I blinked. “Eh?”
His form flickered, and he disappeared. Unease knotted my stomach. What the heck is he doing?
“Zoran!” Freya threw her arms around me.
And as glad as I was to see her, there was much more that I had to do.
I glanced around the region. “You need to stay safe.”
The elf looked perplexed, but I didn’t take the time to explain.
I didn’t have the time.
A strong mental pressure broke into my mind. Something is going on. I shot forward, weaving through the rubble.
The Time Lord stood at the edge of the dark pit, only now, the circular edge had a line of crystals bordering it. He placed the last one down, and snapped his fingers. The green light within the crystals intensified, and suddenly flames of fire surged from every spot with a crystal. A beam of golden light rose from the pit and surged into the air. It hit the sky, and morphed into a swirling form of golden clouds.
The mental pressure inside my mind increased. Something terrible was going on. I could feel it.
And then I saw it.
Those weren’t just clouds. They were a portal.
I shot to Horace, desperation driving my broken frame. I threw my fist at his form, but he simply held his hand out, stopping my blow with his palm. A massive shockwave sounded from the impact point, but not a single scratch appeared on the Time Lord.
“I will take the Phantom Heart back from you.” He tossed my hand up and smashed into me with his fist. I went flying back, through the final tower standing, and slid over the ground.
“Diablo!” the Death Lord ran up to me.
I pointed at the sky, my hand shaking terribly. “We need to stop it,” I croaked.
“How?”
Footsteps approached. Freya and Irmeia ran up to us, with worried looks on their face.
“I don’t know how to stop him,” I said. “He’s too strong. We don’t have any way to take him down. And if he gets to do what he wants to, we might as well say goodbye.”
Everyone was silent.
“Diablo.” Nyx’s voice tensed.
What?
“I’m…hearing voices.”
Huh? What do you mean?
“The Phantom heart is…speaking to me.”
My eyes widened. What?
“It says there is a part of your Phantom Heart that you have yet to tap into.”
I froze. Something else?
“The Phantom Heart is key to using your ultimate spell.”
My heartbeat rose. What do I do to activate it?
The spirit spoke. His words flowed through me. And at the very end. My eyes turned bloodshot. I clutched the sand sticking to my palms, my hands trembling.
“No,” I sat up. “It can’t be.”
“Zoran?” Irmeia leaned in.
I looked at her, and then I looked down. I stood up. Pain broke into my legs, but I bore with it. Heat descended down from the swirl of clouds as great power leaked out of it. This process was almost complete. Horace was going to strike me down, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Unless…
“Diablo, what happened?” the Death Lord asked.
“There’s one way I could stop all this.”
Everyone’s face lit up. “What is it?” Freya asked.
I looked at her, and then turned my gaze down to the ground. The words stuck in my throat, but I coughed them up. “To use the heart, you must be prepared to lose another.”
“Eh?”
“I need to kill the person I love.”
A thundering silence shook the air. Heartbeats rose, with the sounds of gentle thumping resonating through the void of sound that was left behind.
“Could you just kill an Eternal? And then have them resurrect?”
I shook my head. “Anyone I kill, stays dead. They’re…absorbed”
Everyone stopped talking, and the silence returned for a few seconds.
“So, one of us has to die.” Freya’s eyes darted around.
“And if we don’t, this man will resurrect a race that could wreck havoc over the lands,” Irmeia said.
“I’ll do it.” Freya stepped forward.
I looked to Irmeia and the Death Lord and they both nodded at me as well.
I didn’t know whether to feel broken or relieved, and so I felt both. So, I have to kill someone.
"It won’t be your first time.”
Kill someone you love, and save these lands.
“Can you do it?”
I smiled. Of course, I can. But that thing you told me about saving these lands was a lie, wasn’t it?
Nyx stayed silent for a moment. “You heard something you weren’t supposed to.”
The Phantom Heart was connected to those hundred points of power, huh? I stared up at the golden sky. So, either Horace destroys these lands, or…
“Yeah…”
I hate my choices.
Freya had tears in her eyes now. I stepped towards the elf. Her body shook, but her hands were still clenched into fists. She looked me right in the eye. “I’m ready.”
Pangs of guilt pierced my chest. I looked to the Death Lord. “Take care of her for me.”
The elf’s eyes widened. “What?”
I stepped back from her, and snapped my fingers. Darkness rushed from the ground, and rose around Freya and the Death Lord in a small, gentle twister.
“Zoran!” Freya’s voice cracked. “What are you doing?!”
“Goodbye, Freya,” I smiled. And then they disappeared.
I stepped up to Irmeia. The Eternal looked right at me, her lips quivering, but not a single tear dropped from her eye. I touched her face, and a trickle of sadness slide down my heart.
“Here we are,” she whispered.
“I’m…” I looked at her. “I love you, Irmeia.”
A small smile curled onto her face. “Would it make it any better if I didn’t say anything in return?”
My eyes met hers. “It would.”
