The Almighty Ring

“This is the ultimate gamble!”

Jiang Fei concentrated hard and sent out a weak amount of psychic energy to remain engaged with Bargh. The bulk of weak psychic energy was just a mere distraction. The real play lied in the powerful psychic power with surgical-like precision headed toward Bargh’s physical body.

He was attempting to disrupt the planck string frequency that made up Bargh’s physical body. Even though he had yet to fully master the concept of planck strings, all he wanted to do was destroy his body, not reconstruct it or change its properties. Technically speaking, Jiang Fei was not destroying him. He was simply changing the planck string frequency at a random rate, having no need to care for what the outcome was. As long as it was not organized, the result would be cataclysmic.

A single attempt was made and visible changes immediately took place.

“What is this?!” Bargh thought. He was in a mysterious void of space and the only means of offense was psychic manipulation. How had his body received physical damage?

The area of effect was only the edge of his fingers but that was enough to alert Bargh. He then realized the true disadvantage of this unknown void. Jiang Fei clearly had the superior authority in this void and he must have some form of advantage that Bargh could never understand. He must have used that advantage and caused actual, tangible damage to his real body!

Panic ensued.

No matter what he tried, he couldn’t stop whatever Jiang Fei was doing to him. The body and the mind were not of one. He could attack via psychic energy but not stop Jiang Fei from attacking his body.

“Confound it! What have you done?!” Bargh roared, his tone suggesting clear desperation.

“What I did, matters not to you. What matters is the fact that you are going to die,” Jiang Fei replied, condescendingly. He had neither the time nor the attention to waste on Bargh. He needed to concentrate further to cause more damage to his body.

A human body has an infinitesimal amount of planck strings. Jiang Fei was not reconstructing him to his liking nor was he treating the man. The ultimate goal was to destroy him. So long as he continued altering the frequency of Bargh’s plank strings, whatever frequency it changed to mattered not. He could turn into a gold ingot, a pile of cow dung, a mass of biological blob, the Empire State Building, or just a cloud of methane gas. Whatever he ended up becoming, the result would still be the same, the complete annihilation of the Bjolnian known as Bargh.

“This isn’t over yet!” Bargh roared. Seeing as how he could not stop his body from disintegrating, he was desperate.

Jiang Fei heard his bark but paid it no heed.

“If I’m going down, I’ll drag you down with me!”

Desperate, Bargh decided to forgo any means to protect himself. Instead, he was choosing to go all out into attacking Jiang Fei, pouring literally everything he had into an all-out attack.

 A miasma-like wave, saturated with malice, of psychic attack came gushing toward Jiang Fei like a tsunami. No matter how much he tried to defend, no matter how much psychic energy he tried to cough out, there was no defending against the corrupt psychic energy that came from Bargh. All that was poured out turned into the same color and nature of that of Bargh’s. Every method was tried, but every possible way to penetrate his cloud of psychic energy was useless. In the end, everything was converted, or rather, corrupted by his psychic energy. “My lord! His eye! Destroy his third eye!”

Just as Jiang Fei was forced to retreat, he heard Kaa’lna cries from the corner of his mind.

“That’s it!”

Her voice was heard and with a sudden sense of clarity, Jiang Fei understood what he had to do now.

Bargh’s energy was of utmost malice but the source of his energy came from the third eye. If Jiang Fei physically destroyed that eye, Bargh would lose the corruptibility of his psychic energy. Without him constantly corrupting his own psychic force, Jiang Fei would finally be able to apply his usual techniques to defeat and overpower Bargh’s psychic powers.

“I’ll kill you first!” Bargh roared. He heard the cries and knew Jiang Fei would now aim for his weak point. Angered, he now changed his target of destruction to Kaa’lna.

“You will not kill anyone!” Jiang Fei roared, his voice shaking a little.

Jiang Fei poured more and more of his concentration into destroying that third eye. Before, he had only applied random frequency into Bargh’s planck strings, but evidently the efficiency of his destruction was not as high. Knowing that, Jiang Fei needed to focus more. He needed to make sure that every planck string was plucked with a different frequency. Only then would the destruction rate increase to the highest.

The malice energy was coming. It clumped together, forming an arrow-like shape. However, just as Bargh was seen grinning sinisterly, his grin vanished and a frown took its place. His third eye physically crumbled, falling like jigsaw puzzles.

“GRAHH!”

A deafening roar filled the entire void. His third eye broke entirely and the void in his eye socket burst with a powerful surge of black energy.

“What in the world…”

Jiang Fei was sincerely hoping for everything to cease but alas, things didn’t go his way. The explosion of black energy was clearly unexpected. From the looks of it, the third eye functioned somewhat like a limiter. With the limiter gone, the reservoir poured out every drop of black energy like a broken dam. The black energy was pouring out everywhere. And since there was no tangible surface, the black energy appeared to be… sprayed in all directions.

“What the f*ck is this? How malicious could one’s energy be?”

Jiang Fei tried his best to contain the damage by changing the properties of the black energy. However, it proved to be an extremely demanding task, impossible even. The black energy’s planck string frequency was locked. No matter how Jiang Fei tried to change it, it remained unaffected.

“I’ll kill you!”

Bargh was slowly running amok. His psychic energy was completely corrupted by the black energy. The more psychic energy was corrupted, the wider and further the dark energy spread. Worst of all, the planck strings within the vicinity changed, in one form or another, when they came in contact with the black energy.

“F*ck this piece of sh*t! Is he going to destroy this place?” Jiang Fei thought.

He could not allow his precious 10th Dimension to be corrupted! Not after he had literally bled blood, sweat, and tears to obtain it.

“Kill…”

“Kill…”

“KILL!!!!”

Bargh’s mind was nowhere and everywhere. No matter where Jiang Fei turned, he could feel the intense killing intent. His mind was going and all that remained in that little consciousness he had was his will to kill Jiang Fei. And since he had no idea where Jiang Fei was, his attack became random.

The source of the black energy was still Bargh’s body and from the looks of it, it was about to be emptied out. All of the sudden, when the last bit of black energy came out of Bargh’s empty third eye socket, his body twisted and turned in an eerie way; it started converging toward the empty third eye socket as if it was being sucked into it. Not long after, his body was completely “eaten” by the third eye socket, leaving what was a massive glob of black matter. It took some observation skill but even in the 10th Dimension where every matter was frozen in time, the massive glob of black matter managed to slowly crawl across the void.

“Just what the hell are the Bjolnians? How are they like that? What kind of evil do they harbor?”

Jiang Fei could not stop thinking about it. He had no idea what that black glob of slime was and had no means to analyze it, so he could not come up with a means to destroy it.

“Kill…”

“Kill…”

“Ki…ll…”

Slowly yet surely, Bargh’s own consciousness died out. And not long after, like a candle in the wind, his existence was snuffed out. What’s left of his psychic energy was corrupted by the black energy.

“Finally…”

Bargh was dead. That should be the happy ending but seeing as how his 10th Dimension was left in a mess, Jiang Fei felt mildly disgruntled.

“What the…”

Jiang Fei had not realized it before but he did now. The black glob of matter was crawling toward his own body. Even though it was extremely slow, it would soon make its way if he did not do anything.

“What do I do…”

Jiang Fei was panicking. If all was well, he could simply alter the surrounding planck strings and create a mild push to change his physical body’s position. However, he was completely exhausted. His body was crumbling like ancient ruins. A single light touch, from a feather for example, would surely cause his entire body to disintegrate.