Guardian Of The End

"This is going to be tough…" Jason muttered before summoning his dark mana towards his wounds.

He slowly guided it towards his cut off skin while trying to make sure that the mana didn\'t activate his receptors again.

Even if they got activated for a few seconds, Jason would feel raw pain shooting throughout his body.

"Slowly… slowly…" Risa chanted under her breath. "That it! Use that dark mana to coat the entire wound and make sure that it can corrode other things."

Jason nodded and started covering his wound with the dark mana. He also made sure to use the corrosive property to destroy things around the wound.

This didn\'t have an effect on the person using the dark mana. Otherwise, the rest of Jason\'s arm would have corroded as well.

\'This is a lot harder than I thought…\' Jason gritted is teeth and continued the process.

He somehow managed to cover one fourth of the wound before the real struggle began. Much to his shock, the dark mana closest to his normal skin started acting weirdly.

The moment he tried to stop it, the entire patch started reacting. Risa placed her hand on his shoulder in less than a second and used her life magic on him.

"Ha…"

Jason gasped loudly before looking down at his wound. The skin had been completely healed by Risa\'s magic.

It was as though it had not been scarred once in his lifetime.

"That there was a reason that you  should never practice this alone. If I hadn\'t been here, the dark mana would have activated your pain receptors again and you would be in intense pain.

Though the dark mana itself won\'t do anything, the pain will cause a weird reaction and would make you lose focus. There is no knowing what might happen after that." Risa sighed in relief.

Jason silently swore to never practice the same thing when he was alone. It would be better to do this under someone\'s gaze instead of fooling around on his own.

[ Though the chances of your hand being crippled are pretty low, its better to be safe than sorry. Its a good decision on your part to do this. ] The system agreed with his decision.

"So I have to get my skin cut again?" Jason questioned.

"That\'s the only way for this to work." Risa sighed. "Also, there isn\'t any shortcut or trick I can tell you to help you understand this better.  You will have to clear this entire thing yourself and I will just make sure you don\'t get hurt."

"Let\'s start again." Jason replied with a determined expression.

"That\'s the spirit."

***

\'Despite getting healed, my arm is quite sore…\'

Jason was currently lying on his bed and staring at the ceiling. He and Risa had been practicing the same thing over and over again the entire day, with many breaks that is.

"Even if magic will mend you together, its not good to overuse it on your body. Breaking and mending the same thing over and over again can sometimes cause weird changes in that particular area."

Those were the words Risa had said to him the first time they had taken a break. Jason understood some of it but now that he was lying on the bed, it made much more sense to him.

[ Though magic is just like your body, its not easy to change things so easily. If you had done the same thing repeatedly without taking any breaks, your muscles might have given up or your tissues might have torn a bit.

Magic and science go hand in hand even though both of them are composed of different set of laws and rules. Its quite fascinating for a scholar to learn about this. ]

\'I am not a scholar but I have to admit that it is indeed quite fascinating to learn. Its like learning physics and chemistry except you hate the numericals.\'

[ That makes sense for some weird reason. ]

\'I know…\'

Jason closed his eyes and let his body rest. After all, he had to repeat the same process the following day.

He soon fell asleep, getting lost in the world of dreams. The simple pleasure of getting to sleep in reality almost felt new to him.

[ Good night host… ]

***

There are times when you wake up naturally in the morning. Those are good times. Then there are times you are woken by your alarm or a family member. Those are not so good times.

Then there are the times when you are woken up by the size of a bomb exploding in your backyard. Now those are the worst times.

Jason was peacefully sleeping in his bed when something suddenly dropped in his backyard. An explosion was heard which startled him out of his sleep.

"Nuke where?" Jason blurted out before looking at his surroundings.

For a minute, his mind had thought that he was back in the warzone on Earth. Fortunately, he was still sitting on his bed in Duphia.

"Did grandpa demolish someone?" Jason muttered before getting out of bed.

He quickly changed into a new pair of clothes and opened his window. Outside, he could see a lot of smoke spreading across their backyard.

Jason immediately activated his mana vision and saw multiple unknown figures inside the cloud of smoke.

Surprisingly, his earlier guess had been correct since Issac was currently standing in the middle of the smoke.

Jason immediately jumped out of his window, activating his white thunder in the process. He easily landed on the ground in the next instance and looked around with narrowed eyes.

"There wasn\'t any need to come down here. I can handle them on my own." Issac snorted as he could tell that Jason was standing close by.

"I didn\'t come here to help you. I came here to make sure that you don\'t go overboard and kill them." Jason replied with a smile before walking towards the cloud of smoke.

Issac used his wind magic, his secondary element, to clean the smoke in an instant. Jason could now see at least a dozen figures dressed in all black clothes lying around Issac\'s feet.

"These guys are the king\'s personal fighting unit. If I had my powers under restriction, it wouldn\'t have been possible for me to defeat all of them so easily. I might have required Risa and Ray\'s help." Issac trailed off topic.

Jason no longer paid attention to his words and instead observed the figures. It turned out that if he used the normal amount of mana to enhance his vision, all of the men wouldn\'t pop up in vision.

"They are extremely good at hiding their presence." Issac added, his eyes looking at Jason with curiosity.

[ He wants to know how you were able to see them despite that. ]

\'That\'s obvious. I had to use a lot more of mana than normal yet I was still able to see them without facing any kind of withdrawal in my vision.\'

[ I will run a scan on this and tell you the details later on. ] The system replied and went silent.

"Why are they here?" Jason questioned.

"That\'s what I am trying to find out. Unfortunately, physical torture doesn\'t affect them that much. They have already been inflicted by various forms of torture to make them resistant towards it." Issac suddenly smiled.

"That\'s why I have to take care of things from here," Risa said from behind. "Good morning, Jason. Do you want to see how I can break a person from the inside?"

"…" Jason had no immediate answer for her question. Though he was no fan of conducting physical torture, mental torture was something different.

"All right, I will see it." Jason replied after thinking about it for some time.

"Good. Issac, can you take them to the lab? I still have to prepare some special food for Zara." Risa said and went inside.

Issac simply sighed and started picking up the unconscious bodies. Jason casually watched his grandpa haul bodies to Risa\'s lab before going back inside.

He got his daily things done and went to the kitchen to eat breakfast. Once that was done, Jason went back to the upper floor to check up on May.

The demi-god was currently staying inside his grandparents room. According to Risa, she was helping May control her divine energy.

\'She must have some sort of divinity as well.\' Jason guessed. \'There is no way she can easily tell May what to do without making any previous encounters with a demi-god.\'

[ What if she is a demi-god herself? ]

\'Hestia or you would have been able to sense that. Unless…\' Jason shook his head to get rid of the conspiracy thoughts.

He quickly entered his grandparents room, took one glance at May, and returned to his own room.

Using the teleportation formation, Jason appeared in the lab just in time to see Risa strap one of the unconscious men to a chair.

"If you ever need to wake up an unconscious person, place your hand at the nape of their neck and send a short amount of lightning through their body. If you can\'t do that, use dark mana to disrupt their natural body flow." Risa said absentmindedly.

She pressed her right index at the man\'s nape and sent a slight tremor inside him. His eyes immediately flew open and directly landed on Risa.

"Morning, dear." Risa greeted with a humorless smile.

The man\'s face froze as his jaw dropped slightly. "You… you…"

"Don\'t bother. I know they teach you all about me." Risa smiled. "After all, I was one of the most famous torturers in my peak. Jason, watch closely. I will show you how pain is a rather strange thing."

Jason gulped nervously before nodding.

No matter what happened next, he knew that the guy was going to experience something hellish