April 18, 2020

  What faces before Waldo is an opponent unlike any other. With a mysterious technique, marvelous strength, and an overwhelming perception, this opponent is a dream come true for him. Despite how much he was backed into a corner, he can’t help but smile fiendishly and cackle.

  “Interesting! How very interesting! You’re intriguing… so very intriguing I can’t help but feel wondrous! After such a long, agonizing drought, spring has finally come!”

  Waldo recalls the shockwave serpent back to his inner being and charges towards the man. The man decides to also charge forward. The two of them reel in their arms for a punch and clash against each other. The two of them now seem to be equal, Waldo is finally starting to catch up with his own power.

  “Hahaha! Are you still confident that you will win? I have already matched your power, and it won’t take long before I surpass it!”

  “I’ll give you points for your drive, War Spirit. However, you’ll soon see that my power is a mountain that you can never aspire to hike to the top. No matter what tools you take, you will also fall down the face of the mountain.”

  “That’s right! Keep spouting that nonsense! If you’re so powerful, then how about you give me a real fight!”

  Waldo, with his other hand, charges up a shockwave and blasts it at the man’s face. While the man wasn’t harmed, he did get blasted away a considerable distance.

  “Your mistake was ever believing you could win against me! After all, I am the War Spirit!”

  Waldo proceeds to charge many shockwaves in his hands and transfers them into the ground. His shockwaves follow the laws of sound, meaning they travel much faster through the ground. Therefore, the instant the man lands on the ground, the shockwaves erupt from the ground.

  (That was a direct hit! I felt the contact just now! It would be inconceivable if he escapes that one unharmed!)

  Suddenly, a large wave of fire shoots out from the smoke created from the shockwaves. It completely catches Waldo off guard and completely engulfs him. Waldo starts taking heavy damage, his flesh burning away from the fire and falls to his knees, looking up at the man. They seem to have fire coating their hands.

  “A dazzling show. However, you didn’t prove entertaining enough for me. You shall now be purged and kicked off stage.”

  Then, before Waldo could move or say anything, he was once again enveloped in much harsher flames. These flames burn away the entire human establishment. The buildings quickly catch on fire and are reduced to nothing but ash and dust.

  (It cannot… end like this… I will… I will not let it end like this!)

  The man smiles as he watches Waldo burn in the fiery flames. He would surely die from such an attack. He doesn’t have enough power to survive an attack like this. However, his smile suddenly falters when he hears him speak. The man’s eyes widened.

  “Ruin Counter!”

  The flames surrounding the establishment suddenly go out. Waldo’s burning body begins to extinguish the flames surrounding him as well as reversing the damage done to him by the flames. Suddenly, his cursed energy spikes for a moment before his own hand becomes covered in flames.

  “Hey, you prick… how about you taste what it feels like to be burned alive?”

  Then, Waldo replicates the exact attack the man used with double the cursed energy output. Everything becomes enveloped in a blinding light and a large explosion covers the entire establishment, blasting it to kingdom come. In the midst of everything, Waldo stands up and tries to find the man. That attack probably didn’t kill him. He must have most likely hid in the smoke and debris. A devilish grin appears on Waldo’s face, happy with how this fight has turned out.

  “Are we playing hide and seek now? Fine by me. I’ll seek you out and kill you myself!”

  Suddenly, Waldo hears a squelching sound. Immense pain can be felt. Confusion runs through the mind. Waldo slowly looks down to see a cursed tool impaling his body. Specifically, in the location of his core.

  Humans have a central processing unit that they all have in common: The Brain. This specific organ is responsible for every action that human beings take. It is also responsible for their decision making, emotions, maintaining signals, and all of the other important functions. Waldo doesn’t have a brain. Instead, his “brain” is his core, which is the physical representation of his soul. It is responsible for his very existence, his cursed energy, and if harmed, his body and state of being are threatened.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  Waldo looks down at the cursed tool piercing his body. It has struck him right in the location of his core, effectively paralyzing him. The cursed tool managed to puncture through his tough body of cursed energy. He coughs out a big amount of blood on the cursed tool as he feels himself becoming weaker by the second.

  “It’s too bad, War Spirit. That last attack was impressive. I can’t say I’ve seen you use that one before. Perhaps you’re finally starting to come to your senses.”

  Waldo slowly commands his arms to move up the cursed tool. He tries to pull it out of his body and kill this man. He would fire off shockwaves if he could, but with the damage he has currently sustained, that was basically impossible.

  “You’re still able to struggle? Admirable, really. You certainly must have a great amount of will if you can still afford to stand with your core being struck. I suppose that checks out, given you are the War Spirit.”

  Waldo clutches the cursed tool. He can hardly muster any grip, but he refuses to go down. He turns to look at the man behind him.

  “Who the hell… are you? You’re no person… You recognize me… recognized me… Who the hell are you?”

  “You’re just now inquiring about that? It’s far too late for you to know now. There’s no point in telling you right now, since you don’t even seem to recognize me. How far you have fallen, Rāj.”

  The man swiftly removes his cursed tool from Waldo’s core. And with a swift attack to the top of his head, Waldo is crushed into the ground.

