Chapter 46 God Killing
He walked in darkness.
Without a purpose, direction, or path, he simply walked along an unknown path, heading towards a place he didn't know existed.
Gradually, blurry figures appeared around him. They were incredibly tall, shadowy, and almost inhuman. Behind each shadow hung chains that stretched into an unknown darkness. They bent over him with malicious intent, like a group of mischievous children who had stumbled upon a baby bird that had fallen from its nest.
"It's very strange, different from any creature in this world." said the first shadow.
"We should cut it open and take a look. You hold its head and I'll hold its feet." The second shadow suggested.
"-Ah! It can bite people!" the third shadow screamed.
"Kill it, kill it—kill it quickly!" the fourth shadow shouted.
The shadows screamed and scattered, and he saw a dilapidated bondage bed suddenly appear in the corner. A cold light came from nowhere and happened to shine on the rust. The leather belts that bound the limbs had been worn out, and the light blue polyester sheets were stained with blood, full of creases and tears, as if someone had been lying on it and struggling desperately.
"■■■, Professor ■, have you followed the doctor's orders, stayed asleep, and taken your medicine on time?"
A shadow sat beside the restraint bed, dressed formally in a white coat, with a stethoscope hanging on his chest, and asked in a sharp and strange voice.
"I felt increasingly weak, unable even to lift a glass of water. But I could still see those things," he heard himself answering, "I began to lose track of whether the person feeding me the medicine was a nurse or..."
"Priest? The white-robed priest in the 'Church of Light' you mentioned?"
"Right... You know, you're all wearing white clothes, so it's really hard to tell them apart."
"Will they hurt you?"
"Maybe they forced me to eat a lot of strange things: the tentacles of strange creatures, the corpses of rotting plants, and some kind of mucus made from insect limbs. Then they used sharp weapons to cut open my skin and let my blood drain... I don't know. I don't think this is a good thing."
"That's not a reason for you to refuse medication and even remove the IV drip yourself, Professor. The nurse complained to me again. You should know that what you saw were hallucinations caused by the tumor pressing on your brain. We're trying to help you..."
"It's started again, they're here again, don't talk to me..."
"Professor, you should cooperate with our treatment... Don't be too pessimistic. You are still so young. Think about your parents—"
“—Get out of here!”
He began to breathe rapidly, his chest heaving violently, but the air he was breathing became less and less.
If he continued like this, he would be poisoned by the alkali he was breathing, he thought calmly and numbly, his soul floating in the air, staring coldly at the burning, painful but powerless body.
But this time, someone held him in their arms, pressed his head to their chest, spread his twitching fingers, inserted them, and tightened them. The person hummed an ancient song, the gist of which was about a brave warrior returning victorious, washing the blood of his enemies clean, laughing and sharing walnut-roasted venison with his comrades, enjoying endless amounts of fine wine. Then, drunkenly, they collapsed together, to the calls of friends and loved ones, and, gently caressed by the evening breeze and the sea of flowers, they fell into a deep, unwakeable sleep.
At some point, his breathing gradually calmed, and he drowsily opened his eyes. His body swayed, and they were on the boat. In his still blurry vision, he saw another person's chest, as clean and white as the heart of an ancient tree in the moonlight, warm, with strange patterns swirling across it, representing the storm.
"Rather than calling it a divine seal, it's more like... a wound, a testimony, and a feat."
The God-Favored One took his hand and pressed it against his chest. Warmth seeped through the glove, irresistibly spreading over him, bit by bit, in sync with the rhythm of his heartbeat. He subconsciously wanted to pull his hand away—it was too intimate, beyond his tolerance.
But he was like a helpless child in the man's hands. The other person came closer to him, and the other hand even fixed him firmly in the chair.
"Do you want to know how I came across that 'comic'?" The other person's voice was soft, but the madness hidden in it was even more terrifying. Without waiting for the other person to answer, he continued speaking.
"After everything settled, I returned to Asachi Valley alone. It was a very ordinary morning in Asachi Valley, so ordinary that it couldn't be more ordinary—and then the divine seal on my chest began to heat for the first time. The Storm God Utoska appeared before me without warning and told me that he was my father and my master."
The savior smiled coldly: "How ridiculous! He was once a great hero who killed slave owners, defeated foreign enemies, and rebuilt the homeland of the Natalin people... The Natalin people respected him, loved him, and worshipped him. He was their god and their monarch - but then he disappeared for no reason, leaving no words behind."
"Until later, he became a true legend. Even though King Corentin's defeat led to the division of the tribe, one tribe trapped in the deep sea, the other plunged into darkness; even though countless people died and were injured in the struggle against the sea, the snow-capped mountains, and the dragons, and they barely survived under the grinding torture of disease, famine, and natural disasters; even though the blood of their compatriots dyed the Asaqi Snow Mountain red—the Natalin people never resented him from beginning to end, nor did they ever hope that he would come back to save everything."
