The Almighty Ring

“Come at me, b*tch!”

Jiang Fei was done with moving his body far away from the black goo. However, no matter how far he pushed his body away, it was only a matter of time before the thing got closer again. It was behaving like a sentient being; moving ever so slowly, getting closer to his body as if it was drawn to it.

A blast of psychic energy was released. It zoomed across the void to protect Kaa’lna.

“You’re done. Get away. I’ll take it from here,” Jiang Fei said.

“Be careful, my lord.”

Kaa’lna gave her word of caution before vanishing from sight. She had sustained too much damage from Akatziris and could no longer join the fight.

“Oh my darling, my ever-so-loving master. Have you finally the time to talk to me?” Akatziris’ ethereal body took the same form and attire from when she was in the game.

“Persistent little minx…” Jiang Fei muttered under his breath.

Jiang Fei was never going to forgive that woman. Seeing her gave him the creeps just like how someone with trypophobia feels seeing a cluster of holes, only with the urge to separate her head from her torso. The woman was responsible for the many deaths of his Bio-Human army.

Jiang Fei had completely forgotten about her existence after the incident which granted him the power of the 10th Dimension. He hadn’t expected to see her face ever again.

“I’ve said it before and I will say it again, I will always find a way to make you hate me! Forever!” Akatziris’ voice was deafening.

“This ends now. It will be seconds before I destroy you completely!” Jiang Fei roared. The memories of how Akatziris killed the girls under his wing sent a burning stimulus that ignited his blood on the fire for revenge.

“My master, I will not die! No! I will continue to live, so long as you shall live! We will be together! Forever and ever!” Akatziris shouted once more before her ethereal form zoomed across the void toward Jiang Fei. She was not throwing out attacks.

“Piss off.”

Jiang Fei retaliated. He gathered what was left of his psychic energy and formed a blade, piercing the incoming Akatziris.

“UGH!”

She took the stab directly yet she was not stopping. Her ethereal form was clearly damaged but she gathered her psychic energy together and expanded it to fully envelop both Jiang Fei and his blade.

“What are you up to now?!”

Jiang Fei was stunned. What Akatziris was doing was akin to suicide. Even though she had all of Bargh’s psychic energy, it was only a part of his true power of malice. There were still traces of it but not as strong as before when Bargh was attacking. Such a level of malice was strong against Kaa’lna but not enough to affect Jiang Fei.

“I am going to fuse with you, my master! Oh, my master! We will be together!” Akatziris moaned. Not one second later, her entire being, her ethereal body and what’s left of her own psychic energy, ignited in flames, literally.

Panicked, Jiang Fei tried to remove himself by swinging the ethereal blade about. However, no matter how much he cut, no matter how painful Akatziris felt, she was not letting him go.

“My master, know that everything that I have done, was only for trying to find a way for me to be with you! For us to be together! Now, my wish is about to come true!”

Akatziris’ burning psychic energy was only growing stronger, wilder by the second. At the same time, it swirled about, mixing together with Jiang Fei’s.

He tried to release contact but Akatziris’ persistence was relentless. The malice that was imbued with Bargh’s psychic energy, the one Akatziris had taken for herself, was burning away into nothingness.

Jiang Fei could not understand what was happening. Nothing at all.

Akatziris was burning yet she was fusing with him. She was never a powerful fighter to begin with. Then again, Jiang Fei had never researched and understood how Namekians used their psychic energy, and especially not how they would be able to fuse their mind with someone else’s.

What Jiang Fei did not know was the fact that Akatziris was not using any kind of psychic manipulation technique. She was merely using her own racial skill.

Namekians had no gender. They reproduced by asexual means. Once they reached adulthood and found the need or want to have a child, they would extract a portion of their own psychic energy and incubate an egg from it. The extracted psychic energy contained limited memory of the parent, thus granting accelerated growth and knowledge.

What Akatziris was doing then was simply a reverse of their reproduction process. Instead of splitting her mind, she was going to fuse with Jiang Fei’s mind to form a single being.

Jiang Fei had learned a plethora of psychic manipulation skills from Theon but not a single one of them could affect nor stop Akatziris from doing her… thing. He struggled, he wrestled, but nothing was stopping her from the fusion process. To make things worse, Jiang Fei was scared of the outcome.

The flames continued to burn and whatever malice contained within Akatziris’ psychic energy was scorched. With refined guidance by Akatziris’ unrelenting will, both their psychic energies continued to fuse.

Concurrently, Jiang Fei’s Core of Will flashed continuously, absorbing the newly merged psychic energy into its own. Instead of helping Jiang Fei to repel the foreign entity, it was absorbing it profusely!

Not long after, while Jiang Fei was still swinging the ethereal sword, the last of the flame died out. Akatziris, Bargh, her psychic energy, his malice psychic energy, were gone. What was left in the unending void was Jiang Fei, alone.

“What the…? Is it done? What the hell happened?”

When all was calm, Jiang Fei immediately went over his own mind to check for visible changes. However, as thorough as he was, he could not find any difference. He was the same, be it power, psychic strength, or power level.

“What did she do to me? Did she just burn herself?” Jiang Fei asked himself over and over.

“My lord! Your body! You have to save your body!” Kaa’lna shouted.

“Shoot!”

Jiang Fei’s psychic energy, or his consciousness, zoomed toward his body. When he was still engulfed in flames with Akatziris, he had not been able to move. The entire process had taken quite some time and the black goo had already made considerable progress toward his physical body.

When he was back to his body, Jiang Fei immediately created a current and moved it away.

“I can’t continue moving about. I need to leave this place!”

Jiang Fei had no idea how he was going to deal with this concentrated mass of malice. For now, he was going to drag Kaa’lna and leave the 10th Dimension. He was planning on asking Theon about the black goo and when he could finally understand what it was he would return to the 10th Dimension to sort things out.

“Come! We are leaving!” Jiang Fei ordered. He activated the power of the Core of Will and vanished from the 10th Dimension with Kaa’lna.

A split second before Jiang Fei vanished from the 10th Dimension, the mass of black goo spat out a tiny part of itself, about the size of a pea, and stuck itself to the back of Jiang Fei’s hand. As it touched his hand, it vanished, leaving no trace of itself. Neither Jiang Fei or Kaa’lna sensed it.