The Eternal: A Boxed Set (World of Ga'em Book 6)

by Dhayaa Anbajagane

  But I was prepared for that.

  “Tritus Oceanus!’ I yelled, and sent a blast of water to meet the flames. The attacks conjoined, and rebounded in an explosion that sent smoke all through the room. I glanced around, trying to look through the dark smoke and make out the lime-green flames of the Cursed Lion.

  “Diablo,” Acnologia said. “I’m sorry I took so long to summon myself.”

  I saw eyes of blood-red shine through the smokescreen, and a smile curled onto my lips.

  The Dragon was here.

  Acnologia let out a terrifying roar, and the lion immediately stepped back. The smoke cleared, and the massive dragon stood hunched in the small room, barely managing to contain himself to a functional size.

  “All at once?” the Dragon asked.

  “All at once,” I said, looking at the others, who just nodded in agreement.

  The lion’s confidence was diminishing, especially with Acnologia’s presence here. We all attacked the beast, sending our prime attacks right toward it. The lion stumbled around, panicked, and then the attacks hit.

  I watched as its health bar went down fast, the successive strikes landing a knockout combo. In a second, the lion’s health went down to zero and the beast fell to the floor — dead.

  DING!

  Congratulations! You have defeated:

  Cursed Lion Pride (Lv. 896)!

  Lions are ferocious enough as is. A cursed pride sounds even worse. The real question though is, who the hell keeps a pride of cursed lions in their home as pets? What’s next? A resident dragon? Reward: Hide of the Cursed Lion. Reward: Enchanted fangs of the cursed Lion. Reward: Hide of the Cursed Lioness. Reward: 19400000 XP. Reward: 13600000 Sol.

  I closed my screens, not bothering too much with what it had said. I glanced around for a second, searching for an exit, and just then, a loud hum struck the air.

  All of a sudden, the walls around us flickered, and the stone swirled and swaying as though it were just an image.

  I froze. An image?

  One second we were in a dark room, and the next I found myself in some tall chamber. I looked to my sides first, and noticed that everyone else was here too.

  A laugh sounded from ahead, echoing through the high walls of the grandiose room. I looked up, and my eyes froze.

  “You,” I whispered.

  “Indeed, Eternal.” A man sat on the throne before us, on a seat made of solid crystal. He wore armor the shade of solar-golden with sharp streaks of jade green decorating them.

  The man from before.

  The man who had brutalized those dragons.

  I should have seen the connections. I clenched my fists.

  “I am glad to see you finally made it, Diablo,” he chuckled. “I was starting to think you’d left me out on the limb here.”

  “Who are you?” Rage and disgust coursed through me.

  “Surely, you have not forgotten your friend Horace, have you?" he asked.

  “I don’t know who you are.” My voice rose “Stop acting innocent.”

  "Introductions are in order then.” He stood up. “I am Horace Zentheniel.” He bowed, and a chuckle left his lips. “You may call me the Time Lord."

  ***

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Time Lord.

  The words echoed into my mind. Connections were made and questions were answered.

  I looked at the man. “You brought us here.”

  “Indeed, I did,” the Time Lord said. “Apologies for not checking in with you before. I have not been that good a host. How has your stay here been?”

  I grit my teeth. “Still mocking us.”

  “It is but a mere jest, Diablo,” he chuckled. “Surely, you are not a man averse to jokes.”

  He knows I’m the Phantom Lord, I realized. He wouldn’t call me Diablo if he didn’t know that.

  “If he’s the one who brought us here I’d assume he knows what he’s talking about,” Nyx said.

  “I sense great power from him, Eternal,” Acnologia warned. “His jestful nature does not reveal the true strength that he wields.”

  Got it, I said.

  “You have quite the party here.” Horace eyed everyone else.

  “Why did you bring us here, Time Lord?” I asked.

  “Well, to be fair, you were the only one who was supposed to be sent here,” he said. “Of course, my powers messed up a bit, so I ended up bringing anyone who was next to you as well. As for the Knight of the Dark Alliance, I do not know how he got caught in the temporal teleportation.”

  “Wait, what?” Oris face was crestfallen. “It was all just a mistake?”

  “I’m afraid so,” the Time Lord chuckled.

  I stared at him. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

  “Now,” he said. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Eternal, but you do not possess your memories from this time, do you?”

  “What does this have to do with my question?” My fists clenched.

  “Ah, so it is as I had expected,” he said. “You have no clue. So in that case, you would not remember what happens to the past you after this, correct?”

  My eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

  “As expected, you do not,” he chuckled. “How unfortunate. And the Evil Overlord transition was the most fun part too.”

  I froze. What is he talking about?

  “Calm down Diablo,” Nyx said. “He’s probably bluffing. He’s trying to throw you off your feet. Don’t fall for this.”

  “I am not an Evil Overlord.” I looked at the man plated in golden armor. “I do not know what kind of a Phantom Lord you think I am, but an Evil Overlord I am not.”

  “Ah, the first step. Denial,” Horace chuckled. “You may no longer be an over-powerful Eternal, Diablo, but your thirst for power has not changed one bit. I know you feel it within you. You sense a gap you need to complete. And then, you know very well, of these…desires that you have started feeling.”

