novelraw Chapter 609: I Will Kill You (Two-in-One)
Chapter 609: I Will Kill You (Two-in-One)
"Did you know that back in the Dragon Court of Fafnir, there was an unlucky bastard just like you who thought he could accomplish something relying on the Chaotic Knowledge within his body... In the end, he left nothing to this world but devastation and destruction scattered everywhere."
"Splash, splash, splash."
The sky-filling rain poured down along the Portal, falling into the Demon Dynasty and landing on Fisher—from whose body black mud continuously surged—as well as Agreas before him. Her arm was tightly entangled by him, unwilling to let go. Although Agreas' expression remained calm on the surface, only she knew that she had to divert a considerable amount of energy to resist the soul-draining sensation emanating from the black mud on Fisher at this moment.
Glancing upwards and receiving no news from Barbatos for a long time, she roughly guessed that his battle with Eliog was not progressing smoothly, and he likely wouldn't have the opportunity to bring that Dragon-kin down.
"What do you think that Transferred Person named Caleb Uz was thinking before being swallowed by the Chaos? I heard that before he was hunted down by the Dragon God and fled, his mind was already unclear. You are in a similar situation as him now. Can't you tell me what on earth you are thinking right now, and what he was thinking back then?"
"..."
Fisher gritted his teeth and lowered his head, offering no reply to Agreas' words. Yet his consciousness unknowingly continued to flow along the scene she described. Once again, he saw the demigod roaring at "himself" above the Fafnir Dragon Court back then.
It was a gloomy and rainy day, a weather exactly the same as today. Even Fisher standing in place seemed to have turned into that "Caleb Uz" who powerlessly collapsed onto the ground...
"Transferred Person, you provoke time and time again. Just what exactly are you doing it for?!"
"I... I want to break free from my destiny... Dragon God, let me enter the Spirit World. I was just a little bit away... just a little bit away from being able to..."Caleb Uz's expression grew increasingly despairing, because it was only until recently that he finally understood everything within the Chaotic Knowledge.
Just as Fisher had seen, his notebook recorded many of his thoughts and reflections while researching the Chaotic Knowledge. However, because the Completion Handbook was written by him in advance, an inevitable lag occurred in these thoughts and reflections.
In the handbook, he didn't meticulously describe everything he saw in his past lives for Fisher, nor did he tell Fisher exactly what his "Consciousness Abyss" personally told him. Furthermore, he didn't record why, after experiencing so many past life memories, he remained stubbornly intent on entering the Spirit World.
But at this moment, the Chaos pouring fully into Fisher's body revealed the answers to everything.
Right now, what appeared before Caleb Uz's eyes was a pair of blonde, blue-eyed mother and daughter. Fisher could recognize almost at a glance that they were Caleb Uz's deceased wife and daughter.
But quickly, the appearance of those two existences began to continuously change. From a pair of smiling humans, they gradually shifted into two organic lifeforms of varying sizes covered in slime. Yet in Caleb Uz's eyes, they remained just as intimate. Following that, their external forms began changing once more...
From normal carbon-based life to somewhat strange silicon-based life, from an extremely massive cosmic camel to an infinitesimally small microscopic organism... until those two figures turned into a blurry existence, a concept: lost love...
Only then did Caleb Uz painfully clutch his head and collapse to the ground, agonizing black mud continuously welling up from his nose and mouth.
His soul... it turned out he had entered the souls of countless civilizations and countless races! It turned out that in every life, every lifetime, he had continuously endured this pain of parting.
It was as if he had experienced a lifetime of every sentient creature in the universe outside, and had likewise gained these beautiful emotions—those humans could understand, and those humans could not understand. Yet they were destined to be lost due to some unknown reasons...
Could this be destined by fate? Was he truly so unlucky that he must face such suffering in every life, every moment?
Or perhaps, everything about him was being manipulated from the shadows by an unfathomably powerful god, mockingly watching him review his past lives while repressing these sorrows time and time again until they finally coalesced into despairing agony...
Yes, Caleb Uz gradually understood. Only an intense consciousness built upon hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of lives could become...
Become, the [Base of the Ocean].
