CHAPTER. 139: THE BEGINNING OF THE END (PART 1)

What the fuck⁠—

And the whole chamber trembled from a hit coming from the outside. I winced. Asok was still outside, acting like a monster. Which also meant, I was stuck in this chamber. My mind whirled for a few moments before a dull pain spread through my stomach, a sickening hunger that I had been suppressing for a while now.

I shook my head and ignored the sounds coming from the outside, instead turning towards the papers once more. More specifically towards the red paper, the paper with the steps of ascension to become more as it marked.

Based on what I understood, the so-called ascension was the process of becoming more. It was the process of attuning myself, or rather; changing the corruption within my body to be something greater. This process included making my corrupted mana into what the arcane magic was, but the thing was.

I had to also change my body itself, and risk failure; risk becoming just like⁠—

And the outside trembled.

Him. A mass of corruption, one that is self aware and immortal, but one that is also cursed to have bouts of hysteria in which they are mindless. It was something that I didn’t want, the real question was:

Did I really have to undergo the full process?

He had described the corruption like an incurable cancer, and he had also essentially suffered from it. It was pretty much a terminal illness that I’d continue to suffer from until I essentially engaged in a death battle with it; as the paper put it. However, it wouldn’t be killing me any time soon given the Hero of Arlas was still very much alive, at least that’s what I thought.

The question was:

Did I want to try to deal with everything in one fell swoop, or delay the inevitable for later?

That; I didn’t know. First though… I turned to the pile of papers. I had to learn how to separate my body and the mana for the so-called ascension. Oddly enough, there was no mention of the soul; which the Hero of Arlas had mentioned. Though maybe, the reason Asok was mostly conscious was because his soul had gone untouched? I didn’t really know.

“It seems that I’ll have to do a lot of research…”

I wanted to sigh, unfortunately, I couldn’t even leave this room and see what was happening. All I could do was go through Asok’s notes and hopefully find something. According to him his title was the Golden Researcher; if that was the case, then perhaps all of his information would be a great benefit.

However…

Looking at some of the pages one thing was clear; I was an art major, not a scientist. So understanding things was going to be tough. But at the same time, I didn’t really have much of an option if at all.

Now the real question was…

“Where to start?”

Taking a small breath I began to read through the research notes, all to piece together the path to my salvation.

◇ ◇ ◇

At first I didn’t understand much of what I was reading or looking at. Whether it was mathematical formulas with letters, the abstract concepts that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend, or the sheer volume of information.

All of it was very overwhelming.

“According to the Third Law of Reality; foreign magic cannot be introduced into a new System, for it encompasses all magic, and yet the Corruption might as well be foreign, therefore breaking the law itself…”

Some of the notes were about piecing what the corruption exactly was, which at first I thought would be useless but seeing the dots slowly be connected with the already existing knowledge that Asok had was rather interesting.

And well, I did learn a thing or two, such as each System implementation seemed to have a different goal and purpose, and Arlas’ was… I didn’t quite know, but the concept of heroes seemed to be unique to it. As for stopping the corruption, or the initial System that propagated it; it seemed like a tall order that was impossible to fulfill.

Though Asok in his notes seemed to have a different idea.

“If I took a System and made it isolated; somehow conquered the magic of the gods… Wouldn’t all of this corruption, all of this ruination, all of this misery immediately disappear? What a dream, to resurrect my predecessors, to give birth to my progenitors and be the forefather of a new era.”

Which… I also found interesting.

There were hundreds of notes, if not thousands of them. Some made sense, some were too detailed for me to understand and some bordered on gibberish, but slowly I managed to find some information, the first was that:

The corruption couldn’t taint a being that wasn’t touched by the System to begin with; it was an impossibility.

Which, theoretically speaking, if I were to be disconnected from the System I’d also be free of the corruption. Though Asok did theorize that while the gained powers wouldn’t be lost; magic would be exponentially more difficult to use to the point it might be impossible due to the complex processes behind its existence.

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In one of the pages he went in depth about what magic actually was, but unfortunately it wasn’t something I could understand. However, I did know that this went beyond any broken video game logic that I was applying in the past. Ignoring that; it was one of the ways I could theoretically cleanse myself of the corruption after leaving this place.

He also mentioned that destroying the greatest source of corruption could cause a great shock throughout the ruined System that could potentially lead it to restore its functions even if temporarily, something that I took note of.

Among the information I found, one of the most important things was; I managed to fully understand why ascension worked in the first place.

“By getting corrupted, one is replacing the current System with the Primordial System of old. I theorize that if one were to become incredibly corrupted, through cleansing said corruption one would become ‘pure’ ⁠— sending a shock through the System and restoring and becoming what was once the peak of existence ⁠— the Eternals. Now the problem is… how does one cleanse the corruption to begin with?”

