TWL Chapter - 85

My veins burned like they had just been stuffed with shards of glass.

But even that was nothing compared to the agony I felt in my eyes.

My vision went dark but I was still conscious.

The only reason for that was because I had made myself incapable of losing consciousness. It had seemed like a smart idea at the time, considering all the idiotic situations I kept throwing myself into.

It didn’t feel so smart now. Staying awake through this kind of torment was… not fun to say the least.

I had known it was going to hurt like a bitch, but knowing didn’t make it hurt any less. 

Every breath was torture as it made my nerve endings scream.

Eventually, after what felt like days, the pain began to ebb. I forced myself to check if everything was done before flooding my system with morphine. My body melted into the ground in relief.

“Are you still alive?” Vaylara inquired.

I managed to whimper out a yes through the haze of pain and morphine.

“Did it work?”

“I sure hope so, I really don't want to do that again.”

I didn't move from my spot on the floor and slowly opened my eyes.

The world no longer looked the same. I could see in resolutions I hadn’t known were possible to comprehend. Colors that I could not name. 

I picked up the closed reflective surface I could find, which was a dagger lying nearby. 

My eyes were still black.

Which raised a question.

How the hell do I turn it on?

I looked inward and checked on everything.

The changes weren't just in my vision. I had essentially summoned Uchiha blood and eyes into my own body and bound the name to my soul.

Once I was certain I wasn’t going to keel over anytime soon, I did a deeper scan to understand it better.

Just as I completed the scan I realized that I may have to revisit the notion that my biokinesis wasn't alive because I swear I felt it have an orgasm.

The new data I had access to was staggering. 

Chakra wasn’t magic, but It was in its essence a form of energy that had evolved to be efficient for certain applications. Once I broke it down and gained a better understanding of it, building cell clusters to act as converters was almost trivial.

Once I had them functional I channeled the energy into my eyes and looked back at my reflection. 

Still black.

But I was not disheartened. I looked back inward again and focused on my eyes and tried to figure out what the problem was.

The Sharingan had its set of stages controlled by neural pathways that hadn’t been fully formed. Between those pathways sat barriers, dense knots of tissue blocking access to higher functions for safety. My eyes were still in the unawakened state which was the weakest and understandably the least energy dependent, meant for a child’s everyday use.

So I had two options, wait for time and trauma to have those pathways form anturally… or I could cheat.

I connected the first two pathways without issue. My vision flared crimson, one tomoe spinning lazily in each eye. The world didn’t just sharpen. It unfolded. Every edge, every shadow, every flicker of movement became a thousand times clearer.

Before I could get fully engrossed in what I was seeing I forced open the next two connections.

I instantly felt the pull on my heart, magic draining out in heavy gulps. Manageable, yes, but impossible to ignore. These eyes were hungry little bastards, and I could already tell they’d never be satisfied for long.

But in return, reality peeled open, revealing hidden patterns with dizzying intensity. 

I could see everything.

Everything that moved, everything that stood perfectly still, my eyes caught it all. I tracked it with such insane precision it felt like I was stealing glimpses of the future, even if only by fractions of a second.

Before I could get completely distracted testing its limits, I focused on the next step.

The following connection was trickier… far trickier.

If the earlier ones had been a child’s science fair project on how electricity worked, this was trying to design the entire grid for a fifty-story tower while blindfolded.

But the pattern was there. I could sense it, like a puzzle just waiting to be solved. Hours seemed to stretch as I had to connect the right parts of my brain to the right parts of my shiny new eyes.

And then, finally, the last piece slid into place. The drain on my heart skyrocketed and my vision pulsed crimson and the world itself shuddered in response. Space warped around me, lines of reality bending and twisting as though they were struggling to hold together under the weight of what I had just done. 

For one breathless instant, I was everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

Every Mangekyō user had two distinct abilities, one in each eye, shaped by who they were and the trauma that birthed them. But I hadn’t awakened mine the normal way I had forced it into existence with my own hands.

I zoned back into the world and caught Vaylara watching me with open suspicion.

“Are you still good?” she asked.

I must have looked insane to her, standing in the middle of the circle, staring at my reflection in a dagger while my eyes shifted red.

“Yes. Were you worried I had gone evil?” I giggled.

“I know you’re evil. I was worried you had gone insane.” she remarked dryly.

“Thas quite a fucked up thing to say to a freind.”

“So how did it go?” she just moved on without…. never mind.

I tried activating my currently only available mangekyo ability and instantly ran into another issue. 

While my heart could produce an infinite amount of energy, that didn’t mean I had infinite energy on demand. The Mangekyos’s abilities came with a massive mana cost.

It still wasn’t a production problem though, it was a transmission problem. My current pathways couldn’t handle the intense flow. So I built several more industrial-grade channels running directly from my heart to my eyes.

“Well, I was kind of hoping for more than just menacing eyes after all that work,” Vaylara remarked wryly.

“My bad. Ran into a small issue. But it should work now.” I assured her. “Throw something at me.”

With just a twitch of her finger she hurled an empty glass vial at me.

I watched it move through the air like it was honey.

I could have easily moved to dodge it.

But I didn't need to.

The vial simply passed through my chest and shattered against the wall behind me.

Kamui.

The ultimate defense. 

The best way to not get hurt was to dodge.

And the best way to dodge was to not even be there.

If that wasn't enough it also gave me an infinite inventory plus a much faster global teleportation.

