The Invincible Young Master

Chapter 265 - 265 - Young Azeroth

Spark stepped forward, and began to circle him.

His gaze moved across Azeroth's form with open curiosity, pausing briefly on each head, observing details with interest of someone examining an unfamiliar creature.

There was no hostility in his expression, no lingering intent from their earlier clash, only a calm academic attention.

"Hm… taller in this form," he muttered, tilting his head slightly. "And missing two heads."

He stepped around to the other side, as though confirming his own observation.

"A solidified divinity," he added, sounding mildly impressed. "Not bad."

Then, after a brief pause, he gave a small shrug.

"Still too young."

Azeroth remained silent.

His mind, however, was anything but calm.

He watched Spark carefully, trying to reconcile what he was seeing with everything he knew. This level of control over space, the effortless suppression of an outsider's incarnation, the way even his own divinity had been rendered meaningless, none of it aligned with the limits of this world.

For a moment, the thought surfaced again.

An outsider.

But just as quickly, he dismissed it.

From the memories he had taken, from the fragments he had pieced together, Spark was not some foreign entity. He had been born in this world, the youngest son of the Dwight family, a lineage deeply rooted within its structure.

And yet nothing about him felt bound by it.

Azeroth's gaze narrowed slightly, and though countless questions pressed against his mind, only one found its way out.

"Why did you save me?"

His voice was steady, but quieter than before.

"I harmed your siblings. So why?"

Spark stopped.

For a moment, he seemed to actually consider the question, his expression settling into something thoughtful rather than dismissive.

"Why?" he repeated. "Because you're a valuable data."

Azeroth frowned.

"Valuable…data?"

The word lingered in the air, carrying a meaning that did not immediately reveal itself.

Before Azeroth could question it further, Spark raised his hand. His finger extended slowly, until it pointed directly at Azeroth's chest.

A soft glow formed at its tip, faint at first, then steadily brightening into that same pale light he had come to fear.

Azeroth felt it instantly.

Every instinct within him urged resistance, yet his body remained still. Whether he lacked the will or simply understood the futility of struggle, even he could not tell.

The finger touched him.

The light entered without resistance.

It did not explode or tear through him. Instead, it spread quietly, flowing through his body like something that had always belonged there.

Azeroth felt it pass through every part of him, not as destruction, but as something deeper, something that examined, unraveled, and rewrote.

His form began to break apart. Not violently, but gradually, as though his existence was being converted into the same light that now filled him.

His limbs lost their solidity, dissolving into faint particles that drifted outward, his presence thinning with each passing moment.

His vision blurred.

Spark's figure became indistinct, fading into a silhouette of light.

"You'll understand when the time is right."

The voice reached him as if from far away.

Azeroth's thoughts trembled.

"Those words…I've heard that before…"

The realization surfaced slowly, like something rising from the depths of a long-forgotten memory.

As his awareness began to fade, fragments of his past stirred.

Questions he had once asked himself, questions that had never been answered, returned with unsettling clarity.

What was he? Where had he come from?

Why was he the only one of its kind?

Why had he possessed power far beyond rest?

Why had he never known origin, lineage, or creation of its kind?

Unlike every other being in this world, he had no past that could be traced.

Only existence.

Now, as his body dissolved further into light, those buried memories began to surface, piece by piece, breaking through the darkness that had concealed them for so long.

Something he had once known. Something he had forgotten.

As the last fragments of his present self dissolved into pale light, Azeroth's awareness did not vanish. Instead, it sank, drawn inward, past layers of forgotten time, into a place where memory had long been buried.

At first, there was only indistinct motion, like shapes seen beneath murky water. Then gradually, the haze thinned, and a scene took form.

He was small.

Not the towering, many-headed entity he had become, but a young creature barely formed, a nine-headed serpent no larger than a coiled branch, its scales still soft, its movements cautious.

The wilderness around him stretched vast and untamed, filled with unfamiliar scents and distant sounds that made each of his heads shift restlessly, alert to every disturbance.

He moved through the undergrowth, weaving between roots and stones, until something made him stop.

Two unfamiliar figures had appeared.

They did not arrive with sound or force. They were simply there, standing within the clearing, their forms indistinct, as though made of light that refused to settle into a fixed shape.

Even in that distant memory, their presence carried something incomprehensible, neither hostile nor gentle, but undeniably beyond the world around them.

Instinct took over.

The young serpent recoiled at once, his small body slipping beneath a nearby bush, pressing himself low against the ground. His nine heads stilled, though their eyes remained wide, watching through the thin gaps between leaves.

"Little snake, come out," one of the figures said, "I saw you."

The serpent did not respond.

He remained hidden, his instinct urging him to stay concealed, to avoid whatever these beings were.

A brief silence followed before the second figure spoke, its tone softer.

"You're scaring it."

The first did not reply immediately. Instead, the second figure stepped forward and lowered itself, crouching near the bush. It extended an open palm, the gesture slow and unthreatening, as though it understood the fear before it.

"Little one," She said gently, "don't be afraid."

The voice carried no pressure, no command, only a quiet reassurance that seemed to settle into the air itself.

For a moment longer, the young serpent hesitated.

Then, cautiously, he moved.

One head emerged first, followed by another, until all nine peeked out from beneath the leaves. His gaze remained fixed on the outstretched hand, wary yet drawn by something he could not explain.

Slowly, he slithered forward.

He paused just short of the palm, each head leaning in slightly as if to inspect it. One of them extended farther than the rest, testing the air, before finally brushing against the surface.

It was warm and not dangerous.

Encouraged, the small serpent climbed onto the offered hand, his body coiling lightly as he settled there, still alert but no longer retreating.

The figure watched him for a moment, then tilted its head slightly, as though considering something.

"What should we call you?" She murmured.

The other figure spoke without hesitation.

"Nine-headed snake."

The one holding him gave a small shake of her head.

"No," She said, voice thoughtful. "Since you're the first being we found upon our arrival in this land…"

She paused briefly.

"...you'll be called Azeroth."

The name settled into the moment.

The young serpent reacted almost immediately. His nine heads lifted, turning slightly toward one another, a faint, instinctive excitement passing through him as though he understood, in some simple way, that he had been given something that belonged to him.

The figures watched in quietly.

Then, the scene shifted.

Something appeared around him, a structure forming without warning.

A cube of faint light enclosed his small body, its edges precise, its presence firm yet not oppressive.

The young Azeroth stirred, confused, his heads turning in different directions as the space around him sealed.

His strength began to fade.

A sudden heaviness overtook him, his movements slowing as exhaustion set in without explanation. His vision dimmed, and the world grew distant.

"Don't worry, little one," the figure holding him said, her voice reaching him as though from afar. "We mean no harm."

"You are… important to our mission."

The meaning slipped past him, too vast for his young mind to grasp.

"As for why…"The voice softened. "You'll understand when the time is right."

"Now sleep."

He lost consciousness.

After that, his memory was unclear, but he remembered one thing, the two figures were the ones who brought him into this world.