Chapter 151: Grasp

  "Hello there."

  The greeting rang through the dark cavern, echoing off the jagged stones.

  Tur'uga still remembered it like it was yesterday. It was a sound completely devoid of life—cold, distorted, and heavy with an ancient corruption. A chilling, mechanical static that was a far cry from Harrison's warm, welcoming greeting, despite the adventurer's fleeting life and blood-choked lungs.

  It was Silas.

  The machine had stepped out from the deep shadows of the underground cave the exact moment Harrison Aster's chest had stopped rising.

  "So, the human finally croaked," Silas said in the shimmering projection, stepping casually over the spreading pool of crimson blood. "Poor him."

  The synthetic voice was laced with a cruel, undeniable mockery, casually dismissing the vibrant life of the man Tur'uga had just claimed as his very first companion.

  "Who... are you?" the childlike voice of Tur'uga echoed in the memory, the sheer mass of the beast trembling slightly beneath the earth.

  Above them, a thin, solitary shaft of moonlight pierced through a crack in the cavern ceiling, illuminating the intruder in terrifying detail.

  It revealed Silas’s mechanical figure. He was a sleek, gunmetal humanoid, his outer armor plating shifting smoothly over a complex, horrifyingly intricate musculature of turning screws, hissing pneumatics, and grinding gears. Instead of a single sensor, pairs of red, glass-like optics dotted his featureless face. They whirred and clicked, continuously adjusting focus as they aggressively scanned the surroundings, a predator never fully letting its guard down.

  But the most terrifying feature was not his face. It was his chest.

  From an open, jagged cavity in the center of his torso, a thick, purplish haze oozed continuously, spilling into the cold cavern air like toxic smoke. Nestled deep within that cavity was a jagged, deep black gem. It didn't reflect the moonlight; it actively swallowed it, creating a pocket of absolute nothingness that pulled at the fabric of reality around it.

  In that moment, gazing at the machine, the ancient beast felt a brand new, entirely human emotion wash over its colossal mind.

  Fear.

  With Harrison, Tur'uga had felt comfort. A soothing calm that chased away the shadows of a centuries-long loneliness. But with this new, metallic figure standing next to the corpse of his only friend, it was something entirely different. It was a cold, suffocating terror that made the beast's massive, buried heart seize in its chest.

  "Who are you?" Tur'uga asked again, the childlike voice trembling against the walls.

  Silas tilted his sleek head, the gears in his neck snapping with a sharp clack.

  "You don't know me?" Silas asked, the red optics glowing brighter. The machine let out a short, burst of static that vaguely resembled a sigh. "It seemed that they did not explain anything to you. Poor you."

  "What... are you talking about?" Tur'uga asked, thoroughly confused by the cryptic statement. They? Who was they? The glowing entity of pure light that had put him to sleep?

  "Anyway..." Silas waved a metallic hand, dismissing the question entirely as he moved the conversation along to his true objective. The red optics swiveled downward, locking onto the lifeless, broken body of Harrison on the floor.

  "What do you think of that human over there?" the machine asked.

  Silas crouched down, his heavy metal knees clanking against the stone. He reached out, his cold, gunmetal fingers hovering just inches over Harrison's cooling cheek.

  "Do you want him back?" Silas offered, turning his optical clusters back up to the giant, buried eye of the beast. "I can do it for you."

  "You can?!" Tur'uga gasped in the memory, the primal fear instantly swept away by a wave of naive, desperate enthusiasm.

  "Of course I can," Silas answered, his metallic voice humming with a smooth, manufactured confidence. "Or... more exactly, you can. I have a certain magic trick that I can teach you."

  "What is... magic?" Tur'uga asked, the childlike wonder bubbling up through the fear.

  Silas let out a burst of grating, static-laced laughter. He raised a metal finger and theatrically wiped a nonexistent eyebrow on his smooth face. "Oh, right. You're a turtle. I almost forgot," the machine mocked lightly. "Just... do exactly what I tell you, and you can get him back."

  In the memory, the giant beast hesitated. Tur'uga didn't know who this metallic stranger was, nor could it comprehend the machine's true goals. But the thought of returning to that suffocating, eternal darkness—of never hearing another second of Harrison's vibrant tales again—was an agony the lonely creature could not bear.

