Chapter 17: Chapter 17. The Start of 400 miles Journey
After an undetermined time had passed, I was awakened. I felt weak, even opening my eyes took a little effort. I check my surroundings when I did manage to open my eyes. Not much I could see from this point of view. I knew that it's not the night, since the sunlight was there, although I must say that this place felt pretty secluded, judging from the shade covering my sight. My head couldn't move, it felt like the sides of my face was enveloped by something, blocking me from moving freely. I exerted my strength to get up. It's like I had to use every ounce of energy to be able to move my body. After some time passed, I was finally able to move my head and see more things.
I was somewhat buried behind a rock. The rock itself wasn't extra big, however its shade covered more than half of me. Almost all of my body was under the cover of red soil. This soil, it's almost as sticky as gum and, at the same time, had characteristic of mud. A small part of my face was probably the only thing still on the surface. That was why it's so hard to move.
Trying to get out of the soil, I found that the soil was both dense and sticky. It took me quite some time to free my hands. Now that my hands were free, I grabbed the rock and used it as a support. When I got to the part where I managed to free my legs, I realized that I couldn't move them. In fact, I couldn't feel anything on the lower part of my legs. I could sit but I failed to stand up.
"Damn!" I cursed. Was I crippled? This sucks! I showed my power and this was what I got?
Based on the information from Seo Daho, Choi had been with them from the start, so he couldn't be the one who came out alive from the fight at that supermarket. Meaning, he shouldn't be an evolved like me. I couldn't be really sure because he wore long sleeves shirt. As for Min Songhee, now her I was pretty sure that she wasn't an evolved. I meant, she wasn't modest with her choice of clothing at all.
What then, could be the reason of their action?
Also based on the information from Seo, Choi was someone who liked to be in limelight. So was Min Songhee. I wondered whether that related to me at all, with me being suddenly famous? In the end, I couldn't understand what's going on in their mind and what prompted their vile action.
Thinking up to here, I promised myself that from now on, I'd be more careful and be as low key as possible.
My whole body was covered with red sticky soils. I probably looked like one of the purger now, being bulky. Considering I just fell a few hundreds meters and still alive, I considered it lucky. Well, I had Titan Armor to thank. Still, the fact that I was crippled due to the fall proved that even with Titan Armor I wasn't invicible.
Looking around, I saw foot marks everywhere. It was like the earth was trampled on. I looked up and saw to my horror, various kinds of tools were hanging on the cliff. There might be hundreds of them.
A terrible feeling crept into me, it's like tiny ice cubes were slashing my spine. Even taking a guess about what happened to the people up there frightened me.
The purgers on this new land, before my fall, didn't seem to know that there're human up this tall cliff. My fall must've alerted them and thus they decided to climb up. Even though the cliff was hundreds of meters high, for monsters like them it wasn't impossible. Using their strength and claws, they could climb the cliff easier than any professional climbers. Not to mention if they used some kind of tools, like hooks and ropes.
One interesting thing plague my mind. How had I survived with only broken legs? The purger had one motto and one motto only: Take No Prisoners.
I couldn't possibly be sure of what really happened, but I guessed it had something to do with my Titan Armor and the fact that I was buried due to the fall to this particular part where the red soil was softest and partly blocked by a rock. Titan Armor kept me alive despite falling this high while the red soil and the rock hid me from further disaster of becoming fresh food for the purgers.
I felt hungry and weak. Titan Armor had taken every bit of stamina I had. I had only regenerated a bit of stamina during my faint so I guessed I didn't passed out too long. I wanted to know what happened up there but it would have to wait.
Throwing my sight afar, I eyed the purger's camp. That nearest camp must be where the climbers came from. It should be near empty or fully empty now. From where I lay I could see fire totems inside the camp. From this distance, no purger was sighted, which was good. Or bad, depending on whose perspective it was.
There could still be left over purger at the camp, I couldn't really be sure. Anyway, I still got to give it a try. If I could get at least one marble from a purger, my vitality would be replenished faster. This was what I learned from repeatedly consuming the marbles. As for my legs? I'd think about it later.
