Chapter 41
The Castle Must Stand
There never was a moment of calm.
A faceless bug composed of twelve legs and the bodice of an obese ant bit into Asher's side, ripping off a chunk of flesh before he managed to yank it off and split it in two. There were dozens more latching onto him, but he luckily triggered Dawn Ripper’s third strike, becoming the world for a moment and unloading hell onto everything surrounding him.
As soon as he came out, he dashed out, desperately gasping for breath. Every inch of his body hurt, and his lungs felt as though they were on fire. He’d been fighting for nearly an hour straight, and to his shock, it seemed as though his stamina wasn’t infinite as he assumed.
Furthermore, he hadn’t Leveled-up in a while. A while. He must have killed close to two hundred monsters without the world pausing to offer him just a second of respite. Even now, as soon as he created some twenty yards of distance, the monsters pushed onwards, closing the gap. What hurt more was that he kept giving way to them, losing more and more ground. By now, he was only fifty yards away from the collapsed gates, and if the pressure continued to mount... it wouldn’t be long before he was beaten back toward the castle’s inner courtyard.
But he couldn’t rest.
Having barely managed to catch his breath, he rushed back in and got himself tangled once more--he'd long lost count of how many he had killed altogether, or even of the types of monsters that appeared. They all sort of blended into a single shape or, at most, a few which differentiated them just enough for him to know what they did in broad strokes.
The same was the case with the world--it never ceased raining, and it seemed, somehow, that the ground beneath grew more slippery. But all of it had become just background noise, an insignificant detail in his struggle to survive. There was only a single thought in his mind: fight. Fight. Fight.
Asher entered a strange trance, one both beneficial as well as severely dangerous--but he was none the wiser. For him, there was the silence of mind, the world obfuscated in the fog of pointlessness, and the sharp tip of the blade that obeyed every single one of his commands.
He bobbed and weaved between the monsters, decapitating those who had heads and disemboweling those who did not. He was a swift phantom, all but imperceptible--but, at the end of the day, he was just a human. His body, though willing to burn forward, began to break. At first, it was his legs staying a touch longer in place than he wanted; then it was his eyes’ field of vision narrowing just enough to create more severe blind spots. Soon, though, it was his shoulders refusing to rotate back and let him strike overhead.
Abruptly retreating, he took account of everything, awoken by pain from his trance--there were mounds of corpses, some whole and some in bits, strewn about in front of him, rain washing away the blood and pooling it into the dirt. But it was as though the number of monsters didn’t decrease at all--there were still hundreds hounding forward, their maws gaped, drooling. It was different, exceedingly so, from the Stage where he killed ten thousand monsters. He didn’t think it was just the fact that he wasn’t a melee fighter back then--he was more than certain it was the Stage itself. He’d already noticed it slightly in the desert, that he was growing tired. However, because the Stage lasted relatively short and he didn't have to exert himself all that much, he didn't experience the full breadth of it. Today, however, he did.
He was tired. So, so, so tired. Every breath was seemingly racing against each other, and his lungs were burning--and yet, he was cold elsewhere. His fingers were shaking, his lips were likely pale and quivering. And his feet have been soaked wet from the start.
And though he wanted to, he could no longer lift the sword. His fingers held steadily to the handle, seemingly having become one with it, but the rest of his arm simply couldn’t move.
He smiled bitterly. From the onset, this was an impossible task--made only more so deadly by Qyne's interference. In an already devious balance of success, where a singular mistake would have become his undoing, her entanglement was like a seal that jailed his life.
Deep down in his heart, he knew that he’d die here--he was no hero, far from it. Not just by his virtue, but by his willpower. He’d given up countless times before, in his life. In fact, it was a miracle he persisted for as long as he did given his track record.
"... you tired?" Havar appeared by his side, grasping his shoulder. Holy light emerged from the man's fingertips and gently streamed into Asher's body. The chill that had begun to take ahold of him was wholly dispersed, as though never there, and a warm, cradling feeling entrenched itself within his depths. Suddenly, he found it a bit easier to stand up straight, and could even move his stiff joints once again.
“Dying,” Asher replied with a faint chuckle. The monsters were coming, some twenty-five yards of distance between them.
“Then rest,” the bald man said, taking out the sword from its scabbard. “Loe and I expected a journeyman, a buffoon who would have doomed us. We have already made peace with this being our last stand, as did those boys behind me. But you... you little shithead, you gave us hope,” his voice cracked slightly. “The castle must stand. Nothing else matters. But the castle... the castle must stand. Rest, now, and use us. Use all of us. Let our wretched prisons of flesh become the walls of your spring, and when we are all gone... undo the hell cast upon these borders.”
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Asher remained rooted for a moment longer before two sets of arms grabbed him from the back and dragged him into the castle grounds. He caught a glimpse of the golden light beaming out of a figure that seemed holy and sacrosanct, thrashing against the brutal wave of death.
Soon enough, he was in the keep, away from the rain, in the side room where he had a brief chat with Havar and Loe. Even in here, he could hear it--the occasional gasp of thunder, the roars of monsters, and the ever-fading whimpers of those who've made peace with death.
Were they real? Was all this suffering truly just a backdrop for his own? Or, perhaps, were all the people in here prisoners of a higher power who saw it fit to send them through a mental grinder? The answers... eluded him.
Eyelids heavy, he struggled to keep himself awake. If he fell asleep, that would be it. He would die and forfeit the point of his struggle until now.
