>>5807192You feel your chakra depleting, and for the first time since entering this place the sensation of panic and worry begins encroaching on your mind. It wasn’t with you at the start, repressed by the fugue of moving through a waking dream, and the surge in confidence of being lucid within that dream.
Lucidity and awareness was becoming the enemy now, however. That awareness was now including how easily you could be killed here.
Unbidden, your mind wanders as you focus on keeping the chakra in your mist alive, furiously focusing on generating more of it. You see yourself standing paralyzed in a rice field, Masami worriedly asking if you’re okay. You see yourself, completely drained of life, fall face first into the water. Dead. You see Masami run to your body, grabbing you. Unable to believe that you had seriously died. Out of nowhere. Completely inexplicably, from her point of view.
You realize how pathetic that would be. How much damage it would cause. Masami would be emotionally damaged, likely forever. She would cry, clutching your dead body. Maybe she wouldn’t even believe it at first? Hotaru and Naoki, who even knew? Nothing good. It boggled your mind just how much HURT this thing could cause if it actually won against you here. It strained your mind to even imagine it.
But there was an easy solution: Win.
You couldn’t allow yourself to die, not like this.
The demon in the rice would have to be expunged from this world.
As sure as the moon rises and the sun sets, you would strike this thing down. If by some impossibility you failed, you would fail giving it your absolute all.
You recall what your clone had said to you: <span class="mu-b">”The core.”</span>
It had seen something in its sensing water orb, and used its last moment to inform you of that fact, and a direction. It was unthinkable that such a thing would be meaningless.
Continuing to generate mist, you slowly enter a prone position, lying down on a ‘floor’ that seemed to be made out of the surface of water. Solid like glass. On the other side, if you looked closely, you could see blue sky and rice fields.
You release Hiding in Mist so you could use Sensing Water Orb.
You generate a small one, as quickly as possible. You had less than three seconds until your chakra fully exited your mist and your shield disappeared.
Inu. Sensing Water Orb. As the orb forms you charge it with your will. ‘I want to sense chakra’.
You feel the orb intently. You can’t see it, the mist was too thick. At first its surface ripples with many different signatures as the chakra in your mist rapidly fades. Then, the chakra is gone. The sphere is still.
You feel a mighty swoosh nearby as a titanic claw rends the non-air somewhere off to your right.
Another mighty swoosh as its body passes overhead. A dull reverberation of noise echoes through your mind, the sound of some kind of ancient groan. Its meaning is not lost on you.
<span class="mu-r">KILL.</span>
