The Berserker Chronicles [ONC 2022]

The Black Hole

Chapter 10

Note to Public: When
next you see a black hole, try
not to fall in it.

LUCKILY, NONE OF US DIED.

The blast was like auto-defense or something.

The ground where the explosion took place was intact. No steaming crater. No scorch mark. Even I, emerged unscathed, except for a few paper cuts. Or, if I may, few grass cuts.

The Sphere dimmed weakly to a dull sheen as if from overexertion.

Friar, who was closest to the blast, lay sprawled on the grass. Ignatius Hikaru stirred but refused to get up.

As I staggered up, I heard shouts across the courtyard. Monks in gray robes trooped out from multiple directions. At once, they surrounded me, alone, in a wide ring. Two dozen spears bristled like insect hairs, their tips pointed directly at my throat as if daring me to speak.

"Nice attempt trying to steal the White Sphere," one of the monks brandished his spear. He had a wide mouth. "One Sphere isn't enough for you. Now you've come to take the second one too."

I tried for a convincing speech but was curtailed by a muscular guy in a ripped-off robe. I resisted the urge to tell him he's got terrible fashion sense.

"You are under apprehension for assaulting the abbot, a senior monk and attempting to steal a property of the monastery," the guy with the wide mouth concluded.

"I-I don't know what you're talking about." I figured I was sounding like the worm kid my bullies called me at school.

"Ha!" The monk with the wide mouth said. "Hear him speak! Gag him up, Rudolph!"

"Alright, Bran," the muscular guy called Rudolph flexed his hand, as if practicing his choke-slamming skill.

I was gagged at spearpoint by Rudolph the Muscular. From my fresh battle with eight goblins, I didn't like my chance against twenty plus humans with a muscular guy that easily made them thirty.

"Come with us," Bran the Wide Mouthed said. "Let's meet the Elder Monks. They'll try to make your death quick and painless."

I looked over Bran to see Moses grinning behind a distant pillar like the Devil.

♛♛♛♛♛

A WALL BLOCKED MY WAY to painless death and Moses happily suggested to open it.

I remembered Ignatius Hikaru telling me something about the boy being the key to the refectory. I regretted making a pun out of him.

Back in the courtyard, after the gray-robed guys had gagged, then handcuffed me, Friar and Ignatius Hikaru regained consciousness. Typical. They were helped up, dusted and given special treatments.

They instantly forgot about me.

I had a suspicion the gray-robed monks saw me as a major threat because: 1) Why not? I'm a major threat, duh 2) According to them, I was an alleged thief and an abbot assaulter Crazy! 3) I was the only non-monk 4) My underpants was visible. Rude!

Now, inside a mazy hall, facing a dead-end niche, our procession was hampered by a wall and Moses advanced towards it, balling his hands.

The wall was twelve-foot-high. It had a subtle hairline crack running vertically along its centre so it looked like a giant pair of double doors with no handles. It would take up to fifteen men with fifteen hours of hard labor to crack an inch open.