novelraw Chapter 295 284: Origin Titan
Chapter 295 284: Origin Titan
The Titan left his hammer and most of the tools on top of his anvil, where the creation, a cumulation of many, many wonders, cooled off. It looked lost, like the apparent sense of this Origin Titan, who might be a beggar within their ranks. That was wrong, of course. Everyone with a decent amount of knowledge knew every Origin Titan was equal and pretty darn impossible to see and understand.
That was, until one met one, or multiple at the same time. Lisa shuddered at that image and knew their meetings were never fine. This one felt wrong and old until he stomped forward, creating echoing, loud forces with his bare feet. He approached this pair in a single step, shifted the distance between them, and shook the floor and space itself.
Hunching down, it was incredibly awkward for any of them to talk to someone this big, but the Titan had no issue with it. Seeing eye to eye and head-to-head was impossible. It wasn't a wrong wish to have, however. Every Titan wished for an equality that would never come, while the pair before was so small, it was almost laughable.
To be tall and majestic came with obvious curses and manners. From food and clothing to needs and living quarters, they were hefty. Crouching, only a single stride was necessary to reach these invaders, but he was long before them anywhere.
Lisa and Murai saw his splendor, yet seeing and hearing him truly challenged their minds. Fleeting scene and understanding this Titan were impossible, but at least mana and their control weren't breaking apart again.
Murai was even feeling a slight improvement in his Beast Core, and his Brightlife felt more vivid, as if curious about this Titan or about changed energies. He judged his current feelings more and what to take out of this. Ten meters before him was quite a terrific picture, yet the head was higher and farther away, which was annoying.
More than a fifty-meter-tall savage should never give a duck sensible discussions or looks. It was physically against the rules of the universe and everything that was right.
Of course, this Titan accepted this without a shred of humility, but he also knew this wasn't his time and era. Still, he also knew who and what was before him. There were no normal figures, as his eyes held their specialty, and his awareness of the Battleworld wasn't negligible.
Which was odd, depending on concerns of the Battleworld, or its Gods and history. Why were they here at this hour, or how or what for? He didn't remember visitors. Murai wouldn't accept answers; he believed in mess beyond equality, since even a rock was able to shake the status quo of his Cursed Living.
So when a sculpted mass of muscles and ancient strength looked at him, even he had to come clean and seriously reconsider his next words and actions. This wasn't about hideous, burly features or a human pose and posture. The muscles were devoted to power that could touch and reforge the stars, so that went well beyond the chart of Gods. His back and arms were the craziest part of his body, followed by his beard. That stuff was against the laws of his race, which either made this Titan into a refugee, a beggar, or a lost soul.
He wore a forging apron of hundreds of pieces of unknown leather and tough, metallic plates. It was likely he was naked underneath that.
"Not talking, is it? Well, you all are still living and judging every conceivable matter that has come with this meeting, my hammering, and creatives. You shouldn't worry; I do the same. Do you fear the consequences of your lives so much that you forgot to live? Curious, really," the Titan continued with his message and hunched down even further, now glancing at that duck better, and almost exposing his bare legs and beyond.
In fact, it was almost way too revealing for anyone with taste. For Lisa, who backed away from Murai in fear of frightening, tilting realizations, this was inconceivable.
Against a pair of rather small beings, no words were fine. Even a giant should feel wrong with this sort of conversation. By standards and mass and body rules, how much blood and weight were within such a massive thing? Maybe none.
"W-w-who in the life are you?" Lisa mumbled first, finding the courage to talk. It went from her core after she tried her best not to flee, betraying part of herself.
"Oh! So a talk it is! Splendid. I almost judged I would have to tear the souls and talk to them afterwards. Alas, I fear ghosts no longer, and they can even talk nowadays? Interesting. That is a splendor of chance, I suppose, but no judge is worth this pity. It would be beyond pity. Sinful, I attest," the Titan sighed, as if urging his apology for Lisa's fate and foreseeable struggles.
