Finding my Parents in Another World-Chapter 54: (Zack) Electric Return

Zack was still in a daze. The last thing he remembered clearly was going into the crater to check that the tyrant was dead and then looking into a shimmering face. And then everything was muddled, confused. It was as if he were a spectator to his own actions, watching a movie in third person of himself attacking Pende and unlocking his Inito.

Speaking of which, this power was still unfamiliar to him. Zack twirled the staff, watching the ball of electricity smoothly move at the end of it. He wasn’t yet completely sure what [[Universal Conductor]] was capable of, but what he did know was he felt the magik coursing through his veins at a much higher rate than before.

"Welcome back old man." Pende said with his trademark wolfish grin, as he leapt up to him. It seemed he wanted to slap his back as encouragement, but his hands being blades and not actual hands made that difficult.

"I-I’m sorry Pende, I don’t know what...."

"Don’t worry about it. The Sciadorm does that to people."

"How did I....come back?"

"Well you’ll have to thank Poison Bloom for that." Pende nodded towards the other end of the hall where Isadora had struck the wall. The daughter of the tyrant was back on her feet. She spit out some blood, and looked towards them with an encouraging smile, which looked more maniacal than it probably was because all the blood she was covered with.

"Wha-"

"Not her blood." Pende interjected quickly leading to Zack nodding somewhat in relief.

Then he turned his attention forward to the enemies. Fermi Ja had watched the confrontation between Brunaulf and Pende/Zack almost dispassionately. His attention was focused on his traitor daughter. Brunaulf, on the other hand, recovered much faster than Zack had hoped. The General was also bleeding from his head from an injury he picked up while convulsing on the floor, but otherwise he seemed back to his normal self, his eyes flitting across the three of them, gauging their individual threats.

He must be regretting me having [[Universal Conductor]] now

Zack didn’t yet fully comprehend his hypnosis, but being forced to attack his allies, even ones built on flimsy promises, made him furious. For the first time since he had come into this strange world, he was fighting to kill.

Isadora moved first. With rapid, yet graceful steps, she started running, this time straight towards her father. The snakes around her cloak coiled upwards and then shot out like bullets towards the tyrant. Like before Fermi Ja prodded his animal, and the Sciadorm rose up on its hindlegs, making itself a meat shield. This time however, Isadora was prepared for this. The snakes didn’t strike the beast, instead turning around at the last moment, twisting around the paws of the Sciadorm to strike up above at its master. Fermi Ja unsheathed two daggers from his belt, and with the efficiency of an assassin cleanly cut the heads of the two snakes shooting towards him.

Isadora was just behind them though. Using the snakes as a diversionary tactic, she kept rushing towards the Sciadorm. The beast was still awkwardly positioned on its hindlegs, and Isadora took advantage of this to rush in and stab upwards at its wings. With a piercing howl, the Sciadorm stumbled backwards, blood gushing out from its severed right wing. Paying no attention to the screams, Isadora jumped up stabbing her sword towards Fermi Ja. The tyrant positioned the two daggers in front of him in a cross and blocked her initial stab. Isadora piroutted, using the support of her sword on the daggers, and spun in the air above her father to land behind him. Fermi Ja turned around, fast as lightning, preparing to block again.

But this time Isadora didn’t strike her father. Instead she turned her sword to the left and swung once more, severing the remaining wing of the Sciadorm.

With a howl the animal stumbled backwards. Zack made an effort not to look at its shimmering face, but it was impossible to not look at the brilliant colours which kept flashing there, almost like a soundless cry to accompany it’s howls of pain. Blood gushed out from both it’s sides now, its wings torn on the ground. Isadora jumped off the animal, just as her father made a clumsy stab at her.

"Look sharp." Pende’s voice brought Zack back to his own fight. Brunaulf was approaching them. The General had cast a disturbed look over at the Sciadorm, but evidently had decided that the tyrant could hold his own long enough, even without his Sciadorm. For now Zack and Pende were the bigger threat.

Brunaulf raised his hands and threw both the hammers up in the sky. They collided with a huge bang and immediately burst into thousands of smaller hammers. With a motion of his hand, Brunaulf sent the thousand little hammer missiles shooting towards them, as he himself started running in the same direction, another hammer already materializing in his hands. His plan was obvious, but hard to counter.

A barrage of distractions followed by one single, fatal blow.

Cursing, Zack raised his staff. Zack didn’t know the full extent of [[Universal Conductor]]’s powers, but he did know that it allowed him to conduct electricity through any object as if it were a perfect conductor. Which included air.

