Chapter 255: /kill
Chapter 255: /kill
The third was Nurgle.
Nurgle’s Garden had not yet fully recovered from the previous incineration. The little wooden shack had a few newly patched planks, and mushrooms clung to the scorched, broken ruins.
He sat before the wooden shack, waiting for Zeke with the stillness of an ancient well.
Zeke stopped in his tracks, Name Tag in hand, and scrutinized the oldest entity before him.
He hadn’t fled, nor did He fight.
"There is no need to rush." Nurgle raised a bloated hand, calmly gesturing for Zeke to make his move.
"Sitting here awaiting death is not because I concede defeat," He tilted His head up slightly.
"I do not know what you intend to do, but all things have their names, and all things have their final destination. This is not the end, is it?" He rested His gaze on Zeke once more.
Zeke remained silent for a moment. Offering no explanation, he pressed the Name Tag against Nurgle’s broad chest.
A line of text surfaced upon the rotting skin: [Nurgle Nurgleth].
Nurgle looked down at it and let out a low hum.
–
The Crystal Labyrinth was now a field of ruins. In the exact center of the devastation stood Tzeentch.
His robes were torn, His wings folded. His eyes were vacant, and His face bore a look of desolation Zeke had never seen on Him before.
He allowed Zeke to approach step by step, not even bothering to strike a pose of fleeing. It was as if He had finally abandoned all His schemes, hanging His head and awaiting His final fate.
Tzeentch—the Lord of Change, the God of Cunning, an entity woven from deceit and trickery... sitting here waiting to die?
Zeke pinched the Name Tag between his fingertips and narrowed his eyes, re-evaluating the figure before him. Something’s not right.
The Sword of the Cosmos in Zeke’s hand slashed horizontally through the air.
Under the cutting intent of the blade, the disguise crumbled as easily as brittle paper. Illusions peeled away from the figure layer by layer, revealing its true face.
It was not Tzeentch.
The true face hidden beneath the illusion possessed two heads: one looking toward the past, the other toward the future, with only the present impossible to look at directly.
Kairos Fateweaver, the foremost Greater Daemon under Tzeentch, the Weaver of Destinies.
"Long... long time no see, Zeke," Kairos feigned composure.
The sword blade didn’t move away; Zeke simply raised it slightly, pressing it a fraction closer to Kairos’s throat, and asked:
"Where did your boss go?"
Kairos remained silent. He could not look at Zeke’s sword directly, but he could deduce from the future that he was currently in an incredibly dangerous predicament.
"He dressed you up to look like Himself and tossed you here as bait, while He slipped away. And you’re still going to keep His secret?" Zeke advanced step by step.
Tzeentch was notorious for screwing over His own subordinates. Zeke didn’t believe such a boss would have genuinely loyal followers. If they weren’t completely outmatched by Tzeentch Himself, they would have rebelled long ago.
Just as Zeke predicted, Kairos didn’t hesitate for a single second and immediately spilled Tzeentch’s whereabouts.
"He fled to the Well of Eternity inside the Impossible Fortress."
Zeke withdrew his sword. "I hope you aren’t lying."
For Kairos, betraying Tzeentch was simply a matter of course. They screwed each other over, used each other, and pushed each other onto the chessboard as pawns—this was the rule Tzeentch had taught all His subordinates. And today, Kairos was merely using that exact rule against Him.
The Impossible Fortress was a magnificent structure at the very end of the Crystal Labyrinth. With the labyrinth destroyed by the Wither Storm, the fortress finally revealed itself.
Its master stood at the center of the Impossible Fortress, leaning forward, peering into a well.
The Well of Eternity. Legend had it that it contained all the laws of the universe and the answers to every question. It was both the beginning and the end of time; everything that had ever happened, everything that was happening, and everything that would ever happen was precipitated within this well.
Even Tzeentch, possessing near-omniscient wisdom, could not master the Well of Eternity and could only borrow a fraction of its power.
Zeke teleported directly behind Tzeentch, crossing his arms and standing a few paces away. "You came to the Well of Eternity to find a way to kill me?"
Tzeentch gently stroked the patterns along the edge of the well ignoring Zeke’s question as he asked one of his own, "Zeke, what exactly are you trying to do? Kill us?"
"We," Tzeentch spread His arms, "fundamentally speaking, are nothing more than mirrors of emotion. Rage birthed Khorne; decay birthed Nurgle; pleasure birthed Slaanesh; and hope, despair, scheming, and betrayal birthed Me."
"In a sense, Chaos and mortals have always been two inseparable sides of the same coin."
Every time Tzeentch spoke, His other faces would repeat His words with subtle, overlapping intonations.
As the God of Conspiracies, Tzeentch’s greatest weapon was never His strength, but His words and schemes. He explained the connection between the Warp and realspace to Zeke, hoping to persuade him to stop.
Tzeentch stepped aside, revealing the mouth of the Well of Eternity behind Him.
Light surged from the depths, and scenes materialized within the well, like reflections on water, depicting the birth of the Warp.
From the moment the very first life was born, the Warp had existed. It coexisted with the material world and had never been separated from it.
"Do you see clearly now?" Tzeentch said. "If you want to destroy the Warp, it is equivalent to destroying the material world."
Zeke looked at the scenes in the well and spoke, "Don’t confuse the concepts, Tzeentch."
"The Warp is the Warp. You four gods are the four gods. The Warp existed before the first life was born, but you four did not. You are nothing more than products of the Warp—merely residents of it."
Zeke pulled his gaze from the well and fixed it on Tzeentch. "Tying Yourself to the Warp won’t make me hesitate to strike."
Among Tzeentch’s myriad faces, a few twitched slightly.
"When the Old Ones still existed, the Warp was a tranquil and harmonious dimension," Zeke recounted the ancient secrets. "Negative and positive emotions balanced each other out. It never drastically tainted the material world like you four do now."
"But later, during the War in Heaven, the anger, sorrow, hatred, and death generated by the psychic races in the conflict changed the Warp’s appearance, turning it into the daemon-infested state it is today."
"The balance of the Warp has been broken, and someone needs to correct and reform it. And I just happen to possess that capability." Zeke merely stated the buried truth.
"Furthermore, Tzeentch, You’ve mixed up the order," Zeke took another step closer.
"It has never been mortals relying on the four gods to exist, but rather the four gods relying on mortal emotions to exist and grow strong. Yet what have you four brought to mortals? Only more war, more suffering."
"So... why did you name us?" Tzeentch possessed an irresistible curiosity toward things He did not understand; it was His very nature.
"Oh, you mean this? It’s to make locking onto the targets easier." Zeke pulled out a Command Block.
A command had already been pre-entered inside: /kill.
The clear command could directly erase entities and living beings from the world.
This command was only missing one thing to be completed: the target’s name.
The Name Tags from earlier were used precisely to mark those targets. After all, names like Tzeentch or Khorne were merely titles for the four gods and couldn’t be used to truly lock onto Them. So, Zeke had personally stamped Them with names.
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