The figures of Caleb Uz and Fisher seemed to cross centuries of time and begin to overlap. Caleb Uz, who had waited so long because the Dragon God interrupted his mission, finally birthed from the Chaotic Knowledge onto Fisher's body. It seemed that at this moment, Fisher also inherited the extreme despair he felt before his death.
This agony erupting from the origin of consciousness threatening to melt him down. He subconsciously wanted to reject this process, but Agreas before him seized the opportunity while he lowered his head to struggle with the Soul Chaos within his body. Suddenly, she fiercely severed her own four limbs that were entangled by the black mud. Her entire being prepared to fly backward to leave this place and personally bring that Dragon-kin back.
"Come... back to me..."
Acting on his instinctive consciousness, Agreas had yet to breathe a sigh of relief after breaking away from him when the black mud continuously leaking from his body had already spread outwards. In the blink of an eye, it extended dozens of meters away. The deformed Fisher finally relaxed the human form he had maintained in the past, beginning to change towards his soul's true appearance.
The spreading black mud exuded an extremely dangerous aura. Countless sharp claws and fangs resembling tentacles extended from within. The moment those claws and fangs appeared, Agreas' pupils also shrank slightly. Because in the next second, she helplessly watched her own physical body "run" out of her line of sight...
No, that's not right; it was her soul that was grabbed by that black mud!
Agreas gritted her teeth. Caring nothing for capturing Raphaela anymore, she hurriedly stimulated the power throughout her entire body, driving her physical body backwards to merge as one with her soul and jointly defend against the black mud's offense.
This black mud could actually directly break the Mythical Species' Body and Soul Unity trait?!
Even if demons' traits were less obvious than other Mythical Species due to possessing chaotic power within their bodies, a direct separation of soul and physical body was still a little too exaggerated, wasn't it?
Agreas' gaze was exceptionally grave. She reached out and formed a hand seal. In an instant, countless locust tree roots sprouted from within her body, securely enveloping her. Meanwhile, the black mud forcefully and recklessly dragged her down, smashing her fiercely into the black mud's encirclement, desiring to pull her out from the large spheres formed by those roots and devour her soul.
"Fine then, let's see which of us is faster: me finding that Dragon-kin of yours and bringing her before you first, or you losing your mind and entirely swallowing me up..."
"..."
Looking at this bizarre black mud beneath her, a drop of cold sweat trailed down Agreas' forehead. Simultaneously, a remarkably excited gleam involuntarily welled up within her eyes. Utilizing the protection of the locust tree roots beside her, she coldly chuckled and reached her hand right into the black mud beneath her.
She wanted to deconstruct the specific composition of this Chaos. That Chaos of Tao Gong had already had its contained authority fully grasped by her.
If Ramastia's authority were to be named, using [Bestow Life] to describe it would actually be more appropriate. His authority truly lay in bestowing pure life force, therefore the life force circulating within most living beings in this world was actually unified; as for the authority corresponding to the knowledge within the Life Completion Manual, using [Usurping Life] to describe it would be more appropriate. It excelled at distorting and altering life forms to required, rational forms...
Agreas was confident in her own "bizarre-seeking" nature and her understanding of Life Chaos, therefore she actually dared to directly reach into Fisher's spreading black mud at this moment to analyze its authority's composition.
"Thousands of years ago, the Dragon God died for the Soul Disaster spreading within your body. Being rash and lacking wisdom, it was only meant to be... If I can analyze everything contained within this Chaos, both you and your Dragon Queen will entirely turn into nourishment for the revival of my Dynasty!"
Fisher coldly looked at her as countless black mud surged over in an instant. Simultaneously, Agreas' right hand also began to distort, bursting forth with thick power of destiny. She was buying time to analyze the underlying authority of this Chaos.
She mocked with a smile. Her distorted right hand continuously changed hand seals. In the next moment, a sentence in pure Elvish had already been spat from her mouth:
"Elf Secret Method: Reborn Niwan Palace."
The moment the secret method formed, Agreas' head fiercely distorted, twisting the surrounding space like a whirlpool. Subsequently, it violently exploded, directly splitting into countless terrifying, visible spatial rifts that sliced towards Fisher.