“Don’t feel bad about it, Zoran. I betrayed you. You kill me.” She forced a chuckle “I guess we can call it even.”
“Yeah,” I smiled. “I guess we can.”
“Goodbye, Eternal.”
I clenched my fingers. “Goodbye.”
“I love you.”
I pulled back and smashed my fist into her chest. My arm went right through her heart, and she collapsed in an instant. Darkness swirled on the ground around me, and pain struck my body, like lava was pouring into my bones. I pulled my arm out of the Eternal, and she fell to the floor, with her eyes frozen open. Dead.
A piercing pain struck my head and I clutched the sides, yelling out in pain. My body went numb, and I collapsed to my knees. Power surged from the ground, rising up through my limbs and to my chest. A crystal faded in before me—my Phantom Heart—only now the purple lines glowed much brighter than before.
Before I could even tell what was going on the heart shot into my chest, tearing through armor and sinking into flesh. I gasped, as massive amounts of pain bursting through me. The heat from the golden clouds turned hotter. The attack was coming. Horace was going to get what he wanted.
“You did well, Diablo,” Nyx said.
My hand lifted itself up into the air. “PHANTOM HELL!” My voice boomed through the skies.
The entire enclosure rumbled, with tremors filling its surface. In an instant the ground cracked and a massive blast of purple rose into the sky. The golden clouds turned black and multiplied. The entire space darkened, swirling just as it had before, but only in darkness instead of gold.
I stood inside the blast of purple energy. Power still surged out of me, and I fueled my rage into the attack.
Explosions sounded all around, and heat burst through the skies. A scream echoed from beside me, and I turned. The Time Lord’s immobile form laid on the surface beneath me, and glowed with a dark aura. His sounds of anguish echoed through the air as he slowly dissolved away, as his body parts van
ished to nothing.
“You got what you deserved,” I whispered.
His final scream tore the skies, and he disappeared for good. A sphere of purple energy expanded from where he had been, and the world around me rumbled with a greater intensity.
The ground fell apart, with the surface crumbling and revealing the red-hot magma underneath. I hovered in the air, with pulses of energy surging out of me every second. I watched as Irmeia’s body fell with the surface, dropping down to the magma, and disappearing underneath.
Pain tore through my chest. Why? Why did this happen to me? Why couldn’t it have been something else. Every time I had given something up. Every time I had lost something dear to me. Heat raged into my bones, with pure anger coursing through my body.
Why was I the only one who had to sacrifice?
“AHHHHHH!” I yelled out, and the roar echoed into the skies.
The energy within me intensified, and howls rose from the ground. Another massive blast of purple surged out of me, expanding away at Mach pace.
Both purple beams cut away, and I gasped, still hovering in the air. Flames of darkness spread across the lands, burning over the ground that still remained. I will myself to rise high into the air, and I did.
I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it—this wasn’t the only purple blast that had occurred. Multiple points across the lands had been activated, and fire and fury surged out from each of them, like massive bombs that had been set off at once.
Either Horace destroys the lands, or I do.
I hated the choice I made.
But it was the only one I could have.
DING!
Congratulations! You have destroyed:
The Kingdom of Aingard!
Congratulations! You have destroyed:
The Dargonian Empire!
Congratulations! You have destroyed:
Ikarius Village!
Congratulations! You have destroyed:
The Hexel Ruins!
I looked at the screens.
I should feel pain right now, shouldn’t I?
Yet I didn’t. I was numb. My heart might have been beating faster. I couldn’t tell. Every emotion seemed far away from me now, like it was something I should know how to feel, yet somehow didn’t. The visions around me faded in and out, like a dream that I was re-watching, but could never remember.
Everything was gone. The buildings, the people, the lands. All of them. I had ripped apart the very landscapes before me. I had sculpted the lands, changed it to my visions. The Phantom in me had finally broken into the world.
And now hell had risen up to the living.
***
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The dark sands crunched beneath my feet.
I looked towards the horizon. A large flame of darkness rose to the sky, sending streams of smoke up alongside it. The clouds had all darkened, and the winds had frozen up. I no longer felt the breath of nature against my existence.
It had all been made void now.
I’d spent days looking at my Ga’em screens over and over. I’d destroyed the Empire. I’d destroyed the Kingdom. All with that one move.
Did I know that was what would happen?
Of course, I did.
But it was the only way I could have taken out Horace.
The Time Lord’s presence had completely disappeared from the lands. I went searching for him for a whole week, trying to use that to get myself away from all of this. I hadn’t found him, and in return I’d seen a glimpse of the other parts of the lands I had destroyed.
The fires hadn’t stopped anywhere. It’d been two weeks now and they were only getting stronger. Every notification I got was a shock. I’d gotten hundreds of prompts, for each group of people I’d ended up killing. I didn’t want to add the numbers up.
I knew it wasn’t pretty.
It wasn’t supposed to be.