  “You’ll survive. You always find a way to do so. It would be far too disappointing to kill you now, so I’ll allow you to gather up whatever strength you can. I hope you can truly entertain me soon, War Spirit. Just light old times.”

  The small town that once resided near the border between New Mexico and Texas has been completely demolished. It was all at the hands of a single person. And that person has vanished entirely from the scene, leaving the town vacant to all but eternal destruction. However, one thing, one spirit, lived on. He crawls out of the earth, fully recovered and invigorated. During the depths of the night and into the next day, Waldo developed a new extension to his technique that allowed him to transfigure and change his core. Because of this extension, he was able to use a small amount of his entire cursed energy reserves to reverse the damage inflicted. And with using Multiply to regain that cursed energy lost, he was now made anew. Now with a new purpose.

  Waldo looks around at the destroyed environment. The only thing on his mind right now is the fact that he had his first loss. His first very pathetic and humiliating loss. He just can’t stand it. He punches the ground in frustration, causing a small crater to form in the ground.

  “Damn it… Damn it… Damn it! How could this have happened!”

  Coming to terms with the reality of loss is normally not easy, especially for pride-ridden individuals like Waldo. Loss is something that these types of beings expect to never once experience in their lifetime. When it eventually does happen to them, they are struck with great grief and resentment.

  “I’m the War Spirit! Loss shouldn’t even exist for me! Damn it all!”

  Waldo had difficulties accepting this fact, taking an entire two days to process it. In these two days, he worked on honing his abilities without end until his cursed energy pool was nearly depleted several times over. It was all to cope with his frustration and rage, but it has given him time to think. There are people out there that are stronger than him. Acting like a child and a sore loser won’t ever allow him to elevate to those heights. He must use whatever means possible in order to ascend to a higher power. He must use whatever means possible to eliminate that man from existence.

  Waldo stands before a giant pile of debris. He had gathered chunks of the town from the wreckage and piled them up into a large and wide pile that resembled a totem pole. Waldo holds out his arm and begins to charge a shockwave. He releases that shockwave, and it disintegrates the entire pile of rubble. Waldo smiles with great joy.

  “My power has steadily increased. If I continue to grow at this rate, I will surely get much stronger. Now I must find a suitable combatant to test my power.”

  Waldo stomps his feet on the ground and gets into a sprinting position, deciding to continue traveling east. Then, he’s off, sprinting at speeds that exceed double the speed of sound. Waldo can hardly believe the speed at which he is moving. This is merely sprinting, not even taking flight or using shockwaves for a boost. This was just a delight; his laughs could be heard from several meters away.

  As Waldo continues to sprint east, making his way into Plainview, he saw more destruction before him. However, he was surprised by the amount of people living here. By some method, most of the people have managed to procure gas masks or other equipment that would help with living in such an environment. While he couldn’t care less about how they managed to survive, he was delighted to see many fresh targets to test his powers on. And so, he jumps up into the air and stays afloat using the force of his shockwaves slowly coming off of the soles of his feet.

  “They all look like bits of trash from up here. Quite befitting of such a barbaric race. Now, let’s dispose of them.”

  For the next 20 minutes, the town of Plainview came under heavy fire. Invisible shockwaves would rain down on the masses, tearing them apart and further destroying their homes. People would shout and scream about a monster running amidst all of the chaos, devouring people and laughing like a maniac. Not even the women, the elderly, or the children were safe from its wrath. Soon, the town of Plainview grew in silence as the last inhabitants were devoured in the heat of war.

  An entire week of time passes by, and the War Spirit has extended their reign of terror all the way to Fort Worth. After the large destruction of the town, Waldo sits atop a collection of human skeletons, biting into a human head like an apple.

  “This establishment had already faced a previous attack before I came here. Sorcerers or cursed spirits must have plowed through here. There must have been a decent resistance to fend them off considering not all of the humans here have been wiped out. Not like anyone caught my attention.”

  After devouring the last human corpse, Waldo gets up and removes the blood from his hands. Humans might be a good snack, but being sullied in their blood was not a good feeling. Being covered in the essence of such a race disgusted Waldo.

  “If there was an attack here, some of the humans must have fled. It’s time I look for these survivors, if any still remain.”

  Waldo sprints away from the city of Fort Worth to the south. During his time traveling across the world, he realized that there was a larger density of humans in the south. Why that is, Waldo doesn’t know or care. It simply means he has a new favorite direction. After sprinting for a while, Waldo senses cursed energy readings up ahead. Only one of them, however. There is only one sorcerer up ahead, and their cursed energy is sort of dim. Moreover, he finally figured out the structure that humans have for sorcerers and curses: the grading system. He has also learned how to discern different levels of cursed energy to each of the grades. So, this cursed energy he feels is only about Grade 3.

  When he starts getting close to the cursed energy, he sees that there are several human corpses and the smell of cursed spirits. A fight ensued here that left only one survivor. When Waldo sees who this survivor is, he is shocked. A lone human girl, a relatively young one at that. She looks no older than five years old. When the girl looks up from her sobbing, she beholds the War Spirit. And the War Spirit’s mind began to shift gears, and he finally had his purpose finalized.