Dark Magus Returns

Trapped, with four walls rising in front of him blocking his view of the sunlight outside, Murkel was in complete darkness. But rather than feeling despair for the situation, he was pleased.

'My chance, my chance has finally come!' Murkel quickly broke off a crystal from his back, sliced part of his forearm drawing blood, then placed the crystal on his blood and started to draw a circle in the air.

The red crystal lit up, and red lingering energy was seen. Once the glowing energies connected, a circle had opened up, and Murkel stepped through the portal.

'I wish I could see the look on your faces when you all realized the mistake you made giving me the chance to escape, but it doesn't matter because I will be back.'

Murkel stepped through the portal, and on the other side, he had entered another dimension. It wasn't a new dimension but one that was familiar to him. Right now he found himself in the middle of a jungle.

For a moment he turned back and saw the portal closing, and when he looked forward again, he could feel his energy draining from him. He had only taken a few steps until he finally fell to his knees.

'That fight took so much energy from me. I never imagined that there would be someone with that type of artifact to summon a Divine being on me, and that couldn't have been any normal Divine being. I know my strength. That damned child named Raze, he lucked out!' Murkel had weakly grabbed a fist and went to hit the ground.

Usually, his fist would at least break the flooring or dirt, but it was as weak as a human's hit currently.

Lifting his hand from the ground, Murkel started to touch the side of his head.

'During the fight... at one point or another, I also heard another voice. I haven't heard a voice in so long. I thought that our minds had already merged, so why did I hear someone during that fight?'

While Murkel was on the ground, weak and thinking of this, there was movement up in the large trees above. Quick movement from one area to the next. Loud, heavy footsteps could be heard in the distance, and large giant leaves were moving up and down.

This was a dimension full of beasts, beasts that Murkel had been fighting for an incredibly long time, and now he had returned again, after so many years.

'In this state... I don't think I could beat any of them,' Murkel said, taking a deep breath. 'The voice that I heard, it's you, the beast inside me, right? Well, you should do something if you want us both to live.'

Despite trying to talk to whatever had reached out to him back then, there was no voice this time, and Murkel's vision went blurry as he eventually fell to the ground, completely passing

out.

There was a final thought that ran through Murkel's mind, that when his eyes closed he wouldn't be able to open them again, but not in ways one would think. When his eyes opened, and he looked around, he could see he was back in the cave entrance again.

At the front of the entrance, where the light shined in, there was a large number of beasts that were staring at him. There was also a large leaf with a number of fruits and insects, as well as beast crystals of all things.

Murkel went to pick up the beast crystal and started to absorb it.

"You guys stopped fighting, right? These crystals that I'm absorbing, they're from the dead, not those that you killed."

Sounds resounded in the cave itself as well outside.

"All right, then I will take this tribute," Murkel said, absorbing the crystals.

He didn't know how long he had been out for, how long he had been asleep, but he could tell that his body had been treated in odd ways using the special traits of the beast bodies that were here.

He didn't have a large amount of thirst, so they had to have fed him water during this time as well. The beasts in the dimension had all helped out Murkel.

"I'm sorry," Murkel said. "I failed to help you all. I know we all don't have a lot of time. This dimension is dying... and I need to find a new place for all of you. I promise that I will get stronger and help all of you."

Murkel never thought he was going to be killed by the beasts in the current dimension, because to him, all of them were like him, and they were part of what he would call his new family.

This wasn't the first time Murkel had returned to the dimension. When he had gone back to Pagna, there were many times when he felt more lonely than ever, and having figured out a way to get back to the dimension, he had done so.

It was odd for him, how unhostile the beasts were to him, and how each time he came back, the dimension felt more like home to him. But it wasn't the dimension or the style of the dimension itself, it was the beasts inside it.

When he had returned back with all the injuries from the fighting, the reason he believed he might not wake up had nothing to do with the beasts around him. He feared that he was more injured than he thought during the fight.

The other thing was that he might have woken up in the back of his mind, having the beast taken over again.

Over the next few weeks, Murkel had stayed in the dimension and focused on his recovery. The injuriez this time would take a lot longer to heal. He continually used the crystals that the beasts would give him and spent as much time as he could with all the beasts as well. Traveling through the dense jungle, Murkel was riding on what appeared to be a strange large giant hippo with four eyes. Two large eyes on the front and two smaller ones at the side.

It was around five times bigger than that of a regular hippo. As they went through the jungle, Murkel would pick some of the giant fruits and then throw them down to monkey-like beasts that would collect them and take them away.

Everything worked like clockwork, as if they had been doing it for years, and had all done it without communication.

'My body is back at around 70 percent of what it was before. From the fight, I can tell that I'm able to get stronger than before. I wonder if at 100 percent, I will be able to rank up to the Divine realm. If that's the case, then I will be able to stay here and use all my powers, but I won't be able to go back to Pagna.

'I'm also curious. I still was unable to hear the voice of the beast. There is a chance that our merging hasn't a hundred percent occurred. When it does, that might even boost my power as well. There are still a large number of possibilities, and if I want my revenge, it might be best to increase my beast powers rather than my Qi powers.

'Getting to the Divine Rank will get in my way, and besides, I need to look after all of these,' Murkel said as he rubbed the grey skin of the giant hippo.

He then looked up at the sky and could see there were no clouds. Instead, the world was twirling. It appeared as a giant vortex in the air, and everything was being pulled up to one

point.

Murkel, with a piece of fruit in his hand, chucked it up in the air forcefully. It went through extremely fast, nearly reaching the clouds, and then, when it was meant to fall back down, it didn't. It stayed in the air, slowly moving upward, moving toward the vortex in the air.

'I have no clue how much time I have, but all I know is there is only one person that has gotten in my way. If I get rid of him, then everything will be fine!' Murkel thought.

'I underestimated him, a no-name student who had suddenly come to the school using these strange powers. So many things didn't make sense, including the skills of Bofan that he

knew.'

'If I can, it will be best if I don't kill him straight away. I would like to know what his relationship with Bofan would be. Still, I don't want to change my stance or position. It looks like I will have to say goodbye to the academy and the Dark Faction for a while.' Murkel thought, continuing to look up at the sky, and that's when he could see something strange

occurring.

In the sky above, several portals had suddenly opened up. Not just one, but around fifteen of

them, and moments later, several people came out from the portals. Most of them wearing strange robes, white in color, with others wearing blazers that reminded him of what the

student was wearing.

"People... it's never good news when people find the dimension, but they don't look like Pagna warriors, and are they floating?"

It wasn't Murkel's imagination. These people were floating down, and fairly large in number

as well. The other thing that stood out about them all was the golden "I" on top of their

hoods or on their clothing.

"I don't like visitors. I'll get rid of them all," Murkel said.