A handsome face looked arrogantly to the sky, his body standing still in a confident pose. A sea of male and female fans boiled under him, while he ran his fingers through his golden hair, making the female part of the audience shriek in want.
The males were just an extra, but he did not mind them cheering for him as well. He decided to tolerate them.
Karl had not stopped his movement in his hair and his delicate hand slid down along his neck, until it stopped on his chest. Simultaneously, he looked down from the podium and smiled. Smiling while holding his chest with his delicate hand, he delivered a deadly blow to the hearts of all the females with pointy ears present. He was sure that at least half of them had just fallen for him.
"Ladies to the front, let me see you shaking!" He spoke in his melodious voice and his own pointy ears could hear a thunderous response. All the ladies squeezed closer to the podium, attempting to touch his shining, golden boots with their outstretched hands.
They loved him!
In his magnanimity, he decided to give the girls something to worship and took off his right boot. With a fluent motion of a trained gymnast, he lifted his leg high above his head and slowly took off even his sock while the eyes of the elf teenagers below him bulged in awe. He threw his sock to the audience and a violent battle, a spectacular cat-fight ensued in which every lady craved the piece of clothing he had just shared with them.
For a while, he watched the battling ladies before he decided to start the show.
"I present you with my new song. It is called, My Beautiful Curves." Karl struck another pose and began rocking gently into the rhythm of his new masterpiece. Unfortunately, right when Karl wanted to start singing, the atmosphere of the concert changed dramatically and he heard a voice whispering into his ear, as if there was someone standing right behind him.
"Come, free us! Free yourself!"
He shook his head lightly to focus again on the show, observing one of the teenagers finally securing his sock. She sniffed it and exhaled with wide opened mouth, he could see the long, sharp teeth inside. Her fingers holding the sock melted together while her hands elongated, turning into long tentacles. The skin of her deformed hands turned black and her appendages reached directly for him, lacking just inches to grab his neck.
Still focused on her mouth that was cute no longer, Karl saw her mouthing a few words, the sound reaching him as a soft whisper that chilled him to his core.
"One of us."
* * * *
"Where? What?" Karl's consciousness woke up from his daydreaming, his mind filled with jumbled up thoughts. He had his classic daydream of being an elven superstar, but this time it felt more sinister than usual.
"All that darkness around me has to have negative influence on my psyche. I need to go out for a bit." He thought while looking around, his attention ending up on the largest object around him, his underground Cathedral of Thousand Eyes that he had erected below the ruins of Fort Orlov. Was it possible that staying in the underground space that was only dimly lit by lightstones in company of his minions had caused some mental issues for him? He was suddenly worried about his mental health.
"A little bit of fresh air will make everything right." Karl quickly summoned his most presentable minion, the Priestess of Depravity, and commanded her to attach his body to her arm. This time, he decided to become an armband decoration of her loose robe. "I think the Twinstar Fortress has a big pub in front of it. We will be heading there!"
Despite changing owners, the Twinstar Fortress was running the same routines as before, only the titular owner was different. After Lehaim's death during the tides of chaos, the Water Dragon Sect could not hold its position as one of the great sects of Jinsheng and had been absorbed by the Purple Lotus Sect that owned the neighboring riverside district. It brought some concerns about the Jinsheng's hero being too close to Karl's base for his taste, but the devastating assault had brought too many problems onto the heads of all sects' top management for them to care about anything else. There were enormous casualties, extensive damage to the whole city due to the earthquake, mountains of corpses and the mysterious enemy that had suspiciously retreated right in the moment of his victory.
He felt tension whenever he remembered the giant tentacle crashing again his wall of earth, threatening to level the city in a single blow.
"My sanity is the top priority, but I have to be careful not to stand out too much." The city was still searching for the hidden expert who had shielded the city with his earth manipulation that was on the level of an Immortal. There were rumors of a mysterious Immortal from a far away destroyed city hiding inside Jinsheng and the three rulers sought desperately to expose his secret identity.
"They can try, but it is not easy to expose me due to the nature of my powers." Karl had an urge to cackle, but lacked the capacity to produce any sound as usual.
"Ohohohohoooo!" Hence he witnessed someone doing it for him in an especially dumb manńer.
"What are you doing, priestess?" He asked mentally his current bearer and the Priestess of Depravity responded innocently, while for some reason, moving her pinky back and forth in her mouth
"You thought about doing it, right?" She asked, while the pinky distorted her words. Sometimes, he had an urge to rename her to the Mistress of Double Meanings.
"This is too much, I want . .. " Karl wanted to change the one who carried him, but all other chaos minions reminded him too much of his unpleasant dream. He thought about being carried by a skeleton, but that was not much of an improvement.
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"Master, what are you thinking about? Do you perhaps think about us?" The priestess asked teasingly while running over his black surface with her pinky.
Was that the one?!
Regardless of the classic depraved nature of the priestess, her last words stuck him like a hammer threatening to shatter him into thousand pieces.
" . .. about us." The words kept repeating in his mind, making him remember the last words from his dream.
"One of us." He could almost hear the voice from his dream ringing in his ears. He could no longer tell if it was just his imagination. The words of the priestess that usually carried a hidden meaning of playful depravity were suddenly imbued with something sinister.
"Father!" Suddenly, the Prophet of N'Ri decided to join the debate with one of the two words he had learned and Karl's attention locked onto his hand made up of swirling black tentacles. "Mother!"
In his mind the image of the tentacles overlapped with the giant tentacle he had repelled during the siege and remembered the mind-numbing feeling he experience when he looked at it, as if the tentacle had not been just physical, but reaching deep into his mind with its attack.
"I want you to leave! Everyone leave me alone!" Karl howled inside of his mind, chasing all of his servants away.
"This corruption, this darkness . .. this. . .!" He quickly began to release his summoned minions, canceling all his Buildings one by one. " . . . insanity!"
As the Cathedral of The Thousand Eyes crumbled to the ground, he watched it turn into dust. The pupils in its eyes reappeared as soon as he canceled all his minions, staring at him as if with a will of their own. Observing him all the way until the very moment the structure disappeared.
Just one Building remained, one stinky structure he perceived to be the only one not trying to bring him to the edge of sanity. He had quickly called for the last summon he left that hailed that structure his home, a small creature with green skin.
"Don't! Dangerous! Hide! Run!"
"Take me to the inn, quick!!" Karl gave an urgent mental order. If he could, he would have pressed his hands against his ears to silence the voices in his head. He was no longer sure if it was just his imagination.
Through the gaps of green fingers, he saw the dark walls of his dungeon passing him by, until moonlight blinded him and he was forced to look down into the grass. The filthy fingers of the goblin were leaving stains on his surface and his vision quickly turned into that of an old man with dirty glasses. He welcomed it, he welcomed everything that was able to get his attention from the voices in his head that were urging him, encouraging, scaring, confusing all at the same time.
"Status." Karl whispered, perhaps hoping the numbers would provide some sort of stability, but what he saw was the exact opposite.
Karl Gulden ů§)úěř4g;_/':-,p6
Lev ů§)úěř4g;_/':-,p6 Core
_":!*č[>:generation - 10g;_//s`q
||/?ells- [Di§)úěř4gld]
/ummons- QiXrcRlr
[Experience US]
Karl howled in despair in his mind, as that which was supposed to bring him stability only dealt yet another blow to his already tired mind. He tried to make sense of the status, but it had all been turned into gibberish.
"The System has been corrupted as well, there is no hope." Karl Gulden nearly gave up, when he noticed a small line at the bottom of his status that had not been distorted. He had missed it, because there used to be no such text at the bottom of his status before.
Embrace the Cycle
"What is this? What does it even mean?" He clung to the sole sensible line like to his very life, trying to figure out what the message meant. When he tried to think of its meaning, the voices in his head grew louder, as if trying to prevent him from deciphering what had the mysterious messenger in mind.
"I understand." Karl finally regained clarity and all the voice were pushed into the back of his mind.
There was no other way, he had no body, he was just a piece of rock without his system. The System that was obviously on its last legs.
"Let's embrace the Cycle!" Karl shrieked in his mind, overpowering all the whispering voices, and gave his last order to his lone remaining minion. The green hand that held him gathered momentum, speeding up against a flat rock that had been mostly buried in the ground, the last remaining stone of the foundations of Fort Orlov.
He did not know what the mysterious messenger had in mind, but even death was better than enduring all the ghastly voices for all eternity. It was poetic that he would join his long lost friend in the heart of his crumbled home. Thinking about it, he did not even remember his name anymore. The System was probably right, it was time for the Cycle to make its turn.
He felt his black body fracture and his mind turned blank.
* 9 * . * 3 *
In the Nine Heavens, the Sun rose above the heads of the cultivators and fell again behind the horizon, wind and water eroded rocks and rocks were formed again during processes of mesmerizing complexity. Empires rose and fell with their once glorious Emperors and Immortals all but forgotten in the depths of history. It was a dark history, where the people's connection to their souls became weaker than ever, less and less people able to awaken the powers that could even make them immortal.
Until one day a demon god touched the Nine Heavens with his malevolent finger, causing the Sun to never rise again, turning day into night
In the Nine Hells, the Sun no longer rose to divide existence into night and day. Eternal nights turned ominous without wind or rain to revitalize the land. The blessing of immortality became a curse, eternal whispers from beyond the void turning even the most mighty into madmen. And when all seemed to be completely lost to darkness and insanity. .. .
Lo, there was light again! Light that banished mold, death and maddening whispers of the demon god!
"Huh, is there no clean pair of socks left? I guess it is time to turn on the Heavenly Washing Machine." A celestial voice of the reincarnated Godly Emperor of The Nine Point Three Heavens graced the Nine Heavens once more before he closed his Heavenly Chest of Drawers shut again.
Yet, what was just a moment for the Godly being, was ten thousand years for the Nine Hells that for that time happened to flourish again, turning into the Nine Heavens once more. This time period became known to celestial historians as the First Opening.
However, that is a story for another book, because our hero is obviously dead, shattered by a goblin to escape the clutches of insanity.
* 9 * . * 4 *
Hi, ThousandLeaves here. We arrive at the end again, how nostalgic. Before some people tear me apart, I should provide a brief explanation of the obvious.
Originally, I have not planned for this kind of ending, but I think that it fits as is. Why? Too many times chaos gods have been taken as a joke, their whispers only a flavor text to be inserted and swiftly overcome by the hero. When even the celestial emperor could not survive them without reincarnation, how can a simple hero do it?
Currently, I do not plan to make a sequel and it will stay that way unless there is some kind of intense feedback. I hope you enjoyed the strange ride through the Nine Heavens!