Chapter Twelve

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The scroll had another ability to gift him, which was once more a life saver, for if it fell into the wrong hands, or even Annabel's, his entire career would fall apart in an instance, that was how important keeping it a secret was.

The ability was to be useless now. Indeed, the scroll was useless, to all but himself, and how he knew that, he only had a hunch towards, but seeing that Annabel was trusting enough to let him stay at her house for the night, which was obvious given him and her being bestfriend in his eyes, he was inclined to test it out on Annabel and see if she could activate the scroll too.

Sadly, he didn't have it right now, but with the fact that he could still access everything from the palm of his left hand made for the day's start to be back to the scroll world.

As blue light emanated from his left palm, he quickly felt like he was once more a part and inside the scroll world than the guest room, even if the guest room's lovely baby blue walls matched his own love for the colour, or rather history with it.

The scroll world had moved on after mourning the loss of King Leonidas Atulu, his son, Leonidas Atulu II taking on the role of king of the newly established Atul Empire, and becoming the head of the Church.

After a couple generations, the current king was now King Leonidas Atulu the thirtieth, a weak willed ruler that was quite unsatisfactory to his own Kingdom, having split up from the main family to live out on a castle by the capital city, his reign was nothing out of the ordinary, yet as Miguel could see, something was certainly up with the man's crude and rushed actions in recent times.

As Miguel sighed while moving on from the memory of the great legend that once was Atulu, he looked at the tomb in which he had placed the blue dull knife, Leonidas Atulu's tomb that was guarded at all times, and unbeknownst to the kingdom that still searched for the legendary and mystical blade till this day, it was hidden right under their noses.

Finding that the knife was still there, he then looked at the continent from above, it was massive, much larger than any continent on Earth, and the land was still not fully discovered in it's entirety, nearly just a quarter explored, perhaps lazily that too since he didn't find any references to the real size or even shape of the land, but he gave them a couple more hundred years to figure out proper cartography, for the system they had was in utter shambles that chained them down to the dirt.

Using his new found ability, he took the knife and hurriedly secured it inside an elaborate trap, punching in a code only he knew the answer to.

Deep down inside he knew he was seeking a bit of chaos to relinquish his aching heart, no matter how much big the gap was, Atulu was still someone he had begun to care for; thus he kept his only remaining legacy (baring his offsprings, which didn't rather count in his opinion) inside the giant construction he created.

He had thought all night long about what he would be doing next, his cancer was a month away, and being extended, by the week he had expected that it would go away, and right now he had already moved all the equipment into the land of the unknown.

He called it that for even he didn't know where it was, a small orbiting planet perhaps, revolving around the scroll world, the place he had built his house with great effort, or rather the cave in which he plopped down all his items and lab stuff was chocked full to the brim with the mysterious things.

He didn't know the terminology for them yet, but he was willing to learn, as he slowly developed his understanding about the genes that trees have, why they have such a long longevity and what not.

At the end, all he could understand from it was about the decaying nature of life, and to combat cancer and what not, he would have to develope the perfect being to siphon it's genes out, that was easier said than done however.

As he simply laid down for a while, he had searched up a long time ago that the ancient arts of meditation helped increase life span, and the fact that his ancestors had written something down in the scrolls he had foraged through once more just a couple days ago just proved that fact.

While it was slow, combined with his genetic manipulation, he found his cancer dying out quicker than he had predicted, he felt like he had three years to live, which made him filled to the brim with greed for more, as his erratic breaths made him exit that mode of being.

Opening his eyes, the stoney texture of the walls and rocks around him, added with the dirt just below him made for a coarse feeling in his numb body. He felt like the first time he had opened up the scroll, and that made his brows furrow slightly in thought.

Looking around the vegetation filled small planet, he saw not a single organism besides the already before mentioned plants and trees all around.

The fact that he had to keep such vulnerable and expensive equipment in the cave made his mind go into panick mode, for even if there wasn't a creature to be known of for hundreds of perhaps even thousands of kilometres of land and dense foliage around, his own clumsiness certainly brought a bitter sensation of acknowledgement scurrying along.

And so he made another mental note, remembering the scroll world's previous inhabitants in great detail, even if he couldn't replicate them exactly once more, the ant workers would make for some great companions, especially if given a decent personality to comfort him in the tough times that are to come, which means researching melancholic hours, ones he hated dearly, for what was the truth and what was sheer lunacy? He never knew truly until the bitter end.

Getting out of the scroll world with a few more sentences of his agenda to complete, which added a couple more hundred hours of his now twenty plus years of no cancer life out, he had officially gotten out of the danger zone by accident, and leaped out of the room to find Annabel just outside, red faced at first but shocked the next second, for her words were what startled him once more.

   "Miguel, why're your eyes red?" Such a simple phrase that sent chills down his spine, even though he knew he could just bluff his way through everything.

   "I.. uh.. this is nothing! You're just hallucinating this, that's all!" He had no idea how to turn it off, the newest ability given to him, perhaps his emotional instability triggered it?

Closing his eyes shut while yawning and pretending to give out a long and lingering one in the hopes that the pestering blonde would leave him alone for some time, she just pouted and poured in more pressure  keeping her face still and locked on him.

    "This is serious Miguel! You could be ill! Heck, this could be your cancer for all I know! Open your eyes! Now!"

She was forceful in her persuasion, and his weak will to harm her in any way certainly made for a disastrous moment of course, when she found his boring black orbs piercing their way into her own confused green ones.

While he wasn't sure what happened, she certainly kept him busy with her check up till it was time for her to leave for work, of course he had questioned her aswell with what she wanted him to do, her being at his door since quite some time as it would appear.

Her stammering and rushing a good bye was enough to leave the man confused, back at home, and somehow wanting to have her company once more just to hear her meaningless, meaningful and lovely chatter chatter.

But alas, he sighed as he went on back to his room in his house, his same old and boring house in which was nothing much to be said about, unlike the eloquent and elegance filled and decorated interiors of Annabel's bungalow, even the lighting system there seemed better than his shabby one; then again, so did the flash light on his seemingly industrial era phone.

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