"Ghak!" He spat blood out violently as I kept crushing the bastard's organs flat, "What's the matter? R-Ran outta one-liners...?"

"Just die." I uttered, "What was the end goal of all this?"

The old man stopped resisting, opening his Eyes wide in shock as he stared back in surprise. Guess he realized I don't plan on letting this go on for much longer.

"Hey, Lem..." He asked earnestly, "If Nelly died right here and now, how would you feel?"

"That won't happen." I shook my head, "As long as I'm alive, she's alive. End of story."

"You'd do anything in your power to bring her back, no?" He asked again.

"...Hypothetically speaking, in some fucked up reality where she did die before me..." I thought about it, "I'd hold her dearly."

"And if her body was so mutilated that you wouldn't even have anything to hold?"

"I'd track down the one who did it." I grit my teeth just imagining it, "And leave them in a state ten times worse than how they did Nelly."

"Cheh." He let out a chuckle.

"Is that funny to you?" I applied pressure with my foot to shut him up.

"Unf! Nah, I'm not laughing at you." He kept smiling as he explained, "I asked her the same question about you, and she said the complete opposite. Absolutely no thirst for revenge, she just immediately skipped to mourning you and trying her best to accept it. Can you believe it, women just don't see the same appeal as we do."

"Bastard...!" I stomped and stomped, "What's your point with this!?"

"Sigh, no point. Just thought you should know some things." His chest deflated calmly, "For you it's a hypothetical, but I actually lost my best friends back then. The day I became immortal."

"What...?"

"Wanna know how long that thirst for revenge lasted?" He chuckled, "Years. Yep, you heard that right, just a couple of years. Not even decades."

"Guess you must've mellowed out over time." I figured.

"I just realized it's a destructive path to go down, that's all." The old man looked down, "Instead, I set my sights on trying to undo. Undoing a destructive act is constructive, right? From then on, I focused solely on trying to revive my friends."

"Revival isn't r-"

I... No, saying that right now makes no sense. In fact, from the conversation they had before, it seems the old man knew of Nelly's dad's case. Yeah, saying something like "Revival isn't real" would just be naive.

"Yeah, I getcha'. If I wasn't immortal, I probably would've thought the same as you and just tried my best to accept it." He agreed, surprisingly, "In a way, I'd say you kids are way more mature than a grouchy old man like me."

"Nah, if I was in your shoes, and I knew I'd have to live an endless life without Nelly, I'd at least try my hand at reviving her." I shrugged.

"So you do get it? In that case, picture this:" He continued, this time with a bit more hope in his voice, "800 years of waiting, and you finally succeed. You see her standing there in front of you, you hear her voice again. It's been so long..."

What is this picturesque sequence he's making me imagine? Is this his story? So that's what's going on, he must've used those Books Schocco told me about to do this. But then, if he succeeded, then why...?

"You succeed, only for the very bastard that killed her all those years ago to suddenly show up and try to murder her all over again." He clenched his teeth until they made an ear-piercing high pitched screech, "Wanna know the worst part? The bastard that killed her is a God, so even then, there's nothing you can do about it. Don't you think that's cruel? Despite everything, you're powerless against it."

"A God did this to you?" I almost started raising my foot off his chest, but knew better than to give him a chance to recover, "Which one?"

"A smart one. A caring one." He listed off, "One that was not very well known, even during his own time. The God whose followers all got wiped out by my accident."

So basically, you're saying you're not innocent after all. Damn, he got me invested in his damned sob story just to ruin it at the end. Once a bad guy, always a bad guy, I guess. He was never a victim, he's just a bad person that got his due punishment. Tch, I'm wasting my time here.

"I fail to see what this has anything to do with you killing Meil." I glanced over at the body decaying just next to him, the pool of blood slowly making its way over to even the old man's head as they both laid on the grass mere meters apart, "He doesn't have anything to do with this, so why?"

"Keh!" He choked on his own blood as he burst out laughing, "Chehahahahaha! PHAHAHAHAHAHAH! Doesn't have anything to do with it, eh?"

"Am I wrong?"

"You're certainly not right." He got serious again, "Well, I guess you're also not wrong. "Meil" has nothing to do with it."

"So you admit it." He got blurry in my Eyes as tears started to fog my vision, "You killed Meil for no reason, no reason at all. Just a monster that killed a bunch of people, got a few of your own friends killed in retaliation, and killed some more to make up for it. What about this is constructive, goddammit!?!"

"My friend is back." He smiled, "And he's waiting for me to come help him. Once I do, we can revive our other friend. After that, I don't care what happens. I just wanna see both of their faces at least once more."

"...You're a disgusting, irredeemable, worthless piece of shit bastard." I shook my head, "And the day you see those two faces you killed oh so many people for is yet to come. Maybe after I die, maybe after my grandkids die, but mark my words—I know you're immortal, so I'll sicc my entire bloodline on you from hereon to make sure you don't get your happy ending."

