Chapter 298: Farewell to What I had Become!
A glint of aura flowed into Zell's body—thousands of creatures died to his Ars Magna.
However, he no longer needed the system to understand the changes in his body, rather he could visualise the increase.
His former strength limited to the world under the control of the gods and demons who enjoyed their lives in another realm.
No longer burdened by past lives, or other existences' desires.
He became Zell Delacroix, nothing more and nothing less.
"I want to see Rika... the promise I made to her, to the other women I summoned."
Despite his anger towards Astra, the things she told him were the truth.
How could he expect to overcome his enemies when Zell never fulfilled his promises to the women he supposedly loved?
'I am such a hypocrite.'
No, those thoughts were stupid—he shouldn't blame himself.
Zell clenched his fist as he calmed the energy flowing through his body. He wondered if this was how the demons and monsters felt without a game system to support them.
'It's like a small goblet being filled slowly with a sticky substance... to break the seal on top."
With short, sharp breaths, he tried to pull the immense aura flowing into him down towards his abdomen, slowly filling the goblet to the brim. His lips pressed together, and his eyes closed as if meditating in the middle of a crater.
Anya's warm energy is like the golden sun, while Cryska's cold, dark energy is like the moonlight on a cool evening.
'It seems they didn't escape...'
Zell didn't understand this new sixth sense he gained.
However, he couldn't stop focusing on his current task. Zell crushed the energy with his mind—he focused his aura like a pair of hands forming the goblet into a sphere.
Because he enjoyed cultivation novels once upon a time, this shape seemed more fitting as an immense pain spread through his abdomen, a dull ache followed by what felt like daggers gouging his flesh and insides.
"Urk..."
Blood oozed from his lips, as he carved the shape of this wild, unstable aura... a painful noise roaring in his mind like a warning, telling him to stop going against the natural order.
'It's like my insides are being melted by magma!'
Yet with each mouthful of blood, and jolt of pain, his eyes started to shine.
"Return to the beginning, reforge my body from zero!" Zell's lips muttered a single line of words like a mantra, the memories of killing wolves with his greatsword, then using magic to cover the weakness of its slow swing time.
The concept of levels vanished.
All he saw were small auras surrounding creatures, people, even the trees and rocks carried a small amount of aura.
Zell could see abundant pools of aura in the depths of the cliff, at a 360-degree angle around him as he closed his eyes and focused on the world.
The small sphere in his stomach cracked and reformed dozens of times, each time a fresh, bright red mouthful of blood stained the ground beneath him.
'Aura exists in everything... is this the aura of life, or power? No is life the same as power?'
Inside himself, Zell found two streams of aura, but they refused to mix.
He tried once, twice, and then a final time, but each time he brought them together, these auras crackled, like when pushing the same pole of two magnets together.
Bzzzt!
A jolt of lightning flickered from Zell's body, arcing towards a nearby shard of his broken sword.
An hour passed...
Then two.
Finally, after five hours, Zell made some progress.
His body covered in deep wounds, blood and sweat oozing down his tanned body as he breathed slowly and let out a sigh of putrid and thick breath that formed a purple cloud.
Zell formed two orbs.
One was a white orb affixed to his left hand. The tattoos and markings from his pets appeared inside the pale white orb, which sank into his flesh and etched a dark red pentagram tattoo on the back of his hand.
The second orb, jet black, carried the markings of his demonic heritage, including the bright purple incubus marking. As it rotated inside his abdomen, it constantly absorbed the surrounding energy from the air.
A sense of power constantly flowing through his muscles and veins.
Zell's crimson eyes transformed, turning golden.
His eyes snapped open to reveal two patterns etched into his pupils: the sigil of a dragon in one and the marking of a pentagram in the other.
"I see, now."
No longer a human who became a demon with the system's help, Astra used her divinity to transform his body, as if she had gone back in time and changed his race as an embryo.
'I should show her some gratitude... this strength no longer feels foreign, it moves and follows my command as easily as breathing.'
Zell lowered his hips, tensing his muscles, while bending both legs and pouring the energy from his stomach into his legs, the strange aura in his left arm unused.
BANG!
The moment he left the ground, his body flung into the air like a rocket.
Zell grabbed a rock with his left hand in midair and used his newly found aura to propel himself further. He then jumped again, stepping on a rocky crag while rotating in the air.
Finally, with a loud thud, he landed on the cliff.
"Zell?!"
"Master!"
Their eyes widened, and they were shocked to see him so suddenly appear.
After the explosion, they rushed back as quickly as possible, only to find that the atmosphere made it hard to breathe.
However, they looked at their leader, lover and master with a confused and conflicted gaze, their expressions filled with concern, affection and love but also doubt.
When Astra removed the system, the strange voices in their minds that assured them of his greatness and guided them toward him vanished.
'Strange... my heart still aches for him, but the sense that everything in my life revolved around Zell has vanished.'
'Master, you're so divine... I want you to hold me in your embrace.'
Zell gazed at the two, nodding as he sensed the changes in their feelings. Their aura flickered, and they accepted his presence.
'I see... so the system was influencing the girls, even if just a small amount.'
He stepped forward, his hand brushing across Anya's cheek. His touch was delicate, as if touching something that might break with the slightest mistake.
"Anya, I have wronged you... the one who followed me from the start, loved me... and suffered such a horrible fate."
Zell didn't realise how tall he became after Astra transformed him.
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No longer a human, but a true Zel Dragan. He lowered himself, leaning down as his thumb pressed the base of her chin and lifted Anya's gaze to meet his.
"Zell...?" Her soft, hushed voice had a slight quiver. Is it you? Are you truly Zell?"
The thoughts of his past, the previous incarnations all vanished along with the system. All he kept were the experiences and knowledge, thus Zell could confidently say now.
"I am the Zell that fell in love with you at first sight, Anya."
Memories of their first moments together in the game, Tessa and Anya arguing and teasing him... Griselda was fighting alongside him as they fought in the goblin arena, where he and Anya crossed a line. That was the moment Zell failed her.
"Come here." His low, raspy voice echoed as his arms spread. "I am so sorry for being a horrible boyfriend to you."
"Hnnng... It's really you... really? You've come back?"
Her mind might no longer be bound to the system and forget things she liked other than Zell, but the affection and desires also became free... bursting from her chest as she leapt into his arms.
A small dwarven woman in the arms of a huge devil dragon.
"I... thought everything would be okay, that it didn't matter how many women you had...."
'He's back... he cherishes me again, he noticed my feelings!'
Zell narrowed his eyes, and kissed Anya's cheek, stroking her soft, honeyed lips with his thumb squishing them.
"But I..."
'The system seems to have blinded my vision too... how could I neglect this lovely girl for so long, I've even slept with her mother!'
"Sorry, Anya. I was an idiot who couldn't see your suffering."
"Nn... then you have to take care of me in the future..."
"I promise."
Cryska watched the pair with a complex, yet warm sensation in her chest.
Anya, her daughter, confided in her several times about how she wondered if Zell became bored with her after meeting so many wonderful women.
'I see... he's finally found his path.'
As an adult woman, she also had doubts from the moment she met him, but something in her mind, a tempting voice whispering and guiding her, didn't prevent her from falling for the handsome man.
'No, that voice just spoke my feelings and let me forget reality to pursue them... even at the cost of my daughter's happiness.'
However, that meant nothing now.
Cryska touched her chest, the low throbbing of her heart beating powerfully against it.
She felt the same desire towards Zell existed even without the voice, and for the first time in a year, her mind became clear for the first time.
'For now I will let Anya tell him everything, let out her feelings...'
'Because he is still my master.'
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