"Huffff..."
Elane awoke with a deep breath of air, half panicked. Her heart was beating like crazy, and those last few monts where she was hit and sent flying by the hoplite replayed over and over again in her mind.
"W-Where am I..."
For an awful instant, she didn’t even know where she was.
Her body lurched upright on instinct. One hand flew toward her chest while the other clawed at the ground beside her for a weapon that wasn’t there. Her bow.
Where was her bow? Where was Rohan? Where was the ruined town...?
Where... was the hoplite?
Only after those frantic thoughts had already surged through her head did the real world begin to settle into place around her.
She was laying in a bed. Her bed.
Her mind began to stabilise, and she realised that her situation was nothing like she woke up thinking it would be.
Elane’s breath ca harder for several long seconds anyway, because her body clearly hadn’t received that ssage yet. ’I’m safe now. I’m back... There’s no need to worry.’
She understood what happened now. She’d died in the Origin Realm and been expelled out like any other Awakened who failed to survive would.
"Elane! What’s wrong?"
At that mont, her father ca bursting into the room after hearing the commotion coming from inside. A few hours ago, he was heading ho after finally getting a break from his extrely stressful job, only to receive an alert from Rohan’s ho security system that Elane had collapsed inside his apartnt and was unconscious.
This was sothing Rohan, and most Awakened for that matter, prepared for before entering the Origin Realm again. Most apartnts that Awakened rented ca with good security systems that could detect when soone was conscious or not, and automatically sent an alert out when they appeared back from the Origin Realm like this — as it only ant one thing; they’d died inside.
Which led back to the present — after Elane’s father sped over to Rohan’s apartnt and took her for a check up, before bringing her back to their own ho.
"What happened, darling?" Harland asked, concerned.
But as the mories started to co back to Elane after she’d cald down, she began to rapidly hyperventilate and beca even more panicked than when she first awoke.
"Huff.... I — I died! Dad... I was so scared..." Tears imdiately began streaming down her face. Although death inside the Origin Realm wasn’t permanent and one would be sent back to the outside universe in just a weakened state, that didn’t make take away any of the pain one would experience, both ntal and physical.
After all, the fear of death was a natural ingrained instinct every living being has, so experiencing it first hand was quite a ntal scar for any Awakened, no matter how tough they believed themselves to be.
Harland quickly embraced his daughter in a hug, calming her down and gently consoled her. "It’s okay." He whispered quietly. "You’re safe now. They can’t get you here."
***
15 minutes continued to pass before Elane fully cald down enough to recount the events of her death to her father.
" and Rohan... We discovered a ruined town after venturing into E rank territory, and then..." Her breath began to falter.
But at the encouragent of her father, she continued. "...And then... we encountered a hoplite."
Harland’s entire body went still.
"You said what...?"
For a second, he looked like he hadn’t heard her properly. Like his mind had rejected the word before it could settle into any aning.
Then his expression changed so sharply that Elane felt herself beco incredibly tense under the suppression of his aura.
"A hoplite?" He repeated. "Of THE hoplite race?"
There was no mistaking the shock and disgust in his voice.
Nobody knew how serious Elane’s revelation was than him. Harland had spent his entire life in a state of war. He’d killed hundreds of hoplites in his ti as an Awakened, and so ordinary people would never understand how bad that was.
A hoplite appearing so deep within human territory in the Origin Realm was not so unlucky encounter like others may be led to believe, as they are not just so wondering enemy who’d lost their way.
Especially so close to an occupied tier 2 city like Erenhot. This hoplite would have long been discovered and hunted down to the ends of the human dominion.
He knew from that instant that sothing had gone terribly wrong long before Elane and Rohan ever stumbled into that ruined town.
Harland slowly pulled away from the hug, but kept both hands still on his daughter’s shoulders and stared at her face like he was checking for any sign she might be delirious.
"Elane," he said sternly. "Are you absolutely certain that’s what you saw?"
If she weren’t still so traumatised by that whole experience, she might’ve felt offended that her own father didn’t even fully believe her.
But she answered as honestly as she could.
"Yes. It was the hoplite that killed ..." She said ekly.
Her father looked sickened by what he was hearing.
A deep crease ford between his brows, and the hands on Elane’s shoulders tightened, causing her to wince.
Elane had never seen her father like this. Never once had she seen the man she’d looked up to as her own personal superhero her whole life look so rattled.
Most people only ever saw the stern Colonel of the self defence forces, but she was one of the very few people who ever got to witness the real man behind the uniform — and he was nothing like she was looking at right now.
"You need to tell everything you can rember. Everything. Down to every last detail. I don’t care how minor or inconsequential you think it may be, I need to hear it." Harland stopped gripping Elane’s shoulders after realising he was starting to hurt her.
Elane nodded timidly.
She knew eting the hoplite in that place was abnormal, but never did she expect her father to react like this.
User Comments
0 comments from readers