Chapter 965: You’re a Bother
"Urgh!" His body hurt all over. A ringing sound flared off like a siren in his mind while something hot seemed to be leaking out of his eyes.
’Where...am I?’ Inala thought as he tried to open his heavy eyelids. His vision was hazy, and the dampness of his surroundings only seemed to be worsening his fever...fever?
’Fever? Here, on Sumatra?’ He became alert in response, only then noticing that the ringing sound was coming from the grey tower in his mindspace. The glass-like structure forming it was constantly cracking and mending itself while the information cluster inside was banging on it with borderline insanity.
The information cluster wanted to break out and flood the mind space, but the grey tower barely managed to keep it in check. However, their conflict caused the ringing sound, plunging Inala into a state of fever.
"What’s...wait, this doesn’t make sense," He noticed that he was in a narrow cave, burrowed deep in what appeared to be a mountain. The air was hot and damp inside, with some glowing crystals embedded along the ceiling, peeking vertically downward.
The most puzzling detail of them all was his line of sight. It was short, significantly shorter as compared to what he got used to in recent years. He seemed tiny, annoyingly so, with a frail body to accompany the fact.
He tried to inspect himself further, but noticed that his body was wrapped from the neck below in what appeared to be a cocoon of mud. ’This doesn’t make sense, unless...!’
He turned to his left and noticed an unconscious Shuwrak Zahara stuck to the wall in a similar mud cocoon, with only the head peeking out. Stuck a fair distance away was the Knell Clansman, having yet to wake up.
Inala turned to the right and noticed an unfamiliar woman in a similar cocoon, also unconscious. She had curly green hair with shades of muddy grey around the roots. Her chubby face rippled faintly in response to her snores.
’Who is she?’ Inala wondered before he felt a familiar presence from her, ’Loya?’
"Whoever is behind this, reveal yourself!" Inala had a fair grasp on his situation as he shouted towards the entrance. A couple seconds later, a tall woman sauntered in, ’I knew it.’
"You don’t need to put on the act of a confused victim." It was Gannala, her voice extremely calm as she stopped before Inala and uttered, "I figured out the truth."
Inala made eye contact and then broke into a wry smile, "Not the situation I hoped for a reunion."
"Right?" Her face beamed as Gannala wrapped her hands around Inala’s head, clutching tight, "Welcome back, Dad. I missed you."
"I missed you too...Urgh!" Blood spurted out of him as the mud cocoon shattered, revealing Gannala’s right fight planted squarely in his stomach.
Boom!
Large fragments of the rock wall collapsed as Inala was burrowed in a crater a couple metres deep. Blood covered his being as he still reeled from the shock of the impact, "...Guh!"
"I dearly missed you, Dad. I truly did." Gannala said as she poured a High-Grade Elixir into Inala’s mouth, watching his wounds heal. And then, she slammed in a second punch, widening the crater further, "But damn you."
"If you had revived, you should have found me first!" She retracted her fist and observed the bloody figure of Inala in concern and waited until the Elixir did its thing. Then, she delivered the third punch, "This is for Harrala!"
"You...should have just sacrificed me in place of her!" She said and sent out a fourth punch, grunting as she used the other hand to swat away the crumbling rocks, the impact turning them into dust. "Just why? Are you saying you, with all your intellectual superiority, couldn’t find a solution that didn’t involve sacrificing her?"
"That...poor girl, could never enjoy happiness." She grumbled and punched the fifth time, stopping upon seeing that the Prana generated by the Elixir had been used up. She took out another High-Grade Elixir and poured it into Inala’s mouth, "If nothing else worked, then you’d have been better sacrificing me instead of her."
"You...know better," Inala groaned as he lay sprawled amidst the crater, weakly raising his hand to gently touch the teary face of Gannala, "I was desperate,"
"Desperate to create a future for you."
"Even if it meant sacrificing everything?" Gannala screamed as she grabbed Inala and shook him in fury, "Even if it meant creating that abomination in the Kalahatra Desert? That creature..."
"It can singlehandedly destroy Sumatra Continent."
"I regret the choices I’ve made, terribly so, especially sacrificing everyone who had faith in me." His lips trembled, throat choked, and his body in full pain, but his eyes held warmth as he stared gently, "But I don’t regret saving you."
"That was the only purpose that drove me forward, through everything."
"Really? Did I ask you to save me?" She cursed, "She...Harrala stood by my side when the rest of the Mammoth Clan fled like cowards! She truly was my sister! And do you know she looked upon the most?"
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