Wonderful Insane World-Chapter 124: From inside

Breath ragged, axe raised like a sentence, Maggie lunged.

Her muscles, galvanized by burning essence, hardly belonged to her anymore. She didn’t think—she moved, driven by that ancient fire that knew neither doubt nor mercy. A pure warrior’s impulse, born of an instinct forged from all the pain she’d never screamed.

The blade carved an arc through the air—sharp, silent, almost solemn. A perfect decapitation. A release, in itself.

But Dylan... or what he had become... looked up at that precise instant.

And the world slowed.

His black, glassy pupils gleamed with an incandescent light, not quite human. A grin crept across his face—a blasphemous, satisfied grimace. As if he had been waiting for her. As if he knew.

A wave burst from his body—brutal and invisible, a push of essence so dense the air trembled. The ground cracked beneath him. His bulging veins pulsed like rivers of lava beneath his skin. And in a fraction of a second, his core opened. It exploded again, from within, unleashing titanic power.

Maggie felt the impact before she even knew what was happening.

A blast threw her back—an invisible strike that cut off her path, as if space itself had contracted around Dylan. She rolled across the ground, her back scraping the earth. Her axe, torn from her hands, landed farther away, embedded in the mud like a forgotten headstone.

Dylan rose slowly. His body, warped by constant regeneration, throbbed with waves of energy. His movements, once heavy, had become sharp, fast—inhumanly precise.

He charged.

Maggie, gasping, crawled to her axe. Grabbed it.

She rose just in time to block the first strike—but not the second. Nor the third.

A flash of pain split her side, then another in her thigh. Dylan pummeled her like a storm. Every blow aimed not to kill, but to break. To crush. He struck with the rage of a displaced spirit, and silence screamed around them.

She backed away, slipped, stumbled... but her gaze never wavered.

So she made the only choice left to her.

Her core.

She felt it beating, deep in her chest. A pearl of fire. An ember she had already ignited earlier—but now she had no choice but to call upon it again.

She closed her eyes for a single second, and activated it.

It didn’t open. It blazed.

The essence flooded her veins once more, her vessels burning as if she were circulating molten lava. Her skin lit up with red markings, glowing almost sacred. The marks on her back flared brighter, and she felt her strength, her body, double in power.

Maggie charged at Dylan, her brown eyes now turned ember. The axe rose again.

And this time... she truly wanted to end it.

Their breaths—uneven, chaotic—formed a brutal music in the essence-charged air. Dylan, a dislocated silhouette, drawn taut like a bow, was waiting. His features, twisted by unspeakable rage, somehow looked... calm. Terribly calm.

But Maggie no longer saw the 21-year-old boy, nor even the stubborn lieutenant. She saw the thing. The host. The parasite devouring her companion from within, leaving only a warped, twisted, corrupted puppet.

Her axe sliced the air.

The clash was telluric.

Metal against flesh, flesh against will. Dylan blocked just in time, his bare fingers catching the axe’s handle like he could snap it in half. Their eyes locked in absolute silence, a sliver of time so dense it seemed to freeze the world.

"This isn’t you anymore," Maggie whispered.

Dylan growled. Or maybe it was something else—behind him, inside him. A muddled voice, carried by a myriad of others that weren’t his.

"I’m... all that’s left."

And his arms began to glow.

Essence gathered beneath his skin like a storm, pulsing in his spasming muscles. He grabbed Maggie’s axe with his full grip. The metal sizzled under his warped hold, and the weapon vibrated with a dull tension, as if it sensed its end approaching.

Maggie didn’t let go.

Not out of pride. Out of faith.

She kneed him. Then again. Dylan didn’t flinch. He gripped tighter.

So she let go of everything.

Her core, still burning, pulsed once more. A discharge. A wave. A flash. A prayer.

And in that instant, her marks—or rather, her Stigmate—intensified. The red lines on her back turned crimson, almost alive, racing up her arms, her neck, to her temples. The air around her contracted—dense, unstable.

She spun abruptly. Broke Dylan’s grip with a shoulder slam. Slid behind him. And with a short, almost silent cry—she struck.

The edge of her axe landed against Dylan’s neck.

There was a dry sound. Sharp, grating.

But no head fell—or at least, not yet.

Dylan’s body shuddered. Wavered. His knees buckled. And for the span of a single breath...

