Chap 125: Pleeeeease

Kie, like his teammates, didn’t press the teleportation button on his telecom. When he finally began breathing again, he gladly slapped the thought out of his mind. Pulling in lungfuls of air became his only focus—until it bewildered him. How was he breathing?

He popped his red-shot eyes open. The faint sheen around his vision meant his eyes were glowing. The bright blue light beaming from his teammates’ eyes confirmed it. Relief spread across their faces with each hopeful breath they inhaled. But wait… He darted his eyes back to Tee, who was still suffocating. A spike stabbed his heart.

Kie, Zod, Saeda, and Miko stopped inhaling the questionable air. Their eyes locked onto their struggling teammate. Every question vanished as they took in the tears of blood gushing from Tee’s eyes.

Tee squeezed her neck, desperate for air. But the explosions of pain in her chest weren’t what consumed her mind. She fought to hold back the claws threatening to burst from her fingertips and the urge to scream. Exploding into pulp was better than letting her teammates see her creepy form. Tears of blood streamed down as she begged the universe not to let her darkness show.

“Pleeeeeease!” she screamed in her head.

The Fragment—shaped like a large glowing ring—passed through the purple bubble, pulled forward toward Sade. Its light, once illuminating the vast vacuum, dimmed to nothing when it settled onto Sade’s pale palm. Golden symbols appeared and shattered, signaling the Sealed Bond was close to deactivation.

Sade’s other members stayed in their Dark mana forms—not only because the vacuum was unbreathable but also for enhanced mobility. Legion’s fiery pupils, Riven’s red eyes, and the levitating beasts provided light. Only Lilith remained a cloud of pitch darkness, absorbing any light that touched her.

Kie, Zod, Saeda, and Miko’s glowing blue eyes widened at their struggling teammate. Blood soaked the white lashes of Tee’s tightly shut eyes as she fidgeted uncontrollably. Her dark red skin deepened, and the veins in her neck bulged toward her face. Unlike them, she still clutched her neck, unable to breathe in the void.

But why was she still suffocating while they could breathe?

The tears built up behind her eyes, imagining a future void of human companionship and hated by all. Her heart twisted to a tight knot, trapped in the hell between sensation and being dead. Why did the universe hate her? Why!

 Tee, unlike her other Sentinels companions, had two powerful forces in her body. It was Ultramana and Dark mana. At that moment, her Dark mana was the superior force. Her dark powers would have enabled her to breathe, but she was keeping back her monster side. Hence her Ultramna was surging to the top, but her darkness would not allow it. Hence, the battle between both forces and her state of torment.

 Sade, the sorcerer, remained in his purple energy bubble on one of his five levitating beasts. Finally, the Sealed Bond’s rules were deactivated. It was since those pesky guardians could not interfere. But those thoughts left Sade with the strong energy signature that flooded the vacuum. His fingers caged the fragment in a tight grip and his eyes popped open.

 Blood gushed from Tee’s eyes, and she began to kick her legs while squeezing her neck. Kie’s mind went blank. He couldn’t think of action. But what could he do?

A vein burst in Tee’s upper neck and squirted blood in Zod’s face. 

“Tee!” Kie yelled with teary eyes. 

That was Zod’s cue to action the thought that ran through his head. Yes, they healed, but the pain was the same. Watching his teammate suffer was unbearable. He screamed with tears in his eyes and aimed both his glowing fists at Tee.

“Crap,” Kie muttered. 

 Zod's teammates popped their eyes open and held onto parts of his body to stop him. But their yells of disapproval got drowned in the loud pow from his hand. The energy from his fists combined into one continuous blast to hit Tee in the stomach.

 Tee got pushed back through the vacuum and towards land. But for every action, there was an equal and opposite reaction. It was so even in that sound-defying vacuum. Zod got pushed in the opposite direction from the thrust, but his teammates who held on to him went along. After counting to ten, Zod stopped blasting to breathe again. He kept his eyes shut to stop the tears from rolling down. 

The force pounding at Tee’s tummy stopped, but she continued being pushed toward land. Unseen by her teammates, a dark energy force shield had formed around her—only to shatter moments later. She collided with a raised landform, breaking off its top as she tumbled down the other side. Blood gushed from her mouth when she struck a solid object near the base, ending her roll.

Her racing heartbeat slowed. Waves of pain rippled across her body, making her fidget. When her chest finally filled with air, she regained enough control to rip her eyes open.

Everything blurred through her sticky lashes, but the world was mostly black. The stinging pain in her tummy clouded her mind. She remembered suffocating in the vacuum, yet the flat surface she leaned against said she was elsewhere. Where was she, and how was she breathing?

Her ears twitched as sound seeped back into them. Voices coming from her wrist pulled her attention away from the throbbing pain in her abdomen.

“Tee, you there? Why isn’t she answering—Man, I killed her!”

“Tee, please answer—please.”

“My telecom shows she’s not moving. Did she reach land?”

“We should have teleported—And Zod, why didn’t you wait on my orders?!”