I turned around, catching a glimpse at the smaller fire on the horizon, on the other side. Ikarius. My fame had gone down a bit after that, but not by much. Sure, I’d destroyed the village, but the people were all safe. I’d teleported them all—along with Freya and the Death Lord—to the eastern edge of the Hexel ruins, the only place I knew that was safe from my attack.
I hadn’t met them yet, of course.
How could I?
From the start of my rebirth in this world, I had been told one thing. I was a man who had destroyed the world without a hint of hesitation. I’d vehemently denied that all this while. But I couldn’t do that anymore.
I’d become someone I said I wasn’t. Someone I promised I wasn’t.
Sure, I hadn’t destroyed the world yet, but this wasn’t far from it. And I most certainly hadn’t hesitated when before doing it.
I’d spent hours questioning why I hadn’t hesitated. But my sanity, at least what was remaining of it, made me stop. Defeating Horace had been the only priority of mine back then, and that was what made, and justified, my decisions.
I looked up to the sky, hoping to see the stars. I never did though. From the day I attacked these lands, there was nothing but dark clouds and darker smoke filling the place. It was like a reminder of what I had done.
And the story about Nyx didn’t make me feel any better.
“Hey. I told you already. I’m not an Ancient.”
I know, but my Phantom Heart communicated with you. That’s…odd.
“The Phantom Heart also let you destroy an Empire, a Kingdom, and two different civilizations as well. I would say that’s odd too.”
I smiled. I think we both have different definitions of the word odd.
Either way, this was one of the hundreds of mini-mysteries that I had compiled over my time in the world, all of which I wasn’t going to look into now. With the mental state I was in right now, being curious about things wasn’t really something I wanted to do.
And I was sure it’d stay that way for a long, long time.
“I thought I’d find you here.”
I grabbed Dawnbreaker, and swerved around.
And elf stood there, her long black hair hanging still in the frozen air. My heart tightened, and I managed to smile, even though I didn’t want to.
“Freya,” My voice was weak, “how did you…”
“You would not believe how long it took me to find you,” she said. “Also, it’s hard since my teleportation skill only works once every two days.”
“No one was asking you to find me.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She waved her hand. “We’re all worried about you, you know?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
The elf looked down at the ground.
“That’s what I thought,” I smiled. “How is everyone?”
“Your Knights and the Death Lord have moved on, searching for other lands to go live in.”
“Expected,” I said. “Ijyela and Krof?”
“It’s probably better you don’t meet with them for a while. Nazu and Viola either.”
“And it is fine if I meet Freya?”
She fidgeted. “Mostly.”
“I see.” I turned around, looking at the dark flames of the burning Kingdom in the distance.
“No one gets it, Zoran.” She stood beside me. “No one gets why you did it.”
I smiled. “I’ll let you know when I find out.”
She sighed. “Still joking as always.”
“Can’t help it when Nyx is around here.”
“Sure, just blame everything on me,” the spirit mumbled.
“Where’s Acnologia?” Freya asked.
“He’s taken a visit to the Ulhur Mountains. He…needs some time alone.”
“Ah.”
Silence flowed between us.
“So,” Freya leaned towards me. “That’s how you felt about Irmeia.”
I froze. My chest clenched, with my thumping heart turning numb. I nodded, unwilling to cough up the words.
“Not sure I should be sad I wasn’t the one, or
happy I’m still alive.”
“I could kill you now if you want me to.”
She huffed. “Okay that wasn’t funny.”
I managed a grin. “Sorry. My sense of humor is really not doing well.”
She sighed. “Clearly.”
“Why have you been looking for me?”
“Because I wanted to know.”
“Know what?”
“When are you coming back?”
“To the Hexel Ruins?”
She nodded.
I chuckled. “You just told me it’d be a bad idea to come meet Ijyela and the others.”
“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t come. People work their difference out, Zoran. Just staying away from each other doesn’t work.”
“We’ll see.”
She sighed, for probably the tenth time already. “You’re not going to listen to me, are you?” she asked. “The ruins are really nice. It’s calming, and silent and—”
“I’m not coming.”
She looked at me, and then looked down to the ground. “Fine,” she said. “Will you at least message me sometime? Just so I know how you’re doing?”
I nodded, and said nothing.
“Okay then, you should probably get started on the five hundred odd ones I’ve sent you till now.”
I sighed. “You idiot.”
“I’ll leave you alone then, but before I do…” Her eyes darted around the place.
“What?”
She grinned. “Do you think you could give me a ride home?”
“The plateau?”
She nodded.
I snapped my fingers. Darkness rose from underneath the ground and swirled around Freya.
“See you later, Diablo,” she smiled.
I nodded. And then she disappeared.
I stretched out my hands, and a sigh left my lips.
“That was nice of her, to come visit you,” Nyx said.
“Yeah.”
“You’re never going back, are you?”
“We’ll see.”
The spirit sighed. “Maybe Acnologia can talk to you about it.”
I smiled. “I don’t know, it might be nice to get out of here for a while.”
“Oooh, where are we going?”
The Eternal: Hellbringer - A LitRPG Saga (World of Ga'em Book 5) Page 23
