25 Deceived Myself

On the first floor of the Volcanic Land, somewhere far away from the teleportation circle, a boy was sitting with his back rested against the body of a lizard.

He was weeping silently, while hugging himself. His eyes were red from crying and his throat dry.

Thousands and thousands of questions were continuously banging in his head.

And like a background music, he kept asking himself, why?

As if insanity had finally taken over, he started laughing, laughing his guts out.

"Hahaha! Who the heck am I to be shedding tears? Ha-ha! After all I knew it for so long!" Helkep was hugging his belly like he had heard the most hilarious joke in the world.

"Yea! I knew it alright. I knew it from the moment I somehow got out of the dungeon, no I knew it from way long ago!" Helkep tears finally stopped, probably taken over by madness.

"The only reason I have… deceived myself for so long, it's because…I am a coward. I feared it, I feared power. The power that I possessed so long ago, the power that made me prideful, dignified... That power that betrayed me and left me alone...No it wasn't power, it was fate, it was my destiny." Helkep's bursting emotions started calming down, as he calmly and ruthlessly analysed himself.

"When my innate skill was unusable, when I couldn't use it that was the biggest shock I had ever received, after I awakened my innate skill before others at that. Seeing the prodigy who was born for greatness not being able to do something so simple, they were shocked and I, I thought I had done something wrong. My mind which was always hot blooded, for the first time learned the taste of fear." As Helkep continued on, his mind started getting engulfed by calmness, calmness which was created from a state of emotionlessness.

"At that time my mother came to my room and told me to devour a skill core and see if I could use it. I…didn't absorb the core, I was afraid, I was hesitant, I thought I was early in awakening my innate skill, I will be able to use it when I grew up. But the world is a cruel place, if you want to sit on the top, then you must be someone worthy and must show that you are above everyone else. And if you falter, even for an instance, this world will use everything it can to cripple you. …After the show I was made into, in less then one month a rumour spread. Due to being so gifted, God limited him by not being able to use skills. Now he's nothing but someone ordinary." Helkep stayed quiet for a long time before continuing.

"I was deceived by them, I truly started believing I couldn't use skills, even before I had ever tried to use one. I believed I couldn't and slowly like a disease, the thought spread to those close to me. …The world forged me and I letted myself be drowned in the flood they were trying create for me. I had known this for so long, but at that time, at this time," Silence, there was only silence, he stayed quiet for a long time before speaking again.

"…At this time…I have long lost the talent that made me into who I was. The talent which made people think I would become the king of a new generation. The talent that allowed me to master Martial Skills, like drinking water." It has been a topic of debate for decades, which skills are more useful, Martial or Mana.

Martial skills were strong, very strong. In terms of strength, martial skills dominated Mana skills. But learning Martial skills wasn't a walk in the park, it required patience and effort. Patience for years to wait, that's just how long it took for a normal person to master a martial skill.

Mana skills on the other hand, not boasting insane power like the Martial skill but they managed a large variety of elements and other stuff. And they were also easier than learning Martial Skills.

But Helkep was able to learn Martial skills easily, it was like drinking water for him. Skills that would take one half a year to master, he could master them in seconds and even find flaws in them.

This was the incredulous and unbelievably supreme talent that Helkep was born with.

He didn't even bother learning lower ranked skills and only learned two high level Martial Skills and dedicated himself to master them to the highest level. But as he said, it seems that he can't or doesn't posses the talent anymore and it had been so long since he trained his skills that they were all on the lowest level now.

"I am nothing but an ordinary person, living here trying to survive. Those peers that were with me have long left me behind. Friends that I had, have long betrayed me. The family I hav…had despises me...What am I now? I am nothing but an insect crawling on the ground just like others. There is nothing for me now, only despair and suffering. I guess this is an atonement, in my pride I had committed many sins, I guess this was punishment, for breaking and toying with the things God created." Past memories flashed by his eyes and he shook them away as past.

He got up and dusted his clothes before searching for the teleportation circle, he believed it wasn't far away as he had found the lizard rather quickly.

Too bad, crying truly didn't suit him. As he was searching for the teleportation circle and starting to believe that he might have been wrong about its location, he saw a monster coming towards his direction.

When he looked to the side he saw another monster, it seemed that… his crying had attracted the attention of unfriendly beings.

'I am truly not in the mood of killing right now. Not like i can kill them either. What do I do? Should I run from the side? …Or do I even need to do anything, it would be best for a person like me to die, wouldn't it? Yea I should just wait for it, to come to me.' Helkep's golden eyes dimmed down. Like a lit bulb slowly losing electricity.

