Chapter 303 - 296: Brothers
Chapter 303: Chapter 296: Brothers
"My dear brother... did you ever think that the little brother you left to die in the wasteland would one day stand on the same level as you?"
This bombshell of a question caused the brain of Allen, who was watching from over a hundred kilometers away, to instantly overload.
Allen silently stroked his chin, contemplating whether he should cut the feed and play dead.
But for Lysander, that word, "brother," was like a key, violently ramming open the floodgates of his memory.
Sealed-away images surged forth like a tidal wave.
...
Dark, damp, and forever permeated by a strange odor—a mixture of medicine and metallic rust.
This was Lysander’s only impression of his childhood.
No parents, no name. There was only a black-robed Wizard who called himself "Father," and dozens of "brothers" who looked almost identical to him.
They had been "manufactured."
Beneath a human city, that crazed Black Wizard had attempted to mass-"produce" Wizard Apprentices with top-tier talent through some vile ritual and precision Alchemy instruments.
He and Mercer were the two "products" in this batch with the most outstanding data.
"Father" showed them no warmth whatsoever, only training that was strict to the point of being perverse and an endless infusion of knowledge.
Any failure in an assessment was met with bone-deep, excruciating punishment.
Mercer was naturally taciturn, like a cold stone. No matter how "Father" beat or cursed him, he would endure it without expression, then silently commit the knowledge to memory.
But Lysander was timid and cowardly.
He feared "Father’s" sinister gaze, the cold experimental apparatus, and even more so, the "brothers" who were dragged into the darkness for the smallest mistakes, never to be seen again.
Whenever he was huddled in a corner, shivering, Mercer would occasionally give him a piece of low-quality nutrient paste he had secretly hidden away.
"Crying is useless."
Those were the only words Mercer had ever said to him.
The tone was icy, yet it became the only light in his dark childhood. He began to rely on Mercer, to see him as a true older brother, following him around like a little shadow, never leaving his side.
Until... that day.
A pillar of fire tore through the ceiling of the underground laboratory.
The violent explosion was caused by one of "Father’s" out-of-control experiments.
That crazed Black Wizard was blown sky-high by his own experiment on the spot.
The entire underground base was collapsing. The "brothers" from their batch suffered heavy casualties in the explosion and chaos.
Amidst the sea of fire and thick smoke, Lysander was so terrified he could only scream.
He saw Mercer.
His eternally calm "brother" showed no hint of panic, not even sparing him a single glance.
Mercer deftly maneuvered around all the dangerous collapsing areas and rushed into "Father’s" destroyed laboratory. From a pile of rubble, he dragged out a box.
It contained all of "Father’s" assets.
Then, amidst Lysander’s desperate cries, Mercer disappeared through the only exit to the surface, alone and without looking back.
The flames consumed everything.
Lysander didn’t know how he survived.
He gnawed on the corpses of his own kind in the ruins, hid from pursuing monsters in the filth-ridden water, his mental defenses crumbling inch by inch as a twisted hatred began to fester.
’Why?’
’Why did you get to take everything and leave on your own?’
’Why am I left here to struggle for survival like a maggot?’
This resentment fueled him, allowing him to crawl out of that Hell.
By a stroke of luck, he drifted to a Black Wizard encampment. There, he suffered even deeper humiliation than he had under "Father." To gain power, he groveled and scraped, wagging his tail like a dog, allowing his skin to be cut open as an experimental subject...
Until he heard the whispers of the Abyss.
...
「Forged Fire Fortress, Command Hall.」
Adjutant Gordon’s mechanical jaw dropped so wide you could fit a fist in it.
He glanced at the face on the light screen—one that was seventy or eighty percent similar to Mercer’s, yet etched with madness—then at his own perpetually unflappable superior. He couldn’t resist initiating a private communication.
"Mentor... so that guy is..."
"Lysander," Mercer said coolly, supplying the name he had nearly forgotten. "A... test subject with whom I share a biological connection."
His tone was as if he were evaluating an object that had nothing to do with him.
"...After that, I used those pitiful assets to pass the assessment and become a White Wizard." Not a single flicker of emotion showed in Mercer’s幽蓝晶体 eyes.
He paused, as if recalling something.
"As for ’brothers’... So, not all of them died back then?"
"Oh..." Gordon understood. Mercer didn’t care one bit about so-called brotherhood. Besides, this blood connection was merely the result of artificial cultivation.
Lysander’s dependence would probably only... annoy him.
「On the battlefield.」
Lysander seemed to have read the answer in Mercer’s icy gaze.
"Mercer Iron Star! You’re the same as you always were—a heartless monster! Why aren’t you speaking? Am I not your brother?!"
"We’re all just lumps of cultivated flesh. What’s there to say about blood ties?"
"Such a boring thing isn’t worth my time. Only the intelligent and the diligent are worthy of pursuing the truth alongside me."
That was a killing blow to the soul.
Allen, watching from the light screen, sucked in a sharp breath.
’The Mentor’s words are more venomous than a Magic Energy railgun.’
Lysander abruptly threw his arms wide, the last shred of sanity in his scarlet eyes utterly incinerated.
"Since you won’t acknowledge our blood connection, then I’ll show you just what kind of ’family’ I brought back from the Abyss!"
He let out an unintelligible roar, and the pulsating heart he had torn from his own chest suddenly erupted with endless black light!
The black light shot into the sky, piercing the clouds.
At the same time, on the ground, the remains of the Morning Star Level Magical Beast "Thousand-Faced Abyssal Demon," which had been obliterated by the railgun, along with the hundreds of thousands of Magical Beast corpses on the southern front, began to tremble in unison as if answering a call!
Flesh, bones, severed limbs...
Everything began to decompose and liquefy at a visible rate, transforming into rivers of foul blood that converged madly upon the throne of flesh and blood beneath Lysander’s feet!
"Abyss! Gaze upon me!!!"
"With my blood as the catalyst, and the remains of a million souls as the offering!"
"Cross the barriers between dimensions and answer my call!"
"Descend—"
Lysander’s voice had already become a terrifying chorus of countless overlapping voices.
"Abyssal Calamity Beast!!!"
BOOM—!!!
The entire plane of the Molten Iron Mountain Range trembled violently at that moment.
In the sky directly south of Forged Fire Fortress, space shattered like glass, and a black hole of unimaginable size slowly gaped open.
Behind that black hole, there were no stars, no light—only a chaotic, twisted void that radiated endless despair and madness.
A silhouette so vast it was suffocating was squeezing its way out... bit by bit... from that void!
The mere wisp of aura that leaked out sent the alarm systems of Forged Fire Fortress into a piercing shriek.
The summoned "Abyssal Calamity Beast" seemed to have a chaotic consciousness, filled with the instinct to destroy everything.
But in the next second, Lysander’s body, along with the throne of flesh and blood beneath him, transformed into a streak of light and shot unhesitatingly into the slowly descending, massive figure!
"ROAR—!!!"
A roar on the level of the soul reverberated through heaven and earth.
The "Abyssal Calamity Beast" that had just arrived, its eyes initially chaotic, suddenly became clear and rational, then were replaced by boundless animosity and madness.
It lowered its head, its scarlet eyes—larger than mountains—locking dead onto the silver-haired figure atop the fortress, as tiny as a speck of dust.
It now possessed Lysander’s intellect and... his hatred.