She tried to speak, but only a low shrill—like a leaking gas tank—escaped her throat, followed by a stab of pain. A gray smudge appeared in her blurry vision. She squinted to identify it, but a loud shriek and splashes of saliva made her blink out of focus again. She swallowed hard at the green glowing eyes appearing on the blob.

“Wait… Did you guys hear that? I think it’s from Tee…”

Tee lifted her legs toward her head, attempting to backflip onto her feet, but failed. Blood rushed from her mouth, and the pain stopped her legs halfway. Thinking fast, she kicked the creature with her nearer foot. Another shriek rang out as the blob was knocked away. She dragged her legs down and rolled aside.

Gritting her teeth against the pain, Tee pushed herself up and summoned two swords. A sharp pull from her injured abdomen tore her eyes away from the green smudges sprinting toward her. The darkness was maddening, but like the creatures, everything glowed faintly. Her torn abdominal fabric revealed red, bruised flesh. If only she knew how that happened.

Tingles prickled across her body, prompting her to spin with both swords extended. The creatures that reached her were sliced cleanly in half. Her heart sank when a familiar strong hold tightened around her body, stopping her cold. The invisible force pressed brutally against her wound.

“Aaaah!” she screamed before choking on metallic blood.

Weakness flooded through her limbs. Her swords were wrenched from her hands and forced down at her sides. When her feet lifted off the ground, a hole carved itself into her chest. The creatures racing toward her dwindled to dim specks below.

“Tee, what’s happening?” came another voice from her telecom.

Tee blinked twice when a large glowing eye emerged from behind the hill before her. It made her forget how to respond to her teammates. Six more massive eyes appeared as the giant dark blob slowly moved from behind the hill.

The faint outline of the blob resembled a huge head hovering in the air. Her brows knitted in unexplainable horror. The vast darkness made it worse. Oh no—was she about to get thrown back into the vacuum? No!

Then she realized her teammates weren’t around. The only logical conclusion was that they were still in the vacuum. Pain from her abdomen flashed white through her eyes. The silence made her acutely aware of the voices still calling from her telecom.

A loud sigh followed with Kie’s voice. “Great, she's alive. But we still have a mission to complete.”

Was she about to get beaten up and need her teammates to rescue her again? Tee opened her mouth, but the hold around her tightened. She channeled her rage into a scream. Pain ran along both corners of her lips as her cheeks split. The fiery pupils that flashed in her eyes disappeared when she shut them, but she didn’t hold back. Her jaw unhinged to release a supersonic scream. Her teammates didn’t hear it—their telecoms couldn’t transmit sounds that loud.

Kie looked away from his device. A glowing purple speck, something far away in the darkness, caught his focus.

“Speak of the Apocalypse,” he gasped.

Zod, Miko, and Saeda shifted their attention from their own telecoms. They too noticed the small purple glow, reminiscent of Sade's energy bubbles. It puzzled them—had they moved that far? Or had the disappearance of the light source finally revealed something that was always nearby?

Unbeknownst to them, the vast vacuum had shrunk due to Sade's hacking. As a result, the disc-shaped lands were pulled closer to the light source that once shone. The five Sentinels were now closer to the Harbingers than ever before.

“Wait,” Zod said. “If the Harbingers are still here and we can breathe now, shouldn’t we go after them?”

Saeda turned her gleaming eyes to him. “And how do we do that? Look at that purple glow—it’s tiny. They could still be thousands of miles away. How are we supposed to reach them?”

Zod rolled both hands into fists, making them glow as bright as his eyes. “Are you forgetting I can push myself with my blasts?”

“Great. And I suppose you’re going to move all four of us during the battle too,” Saeda replied.

“Since I have something to focus on this time, maybe I can teleport,” Miko added, glaring hard at the distant purple speck.

Saeda folded her arms. “Yes, Miko, you can go fight the Harbingers alone. When you don’t make it back, we’ll have a nice big funeral for you.”

Kie pinched the space between his eyes, deep in thought. They were down one member, and their hindered mobility put them at a greater disadvantage. How were they going to defeat a member of the Harbingers like that?

The gleam from Sade's energy bubble illuminated most of his form and his levitating beasts. He and his three nearby teammates felt the strong energy signature again—much like Lilith’s. It was why they hadn’t left the space with the fragment. The vessel’s powerful aura demanded their undivided attention. Indeed, it was not the time to leave.

Tee felt the invisible hold release her, and her supersonic scream stopped. She ripped her eyes open. No sign of the eight glowing eyes in the darkness, nor the titan’s round silhouette, was relieving—but her relief was short-lived.

The hills began to rise, and her side bangs whipped above her head. Panic flooded her body as she realized she was falling.

Her feet landed in the center of a ten-foot-wide crack. The sensation of her cheeks fusing sent a shiver through her body. She blinked away the disturbance and looked around.

The absence of green, bloody scraps bewildered her. She squinted, thinking her eyes needed to adjust, but all she could make out was the bare ground and the high landforms. Where had the shape-shifting creatures gone? And where was the massive one?