The Hunted Regressor: My Heretic Saint System

Chapter 212: This Beautiful Chaos

The transition was near instant, as Ignotus seemed to have grown used to it.

One moment, he was lying on a soft mattress; the next, he was standing in absolute white.

He stepped forward, his boots clicking on a floor that rippled.

Ignotus was back, deep in the depths of his Soul.

He stood at the familiar gateway, the long path leading up to Eris’s manor.

Usually, this place was a void of comforting white.

It was his sanctuary, his mental fortress.

But as Ignotus looked up, his jaw tightened.

The sky above was...

’Damned.’

Indeed, it wasn’t the same black anymore.

More than a month ago, when he had pushed himself to the absolute limit fighting ten Pythons, the dark sky of his Soul had cracked just a little.

A hairline fracture, nothing a little rest couldn’t fix.

But this?

This was a shattered mosaic.

Dark light from the outside—the essence of his own mortal limits—was bleeding through thousands of fissures in the white. It looked like a starry sky, a breathtaking panorama of constellations stretching from horizon to horizon.

It was beautiful.

And it meant his Soul was shattered.

Those cracks of white didn’t just stay in the sky. They reached the ground, zigzagging across the white floor like lightning bolts frozen in stone.

Ignotus sighed, kicking a loose shard of... himself.

"I’m grounded... definitely grounded."

He had no doubt about it; he couldn’t fight anymore.

Not for a long while. If he tried to channel Divinity through this mess, his Soul would shatter.

It was only natural.

Ignotus thought back to the fight, the Frenzy, and the feeling of the serpent tail piercing his gut. He was a Priest. A glorified partial transformer in the grand hierarchy of power.

And yet, he had stood toe-to-toe with a Greater Demon.

He had taken hits that should have vaporized him and kicked a building-sized creature in the chest and lived to tell the tale.

"How?"

Ignotus looked at his arms. Where the [Living Ligature] tattoo sat dormant in the real world, here, in his Soul, it remained in view as a faint glow of golden Arcane woven into his skin.

It had to be that.

The Godhood resonance.

His Frenzy was the residue of the Rune he got from Sebastian, a Blessed.

"Sebastian... you old fox."

It was likely a delayed reaction of his Will embedded in the Rune. A failsafe? Or maybe just the sheer quality of the Blessed’s power protecting his investment.

’Even now you help me...’

Ignotus smiled softly, a genuine expression.

’I owe you a drink, old man. A really expensive one.’

He started walking toward the manor in the distance. The walk felt longer than usual, probably because the ground kept shifting under his feet.

His Soul could be vulgarly said to be "truly fucked!"

But he wasn’t panicking.

He’d pull through; he always did.

It was just a matter of mechanics; if a part was broken, you rebuilt it. If a bone were snapped, you would set it. If a Soul were cracked... well, you glue it back together and wait for the glue to dry.

’One day...’

Ignotus mused, stepping over a particularly large fissure.

’One day the glue won’t hold, but not today.’

He believed this, and no, it was not because of arrogance or because he thought he was a main character in this world (though the System certainly made a case for it).

Ignotus believed it because he didn’t know how much Luck he had left.

Cosmic Luck, the Protagonist’s Halo, maybe even Plot Armor.

Call it what you want; it was a resource. And like Divinity, like health—it was finite.

Every banquet had to come to an end. No matter how popular the novel, the writers eventually ran out of ideas.

Every story had to reach its epilogue.

Ignotus stopped walking and looked back up at the shattered, starry sky.

"Where does my story end?"

What would happen to him after he broke the world? Would he even near that point? Would he cease at Shepherd? Would he burn out as a Banneret? Maybe he’d make it to Elder. Get a nice office, a comfy chair, and tell kids to get off his lawn.

Patriarch? Blessed? Venerable?

"Saint Ignotus..."

He tested the title...

"Hm."

It sounded terrible.

He’d have to stop being so unhinged.

But the thought lingered. If he reached the peak—if he climbed this mountain of corpses and leveled up until he couldn’t any longer—what then?

If his ’cosmic luck’ ran out, what would he do if he encountered a truly unsolvable situation? Even if he became a Saint, he’d always be weaker than someone else.

That was the hard fact of this universe. It was a pyramid scheme of violence.

If he reached Shepherd, there would be Banneret-class bastards crawling out of the woodwork. If he reached Elder, there would be High Elder-class lunatics trying to kill him.

"And if I reach the peak?"

If he reached the ultra-perfection of a Saint, or the highest level known, with no ’upper world’ to ascend to? He would still be weaker than the thing that created the ceiling...

The Lower Gods in Heaven.

They wouldn’t allow him to remain amongst them.

Ignotus now knew of the infinite cycle of Gods.

For above them were the Higher Gods.

And above them?

The very being who coded the system.

"It’s turtles all the way down..."

Ignotus sighed, rubbing his temples.

"Or up, in this case."

He shook his head, physically shaking the thoughts away.

"Honesty, I’m overthinking again."

But wasn’t that expected of him? That was how he was at heart.

He looked at a contraption and asked how it broke. He looked at the world and asked who built it and why the wiring was so shoddy. Even after all this time, all this magic, he was still just a guy trying to fix what was crashing.

Ignotus felt like he was being a bit melodramatic, but he didn’t care much.

If he wasn’t going to reflect in his own Soul, where would he?

It was a broken mess, barely holding together.

Smiling wider, he felt the tension bleed out of his spectral shoulders and resumed his walk to the manor.

With the door open, he entered the main hall.

There, before the pulsing heart of his Soul—the hearth—he saw her.

Eris.

No longer in her cat form, She was the terrifying Queen of Calamity in full regalia.

And She was sleeping, curled up on a chaise lounge, Her chest rising and falling in a slow rhythm.

"Hm."

What She did to save him... pumping her own Divinity into his dying body, forcing a reaction with the Godhood... it must have drained Her dry.

Ignotus stepped up quietly and stopped before Her, staring down.

He looked at Her closed eyes, at her long, raven-black hair cascading over the couch.

Eris’s face was peaceful and vulnerable.

It was a side of the Goddess only he ever saw.

Ignotus felt a pang in his chest that had nothing to do with the hole the Demon had punched in him.

Slowly, he bent his knees and lowered himself until he was eye-level with Her sleeping face.

Leaning in, he kissed Her forehead.

It was a soft, thankful kiss.

She didn’t wake up, but the corner of her mouth twitched, just a little.

Perhaps a subconscious smile.

Ignotus pulled back.

He stood up, looking at her, then through the windows and up at the cracked, starry sky of his Soul.

It had all gone to shit. He was broken. She was exhausted. The world was dangerous, and there were Gods above Gods waiting to squash them.

But they were alive.

"Indeed..."

Ignotus sighed.

"This beautiful chaos."