Bolts of electricity rushed out from the ball at the end of his staff, crashing against multiple hammers. It reminded Zack of a missile showdown, even though he knew that analogy wouldn’t make much sense in this world. The ceiling of the chamber was soon filled with brilliant bursts of light as the electric bolts from his staff attempted, in vain, to destroy the hammer missiles.

But there was just too many of them. It would never work, countering an attack like this was impossible.

"Start running forwards!" Pende roared, already doing that. He skidded through the floor in a way fashion, hurtling towards a head-on confrontation with Brunaulf.

Zack looked up. Yup the number of hammers coming down were impossible to stop completely. It would soon rain fire, or rather water.

Zack stopped his barrage of electric bolts to the sky, turning the staff in his hand forwards, and then began to run. He was nowhere near fast enough as Pende though, so he was still in the radius of the hammer missiles when the first one hit the floor.

The impact was tremendous. Water is harder than concrete when you fall on it from a great height. The effect is the same when water falls on you from a great height as well. The force of the hammers were not short of the real thing, even if they immediately disintegrated. Zack could feel the thunderous crashes coming from just behind him.

Cursing his luck, Zack raised his staff above his head in a defensive posture. He didn’t even know whether it would work, but it did. An electric shield emanated from the ball of lightning at the end of his staff, just as the first hammer crashed on top of it. Zack felt the tremor through the staff as the shield absorbed the hit. Gritting his teeth, Zack started running even faster. Pende was already much ahead of him, almost to the General in fact. But Zack was losing visibility of the fight ahead amidst the rain of hammers all around him.

All he could hear were occasional grunts from the fight ahead of him, and the thunderous crashes around him. The floor was now filled with deep craters, akin to the one he had created himself when fighting Fermi Ja. The floor of the hall was completely destroyed by the ongoing missile barrage of hammers, and Zack was half afraid the entire palace would collapse from the damage.

No time to worry about that now.

Zack emerged after what felt like a century from the storm of hammers. Pende was engaged in combat with the General already. Brunaulf had eschewed the large double hammers for two smaller single hammers; a much more practical choice for single combat.

Trying to be as stealthy as possible Zack ran towards the fight, trying to keep in Brunaulf’s blindspot. He wanted to strike him once at point blank range.

It proved to be much more difficult than he had anticipated though. Brunaulf was surprisingly agile and lithe, being able to keep up with Pende’s erratic and fast movement quite easily, despite being hit with current just a while ago. Pende seemed to be relying on his unpredictable spin attacks, spinning his right arm towards the General and then just as he prepared to block it, swinging in with his left leg. Brunaulf however was easily able to jump over the leg, and even counterattack. He brought the two hammers that he was planning to block with, down in a deafening bang over Pende’s left leg, on the flesh just above the blade.

With a grunt Pende hopped back. From the swelling on his leg, it was clear the bone had broken. Brunaulf grinned at the Chianti Hunter, and Zack chose this as the optimal moment to strike. Keeping his staff pointed forward, he rocketed towards the General.

The sound of his feet was what alerted Brunaulf towards him. He turned around, fast as a cheetah, and threw one of the hammers towards him. Zack couldn’t dodge, not at this speed and this distance, so he decided to tank it instead. Biting his lips, he kept rushing forwards.

The hammer struck him right on the shoulder. Zack immediately knew from the pain that the bone there was shattered. He had to suppress every single instinct in his body which screamed at him to lie down, to turn back.

Instead he kept running forwards steadfastly. There was a moment of confusion on Brunaulf’s face but he conjured another hammer, determination etched on his face now.

With both hammers now, he lunged out to the approaching Zack. This time Zack was close enough. He let the staff go for an instant, and then clasped it on the middle instead. Turning the staff around in a counterclockwise direction, he blocked both the hammer strikes with either end of his staff.

Brunaulf realized his mistake too late. He tried to let go of the hammers, but as soon as contact was made, Zack had attacked with every ounce of magik left in his body. A electric current a hundred times more powerful than the previous one, shot through Brunaulf’s body.

This time he didn’t even convulse. There was a bang sound, like that of a gun, as the electricity propagated through all his nerves in an instant, paralyzing him.

Brunaulf stumbled back, trying in vain to move, trying to push his body to its limits, to do anything. But he couldn’t, he was paralyzed for life.

Or he would have been if Pende hadn’t appeared from behind and teared apart his torso from his body with both of his blade hands.