Chapter 497: Between Immortality and Mortality (5)
“Cough, cough…!!”
Lying prostrate on the cold Pantheon floor, he tried to raise his body, but it was futile.
Even though Lennok had designed and arrived at this moment from the beginning, he couldn’t easily utter a single word to him.
His mind felt completely shaken, as if his brain was being hammered.
His insides churned violently, and his magic surged madly with an agonizing pain that felt like it was gouging his temples.
“Ugh, damn it…!!”
This wasn’t merely the exhaustion that followed the use of a Domain.
It was simply the power of the bifurcation point, which desired immortality—the second Domain Lennok used to kill Amrita—returning to engulf him as a backlash.
The Mad, Sea-less Palace Domain possessed the power to seek out and devour transcendent existences like immortality within its confines.
That Domain, the Apostle of the Sea-less, the Temple of the Madman, was nothing short of a natural enemy to all existing continuities.
However, the power of the Mad, Sea-less Palace, born from choosing a bifurcation point of possibility that shouldn’t exist, naturally came with equally powerful side effects.
It was the extreme of singularity, attainable only through a Geas with an absurd condition: that Lennok, with the perfect rationality of a wizard, would go mad.
Because it was established on the premise that Lennok would go mad, it was absurdly powerful and alien, yet in return, he had to endure the madness of another self who truly had gone mad.
That’s why Lennok had predicted these side effects and tried to absorb the backlash as much as possible beforehand with the power of False Daystar.
Yet, even after successfully executing all his preparations and designs, Lennok still writhed on the ground in agony.
No, unlike when he first responded to the Pontiff, his condition only worsened with time.
The Pontiff chuckled softly, as if understanding Lennok’s state.
“That’s what it means to falsely claim non-existent mortality… You’ll have trouble thinking straight for a while.”
“…!!”
The Pontiff began to walk towards Lennok, who lay collapsed with his hands behind his back.
A dazzling halo spread behind him, perfectly obscuring his already indistinct face.
“But I must admit, this moment is the fruit of a wondrous defeat… Can you even accept your own madness for the sake of your goal?”
Slowly turning his back, the Pontiff, who had approached Lennok, murmured quietly.
“A resolve to endure even the most undesirable moment… Excellent. It’s something my past self could never have chosen.”
“Thi—!!”
Lennok tried to answer somehow, but still couldn’t stand up.
His mad, Sea-less Apostle self and his current self overlapped, implanting non-existent madness and chaos into his brain.
If he were an ordinary human, it wouldn’t have been strange for him to have become an imbecile long ago from the overwhelming information and overload.
Lennok, too, could barely hold onto his rationality while enduring the after-effects.
The Pontiff gazed at Lennok for a moment, then quietly bent down and whispered into his ear.
“I answered your call today because I respect that dazzling resolve. No further…”
“Ugh…!!”
“There’s no need to hear your answer, is there? Once the world completes its cycle, even this exchange will lose its meaning.”
The Pontiff slowly straightened, passing by the fallen Lennok.
“Soon, my companion will arrive to resolve the remaining karma. If necessary, please accept their help…”
His quiet footsteps gradually receded.
Beyond the grand scenery of the Pantheon, his presence became faint, as if about to vanish at any moment.
Just as the Pontiff was about to disappear like a bubble back into Amrita’s memory fragments without hesitation.
“Wai… wait…!!!”
Lennok, having struggled to stand, cried out from behind.
“…”
The Pontiff silently turned back and looked at Lennok.
His legs convulsed, as if he could barely stand. Sweat streamed down his face.
His eyes and lips trembled incessantly. He seemed to be in such a severe state that even speaking was difficult.
The Pontiff knew how Lennok had damaged Amrita’s immortality and what the side effects meant.
Lennok probably wasn’t even sure if he was speaking properly.
His head must have been so damaged that he couldn’t confirm if his thoughts were functioning normally.
The terrible sensation of all his senses and thoughts jumbling together and shattering.
But Lennok, despite all this, got up and spoke to him again, like a creaking doll.
“This is troublesome…”
The Pontiff smiled.
“You don’t truly wish to become my Apostle, do you…?”
“Wait… Answer me!!”
Lennok desperately struggled to keep his balance and asked with difficulty.
“You know, don’t you…!!”
“…”
He forcibly reconnected the senses that had twisted and vanished within his body.
He mechanically retrieved the void that felt lost from his memory and re-manifested it.
Even having forgotten how to speak and how to stand, Lennok’s transcendent cognitive abilities learned and acquired everything again in real-time from the very beginning.
“…You know.”
Lennok’s words had, by now, returned to fluency.
Desperately collecting his thoughts, Lennok spoke again.
“You know everything.”
“I’m listening.”
The Pontiff nodded.