The Titan then spread his arms and knelt with one leg. "Welcome to my humble forge, unexpected visitors that I'd better not so quickly toss into my furnace. I judge none would prefer it, though one is a certain, endearing creature on two. I don't remember meeting this one, but Pterarians and Rivetines have wings and tough necks. Head is weird, however, and that glint and eyes leave me perplexed about what a perfect race, bird, or pet is. Oh, and there are dragons! One never forgets the dragons, but I do cuz I find them boring. But again, that's where I am wrong. The feathers leave the rest in splendor of elegance and in no shunting chaos like squashes, dense feats of plates or fur or scales. Those limbs come with purposes, I presume. I can't see what the bottom is about. Small. Insignificant? A mere pinch would break them and..."
"Oh, shut up!" Murai called out as he felt judged and embarrassed by how truthful it felt. He forgot his manners and quacked out loud. Hearing someone seek his body and talk with such rudimentary facts was beyond his current head. Only this asshole peeking into creation and antiquity would dare to question a silly little duck like him.
Were birds ancient? No, but some might be. It either meant this Origin Titan was a tad bit wrong in his head, or so out of his life, he couldn't place one and two together.
Murai couldn't complain.
The Titan smiled, which was an act hiding behind the beard and contorting skin that wasn't very suited for it. With a smile, he showed off his burly arms as he aimed at his forge, glancing at it like an old master judging their precious possessions.
Murai saw no stoic figure behind this beard, and his expression was conflicted, as if the only act ahead was… nowhere. He didn't expect an Origin Titan to be like this. He knew rumors and ideas about them and feared their facts of uncertainty and history.
Even under the guidance and factors of the Endless Skies, it was strange to imagine their glory or minds. They were no longer around, yet here he was, looking at Murai with a weird glint in his eyes.
"What are you?" Murai let out, sounding confused and unwilling to consider any other question. His quacks came out of his mouth, though this Titan wasn't concerned about them, even if his face briefly flinched after the second sentence.
"Both seem confused, asking a strange question and matter, and unwilling to see the reason for my words. Endearing, truly. Is this too surprising to see a Godwing Titan at this era?" he scratched his arms together and straightened his back, looking majestic and tall, like an overbearing mountain with an intense, albeit rugged, peak.
Nothing answered.
"Why, you ask? You fear, so let me brief you. My name is Pollux. A former... well, former is a broader term than my humble forge. Let's argue I was forced to remain in this state, since it's something I was meant to do. Meant as a broad term. For the goodwill of space. For the last Sun God and for those whose argument hit nerves, I no longer watch when she points that out. Right. Levandis is the one who hides something terrifying. Frankly, it's rather complicated and old, so I oversee it. And yes, the one called Lisa should feel conflicted. It locks onto the Shattering Wars and many other endeavors. But before that, forget it! Both of YOU!" Pollux said, smashing his chest with his right fist and creating enough force to change the entire atmosphere and weight of this room.
The air cleared, tough mana and various energies scattered apart, the furnace closed, and even the last lost tides of mana that Murai overlooked calmed down.
Breathing was easier, feathers skipped ahead to the normal state, and even his Beast Core turned totally mild, following the example of his Brightlife. Artificial Core was kind of broken but kept its shape; much of its work leaked away and scattered, and he calculated more than one quarter of it was left. His body was already fine, but it struck his nerves and drew links to his origin.
It took a mere fist to the chest to clean this work. Then the gravity and pressure lifted like a cover to a pan, and Murai was able to walk and even jump around.
But he didn't; he simply stared at Pollux and wondered where this life went wrong.
Lisa wished to call bullshit out before her surging body reformed against that smack. Her Will grew up, twisted, and slowly returned to her splendor. All against her will, as if the one molding it was no longer her soul. She was bigger before she adjusted to her lesser norm, and Pollux enjoyed her mastery and even enjoyed her for a moment.
