Chapter 8: The long road ahead

After escaping that dangerous situation, I got going and continued my journey. There were a few encounters along the way. I ran into a few zombies and little face-eating monsters as well. The zombies were slow enough that I could outpace them without having to use my misty steps and the face eating monsters were not strong enough to pierce through my magic armor. I also got ambushed by arrows but thankfully, something exploded in the area and I got away. My magic armor almost broke and I got wounded. Hopefully, I could pull out a scroll to cure light wounds on my backpack.

While walking, I thought to myself, "What should I focus on to induce my awakening?" I looked back on the past and thought of what made me the happiest. This was when I thought of this specific RPG. I remembered that the characters used runes to induce magic. I thought about the duality of the Rune of the Beginning. The white shield of the right side and the dark sword of the left side together form the rune of the Beginning.

I started to feel something in my back. I felt something move and thought that the egg must be hatching now. I laid it out in front of me and I took out a bunch of worms for it to eat once it hatched. I also know about kiss-feeding where you have to physically break down the food before feeding it, so I pulled out a mortar and pestle and started mashing some worms. I want me to be the first thing it sees so that my appearance would be imprinted and It would think of me as its parent, By doing this, I'm hoping that it could protect me in the future. Upon observing, I noticed that the egg changed patterns a couple of times. First, I saw a pattern of the heat of fire around the lower end of the egg. The next moment, the fire pattern disappears, and the green grass of spring comes around. Next, the purple lightning shows up. Then finally, before the beak peaked through the egg, blue snowflakes showed up on the top portion of the egg. I am now 90% sure this isn’t a phoenix and lo and behold what peaked through almost does not look like a bird for it does not have legs. Yes, it has wings, a beak, and a face, but it had no feet. Its color changes from time to time. First, it's blue, then purple, then green, and finally, red. It seems to change its color randomly. Sometimes, it takes a few seconds or a whole minute before its color changes again. As soon as it was fully out of its shell, the Thunderbird from before, which I thought was dead, came.

The Thunderbird looked a lot worse for wear. It ignored me and headed straight for the baby bird. I would not let this Thunderbird get the better of me anymore! I activated the bracelet and encased the baby bird in a grid of pure water so that it doesn’t get hurt. The Thunderbird then changed his sight from the baby bird to me. I felt scared but I realized that it won’t be that hard to kill it since it was severely injured by Anton earlier. Now, it is just lightning in the form of a bird. I was prepared for it to come near me. I summoned a giant cage made of solid metal with a lightning rod sticking on the inside. My mind wasn’t fast enough to think of what can be used to kill it because it is just made of pure lightning, but at least I trapped it. I activated the bracelet to perform permanency so that this magical cage I summoned remained in reality and not a temporary object.

The light in my bracelet dimmed. It seems that I can do magic of this level just once or twice before it stops being useful. The baby bird’s eyes lit up after I trapped the Thunderbird. The baby bird then touched the metal cage. The lightning immediately ran towards the baby bird as though looking for a meal. What happened next shocked me. When the baby bird opened its mouth, a transparent giant bird having the same features of the baby bird, formed in its background. The only difference is its head had grown a crown on top. The baby bird then looked at the Thunderbird and devoured it completely by sucking on it reminiscent of a pink puffball that’s loved by many people. After this, the baby bird’s color turned pure purple. Unlike the blue lightning of the Thunderbird, this purple power seems more unpredictable, in the sense that the shocks are going everywhere.

The baby bird looked at me and flew straight to my face. While maintaining eye contact, it asked me, telepathically, if I want to form a contract with it. I agreed not as a master and a subject, but as equals. I proposed that when one of us dies, we both die. I now know that this bird was born with the gift of logic and reasoning on the same level as an adult and that we could talk telepathically. We are currently in Taytay, Rizal. Specifically, we are near the KFC Tikling branch, a fast-food chain known for its buckets of fried chicken, plus wings & sides. That is an oddly fitting place for the egg to hatch in my opinion. As we continued walking towards my old high school, we had a conversation where I answered its questions.