Bab 16: CHAPTER 16 - Resilience And countless
As Featherd was trying to stand after being smashed into the compound wall by Vikram's kick, he saw Vikram jump toward him. His eyes widened in fear, and he screamed like a dying bird as Vikram kicked him in the gut. Featherd was thrown onto the road, out of the building. Vikram came running, and Featherd flew into the air, soaring behind Vikram.
"Featherd, your real pain, like your grandmother's nonsense, is in your DNA," Vikram said as he grabbed him and went flying.
Vikram shouted, "Don't you dare talk about anyone I know! It's you, demon, who's ungrateful, even though my grandmother believed in you! What you did..."
Featherd sneered. "Nightmare. I sent her to the person she liked most."
Featherd grabbed Vikram's shirt, spun him around, and threw him onto a building that was still under construction. As Featherd spoke, he flew into the center of the building. It was circular with a hollow interior. The place was dark except for the light at the base. Construction materials—cables, bricks, cement—were scattered everywhere. The walls were still being built, and some of the stairs were incomplete.
Featherd hovered in mid-air, searching for Vikram. Meanwhile, Vikram was coughing, barely able to stand. His bones were strong as iron—or even stronger—but his skin remained normal. His body was covered in bruises, his face soaked with blood, and his legs were shaking. He was on his knees, almost on the brink of passing out.
Featherd taunted him. "Vikram, just surrender. I don't want to kill you. They want you alive. Just obey me, and I'll spare your family. But if you keep making me wait, I'll start chopping them, piece by piece. Each passing second, I'll decide which part of your family goes first." He gestured as if cutting with his fingers. "One second—your father's leg. Two seconds—your mother's eyelashes. Three—"
Before he could finish, Vikram hurled a brick at him from below. Featherd dodged it, but it wasn't just one or two—more bricks rained down on him. Featherd, agile as ever, dodged each one. But then, something happened. He was pulled down.
"Ahhhhh!" Featherd screamed as he saw Vikram from the fifth floor, pulling him down by a cable he had thrown with the bricks.
"Throwing bricks was a camouflage, wasn't it? You used the rope to grab my leg and pull me down," Featherd realized too late.
Featherd crashed to the ground. The impact was so strong that his backbone broke, and his wings shattered. He coughed up blood as he looked up to see Vikram jump from the fifth floor, a brick in his hand. Vikram smashed the brick onto Featherd's head. The scream echoed through the entire building.
Vikram continued to smash his head with his fists as the brick crumbled. "Yahhhh! Wahh! Ha! Hmph!" He was breathing heavily, but when he looked down, Featherd's body was gone. The brick was crumbled, but the body was nowhere to be seen.
Vikram's face transformed in terror. "What's going on? Everything I threw, everything, was back in its place! And the building—there's no damage. It looks like nothing happened! What's going on?"
He turned in shock, hearing the sound of wings flapping behind him.
"Vikram," Featherd said, his voice cold, "time to quit already. Now we're even. You killed me, didn't you?"
Vikram turned around and saw Featherd flying in the air. "How are you still alive?" he gasped, breathing heavily in shock.
Featherd pointed at Vikram. "For you, I died. Not for me. I don't even remember coming here and fighting you. Not even this universe has information about our clash here, and my death… I swapped it with the universe where I came from. Now, you can't beat me. Surrender."
Vikram grabbed a brick from the ground and smashed it into Featherd's head, killing him once again.
But Featherd came back again, and Vikram stood there in fear, staring at him.
"So, you killed me here, huh?" Featherd taunted.
Vikram rushed back into the building, throwing another brick that blasted Featherd's head. Featherd fell, but before Vikram could react, he checked his phone. The time was moving forward—nothing was resetting.
Featherd returned again, and Vikram, now desperate, threw a rod at him, piercing his chest and killing him once more.
Vikram looked at the time again. "Time's not going backwards," he muttered. "It's moving forward."
But Featherd came back again. This time, Vikram threw a cable at him, pulling him down and smashing him into the ground. Featherd screamed in pain. "You little..." Featherd stood up, firing his feathers like bullets from his wings.
Vikram quickly hid behind some debris. As he looked at the hole he had made earlier, he thought, It's still here, after I fell. But everything else resets—my footsteps, the bricks, the damage. Why is this happening? What's the difference between this and the other things? What's his ability?
He thought about it. He's swapping information from universes. He sends information about his death to a different universe at, say, 12 AM, and gets the information that he's alive at 12:01 AM in return. It's how he rewrites his death by replacing reality. But why isn't this hole resetting?
Vikram realized then and said, "I understand it now."
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone