Heir Of Chaos

Dale ripped further into the carcass with far less grace than before. He sometimes used his sabers to dig through the calcified flesh, yet he couldn’t find another crystal like the one he had discovered.

He pulled his hands from the inside of the worm and crashed into the sand. "Was there only one?"

It was certainly a possibility but he couldn’t let it go.

Just that singular crystal had widened the horizons of the possibilities his ability granted him.

’I can heal myself.’ He could and that was what he had done.

Naturally, there were limits on how much it could heal. In fact, it could barely be called healing himself.

If anything, it was a form of selective chaos within himself that altered the outcome and speed of his healing.

Irrespective, it showed him that if he could aim his Energy Pulse to attack more specific features of whatever he used it on.

’But what else can I do with it?’ No matter how much he pushed himself, nothing came to mind.

Granted, a few ideas popped up but nothing felt as profound as the sensation gotten from the crystal.

Dale stood up and wiped the beads of sweat off his forehead. He glanced at the horizon then at the sun up ahead.

Despite his calm demeanor, his mind was already racing.

"Could this be the ability skill possessed by the worms?" While he hadn’t actively been keeping an eye out for it, the thought that he hadn’t seen the ability skill of the worms was there.

Now that the crystal situation had unearthed itself, it seemed to answer two questions simultaneously.

It finally made sense why the military had refused to wipe out the colony of worms. He doubted that he was the first to ever discover the existence of the crystal.

The chances of that were far too slim. What the military was using it for though, he couldn’t tell.

Despite that, he could imagine a fair dozen of the crystals being given to a promising soldier. Under the influence of the dust it contained, the soldier could quickly advance and gain a lot of power far faster than was natural.

In a way, it was similar to using Trevor’s ability skill to force an advancement just without the adverse effect of reducing their potential.

Dale smiled as a thought crept into his mind. "I mean, it’s not like they would notice." He chuckled as he gripped the body of the worm and started pulling it towards Watchtower One.

Every few meters, he would dig his sabers into the flesh to remove a large chunk of it. He’d leave the chunk where he was and continued pulling the carcass.

He continued this way until barely half of the original mass of the worm was left.

Dale drove his saber into the worm one more time and ripped out a small piece of flesh. He aimed carefully and tossed the piece as far as he could.

It landed on a small hill of sand. Upon contact, the hill exploded and a worm shot out, eating the piece of flesh.

As it fell into the sand, it seemed to notice the chunks of flesh lined up nicely in front of it.

It burrowed into the sand, popping up only to eat the chunks of flesh laid out in the open. Each time it appeared, it was closer to Dale.

The latter smiled and turned on his heel, running into Watchtower One. He ran up the stairs and went to the telescope room.

He pulled the telescope away from its designated window and smiled as the worm shot out of the sand to feast on the main body of the dead worm.

’I hope this works out.’ Dale inhaled sharply and placed his foot on the ledge of the window.

He picked himself up and jumped out of the window. As freefall started to hit him, he activated one of the ability skills of his sabers.

Orange lightning coated the edge of the blade as Lightning Rod was unleashed.

The worm raised its head and immediately tried to sprint into the soil but it was too late, Dale was already on it.

His sword pierced the soft tissue of the worm, unleashing massive lightning bolts directly into its stringy tissue.

The worm started to convulse, thrashing around with Dale still on it. It swung its body, slamming him into the wall of the watch tower.

Wind was knocked out of his lungs and he let go of one of his blades. The moment he did, the worm burrowed into the sand and started escaping.

’Shit!’ Despite the pain pulsing through his body, Dale could still make sense of what happened.

He couldn’t let the damned worm escape. Effort aside, one of his sabers was still lodged in the beast.

Gripping the handle of the saber he was still with, lightning coated him.

He kicked off the ground, dashing forward in a blur. As he ran, he followed the occasional bumps and rising spots in the sand.

Normally, the worm would have gone far underground but the initial shock from the blades had done extensive damage to its insides.

Not to mention that every time it tried, the saber still fixed into its flesh, digging a little deeper, causing it more pain and drawing out blood.

As Dale closed in on the worm, he suddenly regretted not having drunk more water.

The sun was blistering and unforgiving but at least he knew that the chase would soon end.

While it was nowhere as intense as before, he could still vaguely remember the origins of the worm colony.

And with that memory came a somewhat instinctive knowledge of what the worm was thinking... or rather, feeling.

’It is bleeding so it won’t go too close back to its home.’ That part was common knowledge. Everyone knew that no weakened, bleeding beast would ever go back to its home with more of its kind waiting.

It was the equivalent of going to an enemy station with a sign that said ’I am weak and alone, kill me.’

But the knowledge did let Dale know one thing and that was since the worm was stuck between a rock and a hard place — namely him and its pack — it would choose to fight him where it had the most advantage.

As soon as Dale completed his thought, the worm burst out of the sand and faced him with hatred visible on its featureless head.