But not everyone was going to sit back and allow him to die. The hidden boss, who was currently playing with a strange device, felt as if someone was trying to rip his throat apart.

He felt the connection pulling him towards somewhere, he swore to give Helkep a piece of his mind and was soon saddened by the thought of communicating with him.

As the pressure slowly became unbearable, he started running towards where the connection was pulling him.

His unbelievable speed made sure that nobody saw him as he ran where the connection was leading him.

When he reached the teleportation circle, his mind was in so much pain that he couldn't even think about opening it but by luck the teleportation circle lit up on its own.

Not caring about the mystery more appropriately couldn't, he ran towards where he felt the connection blinking, bleakly.

When he reached the end, he was surprised to see monsters ganging up on Helkep.

Monsters were fighting amongst themselves and the prize of the winner seemed to be Helkep, who was currently laying on the ground in pieces.

His arms and legs had been ripped off, with the remaining body beaten up like a punching bag.

Yet he was healing and the healing was the thing causing the monster's imaginations to run wild.

Seeing the connection tingling and about to break, he got enraged and got ready to slaughter all the monsters.

He didn't care about Helkep's current state but he was angry on the fact that these monsters were releasing bloodlust, and him being in the middle of it was obviously affected by it.

He was already pretty annoyed by the connection making him feel like he was about to die now he was even more enraged, he felt humiliated by the fact that even bugs were daring to threaten him now.

He was now prepared to learn the stupid language that Helkep spoke and get him… no force him to free him from the stupid thing that was keeping him tied to him.

Getting enough of the insult that the monsters were throwing on him, he spoke in his eerie and mesmerising voice, "Beings that dare defy me, prepare to become mud in the ground, speak in your last moment, do you hail me Divine?"

It seemed that he had grown up from his broken words and finally embarked on the path of… my words makes them bow.

The monsters started shaking, not due to his words they were too dumb to understand them completely. But the aura that he was releasing was too powerful for them.

"Scatter into dust." His words were like judgement, as they were spoken, corpses fell on the ground.

Within one minute, there was no one alive, other then he himself and Helkep who was currently regenerating his limbs… while unconscious.

The hidden boss felt a bit tired after that connection stopped torturing him, he left the messy area and laid down on the clean ground.

After about two hours Helkep woke up and found himself… alive. 'Sigh! Where is the hidden boss? He should have let me die, maybe he would have been free.'

Helkep got up and felt his legs barely able to support him, ignoring them he searched for the hidden boss, while looking at the bodies that were neatly killed on the ground, with nothing damaged other then the missing heads.

After searching for sometime he finally found him laying on the ground.

The hidden boss seeing him stood up and stared at his limbs while stunned. If it was him, it would have taken him an year or two to recover. He couldn't help but look at Helkep in a new light.

"Where is the place you came in from?" Helkep asked in his weird voice.

If the hidden boss's voice was mesmerisingly eerie than his voice was the representation of death.

The hidden boss had a frown as he firmed his desire to learn the weird language.

Helkep sighed and drew the teleportation circle on the ground, his memory was quite sharp.

The hidden boss nodded and led him towards where he believed the teleportation circle was.

But when they reached the place, the hidden boss started pounding the area, believing that the teleportation circle was hiding itself from him.

Helkep sighed and stopped him. They wandered the area for about an hour before they finally managed to find it. Luck was on their side or they would have had to pay even more for there carelessness.

Helkep focused on his shadow and the hidden boss felt himself being pulled into the shadow, he sighed and stopped resisting the weak force.

Helkep stepped inside the teleportation circle.

When Helkep passed from the gates, the guards felt something was weird as Helkep walked past their senses.

This momentary fear was felt by a lot of peoples, Helkep ignorant of this kept walking towards his room.

Inside the room, Helkep wasn't stopped by the two brothers, they even tried to ignore him. Some horrifying aura was oozing from him after all.

Helkep entered his room and looked at the lizard which was laying upside down.

Hearing the noise of the door opening, the lizard blinked its eyes cutely and after a moment, excitedly started circling around him.

Helkep ignored the lizard and laid down on the bed, prepared to go to sleep. As the voice that was coming from outside had stopped.

But no matter how calm he had become he wasn't able to go to sleep.

After trying for four hours and not getting any sleep he sat up straight and after a while, said to himself, "…So! I am a bit curious, just how many things are there, that I managed to deceive myself about?"