"Unwilling. Stubborn. Very arrogant and rising to purposes against what wills endure. She is very handful. I like that." Pollux assessed Lisa's change before turning to Murai, who remained standing in shock and several soul-bound reminders.
"And you, the creature walking on two and bearing not one, but more than three elemental properties? Lives are… Well, I am no Afterlife, obviously. I am not qualified to speak for her, or so someone may say. I digress, but never mind that. Is that what one calls quantity over quality? I suppose it is true, and I don't remember the names. Either way, it is odd that Brightlife has been cherishing your presence in this very forge and place and flesh. Shame that's where it's wrong and lost until it faced me. What a stubborn bug. I wonder what Strand does that sort of thing, but again, I am no Soul Reaper either. Soul aspects have never met this sort of criterion. Let's roll, shall we?"
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"W-what?"
"No need for worries, visitors. Come. Come. I saw no one in centuries. Talk and don't be such strangers. Haven't you seen a weirder visitor in eras? It gets boring, you see."
"Were there some visitors?" Murai inquired, thinking why he understood him so perfectly when he was freaking quacking.
"Certainly. Not sure when or how it went, though. I get fogged up in my forge. It is almost shocking. I wasn't meant for it, you see."
Seeing his cheerful yet blatant and powerful personality, Murai felt there was no escape from this scene, so he adapted to it. He remained standing, unsure how to follow him or if he should wait for Lisa to reclaim herself. Murai still thought there were rules and more important actions ahead than a bunch of words.
Pollux read them like a paper and even called out wonderful words. And talk? Who would ever meet a friendly Origin Titan and win questions, answers, and such friendliness?
Perhaps nobody should. The likelihood of traps and all sorts of forgery was higher than catching the sun and the moon together.
Still, there were matters with logical impossibilities, and then there were things below their standing and interest.
It was also true that they got here, and it didn't seem Pollux had grabbed them and tossed them to this realm.
Thinking beyond the Origin Titans wasn't fine with regular judgment. Arguing against their core, origin, or minds was even less feasible than their bodies. There were stupid consequences to what Murai wanted to do. Bearing his words wasn't sounding easy either.
Pollux could hear and see anything, and it screamed out of him! How everything was open within those sick eyes, which judged Murai and Lisa alike.
Murai was about to make a terrible mistake, and before that happened, he faced and took his condition to heart. Not to a soul, which Murai found as a perplexing, peculiar sentiment. Asking for death was the last thing he should do with this sort of asshole, while the main threat lessened after mana returned to normal.
"M-Murai?" Lisa asked, turning to him, still trembling in her reassembling, shaky patterns. "You... You will deny this. Let's leave. This shake... This mess. This is not a good thing."
"Of course it isn't. Who could even trust this guy? You and I have better stuff to do, right? I call it bullshit." He willed it to her. "There is no thick meat without grain. I will see this personally and judge it later."
"A Godwing Titan? Murai, this figure has been hidden away and parts the trails of Paragons! Entering and nearing the Hidden Realms, this isn't a godly point. It is—"
"I don't care about historical significances or their overall standing? Let's say it out loud. What is HIS standing, no? Broken… Lost. Also creating. What is wrong with it? He is a freak, lost in the tides of eras long overturned and traced to the Beginning. Now, it is nothing but lost yet still running, wild Titan. Wait... what?"
"Sounds like an excuse to me." Lisa frowned, oblivious to Pollux's gaze that soon fell on her. He gently smiled and chuckled.
"You two have funny swings with words. I think there is a fine line between work and the substance of souls and your connections. I think I can make it better, so..."
Before both of them continued arguing, something clutched them with intangible pressure and lifted them high into the air.
Lisa panicked and hugged herself. Murai swung his wings and quacked sharply, but he couldn't feel any control whatsoever.
Pollux took a seat beside his forge, grabbed his wooden stool, and seized a shield of some sort. He used it as a table, right beside a proper table. His forge was quite messy—as it should be. No one should care about a clean forge. No blacksmith was that nice, even if nothing good would come out of lacking focus.
