Esper Harem in the Apocalypse

Chapter 288 Pandora Box

　　"Do you know what Pandora box is?" Rudy asked calmly. "Well, you cannot speak, so I will answer myself."

　　I will show you what pain means. How it feels to suffer and wish for death, but it never comes. You will know how long eternity is."

　　The emotions behind Rudy's words and his tone changed with every sentence, which was frightening for Vesier.

　　He had already accepted his fate that he was about to die soon, but Rudy wanted to bury him in fear and beg for mercy.

　　"You will soon realize who you messed with," Rudy said and raised his hand in the air.

　　He tried to conjure fire in his hand and create a living sun, but he was having trouble conjuring one.

　　'Fire needs oxygen to keep burning. Even the sun has self-sustaining energy, which it's constantly using. It's burning itself. I will need something for the fire to keep burning for eternity. But is that possible? Even the sun won't last that long.'

　　Rudy placed the palm of one hand on another and conjured a fireball, which worked as the fire was burning one another. But when he opened his hands and exposed the fireball into space, it stopped burning.

　　'Hmm….'

　　Rudy touched Vesier's body and restored it as he was about to die soon. He then pondered for a few seconds before coming up with another plan to punish him.

　　'Since I talked about the box, let's put him in the box,' he decided.'But how do I create a solid substance?'

　　He glanced around and thought, 'I can use the debris and melt it to create a perfect box, but that can be easily broken. I want to trap him.'

　　Amid his thoughts, Rudy recalled something strange that he had been wondering about ever since he got his powers.

　　From where were the conjuring fire, water, and wind?

　　Unlike his other abilities, which were all physical, the others were similar to what one would call magic.

　　'Jane told me the same thing and referred to my flight ability as lost magic. And according to her, they can summon the elemental magic from the atmosphere, or rather nature itself.

　　They turn its energy and change the formula to give them new properties and characteristics. So what if I do the same?

　　I possess the power to do the impossible, at least from a human perspective. I am ordinary compared to the other races. Not in terms of powers, though.'

　　Rudy looked at his hand and imagined creating silver— since it was considered lethal for the vampires— using the infinite resources available in space.

　　A few seconds later, Rudy was able to create a liquid drop of silver that immediately turned solid due to the freezing temperature of the space.

　　"Hmm…" Rudy hummed in wonder and uttered inwardly: 'It's like conjuring fire and water, but it's sucking more power. It will take me an hour to create a human-sized box of silver at this rate. I don't have that much time.'

　　It was rare for Rudy to feel cornered, but that just gave him a new idea.

　　'My time-forwarding technique! I will use it to boost my creation ability and create the box at a much faster rate! However, I will need to be careful.

　　I will be using two powers that drain my mental strength to an extent. If I accidentally passed out, I would be stuck in space and eventually die.'

　　Rudy once again restored Vesier's body back to normal and began creating more silver. He first made a few drops and activated his time-forwarding technique to boost the speed.

　　Within a minute, he had made ten kilograms of silver, but that was far from enough. He wanted to make it thick and layered from all sides. Even if one side required him to create 100 kilograms of silver, the other three would require the same. Not to mention the top and the bottom side, which could require 50 kilograms each.

　　'So a total of 500 kilograms of pure silver. Isn't that too much?'

　　He let out a weary sigh and began creating silver at an insane speed. However, he was forced to stop every minute as he had to restore Vesier's body again and again.

　　His body had become colder than the ice, and the light from his eyes was slowly fading away. His open wound from the chest was also freezing his body from the inside, making him unable to move any of his body parts, not even his eyes.

　　Rudy had realized that he wouldn't be able to restore Vesier's body for much longer.

　　His restoration ability restored any and everything back to normal as long as one minute hadn't passed. However, it took him at least one second to restore it to normal— depending on how much damage had been done or how big the object was.

　　Thus, he could only restore an object back to how it was 59 seconds ago. And every time he restored the same thing, he lost once a second. Currently, Vesier's body had only 10 seconds left, meaning he would die after ten more tries. And everything Rudy did to keep him awake would be in vain.

　　Unless, of course, Vesier's body was put at a normal temperature, that would resolve the cause of his death.

　　Rudy was forced to hurry, which was the last thing he wanted to do as he also had to keep his check on his mental stress, which was rising as the seconds passed.

　　After 8 minutes, Rudy created and gathered around 500 kilograms of silver. He didn't waste any time and shaped it into the box and tossed Vesier inside, who came back to his senses as his body burned because of the silver.

　　At first, he felt good as his body temperature rapidly decreased, but then he started burning.

　　"Argh! Stop it! Stop it now!" he yelled at the top of his lungs.

　　Rudy ignored Vesier's cries for mercy and uttered, "Now, it's time to 'curse' you."