  My eyes widened.

  “Pain, death, torture,” he said. “Those words mean very different things to you now, don’t they?”

  I hesitated. “Don’t paint me in colors I do not wear. What does this have to do with anything I asked you about?”

  He quietly looked at me for a second, and I could feel him grinning under his helmet.

  “Are you going to answer us or not?” Freya asked.

  “The Queen of Iskaeil,” he said. “You must learn to be calm.”

  “I will calm down when—”

  She suddenly froze, with her mouth and body locking into position, like a statue. Everyone else around me had frozen as well.

  It was just Horace and me now.

  “Ahh,” the Time Lord stretched out, and stood up from his throne. “Now we will have no distractions. That elf was quite annoying.”

  “You froze time,” I whispered.

  “Indeed,” he said. “I’ll probably have to hunt done more dragons to replenish my powers after this,” he sighed.

  I froze. “That’s what that was for,” I gasped. “You were using them to refuel yourself.”

  “I see you’ve seen the chambers,” he chuckled. “Marvelous are they not?”

  I stood still, stunned at his words. “You’re a monster.”

  “Just because of that? Then by your own standards, you are also a monster, Diablo.”

  I hesitated. “What are you talking about?”

  “You know exactly what I am talking about,” he said. “This power that we have, this strength that we possess, it makes all those inferior beings nothing more than mere ants to us, creatures with no purpose, with a life that dies as quickly as it is created.”

  “That is not who I am,” I said. “That is not what I believe.”

  “Are you sure?” He stepped forward. “I have seen the things you have done. Do you think all those innocent knights you killed were necessary lives to take? The men from the Black Guardians that you burnt to death — were all those lives taken out of necessi
ty? Or did you take them because you could?”

  I opened my mouth, but words caught in my throat as images of the very events he mentioned flashing through my mind.

  “That’s what I thought,” the Time Lord said. “You may deny it, Eternal. But we both function alike, the way we were supposed to. Stepping upon the lower plane of life and lifting ourselves to a higher existence. We are alike.”

  “No,” I whispered. “We’re not.”

  “I do not care what you think,” he said. “I talked to you because it had been a while since I had brought company from another time. However, this conversation seems to have run out of content now. You wanted to know why I brought you here, did you not? Well, I will tell you why.”

  Suddenly, his helmeted face was right before mine.

  “You will be my sacrifice.”

  I jumped back, with my heart thumping loud, my eyes wide in terror. “Me? Sacrifice?” My body shook. “What are you talking about?”

  “You do not need to know of it.” He walked up to me. I didn’t see a sword on him, but I could never be sure. I slid Dawnbreaker out, ready to slice into this guy if he charged at me.

  I used my Analyze skill on him and the numbers popped up into my mind.

  DING!

  Name

  Horace Zentheniel

  Race

  ???

  Level

  ???

  My eyes widened. Why is his race tag not showing up? I blinked.

  The next moment I felt the man’s fist in my chest, and I went flying into the air, cratering into the wall. I picked myself up, and dusted the rubble off my body. Knuckles cracked and the man walked up to me, a chuckle coming from his helmet.

  I stared at him. “What…are you?”

  “Ah, so you used your Analyze skill on me,” he said. “I was wondering when that would happen.”

  I stood back, with my body shivering a little. I felt fear in this situation. With one strike that man had sent me down to just a fourth of my health.

  He’s a monster, I thought.

  And without Nyx here I had no one to automatically hand me potions and equip my armor, meaning I was going to have to do it on my own — manually, by finding time away from battle.

  I can’t do that. I grit my teeth.

  “You seem deflated, Zoran,” the Time Lord chuckled. “Do not worry. I usually give my victims some time to run around. It’s more fun that way.”

  “Damn you.” I held Dawnbreaker in front of me. I was utterly powerless in this fight, and I knew it.

  If only I could get time running again, I thought. As long as it was in frozen, I wouldn’t be able to use my teleportation skills on the ones who had been affected, and that meant even if I left, this man would still take everyone else as his hostages.

  And something told me he wouldn’t hesitate to kill them off immediately.

  “What are you thinking about, Eternal?” Horace leapt toward me.

  I dived out the way, but a rush of wind surged past my body and struck me against the wall, just from the speed of the missed attack.

  This guy is too strong. Panic rose within me, and I breathed heavy. I need to find a way out of this.

  And right then, a thought struck my mind.

  When Horace had cast his time pause he’d been intensely concentrating on the spell. It also didn’t seem like this was a spell that he could just cast and then forget about. He probably needed to keep his concentration going in order to keep everything paused.

  So I should break his concentration. And I knew exactly how to do that. I jumped back, sliding away about a hundred yards from the man. He looked at me, the way a man looks at a baby animal, with amusement over his face.

  “What are you doing, Diablo?” he chuckled.

  I kept my eyes open and concentrated. I felt a tingle of power at my fingertips, and I saw sparks fly from one of my fingers. I focused harder, imagining my powers swirl through the castle, and head down to a chamber.

  The chamber of dead Dragons.

