The Earth After Rebirth

Kiro was bored senseless after he could one-shot the beetle queen. He had no reason to keep summoning it now, he didn't have battle experience with anything stronger, even Hubris was weaker than that queen.

He spent his days in his head, bored out of his mind. He tried countless times to move the eyelids, he failed every time. He was faintly aware of the outside world, the most uncomfortable was when Hubris cleaned his wound.

It felt like, somebody was cleaning it with a knife, that's how uncomfortable his claws were. Which made him more defiant since he couldn't move or express his frustrations. He vowed to make Hubris pay no matter what when he gets out of his coma.

He sat the same way he would when meditating, and tried to enter the state. Like before, he couldn't. The Kaos energy was too wild to be tamed, it raged like fire in a forest. Kiro felt that, it liked to be courted and rejecting all the same. It was a strange sensation.

"I've never courted a single girl, but here I am courting an imaginary energy. Pitiful." He spat.

He didn't want to die though so he thought back to when Hiro told him it was hard taming flames and being one with them, it must've been something like this.

"That's right, maybe, maybe I shouldn't try to tame it, but be one with it?" He tilted his head, trying to come up with ways to be one with this very stubborn energy.

He became the most patient and obedient boy in the world when he thought this might be the way to do it. He had nothing else to do anyway, his wound was healing, he could feel it but at the rate it was going, it would take years.

He had already taken revenge on the one who made him like this, whether or not it was his imagination it mattered a little. To him, it was as real as everything else in Asgard.

"Now, how to be one with energy?"

He wrecked his brain trying to to think of a way. He suddenly felt why Hiro looked the way he looked when he came back from the craftsman apprenticeship.

It was infuriating how one minute he thought he could grasp the concept, the next it had gone, slipping through his fingers.

He closed his minds eye, took deep breaths and allowed the energy to run rampant inside of him. It was chipping away at his mental fortitude, bit by bit. Of course Kiro was aware of its savagery, he could always mend his mental, he wouldn't allow it to grind it down to zero anyway. He wasn't mad.

Having the Kaos energy inside of him was different from magic. Magic was calm and docile, this one felt hot and chaotic, it didn't care if it drove the owner insane.

As if to say, 'I don't want to be used by the weak.'

While people chose magic, it was the other way around for Kaos. It chose you, through the most savagery and gruesome test of eating away at the mental fortitude of the one who dares to challenge it.

If you're strong enough, you can use it. If you waver, even if a little, your sanity will forever belong to it.

"It kind of tickles." Kiro joked, it was in fact excruciating having your mental eaten.

He had to remind himself that, this was all just a game. His body, his real body was back at his dorm room. Safe and sound, nobody could truly hurt him here. The worst that could happen would him losing his progress.

Though the fact that he couldn't logout unsettled him. He concluded that he couldn't logout, or call out to the system because he was in this state. That was the only logical answer. Everything else defied all logic. There was no way this was real life, and he was really hurt?

These thoughts were ones he pushed back, so as to fortify his mental state. Going up against an energy that seemed to have a will wasn't all that easy.

So he sat there, doing nothing else but meditating.

After a month of playing mind games with an energy, he still hadn't become one with it though it was close. It had stopped eating his mental, it tried its best to exhaust him but ended up bloated first. It greedily ate without thinking much.

Kiro was very satisfied, as that meant he was closer to healing his wound quicker than how it was going right now.

While he appreciated Hubris cleaning his wound from time to time, he didn't like the pain that came with it. He was simply a bad nurse.

The Kaos inside him started feeling familiar, he was reminded of how bad his life was going at the moment. But that didn't make him waver, if he had to sell all 50 of his beasts to make money, that's what he'd do.

"So you thrive off negative energy? That's dangerous."

The energy was making him remember the pain so that when he falls into despair it takes him whole, that was also a way in which it could make the wielder more powerful.

The deeper the trauma the more powerful it was. This was dangerous in that, if the wielder got lost in the negativity and trauma, it'd win one over the wielder. It was greatly disappointed when that didn't work.

As much as Kiro felt his past traumas and regrets to the bone, he thought giving up would be more pathetic. He gave up life once in his past life, miraculously he was given a second chance. He'd rather die than live another pathetic life.

His resolve was much more stronger, it would take the end of the world, the death of everyone he cared about to truly despair. As long as they were still kicking, money was something that can be made. Life of luxury can be bought.

When the Kaos sensed his resolve, it backed down a bit. Not that it would give up, it would just lie in wait for the day the boy lost everything, if that day should come.

Kiro tried to channel it through the mana veins but they were too weak to hold it, they burst the moment it entered their passageway.

So he gave up on that option, and just took in the energy to course through his entire body.