The black mud on the ground was pure Chaos, wholly unaffected by the spatial power before it. However, Fisher's not-yet-fully-changed true form suffered a calamity. The speed was so fast that Fisher found it hard to dodge. He could only barely sidestep to evade, yet his right arm and one foot were still cleanly shorn off.
"Ugh!"
The severed limbs directly plunged into the black mud, and the ensuing pain further aggravated Fisher's eroding rationality. He gritted his teeth and supported his body, while countless black mud consecutively dragged Agreas' locust tree sphere downwards.
"Hasn't your true appearance already become very obvious? Why do you still retain your human visage? What, are you reluctant to part with this handsome face of yours?"
The spatial rifts dispersed by the Elf Secret Method seemed tainted by the thoughts within Agreas' mind, consequently bursting forth with scenes polluting the physical space. Countless figures from the Mythic War surged forth, concealing her smiling figure within.
Actually, Fisher also knew he could no longer be considered human. Just tracing how the severed limbs melted instantly upon plunging into the black muck could prove this point.
But he truly dared not relinquish this bottom line that seemed somewhat pretentious at this moment. Especially since his mind was still battling the Chaos about to transform into a base. Once his physical form was breached, he simply dared not imagine what would become of his consciousness.
However, Raphaela not arriving for so long already indicated that Eliog was helping him...
In that case...
Fisher sneered coldly. The black mud within his body and spreading beneath him grew increasingly restless and unbearable, quickly spraying out towards the distance. It swallowed everything in its path, extracting the souls in the surroundings.
Through the spatial illusions of the Niwan Palace secret method, Fisher saw many figures of the Tree Continent from back then: Tao Gong, who had already changed into a towering, twisted giant tree; the countless angels descending with divine punishment from the sky and the Chain of Heaven; the Dragon God roaring while fiercely battling his compatriots; and finally, that golden blade shadow capable of overturning a continent...
But none of these phantoms had a soul!
The only one truly possessing a soul was that fellow Agreas!
The black mud seemed to instantly find its direction. While eroding Fisher's consciousness, it transformed into a heaven-swallowing giant python and pounced towards Agreas hiding behind the spatial rifts.
"Tch, what a bother..."
Agreas' left hand remained plunged into the black mud, meaning she had to face three fronts simultaneously.
Firstly, the direct soul-swallowing power of the black mud her hand contacted, requiring much of her power to defend against; secondly, analyzing the authority behind the black mud's Chaos, also demanding much energy; lastly, dealing with the offensive Chaos driven by Fisher, which ironically consumed the least effort.
Because Fisher's own rank was not high. Even with this cheating tool called Soul Chaos, it was undoubtedly a double-edged sword for him; he was also constantly enduring its interference.
Agreas had confidence in defeating him, because the true form of the Chaos authority in her hand was becoming increasingly distinct!
Feeling this clear advantage, the palm of Agreas' right hand distorted again, drawing out a twisted sword-shaped Holy Artifact from her body. Her back also began to distortly generate structures mimicking an angel's halo and wings, stimulated by the Life Chaos.
She was simulating an angel's structure to fully unleash the might of the Holy Artifact in her hands.
"This thing is the treasure of Archangel Michael. Acquiring it took quite a bit of effort on my part...
"Multi-Ring Prime Magic Giant Dragon Hunting Spear."
Fisher's murmurs echoed perfectly with Agreas' longsword, which seemed to ignite with punishing holy flames. It wasn't until the spreading black mud began bursting with countless electric spears flashing with jet-black lightning alongside Fisher's blurry consciousness that Agreas raised the holy sword high. Pouring down boundless light and flames, just as the lightning densely swallowed her, those flames entirely enveloped and burned him as well.
"Urrrgghhhhh!"
"...Hehe. Continuing this, you'll be the one to suffer."
Trading injuries with Fisher was a perfectly profitable business for current Agreas. Her rank was higher than his, and she possessed complete Life Chaos knowledge within her body. In terms of restorative capability and trauma tolerance, she definitively vastly outstripped Fisher. Furthermore, it seemed his rationality was on the verge of collapsing...
More importantly, having bought enough time, she had already sensed exactly what authority was contained within that black mud!
