Apocalyptic Era: Starting from picking up a Bishoujo
Chapter 126: Sleep together at 120 1

Chapter 126: Sleep together at 120 1

After saying goodbye to Zhu Shi, I headed toward my home. Mazao naturally accompanied me back. Affected by the recent "shocking news," we didn’t feel much like talking on the way. Mazao seemed to be preoccupied with heavy thoughts as well.

Even during the earlier interrogation of the Weirdo Maker, she had remained very silent. I had thought she wouldn’t be able to resist asking a few more questions since her purpose was to investigate information related to the "apocalypse" through the Weirdo Maker.

"Your ring..." Mazao spoke first, looking at the pocket where I kept the Black Rope Heart-locking Ring, "You used it during the day as well, is it a tool that can compel others to tell the truth?"

"Yes."

I explained the origin of the Black Rope Heart-locking Ring and then inquired about the reason for her previous silence.

"That was an enemy you had defeated, so you should lead the conversation. I was just providing some support at the end, and I had no right to command or instruct. Besides, you also helped ask the questions that I was concerned about," she said, "Moreover, the investigative work that follows is my main ’battlefield.’ If there’s anything you want to know, I can trace it using my own abilities."

"Speaking of abilities, how is your Spirit?" I asked concernedly, "You seemed to have almost fallen again earlier."

"It isn’t as bad as it seems." I wasn’t sure if she was telling the truth or just putting on a brave face, "My blessing power is more taxing when retracing external events compared to retracing my own. It’s easy to overexert and subsequently aggravate my own injuries. However, I can recuperate by retracing my state as long as the injury isn’t so severe that I can’t utilize my powers at all."

I thought I still needed to find a way to heal her Spirit. Even if I could only find a temporary solution rather than a cure, it was still better than not looking at all.

We arrived back home. It was nearly nine in the evening, and I was about hungry.

Before we began the operation to ambush the Weirdo Maker, we had only grabbed something to eat on the road, which didn’t really count as having dinner. As a Flame Aggregation, I technically didn’t have a strict need to ingest food and water, and hunger was just a simulated response; Mazao could reset herself to an optimal state using her blessing power, perhaps even less in need of nutritional intake than I was. But I decided to make dinner first anyway.

Eating was helpful for mental recovery. After all, I had fought and even killed someone—in fact, slain the biological father of a friend—so even I couldn’t escape bearing some mental burden. And it seemed Mazao was still tense in her consciousness. After a meal, both our states improved somewhat.

She started watching a television program in the living room, while I returned to the bedroom and checked my superpower.

There seemed to have been some changes in my superpower after the first time I killed someone. And now that I’d killed the Weirdo Maker, had my superpower changed again?

The answer was yes.

Previously, all my attention had been focused on the Weirdo Maker, and I hadn’t carefully sensed whether there had been changes to my superpower. Such changes were not easily perceived in the first place; the last time, I caught them only because I was concerned about my psychological state when killing. In another situation, I might not have even been aware of changes in my superpower. Now that I had activated my superpower again, not only had changes occurred, but they were much greater than when I had killed the Shadow Swapping Monster.

Now I could describe the changes superficially.

Some people who are engrossed in sports might understand what I felt now. It was as if I had set aside my favored sport for three or four days to focus on studying; when I picked up the technique again, I found that the feel and execution were subtly off. It was as though the feel had overslept and had become slightly unfamiliar, temporarily unable to mesh with my memory. It was as if sand had been sprinkled into a gear machine.

Comparatively, the Shadow Swapping Monster had been at most a pinch of sand, which could be grasped entirely between thumb and forefinger. But the Weirdo Maker was a handful of sand that required cupping my palms to hold.

That handful of sand would soon be completely ground down by the operation of the gear machine. However, my current task wasn’t to grind it down but to pick it out from the gear machine to see what it was.

I raised my right hand, summoned a Fireball in my palm, and then focused intently on it. Now, I had to imagine that this wasn’t a Fireball but a gear machine. I had to invert the machine, letting the sand within separate and fall out on its own.

Before long, I saw a bit of a dark shadow emerge within the Fireball.

The shadow became more visible until it ceased to change, then I dismissed the Fireball. The object that was the shadow fell and landed in my palm, revealing its true form to my eyes.

It was a dark, hard piece of material.

The size of a thumb, the black object was irregularly shaped and hard to the touch, feeling like coal. I couldn’t entirely understand what it was, nor why it would appear within my flames. I tried running my superpower again and found the discordant feeling had disappeared. It seemed that the mysterious black material was the cause of the problem with my superpower.

