Lord of Annihilation

'That was bad.' 

Lucius divided a part of his attention and observed his soul within his mindspace. 

The clear transparent soul remained the same as ever, pristine and pure. However, something had evidently changed.

'The suppression.'

'The soul is no longer actively suppressing my emotions.' 

The [Killer] soul and it's other, more recent derivative [Annihilator] had the active function to suppress and erase Lucius' emotions and feelings, once a certain threshold was crossed.

Whenever Lucius felt overly happy or angry, similar to a board being wiped, the soul would actively erase all feelings. This would result in Lucius remaining in a blank, indifferent state, removing his ability to empathize or sympathize. 

He could neither feel joy, sadness, achievement, excitement or any normal, 'humane' feeling for that matter.

The only thing that remained was ice-cold rationality and emptiness.

He was a mere shell that felt nothing on the inside.

While this sounded terrible and the prospect of being able to feel their emotions once again would be a matter worthy of celebration for others, this definitely was not the case with Lucius.

Being able to feel things, the ability to empathize with others…these feelings were double-edged swords. Not only would one be able to feel things that they want to feel, but also things that they desperately do not want to.

This fact, especially for a person whose life was as tragic as Lucius', was especially bad.

The memories of his life…the people he had lost…the things he had done…the things that had been done to him...and much more.

The battle against Flauros –Master of the labyrinth- had forced Lucius to remember memories that had been buried within the depths of his mind. Memories which he had forced himself to forget.

And now all these memories…all these foreign emotions that he hadn't felt for many, many years, combined with the fact that his soul no longer restrained him…

…made Lucius incredibly unstable.

His emotions were like a dense congregation of steam that desperately sought for release, only that they had no way to do so.

People who deal with emotions on a daily basis would have no problems when faced with such a situation. However, for Lucius, who had forgotten what it means to be a 'normal', forgotten what it means to be 'human', this was an impossible task.

The only thing that he could do was suppress and restrain them. To forcibly bottle all his feelings up with the uncertainty on how to release them.

'I cannot be distracted. Especially not at this moment.'

One thing was for sure though. The day that his emotions reach a critical point and explode…

…a lot of people will die.

------------

"Let's go over everyone we met and interacted with since you woke up," Ka'lor'ah spoke first.

Lucius nodded his head and started to talk.

"First, there was that guy and three of his friends. Then, it was Olivia. Then there were two more weaklings, after which…"

"Wait, wait, wait! Just a second." Ka'lor'ah interrupted him.

"Who do you exactly mean by 'that guy? As in what's his name?"

"Uhm." Lucius paused for a moment and seriously ponder, "Liam? Luck? Lux?... I don't remember." He shook his head.

"However, it doesn't matter he's already dead," Lucius said with confidence.

"How are you so sure?" Ka'lor'ah asked unconvinced.

"I killed him. You were there too. It was in that warehouse or whatever." 

"Ah, so it was that guy! Hmm…what was his name though?" Ka'lor'ah also started to search her memories.

For an important character to be reduced to a mere 'that guy'. Whoever this person was, he has lived a sad life.

"Now that I think about it," Lucius suddenly spoke up. "I did kill most of the people that I interacted with. Most of the others were just on the sidelines that had no direct interaction with me."

Cause could only form as a product of interaction. The fact that Lucius was losing his share of Causality in Mankind meant three things.

1.    The object, upon which the Cause was being based, was itself being destroyed. In this case, it would be Mankind. In other words, the fate of Mankind was being changed once again and this time, its destruction was brought forward. 

2.    Since Lucius was actively losing his share of Cause, a little at a time, instead of losing it entirely after Mankind's destruction meant that someone was directly stealing it from him. The only people capable of such feats were the Lords.

3.    Since a Lord was directly stealing the Cause from him, it meant that the Lord had identified his existence. However, since Lucius had remained cautious since his return and had been with Ka'lor'ah who could actively hide them from the eyes of the Lords, it meant that he was indirectly identified. 

It was only due to these reasons that the duo came to such a conclusion. That mysterious voice must be related to a Lord (makes sense, because they managed to awaken their soul ahead of time) and it was through this person that the Lord noticed Lucius' existence.

"Actually, we can narrow down our search radius," Ka'lor'ah spoke up after a moment of contemplation.

"The crystal can hide you and your Causality from the Universe. Which means, that any interactions that you had while I was with you would not be counted."

"The only duration of time, where I wasn't with you was during your capture and the subsequent few weeks."

"However, you did not have any actual interactions during this period of time. The ones that you did interact with, were all killed. Try and remember carefully, was there someone with whom you interacted with and left them alive?"

Lucius sunk into silence and carefully thought to himself. He reviewed his memories and carefully recalled every single person with whom he had any interactions.

The tense silence continued for some time. Ka'lor'ah did not interrupt Lucius during this period and continued to silently float near him.

Time passed and Lucius' eyes suddenly flew open.

"…I just remembered. There was a person. A woman."

"Who?!" Ka'lor'ah questioned.

Lucius grew uncertain for a moment, before hesitantly speaking.

"I think her name was…En? Ena?" Lucius' tone was filled with uncertainty when he suddenly remembered.

"Ina! She was named Ina!"

----------

Having killed the Master of the labyrinth and having ascended to Stage 2, there was little point staying within this underground chamber. AS such, the duo immediately started their return.

Making his way through the maze, Lucius was bombarded with multiple questions from Ka'lor'ah.

"Anyways, what the story with this Ina girl?"

"Seeing how she sent a crazy guy to murder you in that ship, I think it's safe you assume that she doesn't like you. What did you do to incur such hatred? Did you knock her up and abandon her or something?"

"Oh, and how come you never mention any of this to me? Are you embarrassed? Is it some sort of dark history that you cannot mention?"

"How do you think a Lord became involved in this? Do you think those guys noticed something? Do they perhaps know about what we did?"

"With the rate at which the Cause is disappearing, Mankind mustn't be in that bad of a situation, right? It's only a few years, right? Even with the involvement of a Lord, with the knowledge that I gave to those two kids, they should be doing fine, right?"

"Hmmm, if I recall correctly the Ordeal must be the 'Formician Invasion'. With Mankind's collective strength, the advance soul cultivation knowledge that I had given, factoring your warnings, time passed and other factors…they should still be fighting over the Outer Rim."

"Shut up."

Unable to tolerate it any longer, Lucius finally told her off. They had been traveling for quite a while and the surface was almost in range.

Taking a left, Lucius ran forward only to meet a dead end in his path. Unbothered by this, he gathered some soul power within his hands and punched at the wall.

A strong punch powered by Stage 2 soul power, further enhanced by [Annihilation Energy], effectively crumbled the wall into nothingness.

After what seemed to be forever inside cramped, dark underground spaces, a stream of sunlight gently struck his face. Followed by…

…a furious bellow and a dense beam of concentrated energy.

"I finally found you, murder!!"