She sneered coldly, her consciousness abruptly sinking into the world of Chaos. Unlike the restlessness and roaring felt after reading the Life Usurping Authority, it was extremely quiet here. Amidst the boundless, endless pitch-black, there were only the rhythmic sounds of waves crashing against the shore.
"Splash... splash... splash..."
Standing on the shore, Agreas smiled faintly. She then reached out her hand towards the pitch-black ocean from afar, calling upon the authoritative power corresponding to its Chaos true form.
As long as she could sense it, she could simulate and utilize it...
She won!
"Lala... lalala..."
In the next moment, a distant song with indiscernible meaning and tone abruptly drifted from the pitch-black ocean. It sounded like the song of a Siren from ancient legends to lure sailors, yet it was millions of times more terrifying than that song...
What slowly rose from beneath the sea surface was precisely the "property" corresponding to the deity it represented, which was the Authority.
The first to rise was an existence as ethereal as the song, seemingly rising from within Agreas' body.
Following closely was an enormous moon shaped like a ∞, signifying an endless, infinite cycle...
Upon seeing the birth of the second imagery, Agreas' gaze abruptly shrank. Because the appearance of more than one authority was extremely rare. Even during the previous encounter with the source of Life Chaos, she hadn't seen a second one...
In all her long life, the only existence she had seen possessing more than one authority was this world's Chief God, Lord Ramastia. And that time, she nearly lost her life.
She gulped down a mouthful of saliva. An unprecedented ominous premonition suddenly arose. Because when that moon appeared, the restlessness of the deep ocean before her still hadn't ceased.
"Splash!"
In the next moment, countless pale, severed limbs and arms of unknown races and existences slowly floated up, supporting one after another of imageries rising upwards. Even beneath Agreas' feet and in the distant sky, countless faintly flashing eyes and countless mouths speaking words began to appear...
They watched Agreas, awaiting her endless curiosity to explore. But at this moment, Agreas' mind was a blank slate, seemingly filled entirely by everything before her, leaving only terrifying shock and panic...
"What on earth are you..."
"Lala... lalala..."
The tsunami-like song overturned towards her. Being well-versed in this path, Agreas' pupils shrank as her reaction was even faster. In a world of vision briefer than an instant, she violently abandoned this thought to extricate herself. And this was not enough; she hurriedly extended her hand, attempting to cut off and discard that portion of her soul...
Souls could be damaged, an outcome already verified by Anna on the West Continent back then. Those parts transplanted onto her from her sisters contained portions of their soul. Much like a Dragon-kin's Dragon Horn, cutting off that portion from the original body wouldn't lead to death.
At this moment, Agreas made the decisive choice to sever the soul contaminated and locked on by everything she had just seen. A tactic of sacrificing a minor piece to save the leader, and for Mythical Species like them who possessed Body and Soul Unity, it was even simpler...
Yet, she was still a step too late.
"Bang!"
Her entire head exploded violently. Her hands, which had already moved to slice her head off, had plunged into her neck but still failed to stop the invasion of that Chaos until it threw her consciousness into a meat grinder reminiscent of Avici Hell to be tortured.
"Ahhhhhhh!"
"Rumble!"
Even without her head, due to the chaos in her consciousness, mouths and facial features sprouted from her entire body. Her form also began becoming distorted. Suddenly losing all strength, her whole person was shoved by the black mud and smashed into the adjacent rock wall.
Actually, in the previous instances, Agreas originally had better solutions.
If a fully-powered Agreas truly wanted to find an opportunity to slip away from Fisher—whose consciousness was gradually losing control—to go up and find Raphaela, the probability of Fisher successfully stopping her was absolutely not one hundred percent.
It was just that at the critical moment, her old habit of "seeking the bizarre" acted up again. Her nature drove her to continuously approach this mysterious power she had never seen before, exactly as she had been attracted by the Life Usurping power on Tao Gong back then.
What's more, she had successfully researched the Chaos of Usurping Life. At that time, she was careful and fully prepared, finally glimpsing the power behind the chaotic authority. The success gave her confidence, leading her to ignore Fisher, which ultimately brewed this error of fate.