That was the beginning of a series of notes in which Asok slowly realized that there was an element he was missing; even if a body got corrupted it didn’t make sense for the mind to do so given the System had no bearing over the brain of the individual as dictated by the so-called First Law of Reality: free will is not interfered with.

It all concluded that the System also tried to take that over.

It was the so-called soul.

And it was the reason one had to die in order to Ascend; and fight the corruption off. Though…

If I did that wouldn’t I be a fully sentient mass of corruption?

I shuddered at the thought, the amount of disconnect I’d feel from my body would probably be insane. Not like I didn’t feel it to some amount already ⁠— sometimes I wouldn’t recognize myself in the mirror ⁠— so something like that…

“Not something I can accept… though.” I took a breath. “Perhaps I’m still missing part of the puzzle.”

I sighed looking at the red paper, before turning to all the notes on the page. I didn’t quite understand why through everything ascension was described as becoming an Eternal; I doubted wiping the corruption of my soul in one single impact would suddenly jolt my entire body into becoming better.

That said, not everything was helpless. I had managed to mostly piece together how arcane magic was made. Though…

“I still need to corrupt all my mana and shatter the corruption at once.”

I sighed.

According to Asok in his papers; it wasn’t a hard process, but the problem was it hardly went in-depth about it, all because it was a waste of time in his eyes; ascension would achieve it along with the entire being.

Which meant I hardly understood a thing. I did understand that arcane magic brought corruption with it due to it being connected to the original System; which was corrupted as shit. However, I did not understand why becoming an Eternal would suddenly remove this penalty, and also I did not understand how arcane magic even worked to begin with.

Though, if my mana got corrupted… what happened after?

I wanted to go ahead and do it, but I wasn’t able to really use any of my normal skills with the corrupted portion of my mana. If all of it got corrupted; given I couldn’t use arcane magic either, wouldn’t I be kind of screwed?

The thought itself made me frown, it was something that I didn’t know how to deal with. I turned to look at Sol’as’ Spear, an artifact that was undoubtedly something great and wanted to be greater, but ended up corrupted beyond belief.

Though unlike it, I didn’t want to be something greater, in fact, I wanted none of that. In fact, all I wanted, all I desired was to leave the Forgotten Places and return to Arlas, but unfortunately the opportunity was an incredibly hard thing to grasp⁠—

And at that moment an invisible shockwave passed through the forgotten places.

It was as if a massive change had occurred; the entire world trembled and then there was silence before everything shifted ⁠— screams resounded, the lights flickered, and the corruption on Sol’as’ Spear began to flake as if vanishing.

My eyes widened for a moment.

“What the fuck⁠—”

And another much stronger scream resounded close to the door, my heart skipped from the unnerving noise coming and then, I heard my name.

“Arc!”

Nervousness crept upon me, my hairs standing on end as I decided to open the door only to see… A man convulsing on the ground. He was wearing torn down clothes, his hair was graying and he was entering his late age. A pool of corruption that was quickly disappearing surrounded him.

“What…”

Was that…

“Arc,” he called. “The corruption; if you read the papers, it has been… one of the greatest sources has been shattered, which means⁠—”

“The System has been reset,” I finished for him. “But I thought it was just a theory⁠—”

“It’s a reality.” He groaned. “But, how?”

I paused, and a moment later I remembered the words of the Hero of Arlas.

“I know how to cleanse this area of the corruption. I just need to attack its heart.”

“Did he… shatter the heart?” I paused.

“Is this he, the Hero of Arlas you mentioned? No matter.” Asok grunted. “Congratulations, you’re free of the corruption, bad news is we are in grave danger.”

I immediately turned to my hand, only to see it was… as pristine as ever. As for my mana⁠— it was still corrupted. Then there was also.

“What do you mean grave danger?”

“The corruption.” Asok coughed. “It always seeks to corrupt, which means this entire place; this entire section of the graveyard of worlds, will be consumed once more by corruption; it’s a prime target… and this time, neither of us will survive⁠—”

Then he broke into a coughing fit, as my mind processed what was being said. Then I turned to him.

“Asok, help me learn arcane magic so I can return to my world. That is my only desire.”

He blinked. “Didn’t you hear me? You’ve been cleansed⁠— a part of you needs to belong to the Primordial System in order to be able to leave.”

“My mana is still corrupted,” I interrupted. “If you want you can come with me.”

The man paused, contemplating what I had just said. The gears in his mind turned before he nodded.

“I will help you, but I shall remain here.”

I paused as he shook his head, turning towards the laboratory.

“I shall wait for you in this forsaken place as an Eternal, finally succeeding in my experiments. After all, you will eventually have to return due to the corruption building up within you.” He flashed me a smile. “With that said, we have quite a lot of work to do.”

He rolled up his sleeves.

“The apocalypse awaits us after all.”