I started crawling toward the camp using my arms and torso only. With my strength, it wasn't suppose to be that hard to drag my body. The problem was I felt weak. My stamina hadn't recovered. Something that should've been easy for me to do was now a challenge.
The sun shone quite bright at this time. Judging from the its position, it should be a little bit after noon. There was no hiding place between where I fell and the purger's camp. Sure, there were rocks and some weird shrubs everywhere, but they were too small to hide me. Fortunately, my body was covered with the red soil, making me much less conspicuous on the land.
It took me probably one hour crawling just to get near to the camp. I kept checking whether any purger would appear. Whether it was due to my luck or not, there didn't seem to be any purger around.
While crawling I thought about my fall. Since I didn't see any visible physical trauma on my legs I was guessing that as long as I could evolve up a level then my legs would healed too. When I progressed from white status to an Acolyte, the improvement to my body was great. See, I was an active youth. I played futsal, plus a couple other high impact sports and retained several injuries. All my previous injuries that I got from those sports had vanished now.
How far was the extend of reparation that an upgrade brought? I had no idea. Could it regrow severed limb? Or could it regrow smaller incident like, for example, severed finger? And how about people who was birthed with disability, would it help them?
Anyway, since I had no information nor experience in that matter, let's leave it at that.
Coming back to what's ahead, I was thinking that, even with my legs crippled, I was pretty sure that I could overcome a single purger. I could at least activate Titan Armor once. I was nimbler than any ordinary purger and my strength was far above it. The purger didn't fight with a tactic, it would simply charge at me. With all these advantages, there was a very high chance of me winning. That was, of course, as long as I stayed defensive and faced only one of them.
Since I didn't see a single purger there, I decided to make my way to the center of the camp. This was where I first saw the strange round platform. I was no explorer, even so, I found everything on this new land both interesting and intriguing.
'Shoot!' my eyes caught about a dozen of purgers coming from the opposite direction.
I pushed myself hard to move away, as hard and as fast as I could. Ignoring the pain from rocks and heavy friction with the ground, I hurriedly hid behind one of the tents. After settling in, I pulled myself up so I'd be in a sitting position. I was almost late. They arrived as soon as I managed to drag my currently dysfunctional legs.
They must've came from the other camp. I took a peek at what they were doing here. They were encircling the round platform. From this angle, I only managed to see part of the strange platform, nothing more. The purgers were ordinary ones. I didn't dare to fight that many of them in my current condition. Even in full health I still had to be extra careful.
The purgers were kind of growling at each other. Wow, they're having a conversation? Of course they were. How silly of me to be surprised by this. I had been placing the purgers as something below us human while in fact I didn't know much about them. I knew the marbles produced by their dead bodies were beneficial to us and I knew the purgers were hierarchical based on strength. And that's it.
Eavesdropping from my hiding place, I was somehow fascinated by the way they talked to each other. I couldn't precisely find any similarity between their conversation style with anything in our world. Amidst that gibberish, one of them walked forward and stood on top of the circular platform.
The platform suddenly lighted up in soft light, covering the purger's whole body. That monster was making loud scream, its body was trembling hard. If I had to make a guess of what kind of face this particular purger was making now, I'd say it's in pain. Then its body was emitting some light and it floated a bit.
'What the hell!' I almost shouted when the purger started floated. What happened to it? This scene felt familiar, it made me anxious.
It's only a short moment before the soft light started to dim and the purger landed on the platform again. That purger walked down the platform, and to my surprise, with yellow eyes. If I didn't have good control over my body, I'd probably pissed my pants.
One by one the other ordinary purgers were also going to the platform and came down as yellow-eyed ones. My head was spinning with confusion. I thought they needed to eat our hearts or our whole body to evolve? But what did I just witness? If they could evolve just by standing on that magical platform, then we, human, were definitely doomed.
I felt anger toward the god. Why gave me hope only to crush it in the end? Wasn't this looking more and more like a joke?
The freshly evolved yellow-eyed purgers went back to their camp together. I saw their departure with redden eye. I could only swallow my indignation. There was no way I would ambush them now. Before, when they're still ordinary purgers, ambushing them could be considered a reckless and stupid move, but now it's a complete, sure fire, suicidal.