Even if Fisher's body felt terrible, looking at Agreas lying in the cave twitching continuously into the distance, attempting to regenerate her own body but remaining utterly powerless, the tension in his heart finally slowly relaxed. Simultaneously, he suffered the fiercest counterattack from the Chaos.
"Heh... heh..."
He panted heavily. It felt as if countless steel nails had pierced deeply into his brain and stirred around frantically within, plunging him once again into Caleb Uz's despair that was accumulated by countless folds. This feeling of accumulation also dyed his own memories, making him remember extremely clearly the day Teresa died, heading back to the day he broke with Elizabeth in Saint-Nazareth and began his escape...
He covered his face, as if wanting to shed tears. Yet they seemed unlike tears because the despair was too scorching, almost enough to melt his body, making him currently feel both estranged from and blurry about his own body.
But he was still too fragile. Several forceful suppressions failed to hold back his tears. Just as the "tears" were about to fall, Fisher's palm unexpectedly felt that his entire face, facial features included, had begun becoming sticky, turning like a human's tears continuously dripping downwards with gravity.
With the further aggravation of this non-human evolution, he could no longer hold back this extreme agony and despair, about to entrust his consciousness to the Chaos.
The human exterior he had always feigned finally completely dispersed at this moment. Perhaps from the day he started reading the Soul Completion Handbook, from the time he knew the soul within his body started to mutate, he would have foreseen such a day coming. It's just that when this day truly arrived, he only then discovered he had overestimated his endurance limit.
The Chaos within Fisher's body also poured out towards the sides even more incessantly. It covered all the nearby reefs and magma into a black ocean. And his own soul seemed to be continuously undergoing torment within it, prompting even someone as steadfast as him to uncontrollably groan aloud:
"...I'm in so much pain... I'm suffering so much... Who will save me... Ah... I'm so scared... Teresa... Mom..."
As Fisher grew increasingly fragile within the endless black mud surging from his body, that immature voice from the depths of his heart suddenly inappropriately rang out again at this moment in time.
"I'm here. Don't be afraid, my dear..."
Cupid's originally immature, indistinguishable voice became increasingly specific.
As that emotion-filled "my dear" escaped its lips, its vocal cords thus completely overlapped with Helaire's voice. What a pity that the current Fisher could no longer distinguish anything from the outside world, completely unaware that that evil existence had already descended by his side...
Meanwhile, an extremely beautiful face slowly appeared before him from out of that dark ocean. She was unclad yet possessed an exquisite figure; without any jewelry or crowns atop her head. It was as if only her physical body and her soul were here, devoid of anything else.
She was naked. Similar to a green lotus slowly rising from the filthy black mud yet unpolluted by its evil, she merely gently opened her embrace. Wrapping that Fisher who was experiencing pain and despair, completely melting into her arms, allowing the black mud his body turned into tightly stick to her jade-white skin, she nevertheless tightly clung to him.
"Wuuwuu... wuuwuu..."
"Don't be like this... just endure roughly a bit longer and it'll be fine, my dear... Please wait a little bit longer... wait a little bit longer and it'll be fine, my dear..."
Helaire closed her eyes and hugged him tightly. As if she empathized with the suffering going all over his body, even her words trembled as she employed only the absolute gentlest, most benevolent words to comfort his agony-filled soul right now.
Hearing that lullaby-like comforting, the consciousness of Fisher before her also gradually began reviving. Although just a tiny bit, it was still developing towards the better side.
Right now, Agreas was harmed by her own nature with her status of life or death unknown. Barbatos was stalled by Eliog and unable to approach. And Fisher's consciousness was also growing clearer bit by bit...
Everything was going just as beautifully, only what a pity that fortunate destiny wouldn't always bless Fisher...
Because at this very moment, above the Dynasty Portal, a similarly exceptionally anxious, scorching soul was still there about to enter the danger here.
"Fisher?! Are you down there?! What happened to you, don't scare me..."
"Splash, splash, splash!"
Under the sky-filling curtain of rain, after cautiously crossing the storm deployed by Barbatos, Raphaela finally saw that opened Portal. But looking from afar, she could only see a vast stretch of extreme crimson and black taint far away; she couldn't directly see the scene below.