...he looked almost human again.

His face was no longer distorted. He breathed. He blinked. He gasped. His blood—black, smoking—flowed in a thin stream, but he was there. Really there. Features drawn, lips parted.

"M... Maggie?" he murmured, lost in a world too vast.

She hesitated for nearly one second.

But it was already too long.

His left eye turned black. The guttural voice returned. And Dylan’s clawed hand lashed out, plunging into Maggie’s side, just beneath her ribs. A strangled groan escaped her lips. She staggered back, the axe falling from her fingers.

And behind them, Élisa screamed.

——

Élisa no longer knew if she was screaming—or if it was the entire universe, screaming through her.

Something had ruptured in her belly—hot and cold at once, too vast, too ancient. The bracelet burned against her skin—not like heated metal, but like a presence. A consciousness.

She doubled over.

The world spun. Her breath caught mid-throat, yet she stayed upright—frozen like a statue in the wind. Maggie... Maggie was bleeding too much. Dylan... Dylan was no longer Dylan. And she... she was nothing in this chaos except a fracture. A silent scream. A bottle overflowing under pressure.

Then, amid the turmoil of her mind, she felt a shiver—like a faint vibration. Barely perceptible. But she recognized it.

Not because she had felt it before—no. Because that particular shiver belonged to her.

The bracelet vibrated again. The etched enchantments pulsed—not with a violent red, but a red tinged with pale gold. A soft light, like a buried memory. Like an ancient recollection awakened by an inner call.

And around Élisa, the air grew thicker.

She blinked.

Particles floated. Tiny. Suspended. Light as dust in a sunbeam. But here, in this mud, this violence, they didn’t belong. They pulsed gently, in rhythm with her heartbeat.

She tried to speak—but no sound came out.

It wasn’t language. It was deeper.

Her hand, extended without her will, trembled like a drawn bowstring. And Dylan, before her—Dylan, who had risen again, his eyes still too black, his silhouette ravaged—stumbled under his own weight.

There was no blow. No contact. Just... a shift.

The world had moved.

Not because she chose it—but because she felt it. Like an impulse from somewhere else, beyond herself. Yet channeled through her breath, her nerves, her despair.

The bracelet still glowed.

And something inside her... opened.

An invisible mark, dormant under her skin, buried like a seed for days. She hadn’t known she bore it. Not until it began to burn. A mental warmth blossoming in her temples, her arms, her spine.

The space grew porous.

Élisa inhaled.

Dylan stepped back.

And without thinking, without understanding, she reached out with her other hand. A pure, raw mental impulse lashed the air like a compressed whip. He was flung backward.

She staggered.

But this time, the world had changed again.

And behind her, like an echo whispered into the ear of a god, a soft and distant voice seemed to say:

"There... finally... you hear me."

The voice didn’t come from outside.

It was inside her. Not lodged in her ear, but in that inner breath one only notices on the brink of collapse. A breath the body has never learned to listen to.

And it spoke—without lips, without tone. A whisper of running water in a burning skull. A song beneath the skin. A wave between thoughts.

[ My child... I respect your stubbornness. ]

Élisa shuddered.

This wasn’t a hallucination. It was... real. Organic. As if her mind had suddenly expanded—opened onto another plane, where something had been waiting a long time.

[ You have managed to awaken a bracelet that could only be stirred by someone undergoing fusion of essence... ]

She didn’t understand all the words. But the meaning struck deep.

Fusion.

Something inside her was no longer separate.

Fear, pain, will, flesh, essence... it had all blended, tangled in the same abyss. And she had dived in.

She half-straightened. Her legs trembled. Dylan, farther off, groaned—stirred—but the space around her muffled the sounds like a cocoon.

The bracelet still shone—steady, warm.

And the voice, ever gentle, continued:

[ This bracelet is one of my favorites. I engraved a part of my power in it—of my domain. Mental manipulation. ]

[ It will amplify your Stigmate... ]

The words echoed in her like reverberations.

That burning mark on her nape, her arms, her mind. That strange link with the world—with space. With motion. She had felt it, she had seen it. It had no name yet—but it existed.

Psychokinesis...

That was the word. She knew it now.

Not because someone told her.

Because her body knew.

[ And it will keep your mind from boiling over like hot water. ]