  "Yes," Tur'uga answered instantly, the massive voice echoing with desperate determination. "I will do anything."

  In the present, the superheated heart chamber vibrated.

  "A mistake," Tur'uga said through Harrison's skeletal lips, the purple light in his dead eyes dimming with centuries of regret. "A terrible, terrible mistake."

  The shimmering projection on the crystal walls continued, playing out the tragic pact.

  "Good, good. That is exactly how it should be," Silas laughed once more, the sound scraping against the cavern walls like sharpening knives. "So... here is what you can do. Deep inside your core, you have a boundless well of energy. It is what I call the 'Void', or known by its true name—"

  Suddenly, the projection glitched violently.

  BZZZZZZZT.

  An ear-piercing screech of static tore through the memory, distorting the audio and the visual feed simultaneously. The very fabric of the spell hiding the memory seemed to reject the word Silas had spoken—a word from a language that fundamentally should not exist in this reality.

  "—the other name of the Void," Silas finished, the audio returning to normal as the localized distortion faded.

  "I do?" Tur'uga asked, baffled.

  "Yes, of course you do, my dear turtle," Silas crooned, his synthetic voice dripping with a honeyed, poisonous sweetness. "How else can you explain your impossible size? You have way more power than you could ever imagine. Trust me. I am here to help you."

  "But... I can't even move," Tur'uga pointed out, the childlike frustration evident in his voice. "How am I supposed to use my powers if I am paralyzed?"

  "Hmm... that is indeed a predicament," Silas mused, tapping his chin in mock thought. "You know what? I'm feeling generous. Consider this a bonus from me."

  Silas raised his gunmetal hand and snapped his fingers.

  CLACK.

  The sound was sharp, cutting through the cavern. A split second later, Raito and Yukari heard it in the projection—a deafening, ethereal sound like massive steel chains snapping under immense pressure.

  SHOOOOK. DRRRRMMM.

  The entire cavern in the memory shook violently. Dust cascaded from the ceiling as the invisible, ancient bindings that had held the colossal beast dormant for centuries shattered into nothingness.

  "I can move... I can move!" Tur'uga shouted joyfully. The sheer, terrifying mass of the beast shifted, the grinding of rock and earth echoing like a localized earthquake as the giant turtle finally wiggled its colossal limbs.

  "What did you do? Erm... what is your name?" Tur'uga asked, his voice filled with awe and naive gratitude.

  "Silas is the name," the machine introduced itself with a sweeping, theatrical bow. "Just your friendly, peace-loving neighbor, Silas. And don't worry about those bindings. I only did what I must. Someone who forced you to be locked in here, paralyzed in the dark, must be a truly evil being."

  "They put me to sleep and locked me in here," Tur'uga agreed, easily swayed by the simple logic of a child. "So I agree. They are not good."

  "Now, as for the other thing," Silas said, turning his attention back to the blood-soaked floor.

  The machine reached down and effortlessly picked up Harrison's lifeless body by the collar of his shredded jacket. Silas held the dangling, broken adventurer up toward the massive, glowing eye of the beast.

  "Now, here is what you need to do," Silas instructed, the red optics gleaming with sinister intent. "Reach deep inside you. Feel the movement of the Void within your shell. Then, channel that energy directly towards this human's body. Push it into him. Make a connection."

  "I... I will try," Tur'uga said.

  In the vision, Tur'uga closed its massive, golden eye. The beast focused on the well of power deep within its core—the terrifying, black mass that it had eaten so long ago on that pristine, sunlit beach.

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  Suddenly, a massive burst of energy displaced the cold air of the cavern.

  A thick, viscous energy, black and purplish in hue, began to leak from the stone around the turtle's head. It slithered through the air like living smoke, creeping into every tear, wound, and crevasse of Harrison's broken body. It mixed horribly with his cooling blood, turning his veins an unnatural, glowing violet.

  "Like this?" Tur'uga asked, the exertion clear in the beast's strained voice.

  "Yes, you're doing a remarkably good job," Silas praised, though its optics were no longer focused on the magic.