Due to this, she constantly hesitated above. Until she heard the wailing and groaning out of unbearable torment produced by the Chaos-ridden Fisher below.
She hadn't forgotten Eliog's instructions from earlier, but Fisher's groans from below became increasingly intense. Upon hearing him invoke Teresa in such agony, and invoke the "mom" he originally shouldn't have as an orphan, Raphaela's eyes couldn't help but turn red. Unable to endure anymore, she stood up.
The feelings she had for her Tail-Compatible Partner wouldn't allow her to abandon Fisher, absolutely unconditionally, regardless if Eliog had already forewarned her. She had seen with her own two eyes how her mother became melancholic after losing her father. It was like gouging a huge chunk of flesh directly from within her heart.
It was back then Raphaela swore to never let such heart-wrenching loss happen to any of her compatriots again, which was precisely why she fought so hard.
Now that it was her time to make a choice, was she going to turn and flee, doing as told and hiding somewhere unknown, just to watch helplessly as her Tail-Compatible Partner died to protect her?
No...
She couldn't do it!
"Fisher, hold on, I'm coming down right now!"
She struggled so that she could stand equally by his side. She had never forgotten this point from beginning to end!
She summoned her red longspear. Then she disregarded everything and took a step forward, leaping directly towards the deep Demon Dynasty. Even if everything ahead was an unknown, she would still go straight to Fisher's side.
"Rumble!"
Very quickly, enveloped by the heatwave of steam, she plummeted continuously down into this space laid entirely to waste by black mud and battle.
Her pupils shrank slightly. Looking at the bubbling black mud below, a fear originating from the core of her soul spontaneously emerged, urging her to escape quickly. Thus she violently thrust her longspear in mid-air, wedging it entirely onto the rock wall above her.
Utilizing the inertia, she quickly swung her body and nimbly landed on the edge of the Gate of Expression—the spot that had yet to be swallowed by this black mud.
As soon as she landed, she swallowed down a mouthful of saliva, enduring the needle-pricking shivers all over her body. She looked in all directions, calling out loudly,
"Fisher! Fisher, where are you?! I came to find you!"
"Hugh..."
Right then, behind Raphaela, the constantly twitching Agreas weakly grew half a face and a pair of lips. Her brain was a sheet of white. Even though she thoroughly severed and forgot everything she saw earlier, she was still rendered extremely weak because of it, having already sunk into a heavily injured state, incapable of doing anything anymore.
Her newly grown eye swiveled slightly, arduously absorbing the appearance of the Raphaela before her. After a moment of silence, she ridiculed with a smile. She rested her head on the ground, murmuring,
"This is truly... obtaining without any effort..."
"You're a demon?!"
Gritting her teeth, Raphaela violently pointed the longspear in her hands at Agreas lying on the ground, hollering furiously at her,
"Speak! Where is my husband?! If anything untoward has happened to him, I'll make you die without a place for burial!!"
"Hehe, what deep conjugal love you two share... He is right over there..."
Following Agreas' weakly extended finger, Raphaela froze slightly and shifted her head back around to look towards the center area behind her, which had already transformed into an ocean of black mud.
There, she found a human figure incessantly dissolving into black mud in utter disbelief. Seemingly the intuition of a Tail-Compatible Partner, or perhaps due to numerous soul encounters, Raphaela recognized almost instantaneously that human figure was Fisher.
That is to say, is all this black mud over the ground Fisher?
Raphaela's complexion blanched, but her gaze remained tight on the completely naked woman embracing that human figure.
That woman expressionlessly turned her head around to look at Raphaela, then slightly smiled and said,
"Meeting you for the first time, Raphaela..."
Yet Raphaela had already been overwhelmingly infuriated by the appearance of Fisher before her. With a fiery gaze, she raised the longspear in her hands to point at Fisher in the distance. Even casting all caution to the wind regarding the black mud beneath her feet making her intuitively shiver, she roared out loud in full voice towards that phantom,
"You bastard!! What did you do to Fisher?! I will kill you!!"
At this moment, the spearhead bestowed with Dragon God's blood fully blazed with blood-like divine radiance, surging with killing intent to take the head resting atop Helaire's neck.