Not the channeled kind I had figured out earlier. 

“See? I’m also a ghost now.”

“How did you do that?” She was trying very hard to hide how impressed she was but it was futile, such was my genius.

“Well, plain old space-time fuckery,” I said, grinning like a lunatic. “I am here and not here at the same time.”

Vaylara tilted her head, eyes narrowing. “So where are you actually when the vial passes through you?”

“In my own personal pocket dimension.”

Her gaze sharpened. “Does it also project an illusion?”

“It looks like it does, but it’s not. And I’m not sure how to exactly explain that,” I admitted. “It’s just… a side effect. The best way I can put it is that it acts as an anchor here in some way while  I am physically elsewhere."

She gave a small nod, still studying me. “So is that all it can do?”

“Oh no. It also makes my vision so perfect I can technically see the future and there are also a bunch more bullshit abilities I can unlock with a lot of tedious work, in the future” I added..

“Like?” 

“The ability to cheat death at the cost of going blind in one eye.” I answer with a grin so wide that my jaw hurt.

Vaylara raised her eyebrows in disbelief. “Can you do it twice at the cost of going fully blind?”

“Yes,” I said without hesitation. “But I won’t stay blind for long. I can make as many eyes as I want.”

“Of course you can,” she deadpanned, crossing her arms, “seeing as how everything has gone well enough, when can you get started on my payment?”

“As soon as you give me the requirements,” I replied. “But… I also have this one little thing I need to do first.”

She narrowed her eyes. “What little thing?”

The air around me seemed to twist, light bending unnaturally like reality itself was folding in on my eyes. 

“There is a little bitch I need to teach some manners to" I said as I was already elsewhere.

-----------------

Joffrey was busy breaking everything in his room as his mind was spinning in disbelief.

He was the next King.

‘The King of the seven kingdoms’

Yet his own dog had manhandled him like a common servant.

And worst of all he had been humiliated by a peasant and he was being punished for it, as if he were the one in the wrong.

Now he was locked in this room like a criminal.

Nobody was giving him the respect he deserved. 

Nobody.

As soon as he figured out how, he would make them all pay for it. 

He would mount all their heads on the walls of their own castles.

Every last one of them.

His thoughts were interrupted by a shiver crawling down his spine.

In the far corner of the room the air twisted, The torchlight sputtered and bent toward it, shadows stretching long and unnatural across the walls.

And then a figure stepped out of the distortion, where a moment ago there had been nothing.

“Ah, there you are,” the stranger said, voice dripping with amusement. “I heard you’ve been looking for me.”

Joffrey’s blood turned to ice. He stumbled back so fast he tripped over his own feet and crashed to the floor, scrambling backward on his hands and heels until his back slammed into the bedframe. His breath came in ragged gasps.

There was something deeply wrong about those eyes. 

It was getting harder to breathe.

The figure began to walk towards him slowly.

“Well… here I am.”

Joffrey’s panic finally broke through the paralysis. His voice returned in a shrill cry. “Guards! Guards!”

“You can scream all you want,” the figure replied calmly, almost bored. “But no one is coming to save you. And all you’re doing is irritating me.”

It finally sank in. He knew who this was.

Before Joffrey could even form a thought, the mage vanished and then reappeared inches from his face, those terrible eyes filling his vision.

White-hot pain lanced through his skull as the mage grabbed one of his ears and lifted him clear off the ground.

He tried to scream, but he couldn't.

“Now, as much as I would love to hear you keep shrieking in agony, it is starting to get annoying,” the mage said, voice low and deliberate. “And if you irritate me any further, I might… slip, and kill you.”

The pressure on his ear kept increasing. He tried to get free  but that only made the pain worse and feel like it was going to get  ripped  off any moment.

“And I did make a promise that I wouldn’t kill you,” the figure continued, ignoring his struggles. “Not yet at least.”

Those crimson eyes bored into him, unblinking, suffocating.

“Now… I am still unsure of what to do with you.”

The mage tilted his head. “So many options. I could infect you with a million different diseases I know for a fact would kill you in ways you can’t even imagine. But then some fool might argue I broke my promise.”

His eyes narrowed. “So time to get creative I guess.”

Joffrey tried to scream, tried to claw and thrash against the grip on his ear, but it was completely futile. 

“Ah, I’ve got it, here, let me give you a couple of kidney stones. A nice little reminder that actions have consequences.”

Joffrey froze, eyes widening. What?

Then the pain hit. A sharp, grinding fire deep inside his gut, like his insides were being torn apart from within.

“Now, the pain you’re feeling is bad,” the mage said, sounding amused, “but it’s nothing compared to what you’ll feel when it passes. I’ve heard it’s… quite an experience. The kind that makes people beg for death.”

And just like that, Joffrey was dropped.

He crumpled to the floor in a heap, clutching at his stomach as if that would stop the fire raging inside him. His breath came in ragged gasps, broken by sobs he couldn’t hold back.

Joffrey curled in on himself, shaking, tears streaking his face.

When he looked up, the mage was gone. The room was empty, silent but for his own whimpering.

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A/N: I’m really sorry, guys. I know I suck. I was supposed to post this on Monday. I made that promise and broke it. Honestly, I should be court-martialed. 

But in my defense, I made that promise after I had written the previous chapter at record breaking speeds on a good weekend. I definitely wasn’t expecting to get slammed with literally infinite work the moment I logged in on Monday, which is still very much pending.