One breath in, one breath out.
Asher’s first instinct, when he was offered a choice as to what to do with Qyne should he live, was to immediately execute her. He hated her profoundly, even if the root of that hatred was, on some level, pettiness. But, for better or for worse, she did save him once. It hardly excused this ringer she ground him through, but it was something, at the very least.
It did not mean he could forgive her--which only left the choice of enslavement. But, deep in his bones, he knew that would be wishful thinking. Chances were that the entire choice was just a charade--another attempt to get a rise out of him and then pull the rug under him. The best he could hope for was some extra Souls and, should he be lucky, a different fairy to be his ‘guide’.
After all, she wasn’t just any other fairy--she was a Princess. And though he couldn’t fathom just what that meant and how much it mattered, it wasn’t nothing, at the very least.
One breath in, one breath out.
He forced himself to stand. Breathing to easier, legs recovered some of their mobility, and he could swing the sword with some ease once again. Step by step, he left the keep and entered the castle grounds. Even in the dark and from quite some far away, he saw it--the horror.
There were bodies flung everywhere, some splattered against the keep’s walls, even, and most lying about in pieces along the dreary courtyard. The lighting flashed across the sky like a divine serpent, illuminating the world surrendered to the dark, and giving light to the death lain before him. Monsters and people lay intermingled in the grace of infinity.
Asher stepped forward and counted them, one by one. He could recognize a few, those that weren’t entirely disfigured, and most had expressions of horror and unwillingness plastered across their faces. He understood them--the young oft died not because of their own will, but in the name of something the old charged the world with.
He stepped out of the castle grounds, and was met with even a grander spectacle of death--there were entire walls constructed of monsters' bodies. Asher was shocked--in his mind, no more than five minutes had passed but, evidently... it had been much, much longer.
Some fifty yards away, he spotted Havar. The armor was stripped in chunks, the body bisected with a hundred cuts, head lain clean to the side, cut off in a single slash. Around him, hundreds of monsters' corpses were strewn, violently dismembered, and purged.
Among the apocalypse, a silhouette emerged. The bereaved, blood-misted fog parted, as did even the rain, giving way to a figure that walked with unprecedented grace. She was around six feet tall, decked out in gem-suffused silver armor, motifs of asymmetry tapered across the glistening surface. A red skirt dangled from her belt and backward, adjacent to the violently fluttering cape.
She was unhemled, sporting long hair dyed in the color of the moon and a pair of silver eyes that seemed aglow. There was a long, thick scar running across from her right eye and downward, chipping part of her upper lip. Just like Asher, she wielded a relatively thin and short sword, though hers was demonically chiseled, with blood-tangled tentacles writhing around the guard and slithering across the blade's chinked surface.
"You," she spoke, her voice soft and wholly human. But it was still strange--there were a good hundred yards of distance between them, and yet her voice easily reached him even through the rain and thunder. "Were the one they were protecting?" Where the fuck is the boss screen? Asher frowned. Wait, is she not the boss? “I have severed the link,” she said suddenly. “I don’t mind participating in their games here and there, but I found it best we had some privacy for a little while.”
“...” Asher’s frown deepened.
“My name is Alice--or, rather, it was. When I walked among them. Now I roam the wilds nameless. What is yours?”
“... Asher,” he replied softly, yet the woman seemed to have heard him.
“You’re a human, Asher.”
“...”
“Just like me.”
“...”
“Which is why I find it strange,” she added, suddenly appearing next to Havar’s head and picking it up. “Why the mass of ante-men fought so valiantly, even under the dreaded fear of death, to shield you?”
“...”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Asher replied honestly. “Maybe my good looks?” strangely, she smiled. It was quite a natural smile, too, and were it not for the gnarly scar--no, even with it, it was a rather sweet smile, if not beautiful.
“This is their bout of cruelty for my betrayal, Asher,” she said. “They want of me to kill my own kin, so they may laugh within their hallowed halls. And, sadly, I oft must. Being a human means little on the whole; monsters embark from the shores of all races equally. Though, my sin remains nonetheless.”
“...” Asher largely felt like a wall that she used to bounce some soul-searching off of, so he remained silent, penning the words to his mind as they held quite a few clues.
“I shan’t kill you today,” she said. “Though I am blind to the reasons, these men did not see the human in you, but a warrior.”
“Did--were you part of this? Whatever I am a part of?” Asher asked hastily as he realized she was about to leave.
"A long time ago, indeed," she nodded faintly. "But I scarcely doubt my circumstances will help your own. I was simply tossed in a jungle with a thousand other humans and told to emerge a victor."
“... by killing everyone else?”
"By being the last to survive," she said. "But to claim my hands are stainless would be folly. Good luck, Asher. Should fate allow it, we shall meet again. They may query what transpired--do not tell them the truth. Simply say I spared you on the account that you were a human and, for today, I felt strangely melancholic. Farewell."
“Wai--” Asher could barely put a word out between his lips before she vanished, like a ghost dissipating back into the whorl of the world. He stood briefly comatose and mindless before waking up and looking around. Everyone save for him was dead. Every man and every monster. Thousands. He was the sole survivor and he didn’t even have to fight the boss. It felt... bitter, incomplete, as though these men died for nothing in the end.
No, he held the line--even if it wasn't through a fight. That's what he was asked to do--the castle must stand. The castle must stand. And, it stood. And... it stood...