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Stomping, stomping, and smashing him into the ground as much as I could, I didn't stop even as the girls behind us desperately fought against the Voices to break through and save him. Why, though? Where's the rush, it's not like he's gonna die from this.

"No, elder!" Shillianna screamed.

"Dammit, what the hell is this wind!?" Sheila too got angry over it constantly pushing them back, "Elder, hang on! We're getting there soon!"

What will they get from doing that? In the first place, is it really important to take care of a guy who did nothing for you personally? Of course, the story goes that Olya saved their ancestors or whatever, but that doesn't mean they should feel indebted to him. Ugh, this guy's throwing up his guts... All this, and he still won't die.

"...Wait." I got a nasty idea, "You're immortal, right? Is there even a way you could ever die?"

"I'm a World Wonder, to be precise." He immediately shot down the possibility, "In other words, "indestructible" is more along the lines of what I am. Absolutely nothing you do will make me not regenerate eventually."

"So what you're saying is:" I grinned, "I can hurt you, cut you up, stab you, dismember or otherwise mutilate you all I want, and you'll just keep regenerating so that I can do it all over again?"

"Elder!" The girls eventually broke through, "Don't touch him-!"

"Fall." I turned back at them, "Remain where you are, this Order is Absolute."

In spite of their best efforts, the girls did indeed fall to the ground, as if magnetized to the very grass they previously stood on. The fact they fell in such a way that they could only look on as their dear elder was getting tortured only made things better. I grabbed the cane lodged deep into the ground nearby, yanked it out, and gouged the old man's Eyes out. One Eye, two Eyes, and when there were no Eyes left, I tore his tongue out. Once his face was gone, I moved onto plucking his heart out. Scarily enough, the old man didn't so much as make a sound. No screams of pain and agony, no crying nor yelling for me to stop, just calmly staring at me with an indifferent smile of acceptance.

"Creepy." I scowled, tossing the cane away, "Alright, guess that's it for round one."

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Shillianna called me out, "Getting revenge is one thing, but you're just torturing him for the hell of it!"

"Oh zip it. Here, use these as a tally counter." I kicked the gouged Eyeballs in front of her face, "I can't kill his body, but his mind is a different story. Making him endure enough torture would render him completely unable to think after enough deaths."

Soon enough, his body recovered anew. He still wasn't screaming, or even talking for that matter. I assume he must be thinking up ways to get out of the situation, but since I'd blind him the moment he would revive, he couldn't really do much of anything after that. He's just laying there, waiting for his chance, meanwhile I'm not giving it to him. After a while though, I did feel myself growing fatigued.

"Right, how many are we on now?" I turned to the girls.

"...146." The girls begrudgingly kept track of the number of Eyes I gouged out.

"Alright, just four more and we'll reach another milestone." I smiled back, "Ack, my head."

"Finally got sick of yourself?" Sheila scowled.

"It gets tough Focusing on Commanding you two to lay there while I keep killing this guy. Plus it's pretty boring." I kicked the dead body, "It takes a good minute for him to revive, so until then I just kinda have to sit there."

"Then let me make things a bit more fun for you." The old man replied, moving his arm to grab my leg and pull me down in spite of being dead.

"Crap, how-!?"

"Iro Combos. Never heard of them?" His dry voice chuckled, "Sometimes a person Converts to two different Eye colors. Means they can utilize both Iro Abilities respectively, albeit in a smaller scale, but also combine them into a secret third Ability."

"Let me gogh!" I tried squirming away as the corpse choked me out.

"In my case, I got a Rainbow Iro." He continued talking like nothing serious was happening, "Means I got every Iro, and that gives me access to every possible combination."

"Elder!" The girls finally got up once my Focus waned enough, "Keep going!"

"Can't... breathe..." I felt my Eyes roll up into my head.

"Now take the Purple Iro's Ability to talk to the dead, and the Yellow Iro's Ability to Command, and you get me Commanding my dead body to move without any input, heheh!"

No way, such an asspull reason...! Crap, I can't Command the girls to stay back. They're already here. It's back to a 3v1, not at all favorable. Can't even kick the old man away since the fatigue and wounds are catching up to me finally. I can't die here yet, I already faked my death once! Right, if I just...! If I just...

"N-Cha!" The old man's voice let out a victorious exhale as he finally tossed my limp body off of him, "And stay down!"

Not dead, but my consciousness is fading. Soon, I'm gonna fall unconscious from lack of oxygen, and who knows if I'll be alive by the time I wake up then. The girls are using this chance to get a few kicks in, but I couldn't care less. Not like I haven't already lost, anyways. I knew it, I knew it but I didn't wanna believe it—The old man is simply unbeatable.