Chapter 573 - 567. The Failed Experiment
The moment Zein felt no resistant force from the source, his heart sank.
He had wished and hoped that Naoya had mistaken the shape of a shard with a Fallen Star’s fragment. But the fragment never repelled anyone; if anything, it welcomed people to touch its corrosive surface. Even if the fragment created a repelling force to protect it, there was no reason to repel espers but allowed a guide--or rather, Zein--in. After all, for the fragment, Zein’s power was more destructive than the espers’.
Still, as he walked closer to the podium, he bore a hope that it was just a relic. A relic in the shape of a crystal, or a material coming out of a dungeon. Who knows; maybe in a dungeon somewhere, there was a stone or a crystal that could attract miasma? Maybe that material got transported during the process of a dungeon break.
At least, Zein still harbored that denial until the two shards--especially the one from the cavern--vibrated and sent him cries of lament. Instead of disgust or fear, what they felt was...sorrow.
Zein’s heart dropped even more. As he walked through the storm of miasma under the double protection of the shards, his hands were trembling.
But he couldn’t stop, not now. His stomach churned and his mouth felt like it was flooded with tar, but his feet kept on walking with the urging for the sorrowful shards accompanying him.
And finally, he reached the podium.
Like the eye of the storm, it was calm in the center. So Zein could see it clearly; a rhombus-shaped crystal crawled with sizzling miasma. A tiny, tiny portion of light shone behind the encroaching black, like a firefly in the depth of the night. It was from that minuscule light did the repelling force came from.
And it was from that minuscule light did Zein finally accepted that the thing in front of him was indeed, a shard.
Or it used to be.
The two shards’ lament was getting stronger, and as if hearing the voice of what used to be its kind, the corrupted one sob. The black shard trembled, as if trying to get away, but the crawling miasma shackled it in place. Zein gritted his teeth and reached out his hand, feeling the two shards’ energy flow to the tip of his fingers there as he touched the black shard.