Shadow Lord stared at Ace Eros with a complicated expression on his face. "What type of pain do you pass through, young man? The seed is blooming in you!"
For himself to even think of using the seed, he had used all the pain in Sector Delta to fuel himself, and it had twisted him into sothing inhuman.
Even then, he didn’t plan to just eat the seed. It was to be a gradual process where he would consu it little by little. But what he was seeing happen in front of him wasn’t anything like that.
"What... is this?"
Although Ace stood still, his eyes closed and his face even calm, what surrounded him was flickering light that was almost impossible to see.
But the strange thing was, whenever the light—the dark red light that’s almost black in color—flickered, Shadow Lord would flinch and move back.
Because the flickering light was pain, and it was drilling into his body in a way he’d never felt before. His eyes began to weep even more.
But he gritted his teeth. "Ace Eros. I’ve been planning this for hundreds of years, and you think you can just co from nowhere and steal my powers for yourself? I won’t allow it.
"This is my sweat. The pain I go through that twists my body in such a way that I beca unrecognizable. I beca sothing else.
"No. I will fight for what is mine."
Shadow Lord’s voice turned a bit solemn at the end. He took a deep breath, and his right hand stretched out. The shadows beneath him twisted and spun. They squird towards him, crawling around him.
And in the middle of it all was a familiar shadow that was held by illusory darkness chains.
Shadow Lord revealed a nasty smile. "Let’s start."
☆☆▪︎▪︎☆☆
’Who am I?’
Ace Eros was a lot of things.
The mories twisted and churned.
It showed many scenes, mories of torture of the host, but then sothing strange happened. The sea of mories, the wave of mories, trembled.
And it suddenly changed again.
It showed another Ace Eros. The transmigrator.
He stood in a room, a near dark room, and his eyes were staring at the man in front of him with horrific eyes. He was four at the ti. "You... you are not father."
The man stiffened and then looked at him and frowned slightly.
His father was a twin, very identical, but he went out one day, and it was his brother that took his place.
The twin suddenly smiled, and his eyes shone. "I guess I am now. Your mother definitely approved. And for him? He’s sowhere cold and silent. He won’t be disturbing us.
"Now be a good boy and be quiet as well. Or I’ll make you."
He had stared and stared at the one who claid to be his father. His twin brother that replaced his father.
At four, he knew pain for the first ti.
His life continued, together with the father that wasn’t his father, and his mother that allowed it.
And then his mother died. Intentionally, or she was helped on by his ’father’, he couldn’t tell. But he could tell that things changed. It changed so damned well.
His new father began then. Withdrew him from school in the pretense of hoschooling. And then, the torture began.
Pain. He grew numb to it. He ca to enjoy it.
Suddenly, the fragnts of the mories broke into fragnts. The force of the breaking was like the howl of a tornado, and the sea of mories turned turbulent.
The mories began to shake and separate, dividing into two and moving in separate ways.
Then they gained human figure, solidifying into two Ace Eroses. One was pale and his body was see-through, while the other was a solid block of dark red.
The pale Ace Eros smiled sadly. "So you carried so much pain as well. So much so that you have even blocked your mories of them."
The Ace Eros, the transmigrator, shrugged. "I chose to forget."
The other one laughed. "Right. It’s not as if your mind couldn’t handle it and it forcibly sealed your mories."
"I can handle it. Didn’t I handle all the pain you throw at ?"
The pale Ace Eros sighed. "Give up. Maybe I can handle my pain, and you can handle your own. But can you handle two pains at once?"
Ace Eros, Transmigrator, smiled. "Yes. Won’t you want that to happen, General Dolor?"
There was a pause, and the other Ace stared at the Transmigrator. "So you know!"
"I do. You are not Ace Eros. You are Dolor. Avatar of pain."
"Aahaha... how do you know?" He sounded genuinely curious.
Ace Eros stared calmly at Dolor. "Because when I was shown the... my mories, it ca from my view and the view of an outsider. You."
Dolor narrowed his eyes. "And you. You are not Ace Eros yourself. Who are you?"
Ace Eros smiled. "I guess I am now."
They looked at each other in the silence that followed. And then Dolor began to speak.
"When they ripped the seed from , they tore out a sliver of my consciousness as well. I’ve been building myself since then. No matter what, I must take this body and use the seed. I will free myself from the shackles of all this."
Ace shook his head. "It was him, isn’t it?"
"What?"
"The one that made all this possible. That made it so you can unite with your body. The organization that Shadow Lord spoke of, you are the one in actual control. Shadow Lord or Veyron, they are just the different ways for you to gain resources.
"If Shadow Lord had devoured you, then you would have taken control of his mind and body. And you’d free yourself. And if it’s Veyron that got hold of you, then it’s still the sa.
"You bastards are the ones at the head doing everything. Those organization mbers that passed through here. They are yours, right?"
Ace shook his head. "And then there’s him. The one who made it all possible. The one who made way for all this."
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