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Chapter 5 - Starken Renewal

While watching the ongoing fight, it was quiet for the next minute… until something caught a green flame inside my soul.

Adrenaline surged through me like it was pumped straight into my veins at lethal doses. My breathing quickened, harder, sharper, each inhale scraping at my chest until I felt my whole frame tremble.

In seconds, it tipped into full-blown hyperventilation.

Abruptly… I heard him again.

That same voice from the bubble realm, whispering through my head like an ancient resolution.

"Vermillion. Blood intertangled in a desperate calling, let your eyes turn the color of bladed grass."

Uhh… What did I just hear?

Get your mind together, that's the least of your worries! What's happening to my body? This amount of adrenaline is… way too overstimulating. 

My heartbeat is pounding in places I didn't know could beat. For the first time, my skin feels alive, hypersensitive to every fleck of dust in the air. I grabbed my chest for a short amount of time, an attempt to calm my nerves.

Beside me, Lack's expression shifted from curiosity to something closer to alarm. His pupils narrowed, trying to read something deeper than my shaking breaths.

Observing Veck's eyes turn an emerald green, irises and pupils, confusion was certainly in the air.

'Green eyes… where have I heard of this?' Lack wondered inwardly, trying to recall the memory, the thought barely hiding behind his gaze.

"Hey, man, you okay? I can call an ambulance if you need it," Lack offered, words balanced somewhere between concern and suspicion.

"I'm… fine." My voice came out thin, the lie clumsy on my tongue. "Breaths are just a bit wacky, this happens sometimes."

I had zero clue what was happening. 

Bladed eyes? I've always hated swords…

A cracked laugh formed silently at the back of my throat. 

"Kekeke."

Weirdly enough, as if some ancient instinct had struck my nerves, I found my hands locking around the ledge of the arena. My gaze tunneled, transfixed on the two shirtless fighters.

One of these warriors was a towering, muscle‑wrapped African‑American man, his dreadlocks swaying like iron cables.

Then the other... he was equally as impressive and massive. He was Caucasian, sleek black hair parted down the middle.

"Lack," I muttered, voice hushed, vibrating with something close to hunger. "Shut up and watch. Something epic is about to happen."

"Aight man…" He laughed, turning back to watch the fight, entertained by the whole predicament.

Yes... yes... I have to be right... this instinct of knowingness, a primal certainty, wrote into bone, more real than thoughts. Like, a cat knows he'll land on his legs if dropped.

My breath shortened, heart hammering in a rhythm I couldn't slow.

Any second now…

And in that bonded instant, caught between envy and awe, I for this first time in my lifepath, saw what true beauty was.

And in the truest moment I've ever experienced… I didn't want to die.

They hovered in the air, two twin reapers taut with an unspoken rage and desperate bloodlust...

Suspended in a levitating equilibrium, one can even say, it came off less like a fight and more like a crucible for their supercilious minds. The payout for winning by death was a measly three thousand dollars. Risk dying in the octagon and you get basic necessities for one month.

But these death seekers were aiming for a peak more grandeur than the rest... one in which involved universal fame.

They charged up in a zeptosecond and collided. Fists met with a sharp blast that echoed not just around the arena but deep inside my chest. 

"I really want to do that." I found myself muttering subconsciously. 

The sound of their clash barely registered before it was over…

The white fighter lunged forward, hand snaking to trap the other's neck, as if playing a move he'd rehearsed in his training.

But the black fighter caught on fast. Before the hand could reach his neck, he drove his own fist through the white man's chest, skin and bone shredding like wet paper. Blood fountained around his knuckles, splashing across his torso. The defeated man's blood streamed down his abs, dripping onto his bare feet.

As his aim settled, his fingers hooked around the loser's pulsing heart. With one savage, rending rip, it tore free, slick and wet in his grasp.

"Your heart has been pillaged," he grimaced, his voice clear and callous. "This'll fetch a fine price on the market."

The mans lifeless eyes emptied, and his corpse crashed into the steel floor, creating a pool of a bloodied crater.

Holding the heart up and roaring, the levitating warrior waved it around like a trophy.

How beautiful... is this view? He holds a heart in his hands, his purpose walking on the edge of death, but one... nonetheless. 

I know this is a bizarre thing to say... but I feel as if I'm just on the brink of becoming someone entirely new...

"A lucky rebirth," I uttered aloud, the syllables slipping out almost unconsciously, like an instinct made verbal. 

Lack's gaze, quick as a hawk's, locked onto me. His eyes, wide as saucers, held a silent, unmistakable terror in his thoughts. 'What is this sudden magical current I'm feeling..?'

My gaze widened even further, It's prominence lighting up a visceral green.

My forty-six double helixes in every cell multiplied, folded upon themselves, and ascended into a more complex, supreme design…

Cells, once considered bizarre concepts within my mind, materialized as knowingness, infusing every capillary and blood vessel throughout my body for what seemed infinite.

The entirety of my genetic makeup was rewriting itself, and what materialized in my genome afterward was a biological insignia in replacement of my DNA were symbols of emerald and coin.

Naturally, I posed with my left hand, my thumb on my temple, and the rest of my fingers acting as a visor.

These exemplary cells of mine forged a new covenant with materiality, giving rise to an intrinsic power and intellect far beyond my former understanding.

It wasn't just the innumerable amount of cells flowing through my body, but also an intricate network of bioelectrical neurons propagating the same parallel evolution.

Yet... despite this elevated ascent of intelligence, I'm serene... as if... my very biology was engineered to withstand and integrate this genetic phenomenon.

I don't know why this is happening, but I really love it.

My hyperventilation ceased, my breaths slowed and steadied.

Finally I can think straight. 

He's really dead, the blood just keeps pouring out of his chest. Would you look at that, now they've got cleaners rushing to the scene.

Death... by consensual morality is what I just witnessed. The beauty of doom battles was the paradoxical blood-chain I carried unknowingly.

I halted my visor pose, my arms falling loosely by my sides as I leaned back slightly.

Then, I stretched and stretched my lips into a broad grin, utterly joyfully at this ecstasy.

For this inconsequential existence of mine, I've been astray, untethered and unmoored, burdened by a weight that was both oppressive and meaningless.

What if defiance to despondency isn't rebellion, but my innate survival reflex…?

After this realization, my face settled into a placid, neutral mask. 

What if staring despair in the face and laughing is the only way to claim agency over my life?

In that stark, sublime moment... a newly discovered lifestyle took over.

I quickly examined the lifeless body, then lifted my frail arms toward the ceiling, fingers splayed wide. As I studied these hands, a spark of curiosity ignited…

What might they be capable of when I start fighting?

"So this is what it means to live… the renowned mortal combat."

Two lone tears traced down from my irises, now dyed permanently in the unique color of emerald.

Iris predominantly... the fissures of a thousand lessons cracked under years of cultivated numbness.

One tear on each side. No more. I let my arms down after wiping these tears.

These droplets were no sign of weakness… they were relief tears, an acknowledgment of being freed from the chains of anarchy, but not deluded by these updated perceptions.

I don't think… I've ever cried before.

Lowering my fists up in a taekwondo stance, I couldn't contain my desire to battle. So, I simply took the famous fighting stance.

I can't believe I'm saying this… but I don't want to die anymore. 

Living was just given a new meaning… and for the first time, I found myself questioning why I ever wanted kill myself...

So long as I begin training, so long as I can fight soon… I don't want to die.

I want to live for combat... and maybe… someday, something more.

My endorphins and receptors finally blossomed, bestowing upon me the paramount demand to keep living.

It was in this fighting club where I, irreversibly, fell in love with fighting.

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