  Pain struck my chest as I unloaded my energy, and I dropped to the floor, breathing heavily.

  “What did you just do?” the Time Lord looked around. “Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to have worked.”

  That’s what you think, I thought. I lifted myself up, and my body was completely weary. The damage I’d taken, plus the mana depletion, had caused me to feel pretty exhausted at the moment. But I stood strong, hopeful that the change in tides was just around the corner.

  “Mysteries are very entertaining,” Horace said. “Maybe I will keep you alive a little longer.”

  And right then, a thunderous roar surged through the halls. The walls collapsed, and an army of skeletal dragons broke into the chamber, heading straight for the Time Lord.

  He stepped back, and I could tell the sudden intrusion had broken his concentration. The unanimated forms of Freya and everyone else came to life once more and I quickly ran over to them, unwilling to let this man take them away once again.

  “Holy hell,” Nyx exclaimed. “You did all this with your Re-animator skill?”

  Yup. My voice beamed.

  And then everything went wrong.

  A massive boom sounded and a shock wave passed through us all. The next thing I knew, the army of Dragons had all dropped to the floor — no longer one hundred undead dragons, but a large pile of bones and powder on the ground.

  The Time Lord turned to me, and his demeanor changed once again.

  Uh oh. I stepped back.

  “That was quite entertaining Eternal,” he said. “I must give you that. However, I believe playtime will have to end here.”

  I grit my teeth, and held my blade out as I stared right at him.

  “Kalia Urr Tal,” a voice yelled behind me.

  Two slabs of stone rose up on either side of me and slammed inward. I slashed at them with Dawnbreaker, and caused enough of a pressure wave to slice through the rock and dismantle the attack.

  However, I knew who’s attack this was.

  And I could not believe it.

  “Oh, I almost forgot to mention,” the Time Lord chuckled, and a dark-skinned Eternal now stood beside him, glancing at me with cold, hateful eyes. “This is Irmeia,” he said. “And the one thing we both have in common is that we want you dead.”

  “What?” I gasped, disbelief all over my existence, pain anguishing my heart. “What did you do to her?! What kind of brainwashing is this?!”

  “You are entertaining, Eternal,” the Time Lord laughed.

  “What the hell did you do to her?!” I yelled.

  “I did absolutely nothing,” he said. “Say, don’t you think it was odd? That you conveniently found an Eternal in a cave on an island. That merely hours after you came back some light radiated from her and took you to the past?”

  My eyes widened. “No way.”

  “You see, there are certain rules I am forced to follow, and one of them is that I cannot go meddle with events in the future, and that includes bringing someone back to the past. Irmeia is my loophole for this — my piñata to the future”

  He chuckled. “I sent her to the future with a time travel rune embedded into her. The moment you found her in that cave, the spell I had hidden within her began activating. And when it was ready, you all got brought back to this time. Sure, I’m evil and everything, but you wouldn’t even be here if Irmeia hadn’t volunteered to have brought you.”

  I looked at Irmeia. “No…” My voice cracked.

  “I was not brainwashing her, Diablo,” the Time Lord smiled. “She’s been lying to you this whole time. She was never who she said she was.”

  The Eternal stared at me, and didn’t speak a single word.

  “Irmeia.” I trembled. “You couldn’t have…”

  “Oh, but she did.” The Time Lord laughed uncontrollably now. “Ahhhh, how much I waited for this moment. Hard to get entertainment like this these days.”

  Freya put her hand on my shoulder. “Let’s get
out of here, Zoran.”

  Horace snapped his finger and immediately a blast of wind smashed into the elf, throwing her into the air and into everyone else standing behind me. Before I could even blink, a box of transparent light formed around them all, sealing them completely. One look and I knew that wasn’t a barrier I could take out on my own.

  Dammit, I cursed and looked ahead. “What do you want with me?!”

  “I thought I made this very clear before,” Horace said. “I brought you here to be my sacrifice.”

  “What sacrifice?” I grit my teeth. “I have a Resurrection Ability. How do you think you’re going to use me as a sacrifice? I will never die. Every time you kill me I will come back over and over and over again.”

  “Ahh, I see the problem,” the Time Lord chuckled, and his tone turned sinister. “You actually think Eternals are immortal, don’t you?”

  ***

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Eternals can die?

  The thought raced into my mind, and the words repeated over and again till they lost all meaning within my consciousness.

  “Stunned?” the Time Lord chuckled. “Bet you didn't see that coming.”

  “You’re bluffing,” I said. For all my time in this world, I had known one thing. My resurrection ability did not let me die. I would always resurrect into the world whenever my health went to zero.

  And yet this man was making such a claim before me.

  “I’m bluffing?” he laughed.

  “Are you willing to bet your life on it, Diablo?” Irmeia asked, her tone cold. And that was when I started hesitating.

  A lot.

  The Time Lord smiled. “Come along then, Zoran,” he said. “Time to be my—”

  I thrust my hand into the air. “Hiestia!” I yelled.

  Darkness surged into the air, covering me and everyone else. One moment we were in the throne room, and the next we had sunk into the black. I breathed a sigh of relief and looked around, making sure everyone was here.