Lennok slowly calmed his breathing and whispered quietly.
“The mirror abandoned in the temple’s basement.”
“…”
“It must have been you.”
It was so calm and quiet that the silence itself felt deafening.
The Pontiff gave no answer to Lennok’s words, merely gazing at him silently.
Before him, Lennok cast the question he had hesitated over hundreds of times, deliberated over thousands of times.
“Was it you, then?”
“…”
“Was it me, then?”
“…”
Why was a mirror reflecting someone with the same existence rate as himself placed in the basement of the Far Eastern Branch temple?
Was it not a trace left by someone who once shared Lennok’s concerns and ideals, searching for another?
After countless agonies and torments, a single conclusion emerged.
Lennok asked.
“Were you me?”
“Heh heh…”
The Pontiff laughed silently. Without any answer.
As if that itself were an answer.
Breathtaking silence. A momentary eternity that felt like it would last forever.
But as if to render all that wonder meaningless and vain, the scenery of the Pantheon began to crumble little by little.
Rumble…!!
The massive pillars hundreds of meters in diameter, the temple scenery, the grand corridors, slowly vanished and disappeared.
Amrita’s memories were losing their existence and dissipating, and with them, the scenery contained within them was also vanishing.
The Pontiff’s memory, existing only within her memories, would also disappear like a bubble along with it.
Seeing the Pontiff’s fading memory, Lennok grit his teeth.
“Answer me. I have the right to hear it…!!”
“…”
The Pontiff raised his indistinct face from the fading scenery and quietly turned his gaze.
Amidst the crumbling Pantheon vista, he spoke.
“We stand in the same place but are not the same, and though we stand in different places, we are not different.”
“…!!!”
Suddenly, the Pontiff’s tone had completely changed.
Unlike before, when he sounded somewhat powerless, it was the voice of an absolute being, filled with an overwhelming and commanding self-assurance.
“The Grand Otherworldly Contraction Formula I showed you through Amrita is part of the ending we desire. It is a destination that must never change.”
The Pontiff smiled.
“We cannot avoid meeting when all destinies intersect, but until then, we must not meet each other.”
“What on earth does that…!!”
“Don’t you understand yet?”
The Pantheon scenery collapsed completely, the vast corridors, spires, and pillars shattering and falling into the abyss below.
A裂裂that had split on the other side of the corridor instantly swallowed everything, turning it into a handful of void.
Only the space where the two stood facing each other remained, shaking madly, before shattering into pieces and on the verge of vanishing.
The Pontiff passed by Lennok and said,
“I am not you.”
A fleeting remark, as if that fact held no meaning.
Immediately after, even the last few fragments composing the memory vanished, and Lennok’s body plummeted as if into darkness.
Only the Pontiff’s words echoed in his empty ears.
“If we can meet again at the end of the cycle, that will be enough.”
The tone with which he looked back at Lennok seemed to hold a faint smile.
“It was, after a long time, quite enjoyable.”
Sizzle…!!
“Ugh…!!!”
He frowned at the stinging pain searing his forearm, rolling among the ashes.
A dizzy spell washed over him the moment he sprang upright, followed by a gut-wrenching shock.
“Ugh!!!”
Unable to hold it back, he collapsed and vomited violently.
Only after raising his trembling hand to painstakingly touch his face did Lennok realize he had returned to reality.
“What on earth was that just now…?”
[Master…]
Davi, squirming out from his arms, looked up at Lennok worriedly.
As Lennok’s cyber-familiar, the spirit who shared his consciousness would also be aware of the memory of meeting the Pontiff just now.
That’s why Davi, even at this point when the situation wasn’t entirely over, showed his face, worrying about Lennok.
“…”
In the end, Lennok hadn’t properly understood anything the Pontiff had said.
Or perhaps he had a vague understanding of the meaning but couldn’t be certain?
Using Amrita’s death as a catalyst, he had reached a meeting that shouldn’t have been possible, but it only ended with him asking questions.
He even doubted if the Pontiff’s final denial was an answer to Lennok’s question.
No, more than that, could he unreservedly believe everything the Pontiff had said?
Without being able to provide any proper basis for all those questions, Lennok had simply thrown the dice to meet the Pontiff out of sheer impulse.
But if it hadn’t been for that opportunity, such a moment would never have come again.
“Whew…”
He had no regrets.
The time to choose was too short, and making the judgment was purely a matter of the heart.
Even if only worries remained after the exchange, he believed he would never stop.
However, even so, Lennok found it difficult to easily guess the exact meaning of the hint he had received from the Pontiff at this point.
“The battle elsewhere is…”
[It’s not over yet.]
Davi replied.
[Most of the cult’s forces inside the Far Eastern Branch island have been suppressed. Currently, only the decisive battle between the Watchers and the Proxies is ongoing.]