Azuka's voice grew softer. "But when the legendary being stood before me once again, he told me that he was my creator and that he was coming to take my life and everything he deserved—and then he would once again write the story of freedom and victory for the people of Natalin."
"Your birth was my careful planning. Without my hard work, you would not have been born." The God of Storms stood in front of him, looking down at him, so high and mighty.
"Your mother tried to protect you," he said lightly, even at the cost of her own soul—she was a good woman, but she overestimated her abilities. "I still found you and carved a divine mark upon your soul. Now it is time for you to repay your master—don't worry, I will later slay the enemies of the Natalin people and let the winds once again sweep across every corner of the earth."
"So, as his thunderbolt pierced my chest, my sword pierced his neck." The Savior tenderly described the scene of patricide, as if he were painting a giant painting that took the artist years of painstaking effort: "In anger and hatred, we destroyed each other's bodies."
The dying God of Storms looked extremely painful. With his blue eyes, inherited from the Natalin people, he stared tiredly at the young man who was related to him by blood and was about to die.
The hero chosen by the Book of Genesis was still young, too young to survive the clutches of an old monster who had lived for who knows how long, not to mention the constraints of the divine seal. But his endurance, tenacity, and madness were beyond the imagination of the gods, so much so that even the gods' bodies fell at the hands of the slave swords, who treated them like ants.
For some reason, the Storm God suddenly remembered a very, very old memory - when he was young, he once swore that Utoska would die like a hero.
Unknown to some reason, the Storm God heard himself softly chanting, accompanied by a faint warning tinged with blood and the breath of death: "Be careful, you are caught in a huge conspiracy, be careful—"
God.
The savior only guessed the last word later, because when the God of Storms fell, the power accumulated in the depths of that ancient soul for hundreds of years and the ideas that resonated with him broke out into an earth-shaking resonance, and a huge storm without warning swept across the entire world.
He felt his soul leaving his body, and he saw the soul of the God of Storms also rushing out of his body. The shackles called "death" on his soul began to break, and the shackles called "transcendence" began to crack.
But the other party quickly melted into a pale, twisted monster. Without time to react, he vanished completely like sand blown away by the wind in the devastating storm. The divine seal on his chest, pierced by lightning and emitting a faint azure glow, also dimmed, leaving only a shallow scar of the same shape.
Afterwards, he fell into an endless storm. At the center of the storm's eye was a book. Before his consciousness completely dissipated, he read Azuka's written, tragic and ridiculous life.
...He didn't know if it was an illusion, but before he completely lost consciousness, he seemed to see a very familiar, sharp and cold silver halo, bright, beautiful and great.
...Is it you? The Savior's lips moved slightly, but in the end he said nothing.
His nemesis looked a little dazed. After a moment, he suddenly jumped up from the chair, almost hitting his forehead, and was pushed back by Azuka with a helpless look.
"Paper and pen, and a cup of coffee, quick, quick—"
The professor seemed too lazy to argue with him. All the negative emotions from before became unimportant at this moment. His smoky gray eyes were frighteningly bright, like a furnace of boiling iron, about to burn away anything that prevented him from thinking.
He helped people get what they needed as usual. The God-favored One sat aside, supporting his cheek, and looked at his professor quietly with gentleness and helplessness.
He did not tell his nemesis such important information until he was completely sure that the other party was not a puppet of God. After all, he was a cautious, suspicious and cold-blooded guy.
...But when ordinary people learn about his shocking life story and hear about this tragedy of father and son killing each other, shouldn't they express shock or sympathy?
"To put it simply, your father suddenly appeared and wanted to kill you, and you died with him. Then you saw that 'comic' and were reborn. Apparently, your father did something before he died, and the remnants of the divine seal he left behind misled the God of Light." After an unknown amount of time, this guy came to some conclusion. He raised his head with satisfaction, gave a concise and partial summary, and then realized belatedly that something seemed amiss.
"...Excuse me, don't be too sad?"
Anyone else would be pissed off by him.
But the former savior just smiled calmly, his emotions so stable that there was no trace of the creepy madness that had been faintly revealed in the other person.
"There's nothing to be sad about." Seeing that the person subconsciously wanted to reach for his coffee, which he had already refilled twice, he simply took the empty cup and played with it in his palm. "A strange old man, before his death, had a change of heart - he killed me, and I killed him. Now he has completely disappeared, and I am still alive. I can prevent you from drinking more coffee and keeping you awake at night."
The God's Favored One smiled gently: "—So I won."
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