From Moving Crates to Killing Gods-Chapter 37: The Impossible

With a recovered body and soul, I looked into the obsidian hallway with new, shining eyes.

"We now live in a place like this!" I said to Kira.

"Yes, I guess this is much better than our old room filled with cots."

I followed Kira, who seemed to know where to go in order to proceed with the examination. Maybe she had used the time I wasted oversleeping, overeating and decrypting system riddles, exploring the corridors of the obsidian spire.

After going up the staircase for a couple of long strides, another horizontal corridor opened to the right. There was a plaque at the top that signaled "Meeting room".

As we entered I saw the faces of our comrades. There was Rolen with a calm expression looking our way. Coco with a massive canteen, drinking something that I could bet was juice. And Finn with a human expression, he seemed to have recovered mostly from the dark water he had consumed and was now smiling toward us.

I wanted to say something to express how glad I was that he didn’t die, or to tell them that there was meat in the fridge, but somehow I felt that it wasn’t the moment.

There was a seat for each of us, and in front of each of us a One sat, except for me, there was an empty chair in front of me.

"Thank you, survivors of the Exile for submitting to the procedure to grant you the title of Ones." Said a bald man with small patches of hair on his face. I was surprised to see someone older than 21 for the first time, they seemed to have more hair around their chin, something I didn’t know happened with older age.

"We’re extremely surprised about the amount of survivors in this generation." Said the youngest of them, who seemed like a smart person because he had glasses. "There have been hundreds of documented cycles, maybe even thousands of exiles and there has never been a case with more than one survivor."

"We think." Said a man with loose strands of white hair. "That it has to do with the fact that two of our trained Zero’s participated in this Exile. One of them is my daughter Mira. But we don’t see them among yourselves."

’Oh boy, is he about to acusse us of using them to our advantage? As if they didn’t teach them to use us as bait?’ I thought for a moment, blood starting to feel warm inside me.

"That’s right." Said the eldest of them, a man with white hair, cold, murderous eyes, and factions that seemed forged under incredible pressure. "My son Darien isn’t here as well. Could you enlighten us about what happened to them?"

A knot formed in my throat, I was starting to plan how I could deal with the Ones, with my ability and the new boon I held, maybe I could finish them. But I hadn’t practiced my ability to be as confident to throw myself into a fight against the sole survivors of past generations that held unknown abilities.

Then, Kira spoke. "They’re dead." She said with a cold, grim tone. "They used their knowledge to guide us as far as they could. We crossed the lake, the outer abandoned citadel, we even made gliders to travel through the sky. But in the end the massive corruptor that lurked outside the barrier finished them both."

An emotion seemed to travel between the four Ones in an instant. As if a lightning bolt had just struck them at the same time. The oldest one, the Citadel Master spoke first.

"Lurked?" He asked, as if waiting for her to correct the mistake in her sentence.

"Yes." Kira said. "That corruptor breathes no more."

Their faces froze. with hope, panic and another unsettling emotion.

Fear.

"That’s impossible!" The bald man said. "He is the strongest corruptor, the other ones don’t only fear it, they submit to it. And in all the history of Argent there has never been a case of someone even hurting a Corruptor!"

Then the man with white strands of hair, the Citadel Minister spoke with a grim, wiggly voice. "Don’t tell me... Is there a monster stronger than that thing? If that’s the case we might cease to exist, if—"

Then Rolen interrupted. "You guys are wrong." He said with a confident tone. "The monster is dead because Allaran killed it."

For a moment there was silence. They didn’t seem ready to ask who Allaran was, they were examining our bodies and our eyes, as if trying to decipher if all of this was just a joke. Even Finn seemed startled, he probably didn’t remember anything.

Then, the Citadel Master spoke. "Who is Allaran?" His tone curious and cold.

"That’s me." I said with a small, newfound amount of confidence.

All of them looked at me, examined me with their eyes. I could even see the One with glasses, the closest to me, sniffling the air, maybe just to be certain that I wasn’t a Corruptor...

Scratch that, actually it probably was because I was as grimy as you can get. I probably smelled like a dead animal.

On the bald man I could see fear, on the Minister doubt. But on the Citadel Master I couldn’t discern what he was thinking.

"I see." The Citadel Master spoke. "The examination has ended. Jim, File the titles of our new partners. We can skip the rest of the process I made. Let them rest and we’ll ask about the other matters tomorrow."

The youngest One answered. "Perfect, Citadel Master. I’ll write the titles and let the runic system know about their new identities."

"All of you, dismissed. Except you, Allaran, follow me." Said the Citadel Master with a low resonant voice that felt heavy in the air.

Kira shot me a worried glance for a moment, but then she seemed to remember that I had killed a massive Corruptor, which made her feel more confident in me. She probably forgot that the only talent I had a week ago was making yo-yo tricks.

And like that, my friends started walking towards their rooms with their newfound authority. While I was walking towards the unknown.