“…I see.”
When Amrita died, there was no way the cult’s followers wouldn’t have sensed it.
Perhaps most of the followers had lost the will to fight at that point.
Lennok thought so, struggling to twist his body and slowly rise.
[The after-effects of using the Dual Domain are severe. If you don’t rest as much as possible, there’s a chance your overall condition could be affected long-term…]
“There’s still work to be done.”
He extended his tattered fingertips, carefully reaching out with magic threads.
“It’s meaningless if I leave loose ends. I’ll finish what I started here.”
[Really…]
Amidst the burnt underground bedrock, scarred by the aftermath of the intense battle and the spilled power, he pulled something up.
Thud!
Amrita’s corpse, crushed beyond recognition.
It was not only charred black, but also torn apart and annihilated everywhere, making it hard to find its former appearance.
But conversely, it meant that the durability of her body was so excellent that it could leave a corpse even after directly enduring the full force of Lennok’s ultimate lightning-based technique.
Plop!!
Lennok unhesitatingly thrust his fingers between the corpse, closed his eyes, and quietly fell into thought, then nodded.
“Just as I expected. A partial success, perhaps…”
Lennok’s attempt to forcefully impose the laws of reality within the Domain and kill the unkillable had succeeded.
A single exchange of blows that intersected within the Mad, Sea-less Palace Domain.
At its conclusion, Lennok had overwhelmingly suppressed Amrita’s forbidden technique with Thunderous Overflow, his ultimate Mind Imprint, and killed her.
However, death in the mortal world didn’t mean that the concept of an Apostle itself was erased.
The Apostles, serving as incarnated bodies, represented the will of ruin floating in the Outer Sea.
Even if their physical bodies disappeared from the earth, the will of ruin would continue to remain, seeking new suitable candidates.
Even if Amrita had died here, a new Apostle inheriting her power and will could appear at any time, provided a suitable candidate was found.
Hadn’t Izel also summoned Proxies from each branch through the Selection Ritual to fill the vacant Apostle position?
“Davi.”
[The pattern encryption is complete. Now, if you trigger and actualize it, it will activate.]
“…Good.”
The amber diadem, still retaining its original form amidst the fierce battle. He pushed it deep into Amrita’s corpse.
Simultaneously, the diadem began to glow on the spot, and its light started to seep into Amrita’s corpse.
Using the control code left by Jindun, a portion of the artifact’s power was extracted.
This was then used as a Geas to seal the will of ruin remaining in Amrita’s body with barrier magic.
Screeching…!!
Amrita’s corpse convulsed wildly with an unidentifiable, bizarre sound.
Even though she was dead and her spirit had left the earth, the instincts etched into her body were refusing what Lennok was trying to do.
[Deploying 88-layer dimensional function encryption. Using the grand barrier pattern to connect and seal the pattern’s entry and exit points!]
He wasn’t touching the will of ruin itself, which granted Amrita her power.
More precisely, he was making the very method by which that power was spread upon this land, using the incarnated body as a medium, so complexly twisted that it could no longer be easily touched.
He was binding the Apostle technique that manifested on this land through Amrita, making it unusable even if a new Apostle succeeded her.
He was sealing ‘Amrita’s Scale,’ the Apostle technique that freely moved the cult’s forces to various branches, so it could never be used again.
Static!! Static static…!!
In contradiction to Amrita’s body being dead, the will of ruin remaining in her flesh was stronger than ever.
An attempt that would have been impossible if he hadn’t forcibly imposed and reproduced the laws of reality onto Amrita within the heart of the Domain and killed her.
Lennok had shattered Amrita’s Domain head-on and created the current situation precisely for this moment.
[Intent pattern encryption complete, 19-layer random variable array applied to the decipherment code and erased. I’ll proceed with the blockage now…!!]
Not only was he twisting the power sent by the ruin Amrita served to prevent its use, but he was also performing additional work to completely block the signal itself.
Not merely sealing the Apostle technique, but if he could make it so that the god she served could never create another Apostle again.
If he could only touch the very root from which the cult could be established as an organization.
Whoosh!!!!
As Lennok thought that and rapidly channeled magic to aid Davi’s computations.
“Interesting. Is that the method you chose to seal the Apostle technique?”
Someone in a suit stood before Lennok.
The man pushed up his thick glasses and watched him, arms crossed.
The aura emanating from his body was more alien and grotesque than any Apostle Lennok had ever encountered.
“Ah, don’t mind me. Keep going.”
The man noticed Lennok’s gaze and waved his hand with a smile.
“I’m interested in where the spirits of high-ranking Apostles like us go after death. I’d appreciate it if you could successfully complete the sealing.”
Beyond his spectacle lenses, the man’s eyes gleamed coldly.
“Anyway, I intend to bury everything that happened here today.”