Chapter 63
Once again, his mind blacked out.
Now he was back to being a little boy, walking in the fields, his family greeted him with open arms.
The faces of his parents were not discernible almost as if covered by veil, but the face of his elder twin brother was clear to see.
Their father used to go to markets by a cart to trade for essential spices, and when he arrived, he and his brother used to greet him by jumping into his chest.
Those were the good times….
Now the scenery changed once again, and Ren found himself falling off the cliff into the water.
Right before he fell, he heard his brother's desperate scream, and after that, everything was swallowed up by darkness.
"Shen, Shen, big brother Shen…." Ren muttered under his breath.
Now, within his dream, he was back with his teacher, Shan, the one who nursed him back to health after he almost perished.
"Life ahead of you is cruel, little one, but never forget… it is when it is darkest the light s.h.i.+nes the brightest."
"I did not forget, master." Ren murmured.
After Shan had sacrificed herself to save his life from Divine Lords, he tried to survive on his own.
But the more he tried, the more cities exiled him.
At the very end, he ended up being hired by mercenaries led by 'Dragon', Shadelin Long, into a group called the Marked Ones. That group's main goal was to take down the Divine Lords, led by Morphus.
"In this world, only the strong survive, weak like you have no place in it" Shadelin's harsh words echoed within his mind.
"I did not choose to be weak." Ren found himself repeating the same words he spoke back then.
"Yet you did lose to me, did you not?" a voice within his psyche, it belonged to Aldan the Greed, the Divine Lord that he failed to best.
After their final fight, he did not see Aldan since.
"Like h.e.l.l I would lose to you…." Ren clutched his fist in his sleep.
"If you could not even best Greed, you stand no chance against me." A person coated in shadow now reappeared within his mental field.
"You again! Why have you come back, o specter of the past?"
"I never left, brother."
He took off his mask, now; it was as if Ren was staring at his very own reflection.
"No, it can't be, after so long…."
The man smiled and put his mask back on.
"It is done unconsciously… but you can sense me, can you not?
After chuckling slightly, he turned with his back now facing Ren.
"Farewell, brother."
"Wait! I still need to ask you…."
Ren now woke up within a barrel, extending his hand outward.
"Wait…" The one he was reaching out towards was no longer there.
"Brother…"
"…I…I remember, many chunks are missing, but I remember, some of it. I had a brother…"
As more water leaked into the barrel, Ren found himself drinking it.
His state of sudden clarity was now replaced by the drunken lunacy.
The barrel was now empty, save for Ren who was occupying it.
Every round rock that was within the barrel was now stored within Ren's storage ring.
Ren did not realize they were actually explosives.
After a wild time within the barrel as the river carried Ren for what seemed to be miles ahead, Ren, in his drunken stupor, now opened the lid of the barrel.
"Ohhh, so much red, so pretty…."
He remarked after looking at the bodies of countless demons dying the water red with their blood.
Without a care in the world, he ended up falling out of the barrel into the water, luckily the water was shallow.
'Oooh, how nice….' Ren sunk himself into the water like a lazy cat.
He did not know however, that he was not the only one who survived.
Apparently, one of the Tiger type demons managed to save himself by crawling into one of the barrels as well.
He was tad bit smaller than the other tiger type demons, but he was still far taller than Ren.
He was standing on shallow Holy Water, not concerned with the fact that his feet were burning up underneath him.
What he wanted right now was vengeance, revenge upon the human who single-handedly obliterated many of his clan members over the bridge.
And now, that human was right in front of him.
Activating his most powerful skill, Baris Rai's entire body was coated in crimson flames.
Now he was approaching Ren with clear intention of ending him.
Meanwhile, Ren took out a large sake bowl out of his storage ring and was gorging himself on water.
The more he consumed, the more drunk he got.
"I don't know why, but this tastes so weird…Hick!"
And now, turning his head, he finally saw the Tiger type demon just a meter away from him.
But instead of being scared, Ren cried out.
"You are on fire! Don't worry, I will put you out!"
He proceeded to use the sake bowl filled with Holy Water to splash the Baris Rai's body.
However, instead of putting out the flames like he intended to, the flames around Baris Rai's body grew more intense, as his body now truly was in agonizing pain, so much so that Baris Rai was screaming at the top of his lungs.
The Holy Water was merciless; the entire area that it touched was burned through to a crisp.
"Oh no, you are still burning! I will help!"
Ren splashed even more Holy Water on the poor demon, resulting in the Tiger demon now producing even more sounds of pure agony as his skin and flesh melted right off his body.
After a full minute of Ren continuously splas.h.i.+ng the tiger demon with Holy Water without knowing he was only making it worse, the Tiger demon fell over backwards into the holy water.
Of his original features, only his clothing remained.
What was left was his gruesomely skinned skeleton which was now slowly being melted away by the Holy Water.
"Glad I could be of help! Ha ha ha!"
Ren now proceeded to swim on his back, while gazing at the sky above him.
'Life is good~'
What could be heard over the distance was only a sound of a very messed up, drunken laughter as Ren was swimming through the water littered with countless corpses, not realizing this was reality, not hallucination.