I tossed and turned it, unable to comprehend what it was, and yet I had a vague guess. Since it affected the functioning of superpower, it was undoubtedly an "impurity" to my superpower. This impurity, which had appeared after I had killed an enemy with fire, felt like the remnants of the enemy’s life left in my flames.

Although my flames had the destructive power necessary to evaporate a target, "evaporation" was not "annihilation," simply transforming the target from solid or liquid into a gaseous state. And after this vaporization, there would always be some substance remaining. Much like distilling seawater leaves behind salt and other impurities... no, perhaps that analogy isn’t quite apt. It was like the "ash" that appears during pyrometallurgical processes...

Indeed, it was "ash." Although it still didn’t seem quite right, I thought the metaphor came closer to the core.

I took this small piece of "ash" to consult with Mazao. I figured that if this "ash" were to be categorized, it would also be considered a kind of supernatural object. When it came to knowledge of such objects, she was far more versed than I was.

"You’re saying this piece of coal affected your superpower?" she asked with a serious look, turning the "ash" over in her hand repeatedly.

"Yes, but it’s fine now," I said.

"Does it reduce the power of your Flame or decrease the precision with which you control it?" she asked.

"No," I said.

"But you said you felt rusty controlling it, like a machine clogged with sand," she pointed out.

"That was just a superficial metaphor," I thought carefully about my sensation, "In fact, its impact is only in causing a foreign body sensation, like when a familiar phone gets a new accessory. It might feel a bit strange at first, but you can’t say the accessory has affected the phone’s function."

My metaphor didn’t seem to fully resonate with her, but she seemed to digest it begrudgingly and then handed the "ash" back, saying, "Then, can you incorporate it back into your flame?"

I summoned the Fireball again, took the "ash," and stuffed it into the flame. The process went smoothly; the "ash" disappeared within the Fireball without a trace, and the sensation of a foreign body vaguely reappeared.

Then, as before, I made the "ash" materialize from within the Fireball. The proverb "practice makes perfect" rang true, and the "ash" appeared instantly this time.

Mazao took the "ash," wondering, "Has the shape of this thing changed?"

I leaned in to observe and indeed found it to be true. The "ash" had been somewhat flat before, but now it had become relatively three-dimensional.

After Mazao handed me the "ash" once more, I tried several times to take the "ash" in and out of the flame. I eventually confirmed one thing—I could determine the shape of the "ash" as it appeared within the flame. The reason the shape was different the previous two times might be because I had unconsciously altered its manifested shape.

"This ’ash’ seems to have some aura of a soul," Mazao used the name I had given the substance, though she also seemed only able to discern this much.

"Soul..." I pondered.

If "ash" was the remaining substance after my flames had consumed an enemy’s soul, then did that mean I had "soul-refined" the Weirdo Maker—Zhu Shi’s father? Just the thought of that felt "hellish."

Compared to Mazao, Zhu Shi seemed to have a more systematic understanding of supernatural objects, so I had considered whether I should show her the "ash." But now it seemed too twisted to hand over material that had appeared after refining her biological father’s soul for examination. I didn’t want Zhu Shi to hate me, so I decided to let it go.

However, this helped me understand why "ash" only appeared after I had killed someone.

Agent Kong and the Undying Monster had not died because of my flames, so their souls had not been consumed by my flames; however, the Shadow Swapping Monster and the Weirdo Maker were entirely different cases. The former had been burnt to death by my flames, and the latter had his consciousness network burnt to nothingness. Especially with the latter, to say that his soul hadn’t been consumed by my flames would be an understatement.

The Weirdo Maker had hinted, both overtly and covertly, when explaining the relation between body and soul, that a person’s soul, spirit, and consciousness are in actuality one and the same, which made perfect sense.

After studying the "ash" with Mazao for a while, we couldn’t figure out its exact use. We had some guesses but lacked ways to verify them. In the end, I had no choice but to absorb the "ash" back into my flame.

"Is it really safe to keep it inside the flame?" Mazao asked with concern.

If we were being cautious, it would indeed be better to keep such an unidentifiable object outside. Yet, as I had felt before the ambush of the Weirdo Maker, I still believed that the appearance of the "ash" was not changing my superpower for the worse. Regarding my superpower issues, I trusted my intuition a great deal.

For now, putting aside the question of the "ash," I began contemplating another important issue.

The Weirdo Maker...

Or rather, his original self, Ying Lingyun—was he really dead?