Staring at the Lunite before him, Free took one last deep breath...before embedding both his hands in the sand.
The Lunite was currently sparing him for whatever reason instead of instantly beheading and killing him.
He just had to take advantage of it.
However...Free felt like the Greek Titan Atlas, stuck under the unbearable weight of the sky itself.
The oppressive presence of the Lunite froze his body, not mentally through fear...but physically.
That, alongside everything, mentally and physically, Free had gone through in the past day, made it impossible for him to even lift his head.
Yet... inexplicably, Free could feel his finger tingling while buried in the sand.
Why?
Why could his hands below the sand move but not his head?
Racing his hands upward from the sand with all his remaining strenght, Free watched as a cloud of dust appeared before him, separating him from the Lunite.
Without a second's doubt, Free immediately leaped backward onto his feet, feeling some of his strength return.
In the next moment, he desperately sprinted backward...right into the dune, repeating what he had done when trying to get the blood-red fragment originally.
Yet, a voice...tinged with a bit of excitement sounded behind him.
"You actually thought I'd let you go?"
Just as Free was about to collide with the dune, his surroundings shifted.
In the next moment, Free was flying backward from the momentum while kneeling on the sand, his fingers still embedded in the sand.
As Free's body fell back, the Lunite's right palm shot forward like a bullet and grasped onto Free's head as if it were a basketball.
Pushing Free's head back and forcing Free to look up at two black holes within his eyelids, Lunite Seren smiled.
Lifting his left hand and pointing at his smile, he emotionlessly asked, like a robot.
"What about this? Is this good enough? Is this enough for you to remember me, even as a darkness monster?"
Of course, the Lunite could not have known that his image had been locked in Free's memory for years now.
At that moment, though, Free's head instantly revived itself as frantic thoughts coursed through his brain for a brief second.
He's not going to kill me... no, he was never going to.
h-he's going to turn me into a monster.
Raising Free into the air by the head, Seren sighed and rolled his head backward.
"Resisting its call is tiring, you know? It's about that time. A good playwright must know when to end his acts."
Leaping into the air with Free attached to his right palm, Seren landed atop the jungle-sized dune he had been standing on earlier, casually jumping an astonishing 35 meters.
Raising his right hand so that Free's head was at the same height as his, Seren gazed downward emotionlessly.
"I got bored while waiting, so I made this."
At the peak of the dune they were on was a human-sized hole, which seemed to reach all the way to the bottom of the dune.
The perfect trap to hold me until the full moon is over...
However, before he could be dropped into the hole and meet his impending fate, Free managed to open his mouth.
There were a lot of things Free wished to say.
Of course, these were likely his last words.
Yet, as his onyx-black pupils drifted upward within his eyelids to meet the full crimson-red moon shining above him, all he could think about was...how lucky he was.
Seriously, what are the odds...?
If someone had asked Free in the past how he had survived the dangerous desert for the past fifteen years, he would have easily replied, "constant preparation and awareness."
Yet...now all he could say was pure and uncontestable luck.
In the end, despite Seren's deliberate moment of silence to wait while Free's mouth was open, no words were spoken.
Instead, a hollow snicker, one that Free's classmates used when gossiping, momentarily left Free's mouth.
"...?"
Confused, Seren gazed forward for a moment before...suddenly breaking out into a fit of laughter.
"*PFFT* Haha, don't be bitter, you're not missing anything too good in this world. The strong will continue to rule while we remain in places like this."
Hearing Seren's response, Free really wanted to ask the Lunite "who is we!?" But, alas, there was no time.
Seren smiled and slowly lowered Free's body, like a crane lowering a piece of trash onto the ground, before continuing.
"Think of it this way...you're making me, one of us, stronger by remembering me!"
What a selfish asshole!
As a white streak flashed before him, Free did manage to smile, though.
*BANG*
*BANG*
*BANG*
Not even a moment later, a white comet crashed right at the base of the dune on which the two of them were standing.
Despite going faster than any object in the world, though, the comet suddenly halted as it hit the top layer of the sand, only affecting the surface.
An earthquake immediately erupted as waves of sand oscillated up and down, collapsing all the dunes in the area.
A deafening sound, enough to send waves through Free's vulnerable brain and daze him, echoed throughout the desert.
Additionally, a bright flash blinded Free as he felt himself descend straight downward at an incredible speed, no longer held up by Seren.
Regaining control of his body, Free immediatly spread his arms apart like a bird attempting to fly...and felt nothing but air.
The dune meant to hold him had been decimated.
He was Free.
A moment later, the comet suddenly began shining as...similar to a seed planted in the ground, three massive transparent stems appeared from the comet's exposed surface and began rapidly growing.
The three stems grew inward before ultimately meeting each other and combining, forming a perfect three-pronged crystal.
*BANG*
Within seconds, Free felt his feet hit the sand, causing his body to collapse from the impact and roll downward.
As his eyes flickered open, he was immediatly met with a massive cloud of smoke, but beyond that smoke, Free spotted a body.