  During this intense transfer of energy, while Tur'uga was entirely distracted, Silas's gunmetal fingers began to swiftly scrounge through Harrison's blood-soaked pockets. The machine's movements were precise, violating the corpse until its metallic grip closed around something hidden deep within Harrison's vest. It yanked it out, concealing the object instantly.

  "I don't really know what that was," the present Tur'uga said to Raito and Yukari, the purple light in Harrison's eyes flickering with shame. "What Silas took from Harrison... I didn't care at the time. My only focus was, exactly like it said, bringing Harrison back to me."

  In the projection, Harrison's ruined body began to twitch.

  First a finger, then an arm. Then, a violent, rattling shudder wracked his entire frame. Harrison's jaw snapped open, and he gasped—a wet, desperate intake of air that sounded less like a man breathing and more like a bellows inflating a corpse.

  "I'm doing it! Mr. Metal, I'm doing it!" Tur'uga shouted gleefully, the sheer joy of a child bringing a broken toy back to life echoing in the cave.

  But... Silas was nowhere to be found.

  The machine had vanished. Disappeared into the shadows like a bad dream melting into the morning light.

  Silas had already finished its real goal: obtaining whatever artifact Harrison took from it, and leaving its terrible mark on the ancient beast.

  "When Silas snapped my restraints, it left something behind," Tur'uga told Raito, the voice heavy with realization. "A piece of itself... within me. It implanted it without me noticing, hiding the parasite entirely using a cloak of its own Void."

  Tur'uga gestured a bony hand toward the shattered remains of the mechanical parasite pinned to the wall. "The one you destroyed brother."

  Raito looked at the smoking wreckage, his eyes narrowing. "That machine... it is not its real body."

  "Then... was the one in your memories the real one?" Raito asked, turning back to the skeletal host.

  "I also don't know," Tur'uga answered, slowly shaking Harrison's head.

  The projection on the wall shifted back to the desperate scene in the cave.

  The purplish Void energy continued to knit Harrison's flesh together. Muscle fibers reattached themselves like dark, writhing worms. Shattered bones snapped back into place with sickening crunches. The Void was healing the catastrophic damages, forcing life back into a vessel that was meant to decay.

  Finally, light returned to Harrison's eyes. But it wasn't the warm, vibrant brown of the adventurer. It was a cold, glowing purple.

  With one final, shuddering gasp, Harrison's head lolled up.

  "Where... am I..." Harrison rasped.

  "Harrison! You are back!" Tur'uga said, the joy overflowing.

  Harrison's head tilted erratically, his jaw slack. "Harr..ison... I... am... Harr..ison...."

  The projection made Raito and Yukari's blood run cold. Something was terribly wrong. The speech was incredibly distorted, dragging and skipping like a broken record. Despite the flesh moving and the lungs pulling air, the man's face was completely devoid of humanity. It was a blank, terrifying expression of pure emptiness.

  "Harrison?" Tur'uga asked, the childlike joy rapidly draining into confusion.

  "Harr...ison... cure..... cure...." Harrison repeated mechanically, his purple eyes staring blankly at the cavern wall, entirely unseeing.

  "What is going on? Hey, Mr. Metal, are you here? Something is wrong! Hello? Mr. Metal, where are you?!" Tur'uga called out frantically into the dark.

  But Silas did not answer. The machine was gone. That moment in the cave was the last time Tur'uga ever saw the mechanical being.

  "Days passed," the present Tur'uga recounted, the sorrow in his voice immense. "I finally realized the truth. The flesh of Harrison may have been brought back, but his soul... it was fractured. Missing from the body. What sat there next to me in the dark was nothing more than an empty husk. I still couldn't listen to Harrison's tales."

  The vision on the wall showed the tragic reality. The giant turtle sitting silently in the dark, watching the reanimated corpse of its only friend staring mindlessly at the ceiling, occasionally murmuring the word 'cure'.

  "More days passed," Tur'uga said. "Despite finally being able to move, I still didn't leave from underground. I realized my body was too big. If I revealed myself, I would only scare the people that I had spent centuries listening to. I didn't want that."

  "So, I spent time mulling over whether I had the ability to shrink my massive form. During those days of experimenting with my Void energy, I realized something else. I realized I was able to control Harrison's husk."

  Harrison's skeletal body raised its hands, looking at its own palms.

  "So... I decided to use that opportunity," Tur'uga confessed. "At first, it was incredibly hard. Human movement is so vastly different from how a turtle moves, after all. The balance, the joints, the gravity. But after days of trying... I finally managed to make Harrison's body move fluidly."

  "Thus, Harrison became my eyes."

  The projection on the cavern wall shifted one last time. It showed the animated body of Harrison walking stiffly up a winding underground tunnel until it breached the surface. The blazing, dazzling sunlight of the Zarateph sky hit his face, blindingly beautiful.

  "Harrison-me left the cave," the beast said softly. "From then on, I used Harrison's body to see the real Zarateph. To feel the sun, to walk among the dunes. Not just to hear them from beneath the dirt."

  The vision on the innards wall abruptly flickered and died, returning the chamber to its terrifying, cracked purple reality.

  "You!"

  Yukari whipped around. The sheer grief in her face had suddenly boiled over into blinding, incandescent rage. "You used my father's body as your tool?! How dare you!" she screamed, her voice cracking.

  Despite her fury, her discipline held; she kept her palms thrust forward, her body still violently focusing her burst of absolute zero frost towards Tur'uga's dangerously vibrating heart.

  "I'm sorry. I apologize," Tur'uga said, Harrison's skeletal head bowing deeply in genuine shame. "But... I was also at my wit's end. I had been trapped in the dark for centuries. I just wanted to see the sky again. I felt like I had no choice."

  "So you decided puppeteering my dead father's body was the correct answer?!" Yukari yelled, fresh tears burning her eyes as she fought the immense heat. "How could you?!"

  "I know now it is wrong. I have no excuse," Tur'uga admitted softly.

  "Hold on," Raito interrupted, his brow furrowed as he tried to piece the timeline together. "If... you have been using Harrison's body all this time... then the one I met in the desert, who helped me... was that also you?"

  "Not fully," Tur'uga answered.

  "What do you mean 'not fully'?" Raito asked. He suddenly remembered a specific phrasing. "Wait... I also noticed that you said this Harrison is 'not quite an undead'. Does that have to do with this?"

  "Yes... yes it does, brother," Tur'uga nodded slowly. "Harrison... he... he is still here. Sleeping."

  Tur'uga raised a bony finger and pointed directly at Harrison's chest.

  "Occasionally, he would wake up," the beast explained. "I know it happens because his memories, his intense desires, would flow backwards into me through our Void connection. In the desert, it was indeed me who found you, brother. But after that... my connection blanked out."

  "Blanked out?"

  "Not cut. I knew I was still connected to the husk," Tur'uga clarified. "But something intervened. Something took over the driver's seat. So I know Harrison was the one who did it. He was the one with you. The only time I regained full control of the body was after..."

  "After Harrison got knocked out on that cave wall," Raito finished the sentence, the realization hitting him like a physical blow. When Harrison’s body wal blown towards the cave wall, during the struggle against silas’s drill machine. that was when Tur’uga regained control.

  "Yes. At that time, Harrison's consciousness fell asleep again from the trauma," Tur'uga confirmed. "So I immediately took over. Using my Void energy, I healed his new injuries and brought him back here, to safety."

  Yukari's arms were trembling from the exertion of her frost aura, but her silver eyes locked onto the puppet.

  "Then... what happens if you die?" Yukari asked, her voice tight with a terrifying mix of hope and dread. "If you cut your connection right now?"

  "My guess? He will die again," Tur'uga answered, the brutal truth hanging heavy in the sweltering air. "I never tried cutting my connection. But the reality is... he is someone who already passed. A long time ago."

  "He will die again..." Yukari repeated, the words slipping from her lips as a quiet, fragile whisper. The devastating finality of it crushed the air from her lungs.

  Her shoulders began to shake, the frost aura flickering wildly around her hands.

  "What... what kind of daughter would want that?" she choked out, her voice building into a ragged shout of pure, unacceptable grief. "I finally found my father! After all these years... I had hope he was still alive! I saw him walking! I heard him! But to be told that he would die again... I can't accept that! I can't!"