Imperfection aside, there was a reason perfect things and beings existed, and Pollux had been on an endless quest for perfection since time immemorial.
Most of the forge had no products or materials because they were in the previous room. Here, there were open shelves with primary materials and half-finished work. Most of their fluctuations or material properties felt like empty husks because Pollux made it so that this pair could survive alongside him.
Murai and Lisa couldn't judge them. They had done so for Pollux, who wanted to talk or do something bad or hideous about their unintentional visit. At least that was what a screaming pair thought as they flew dozens of meters towards that shield.
Even with Pollux trying to soothe the space, the mana was incredibly strong and weird. Murai and Lisa were both lacking in certain areas and qualities to see what he was doing and bringing to the table.
Heat, light, and aura felt the strongest, even if the actual factors looked different. Murai felt he was brimming with the urge to catch fire and shed, so he was kind of in shock as his internals shifted in defiance. His Anatidea was doing it. Not him as a whole.
Whether it aimed at him, Pollux, or their previous loss, he didn't know. He flew close to the forge, and every dozen meters came with one shed of panic. Lisa, who had worries in her head, rather than about heat or flames, resembled a comet.
No flame should ever hurt her, but what was grasping her was another thing altogether. They ended on a tough and vast-looking shield, where Pollux looked at them from a much more suitable position. He was satisfied.
"Is it better or comforting, or am I taunting your presence with this offered opportunity on the table? Not every chance is the same, for there is a change in living if we endure. I endure. I created. I live to stake it all and look at the end for creation. Ah, losses come with it, of course. I will one day be over it, so what of you?" Pollux asked, raising his bushy brows and swinging his arms towards Murai and Lisa, who had overcome their gruesome flight with less grace.
"What is this wordy endeavor, exactly?" Murai asked, standing and realizing he was feeling alright, all things considered. The space was odd, sure, and his spirit and mana were tense, but his ideas and thoughts felt like they were rising much more than they should.
Whatever Pollux was doing, it was working.
"Are you curious about some matters, mighty little birdie? I can see why doubts lift and descend into Chaos and back, but what I tell is what I shell out. That is an equal exchange, you interesting lots. Shame it is the interest that brings us together, albeit in no shining constellation your kind of lots feels. A very enduring interest is the rest, I shall say and do."
"I could see why you speak like this, but... I am not going to repeat the same bullshit all the time. You want to hear words or my will? Here are my cursed quacks!" Murai quacked, sounding very angry, if that even made sense to him. For Pollux, who knew no concept of quacking, it sounded funny.
He understood him anyway, and Murai didn't care how or why any longer.
"You are a lot yourself, you shitty Titan, and I don't like you. You gave up and act like Primordials, yet you are nothing but foggy and a being in a dent. Fuckin' right, of course it is right. And I am not curious about you. If anything, this damned situation and talk about Origin Titans is outside of my minds. It is lacking. Wrong. We don't deserve shit that is better ignorant, while I deserve what?"
"Wrong." Pollux frowned, folded his arms, and rested them on his hefty and powerful chest. He didn't lean back, but forward, glaring deeply at the shaking Murai, who backed away a step.
"You think I am a toy?! The me right now is more than small for that!"
"That wasn't... a fine argument." Lisa unwittingly said.
"You shut up, flying ghost."
"Ghosts are more endearing than that one," Pollux corrected, trying to teach them, but Murai cursed him to the ninth hell this time around.
Lisa was enduring his wrath, which was a good thing. She was still going over her ideas, assumptions, and what exactly this place and Titan were about. Was it a world-shaking event and change Levandis planned for? If so, it was no joke. It was a hateful disaster she hated with passion.
Spreading his legs to make himself comfortable, Pollux looked like the most carefree Titan Murai had ever seen. The circumstances were infinitely more insane than those of Resonance.
He thought of a call as he delved into his maddening pit of hope and memory. A name among the Titan population showed in numerous histories. Originators? Pretins? That sounded like an insult, but he finally got it.