I waited for at least a couple minutes after I lost sight of them to make sure no purgers suddenly popped out. I circled around a bit so that I could get a good view in the direction of where those new yellow-eyed went. By doing this, I could be certain that no purgers were coming this way. I came out of my hiding place and crawled until I got myself next to the circular platform.
The platform was very peculiar. There were engravings of what I guessed to be some kind of writings of words I didn't recognise on the outer side of the circular platform. The inner part was comprised of engraving of pictures which was divided into four parts that circled around a single picture in the middle.
Those four engraved pictures that encircling the middle picture were like avatars of several kind of creatures. I felt there were some familiarity when seeing those creatures, but I couldn't name them. I didn't dwell on it for long. The single picture in the middle of it, however, was definitely a picture of a woman. She was a beautiful woman, with unblemished face and slim figure. She'd look like human, except for the almost illusory wings on her back. Her facial expression was that of lofty and high, like she was looking down on everything else.
Without any doubt, I crawled up to the circular platform right away. If the purgers could evolve with this thing then, using the same logic that certain god introduced when talking about changes, I should be able to evolve too.
The platform lighted up. Immediately, I was engulfed by the light. The light on my body was not coming from outside, it was from inside.
"Ugh!" my whole body was in pain that I almost let out a scream. I gritted my teeth, enduring it all. The pain was like needles pricking on all of my blood vessels. The same with how the light came, the pain also came from inside of me. Now I understood why the purgers were screaming just now. This was totally different with my previous evolving.
And then suddenly my consciousness plunged into emptiness and the pain was gone.
In the emptiness a small light was suddenly emerging. The light was green. It was slowly coming near me. When it was nearer, I could see the silhouette of a woman.
"Mortal Shi Huicheng," a voice was heard in my head.
This voice was clearly that of a woman. This was definitely different than the previous god. I then asked, "Who are you?"
"You are the first human who come to me," she said, totally ignoring my question.
She shared the same characteristic with that previous god when he talked to me, which were haughty and speaking in lofty tones.
"Your god thinks that we will not notice his tampering with our decision about his world. Well, I do notice. And I like it. So I decided to add a little flavor to this."
"Oh no," I thought. With the appearance of this female god I now understood. This female god, together with other gods, must've been the side that push our creator god to agree to Doom. And since our creator god didn't want to see us perished, being his creation and all, he gave us the chance through the marbles.
"Oh yes," the female god voice reverberated loudly in my head.
To say I was shocked was an understatement, "You can hear my thought too?"
"You think just because you are not my creation I will not have the power to hear your inner thought?" she sounded proud.
"My mistake, oh great god, powerful god. Please continue," I decided to play docile. She must've heard what I thought about her just now. I would be in huge danger if she decided to pursue it and punish me for it.
"You think I would punish you alone? We have already sentenced your whole world with Doom! You are an interesting mortal. You're not a bad man, but you're not a good man either."
She read my intention! I should stop thinking, at all.
"Mortal Shi Huicheng. Just as I grant our creations power, I will also grant you power. Fair isn't it?" then she laughed. It's a very interesting laugh, coming from a god.
Stop! I told myself to not think or have any opinion.
"Hmh! You actually managed not to curse at me. Good control, mortal," she scoffed. I could be mistaken, but her reaction was like she lost the chance to play me around. Was this something the god enjoyed? She continued, "Nevermind. Here, choose!"
Her hand reached out and touched my chest. A stream of information suddenly came to my mind.
"Whoa... this... this is awesome!" I could not help blurted out. It was a genuine amazement.
The female god was laughing. As if she knew I would say that. A self-satisfactory laughed.
"I have to choose one from these?" I carefully asked.
I could described her respond as something like Monalisa's smile. She could either be smiling or not. Not easy to decipher.
What she told me to choose was totally different to what the previous god gave us. This was not the level up of my three power of strength, vitality and agility. This was something else entirely.
I turned to the female god. My face must've shown how dumbfounded I was. She could read my mind, she understood right away. The female god nodded haughtily, smirking.
If this was true, it's like me becoming a whole new person. My heart was beating fast. What should I choose?
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone