Chapter 336
Roar of a King (XVII)
Cain swiftly noticed that something was wrong; it wasn’t the behemoth that, though battered, shook it off and prepared to retaliate. It wasn’t the fact that the ocean around the behemoth got nigh-vaporized. It wasn’t even that he barely stayed conscious due to the excessive Mana expenditure within such a short time. It wasn’t the scale of the attack, matched only by the one that got him served a big nerf hammer by the Tower. It was the fact that... nothing was happening on their side of things.
Looking down, he saw everyone, Quinn, Lear, and the twins included, staring back up at him with slacked jaws and widened eyes and no intention of facing forward and fighting the enemy. Oh, a step too much? He mused, though situation itself wasn’t all that amusing, especially considering that the behemoth was preparing to attack.
“Oi, I’m not the boss! That guy is! The fuck are you folk doin’?” his roaring voice finally seemed to awake others to the reality that, despite the grandstanding spectacle of what they’d seen, the fight was nowhere near over. If was only just the beginning.
Shocked back to reality, a flurry of spells was quickly directed toward the behemoth. However, its many eyes never shifted away from their primary target: Cain. If there were a threat window depicting aggro present, all others likely wouldn’t come up halfway to his threat combined.
Nonetheless, it would diminish over time as Cain planned on focusing entirely on defending himself for the foreseeable future. Not even because he wanted to, but judging from the sheer build up of Mana on the other end, because he had to.
In the midst of the flurry of the attacks, the behemoth’s many tentacles suddenly sprung into action, diving toward the sky where Cain resided. Dozens turned into hundreds and he was forced to pour endless lakes of Mana into fabricating shields and barriers around himself. When that faltered, he began blinking about relentlessly, dodging a barrage. In the end, when cornered, he activated all his defensives and took the remaining twenty or so tentacles head on.
With each hit, he instinctively wanted to flash back to dissipate some of the momentum, but he stood his ground. Just like with his opener, a fight like this can only be carried by a momentum. If others saw him falter and fall, their morale could drop, and in a long-lasting fight, that was effectively a death sentence. As such, he took the beating without giving in an inch, even internalizing the grunts of pain and using Mana to suffocate the sounds of his bones creaking.
Luckily, an endless shower of heals fell right over him immediately after, topping him back up. Still, it wasn’t a lovely experience, yet he knew he’d have to go through it many, many times before the boss was defeated.
Lumbering forward, he swallowed a mouthful of creeping blood and rushed to the frontline once again, tossing out a few dazzling, though low-powered attacks. He’d already gone through his Mana pool nearly fifteen times over, and that actually hurt him more than the boss’ attacks. He couldn’t show it, however. He was the wings of a wobbly beast and if he faltered, the beast would crash.
The sight itself was spectacular--hundreds, thousands of flashes of light, ranging from the ordinary-looking flame to mate-metallic silver of the surging bladelight, the whole of the world appeared alighted with the cosmic range of colors. Explosions echoed constantly, but the giant didn’t stumble. It didn’t budge, its many eyes still exclusively focused on the tiny mote in the sky.
“You’ve made my job a million times harder,” Quinn’s voice resonated inside Cain’s mind during a moment of respite while the giant was charging another attack. “Trying to take aggro after that? Fuck. I may as well flip over the sky!”
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“Good luck,” he responded, lacking the mental energy to focus too much as he had to scrape by during the next set of attacks with minimal cooldowns.
Unlike the last time, the giant didn’t unleash a torrent of tentacles toward him. Instead, its many eyes flashed in ruby red, indicating an entirely new attack that he’d never seen before. Bracing himself, for the first time since they encountered it, the behemoth stepped forward.
Amidst the tentacles, a hand stretched out--it was eerily human, long and lanky and deathly white in hue. At the fingertip, a mote of white light suddenly exploded. It was so quick and abrupt that even Cain was unable to react. By the time he came to, he realized something was off--he was cut off from the rest of the world.
Though he could see them still, down below, fighting the many-eyed and many-tentacled behemoth, he couldn’t reach out or communicate with anyone. Facing forward, he saw that the ‘floor’ he was standing on was cast out of pure starlight, and that on the other end stood a topless man holding a sapphire orb in his right hand.
The man’s face appeared old and wrinkled, both his eyes closed, nose crooked and long, lips thin and sickly blue. White, unbridled hair ran amok, reaching the man’s waist--which was all that more impressive considering the man looked to be six-five at the very least. He wore tattered, brown pants and was barefoot.
Cain wasn’t as shocked, though. This had happened, by now, quite a few times--where he and the rest of the raid were forcibly separated, and while the raid got to have the fun fight against a giant thing, he got to fight a humanoid opponent that pushed him to his limits. What worried him, though, was that he had no knowledge of what the man could do. There was quite literally nothing visually striking about the man that could speak of his class, and even the orb that he was holding could just be a random heirloom rather than a proper weapon for use.
The two stood in silence for a long while, with the man ‘observing’ Cain with the closed eyes, while the latter occasionally glanced down. Though there appeared to be some temporary confusion, from the looks of it, they could see him too, which helped them refocus on fighting the giant.
“Lonely are the stars that live to see the end of the universe,” the man suddenly spoke on a soft and melodic tone. “And yet some things are lonelier still.”
“... okay?”
“Tales are told of times before,” the man continued, seemingly ignorant of Cain’s confusion. “And whispers run like rivers. Ages pass and we name them. Eons go and we mythologize them. But at the end of the road, where the light and darkness converge into one, a question begets itself: where did it all begin?”
“...”
“Does the truth rest within the hands of the Creator? Or were he simply the first to witness it all? Or is the truth but a cosmic lie, meant to deceive the curious eyes? We wonder as we wander.”
“...” Cain continued to stare, somewhat shocked himself, as he couldn’t quite grasp what the man’s point was. And thus, he asked. “What are you talking about?”
“A Great War approaches, seedling of Chaos,” the man said. “A war for truth. A war for peace. A war for glory. A war for honor. And a war for death. A war ages in the making. You shall be the sword to carve out the stage, but whether you stand on that stage... is unknown.”
“...” Cain’s throat grew dry and his lips began to quiver slightly.
“Heed the Three Truths, seedling of Chaos--for they may serve you in life before death.
First--the seedling of Honor and Order now lumbers old and wane; he serves in life his deathly sentence, marred by guilt and shame, for he cannot die.
Second--there is but one Throne and but one Crown, but the Kings are endless. And yet, in pursuit of that Throne and that Crown, all those who reached the heights... rejected them.
Third--once the veil comes undone, the whole of cosmos shall know... but a choice will be there--to forget... or to die. All those before chose to die. For in death they are not prisoners of Silver. But a change is needed, for a change is spurred; the Seedling always seeks to rejuvenate what is broken, and spring into new existence the kindling that forever burns. But each time the tree that grows from within the good and noble cause is corrupt and dark and full of loathing.
Let those Three Truths guide you, seedling of Chaos. Shall your life persist beyond the havoc of extermination, and shall you beset the pearled gates, and face the eyes which wept at the whole... there shall be a choice to make. To forget... or to die.
Now, seedling of Chaos, it is time for your test. We beseech you, seedling of Chaos--consume the Seed, or you shall die. We risk truths seeping, but risk them we must. You must understand what it means to become Cosmic. And thusly we shall war, seedling of Chaos.”