"Cretins."
Another insulting word, right beside titanus.
"Titanius, more likely," Pollux offered the truth, and once more, Murai didn't like it. "Also, it seems prejudice is storming in this one, though fret not, I haven't done anything to you just yet."
"Yet? Oh, silly, oversized liar. You are all involved and part of why existence is so shitty and flying right now. Do you think I have patience for another asshole after enduring pressing Resonance hours ago? Oh, silly me, I forgot how time flies and plays with your kind. And listen to this: I am not having this discussion right now. What is this meeting about? Clarify it, and I am gonna be a very different duck."
"Flying? DUCK? Wings... Oh," Pollux thought Muria was joking and misunderstood his message.
Raving and quacking, there was something very weird about this conversation.
"Well," Pollux said after judging Murai's outrage and pretext of his quacks. He had no issue with understanding Anatidae, as Will and souls spoke thousands more words than any syllables, grunts, or animal noises. It was interesting. "I find it intriguing. You more, rather than you." Pollux pointed his left hand at Murai, then at Lisa.
"I think nothing about you," she said coldly.
"Oh, worry not, ghost, I will get to you in your so-called minute. Before that, though, I see and bet Battleworld and all the ploys are going through strained effort as ever. It isn't surprising, yet why am I speaking with an Anatidae and taking such a role? It's strange, considering history and the following kind of my... demise? Listless... Funny? Right. That sounds good to me. Excellent! It is more thrilling than I thought." Pollux slapped his thigh with his left hand and laughed without a care in the world.
Murai was inclined to do anything in his power to stop this damned laughter, yet what could he even do with his lacking magic or words? He couldn't think straight. Even if he wanted to, what power and influence did any of his powers have over something this ancient?
Well, there were thousands of them, while one was right here.
Origin Titans, such as Pollux, were treading a fine and sensible line between fairness and currents of numerous spaces. The Epochverse was vast, and even if they were one of the oldest beings Murai knew of, they spanned quite a large stretch of the Timescape. He considered their domains and lives as very proud and mighty. If there was something they didn't like, they would change it, break it, rebuild it from the core, and do it all over again.
Their birth was nothing, or unknown. They worked in... where? There were so many lost ideas until one might consider them the architects of everything that has been lost and built in all of the following eras.
It was wrong. They weren't doing anything anymore, for they could no longer abide by the rules of heaven.
Also, they were lost and defeated, so that was that.
Hence, hearing Pollux and watching his forging and hearing his words were one of the few things Murai found acceptable, since if it was wrong, what wasn't? Maybe it was fine, if not even a great opportunity to learn a few valuable answers and get to know his kind!
If it was fine, he wondered if Pollux would find it equal. He also mentioned a couple of curious things, implying Levandis and Battleworld, and even the word Anatidae, which Murai for sure hadn't mentioned yet.
For this land to possess an Origin Titan, either forged or hidden in questionable origins, wasn't it secrecy moving behind the scenes and gods? Murai couldn't tell what was correct anymore. He knew very little about the Battleworld, and this topic hardly calmed his inner thoughts.
He wished to know. It sounded like a pretty huge deal.
"P..."
"No," Pollux said, stopping his laugh and Murai's quacks. "I am fed up. Living is a Bliss right now. You want to seek myself? Sure. I've seen a lot of things: be it planets, beings, eras, and your kind. I am fed up with it, for I have lost, and now, I rest. Living with curses has merits, and you, yourself, may be worse, but I am not far from it either. I do own my curses and own up to them. You may not understand it right now. Once done, it won't come again. I don't see your deep desires.... One is really freaky, proud, lost, and cute. Acceptable. Finite. Weak. Lost. Dying… This world can take them from you, so... why are you here and doing this living for? You know you can give up, don't you, one of the Old Ones? Just do it…. Give up. Loss and forget it all."
Pollux finished what he wanted, and his face turned somber and serious, and he went closer to Murai than ever before.