novelraw Chapter 155: Everybody Dies
Chapter 155: Everybody Dies
Ignotus did the exercise differently now, much slower. Instead of quick splashes and healing chugs, he let the magma sit on him, focusing further on mapping the sensation rather than surviving.
How did magma feel at the edge of a nerve? Where did it stop feeling like fire and start being a pressure pushing into him? How did it move against bone... how did it want to bend flesh?
He let it lap at his ribs, watching how his skin blistered and then knit when he drank a potion, a pinch of both pain and cure.
A sight that had Eris groan for the tenth time.
Ignotus smirked inwardly.
’Remember, I’m not inviting you to watch.’
When his [Fortune’s Wheel] needed a break, he rested, letting the afterburn feed his Will.
Then, before he could get too cold, he spun it again, continuing the elemental torture.
Ding!
—
{Ice!}
—
Perfect... his Luck at play.
Cold to balance heat, even if it was long gone by now.
Ignotus learned more about magma by freezing what little remained, feeling how rapid contraction changed the thermal flow.
The ice taught him restraint, a bite that burned in a different way than the fire. It was a weird feeling being burned by an opposite Element in a completely different yet also similar way.
Ignotus didn’t know how he could describe it exactly, but that was the purpose of this torture, was it not? To understand this and ’describe’ it to himself.
He’d learn of many of his Elements, one by one, until the day when he finally could rank up his [Fortune’s Wheel] Rune. That’d make it join the rest and automatically upgrade his Root Rune, as that, and reaching the Priest Class, was the prerequisite. After all, the Root of the tree matched its branches, and if most branches became strong, the root would as well.
So, after such thoughts, he kept going, intimately learning how it burned, how it sat, how it healed, and how long it took.
When using [Fortune’s Wheel], Ignotus would only be given one ability from that Element, and though he could use that ability in multiple ways, it was still pretty restrained.
Doing this helped further expand those restraints.
So he kept on until his healing vials were nearly empty and his skin was shot with many a fresh shining scar.
By then, dawn had arrived, bleeding into the room in stripes.
That was when Ignotus went to rinse the soot and blood from his skin.
"I’m done."
He also called upon Eris, informing Her that She could watch again.
’I don’t want you to ever do that again...’
Eris sighed once more.
’But I know I can’t stop you... I only wish that you never expect me to be alright with it.’
Ignotus nodded at Her, appreciating Her words rather than being annoyed by them.
’I understand you completely... trust me. I’d like to not do this as well, but I have to.’
’Hm.’
With a towel wrapped around his waist, Ignotus calmly padded towards his wardrobe.
Yet before his hand reached for a shirt, the door burst open, and Theodore barreled in.
"Again? Half-naked in my own home is apparently a theme today."
Theodore didn’t care about social graces or decency, immediately flinging himself into a rant:
"YOU DIDN’T TELL ME YOU LEFT HOUSE PLANT!"
Of course... Theodore had just realized that he had been swindled.
The man was always a step behind, but this was something Ignotus assumed that he already knew. At least after the Trial. So he couldn’t help but internally ask, was Theodore this slow? Or was Genus hiding such information from the man?... Or was this due to Ignotus’s Luck?
’Yes.’
That was his conclusion.
"This is illegal!"
Theodore jabbed a finger at him.
"My—my daughter—this house—this is unthinkable! You swindled us, you—!"
Ignotus picked up his new sword from the desk and checked its weight with a finger.
It felt balanced, with a much better weight and temper compared to his last one.
’Vulcan passes.’
Thinking that, he slowly pointed the tip at Theodore’s chest, faltering in his shouting.
"Just because you are my—"
Ignotus smiled.
"—Father-in-law, doesn’t mean that I won’t kill you. Understand?"
That did the trick. Theodore’s face paled a shade, then flushed with indignation.
He waved about a half dozen curses that Ignotus heard nothing of and loudly stated that he would never forget this disrespect.
"May you rot in Hell!"
With that practiced bluster, he left the same way he’d entered.
"I’m sure I will."
Ignotus set the sword down carefully and let out a long breath, his annoyance quickly fading back into the background.
On the desk, embossed with the House sigil, lay a slim black book, now filled with Arcanic script.
It was a diary, or something like a diary. One that he began to use to store what he remembered from his past life, as he knew for sure that he’d eventually forget it... Unfortunately, the Gods hadn’t Blessed him with a photographic memory.
He wrote in Runes as he needed it to be impenetrable to most, an act not solely selfish.
Most people would not only fail to read this but also likely lose their minds if they tried, so in a way, he was helping them by hiding this.
Ignotus, of course, trusted Eris enough to let Her peek, and that small trust was quietly warming to both of them. He’d become a lot more open with Her, something that She, again, found very warming, even if She was only learning about him in fragmented drops.
In any case, some secrets were better kept in riddles; some things were better never said aloud... especially when they damned the realm.
"Theodore won’t be complaining for long..."
Ignotus flipped it open while Eris watched closely:
—
[The first act...]
[We all know how this ends, don’t we?]
—
Page one was something both of them were familiar with, words that he had written in his past life... ones read by a close friend.
—
[Everybody dies.]
—
He let the edges of the paper brush his thumb and closed the book slowly, setting it beside his new sword.
That sentence wasn’t morbid so much as pragmatic, a regressor’s shrug over an inevitable event in time.
For the first time in a long while, he felt like all the small things and the ridiculous actions he did had compounded to work towards something coherent—his version of progress.
’I’ll break it.’
This was it.