Chapter 202
There Was Once a Man Who Could Not Die (II)
There was a peculiarity to living, Wyvenul had learned many years ago. Young were fearless, undaunted, willing to set themselves on fire in pursuit of whatever highs they were chasing. They feared neither death nor pain, accepting it as a byproduct of living. But those that outlive that scorching youth grew old and frail and cowardly, and death in due comes cold and unwanted. Sages wrote of wise men accepting death in their past-time years, but it was all a lie, Wyvenul learned.
There was no one more terrified of dying than someone who had lived–and lived for many years at that. He'd witnessed it dozens, hundreds of times–brave and strong whimpering and begging gods to give them just another year, another month, merely another dawn. Another sunup. It was the irony of life, truly, that those who outlive defying death grow to fear it the most.
King Wyvenul was no different. Even if his devotion to the cause was beyond bone-deep, there were nights he would wake up shaking, having dreamt of the end. He had accepted death would come for him and undo his merits, but even the acceptance couldn't help much. He still feared it, the day this all would come to an end. And if he, the greatest and the strongest, feared death, so did everyone. They had to. Short of those few beyond despondent with nothing to live for, who saw death as their only avenue of life, who but the legendary immortals did not fear death?
Before him now stood a man who could not die. He was cleaved and slashed and cut open and disembowelled and dismembered and pierced and pincered and even beheaded at one point. But each and every time, like a ghoul bereft of death, he would stand back up, a grin on his bedevilled, bloodied face beyond captivating. There was a man who didn't fear death–perchance a man who couldn't even contemplate death.
Once again, a spear of golden lightning suffused with energy pierced the man's heart and knocked him down, digging out a mile wide crater from which he walked out mere seconds later, bloodied by unharmed. He pulled back the wet hair from his forehead, his eyes piercingly empty and void of all emotions. Envy. Wyvenul felt it–a feeling he hadn't experienced since his birth… envy. He did not envy immortality so much as he envied that fearlessness. Soon, it would be his time to go–but he could not go in peace. His restless heart would not allow it.
"Do you not fear dying?" the King asked in the end.
"Hm? Dying?" the man tilted his head in confusion, as though Wyvenul asked the most moronic question in the world. "It's the opposite for me, I'm afraid."
"The opposite?"
"There's one thing alone that I fear in this world," the man said, smiling lightly. "That there will come a day… when I'd no longer be able to die."
"It seems to me you can't die already."
"... no, I can," the man said. "It takes a while and it takes a lot of effort, but it's still possible. You'll eventually kill me–at this pace, hmm. It will take maybe three days? Two and a half if you don't conserve your energy."
"Won't I die of exhaustion before you drop?" the King asked half-jokingly.
"If that seems to be the case," the man replied in the same tone. "I'll kill myself."
"... you have changed everything."
"I have."
"Oh well," the King said as the energy began to churn around him. "The ending is still the same, at least."
The King spat out a of bolt of lightning from his palm, as thick as the trunk of a tree, at the man who effortlessly dipped to the side and dodged. Soon after, another bolt came–and after that another. The King began to fly laterally and shoot bolts repeatedly. The man dodged most, though was still struck often enough to bleed and have his limbs disintegrated. Nonetheless, he was gaining ground–the distance that started as forty feet was being chopped down swiftly. Thirty-five, thirty, twenty… within two minutes, and nearly a dozen lost limbs that were regrown, the man was within ten feet of the King.
The latter urged energy within him even harsher, slamming his palms together as he roared. Beneath them, a rampaging void was split open and it spat out a current of horrors, enveloping the world as the King raced backwards. Just as he thought he might have succeeded, he felt energy far surpassing anything he experienced before quickly assembling. Within the void of crackling currents, a twine of gold emerged–at first it was thin and unremarkable, but within the blink of an eye it grew and expanded, almost like the cosmos itself being birthed.
An array of gold in the shape of a blade strummed out like a string of a harp, ripping through the currents and disintegrating them as though it was fire burning paper. The golden array came at him so swiftly he barely had enough time to blink slightly to the side; he was still clipped, his left arm being blown off. The golden array didn't stop, however, mowing forward like a beast that knew no exhaustion.
It not only ripped the visible world asunder, uprooting the hell and reforging it even more infernal, but for a brief moment Wyvenul saw something that shouldn't have been physically possible–he saw a rift, a small emergence of reality. This world was created via the artefact of the One, using forces so primal they outlived the world itself. And yet, even the fabric woven from those primal forces was cut in its weave, strings, even if just for a moment, unmade. The golden array that grew to the size of a small mountain vanished just after, leaving in its wake a gash so wide and long it was like a river.
At its root, the King looked, kneeled a man in tattered, broken clothes, his hair dishevelled, his body broken beyond repair. He was bleeding from every point, and was barely breathing. But… he was alive. The sword in his hand disintegrated and he drew the other one, using it as a cane to stand up. His muscular body appeared drained, turning into flesh and bone, and his rosy cheeks were now sunken. But his eyes… his eyes' embers burned like a kindle that would never stop.
He was shaking, and yet was stable–at the death's doorstep, and yet elusive still. There, in front of him, was a man who could not die, even if he extinguished his life's candle forcibly.
"If I had done this at the start," the man said in an even tone, entirely unbothered. "I'd have won, no? After all, that was merely twenty-two lives' worth of myself. Expending it so quickly, though, sure is a bitch."
"... how?" the King asked as he urged energy to cauterise his massive wound, ignoring the burning pulses of pain.
"How what?"
"How did you grow so strong?" the King asked further. "There is a tower in this world. An invisible, ethereal, intangible tower. All men and women in pursuit of godly means climb that tower, floor by floor, unlocking their potentials. But it is not an infinite tower. At some point, it stops. Humans can never become gods, after all. We are bound by chains and laws clasping down at us so tightly that effort, talent, will, call it whatever you want, will never break them. But you… you did it. You broke past the tower. How?"
"Oh, that." The man chuckled lightly as his skin began to fall off like ash in the wind. "That's quite simple. I never began climbing the tower to begin with."
"... h-huh?"
"I simply built a staircase of my own and climbed high enough to fuck a hole in the sky," he was vanishing in the wind, eerily so, and yet was beyond nonchalant about it. As though there was nothing wrong. "Brick by brick, death by death, suffering by suffering, I stacked it through tens of thousands of lifetimes. And, at some point, I became what you see. I could have killed you quite easily, to be frank. That was the case hundreds of years ago."
"..."
"But I want to kill you within the confines of your own coffin. I used that attack simply to show you that the story is done. The young Prince will become a King, and before I perish, I will give him the worthy throne. It's not me who's remarkable, however. But you. I simply abused my indifferent immortality to reach this point. But you… you almost cracked the ceiling yourself, within those confines. And all that within a pathetic lifespan of a normal person. You have woven a remarkable story, King Wyvenul. Doesn't it infuriate you that the world will never know it?" By now, the man's lower body was completely gone.
"... no," the King replied. "I'd rather the world never learn of this old man's futile and pathetic attempts to unchain himself. All the talent in the world is worthless beneath the pang of indifference. Gods could still smite me as though punishing a child. But not you. Ha ha ha, haah," the King laughed freely, breathing out a storm that was building up in his lungs. "I will wait for your return, Sylas."
"... it won't be long," Sylas replied with a smile as the last of him began to perish like ash in the wind. "See you soon."