  "Yukari..."

  Raito moved instantly. He wrapped his arms around her trembling form, pulling her tightly against his chest. He gently reached up and wiped the boiling tears from her cheeks with his thumb, shielding her from the crushing weight of the room. She buried her face in his shoulder, sobbing as she poured every ounce of her remaining elemental energy into keeping the beast's heart from tearing itself apart.

  Raito held her close, but his eyes were sharp. He turned his gaze away from the grieving daughter and leveled a dark, furious glare at the skeletal puppet.

  "Silas..." Raito said, the name tasting like ash in his mouth. He looked at Tur'uga. "How did you meet it again? What did it want from you?"

  Tur'uga shook Harrison's head once more, the purple light dimming in confusion.

  "I don't know," Tur'uga answered, the ancient voice vibrating with helpless sorrow. "The parasite machine... it was only a week ago that it suddenly started talking to me. It forced its way into my mind. It told me the time was ripe. And that I had to die."

  The skeletal hand clenched into a fist. "But not just die... it told me to die, and take you with me, brother. That is what Silas said to me."

  "Thus the bomb," Raito stated flatly, his jaw setting. The rampant Void energy, the catastrophic elemental buildup.

  "But why..." Raito hissed, his anger flaring hotter than the magma beneath them. "Nothing adds up. It already had control of you! Why did it want you to die? What did it actually want? Why does Silas want to erase Zarateph along with you? Why does this machine keep trying to control our lives?!"

  Raito’s voice rose to a furious shout, echoing off the cracked crystal walls. "What did we ever do to it?! None of this is fair!"

  Smash!

  He slammed his fist against the crystal floor, fracturing the stone beneath his knuckles.

  But the silence that followed offered no comfort. Nobody had the answer. A machine from an era long forgotten, a machine that had somehow crowned itself a god... none of its actions provided any solid, comprehensible motive. It was just cruel, unfathomable malice playing with mortal lives.

  Raito shook his head, taking a deep, ragged breath to center himself. He slowly turned his head back toward Tur'uga, his abyssal eyes burning with an unyielding resolve.

  "If we manage to save you," Raito declared, his voice cold and commanding. "You better free Harrison. Cut your connection.

  "But... brother..." Tur'uga pleaded, Harrison's dead face trying to convey a heartbreaking reluctance to let go of its only companion.

  "No," Raito cut him off sharply. "No buts. And despite what that mysterious being of light told you on that beach... I am not your brother either. I am Raito."

  He pointed a finger squarely at the beast's chest. "And Harrison deserves a proper burial. That is the least we can do. No more desecrating the dead."

  Tur'uga stared at Raito for a long moment, the heavy weight of the demand settling over the colossal mind. Finally, the skeletal head nodded in weary acceptance.

  "I understand," Tur'uga said softly. "But... how? I am currently going completely berserk. I am about to explode."

  "He is right," Yukari gasped, her voice strained as the frost around the heart hissed violently against a fresh surge of heat. "As much as I hate to say it... I can't be here all the time. If no one is here to slow the heart down, it will just vibrate faster again."

  "Then let it explode."

  A booming voice shattered the tension in the room.

  Raito and Yukari snapped their heads toward one of the massive upper exhaust tunnels. Dropping down from the darkness, landing heavily on the crystal floor with a cloud of dust, was Tanvir. And right next to him, landing elegantly, was Zhu Lihua.

  "We divert the energy. We shoot it out instead of letting it explode inside the shell," Zhu explained, her general's eyes already analyzing the layout of the pulsating, cracked chamber. "Like a flowing river or a cannonball if its too ugly."

  She strode forward, her gaze locking onto Harrison's reanimated body. She didn't flinch at the sight of him.

  "You," Zhu said, addressing the ancient beast within the dead man. "How much can you control your body right now? The turtle body, of course."

  "I... I don't know," Tur'uga answered, intimidated by the fierce human warrior. "The corrupted energy is overwhelming my nerves."

  "Then try," Zhu commanded, leaving absolutely no room for failure. "Go towards the ocean. The rest, we will figure out once we get there."