However, Hadjar had endured. He was still breathing.
Falling to one knee and panting heavily, Hadjar spat out a lump of semi-congealed blood and flesh.
The friends were now standing on an island—there were no stairs or wall behind them any longer, just another abyss.
“This isn’t the power of a Heaven Soldier,” Hadjar groaned as his companion helped him get back up.
“You’re right,” Nero nodded. “It’s a demon knows what!”
General Larvie laughed hysterically. The scarlet waves not directed toward the pair were now spreading down the corridor, almost in sync with his laughter. They crushed stone, tore down tapestries and crumpled the metal armor that stood in their path. Another wave reached Nero and Hadjar.
Nero stepped in front of it and sent the ‘Giant’s Hand’ out to attack it and hopefully help defend them again. This time, it didn’t get destroyed, but it still couldn’t really hurt the newly-ascended cultivator.
Dammit all! Even the uncontrolled flashes of his aura were stronger than their best Techniques. No Heaven Soldier could possess such power. It wasn’t possible. The General they were battling against was almost at the same level as the Spirit Knight on the mountain ridge had been, perhaps a little weaker. But there was no way that the two stages of true cultivators could be so very different!
“It’s so good…” The General sighed.
He calmed down and turned to the insects before him. They were mere ants trying to bite him. That was the way he perceived them, at least. He could have destroyed them at any moment. Without even putting any real effort into it.
“You.” The General pointed at Nero. “I’ll kill you quickly. But you, Officer Hadjar, I’ve prepared only the best and most amazing of attractions for you. If you suddenly decide to die in the process, then, I assure you, my healers will return you to me, even from the other world…”
“Go to the abyss!” Nero spat, and Hadjar tried his best to find a way for them to safely retreat.
To make matters worse, no matter how much he asked the neuronet for a solution, it still continued to show the same red messages that inevitable mortal danger was threatening the host.
Why is it warning me about it if it’s inevitable!
“I’ve been there.” The General smiled, baring his teeth. The scars on his face were slowly drawn into his skin, and his inhuman, red eyes shone ever brighter. “Now it’s your turn.”
He swung his hammer. They had barely a moment to register the movement before a storm of the red energy that was so alien to this world was already swirling around the pair.
Nero and Hadjar prepared to go down fighting, giving their all. They would do everything in their power to not die today.
Their blades shone in the oppressive darkness, although their light looked like a joke in comparison to the raging, red storm. It was more like a ghostly haze.
“Stop,” a calm voice sounded.
Not just the inexorable fall of the hammer, but everything around them stopped at that moment. The birds even froze in the sky. They didn’t fall, but just stopped in midair, as if someone had pressed ‘pause’ on the world itself. Their wings barely continued to move, flickering beyond the normal perception of the human eye.
In the same way, the trees bent under the caress of the wind and also froze in place. The leaves flew off the branches, yet they didn’t fall to the ground, and the ripples in the nearby pond never made it to land.
The whole world stopped completely because of one simple word.
Message to host: ...
Error… Error... Error...
Threat analysis:
Error...
Initiating reboot…
Error...
Time before normal functionality is restored:
4 days
Hadjar couldn’t blink, he couldn’t even feel his body! It wasn’t just that he couldn’t move it, he had also lost all connection with it. As if he was one stream of thought and nothing else.
Something was going on in the space between him and the General. It was as if an outsider had somehow cut the substance of the universe with a knife, and then forced their way out of the newly formed rupture in reality. No. Wait. SOMETHING had just come out.
It appeared before Hadjar in the form of a tall man, and yet, at the same time, it wasn’t a man. It slowly came out from the slit in the universe, and a myriad of black lumps of darkness swarmed beneath its feet. Lumps with burning, scarlet eyes.
The figure’s shoulders were covered with a grey cloak, the edges of which had fanged muzzles that growled as they bared their teeth. It was difficult to understand—was it a cloak at all, or was this some unknown, insanely hungry and predatory creature?
The right side of its face was barely visible from underneath its wide hat. But one look at the left side of its face was enough to make a person start praying to the gods. His eyes, for it was undoubtedly male, were red like burning coals, his skin was grey, and he radiated a deadly calm.
Upon closer inspection, and that wasn’t something Hadjar was overly keen on doing, the creature held something that resembled a bleeding, yellow sphere in his hands.
“I never thought I would find it here,” the same calm voice said, but the creature’s lips didn’t move…
The monster turned its head toward the chamber, and then the stone heart flew toward it. It hung in the air for a split second and then disappeared. It had existed a mere moment ago, but then it had flashed away in the blink of an eye.
One of the rings on the creature’s fingers had flashed at the same time.
If Hadjar’s suspicions about that ring proved correct, things were really not looking good for them. By simply walking, this creature had emanated a greater sense of power than anything Traves had ever done.
“Fate is so amusing.” The sound of the creature’s voice echoed through the castle, merging into flowing words. “I lost my artifact almost thirty years ago and now I have found it out here in the sticks, to my great surprise. But, alas, it seems that I wasn’t the first to find it.”
It came very close to the General, who still hadn’t completed his swing.
“Little ant, have you decided that you can use the demon heart as a simple ingredient to help you crawl along your path of cultivation?”
Hadjar really didn’t like the sound of that.
A little ant that was able to ruin a centuries-old castle with just an ordinary swing of his hammer, and who’d found himself crushing steel armor with merely his laughter... What else had it said? The heart of a demon. Demons…
“I guess fate has chosen to bring us together. The equilibrium must be maintained, little ant.”
Nothing happened.
There was no surge of power, no pompous words, not a single movement from the gray-skinned creature. But, at that same moment, as soon as it stopped talking, the life of General Larvie ended. Just like that.
He remained frozen in place, still in the process of swinging the hammer over his head, and then his eyes glazed over and the light in them just faded. His life had been extinguished simply due to the mere desire of the creature.
Hadjar couldn’t move a single muscle while the creature, moving away from the late General Larvie, approached them. It literally floated above the stone plates, as if the Grim Reaper had chosen this very day to come for their souls.
“I’ll sing a dirge for you, brave ants. Don’t be angry with me and go quietly to your rebirth. I can’t leave any witnesses...”
Hadjar felt as if he was being slowly immersed in a whole cosmos of blood. He was drowning in it, but he still couldn’t move; he was being swallowed up by this maelstrom of death and despair.
Suddenly, everything stopped.
The creature approached him, pausing and moving its face closer to his.
“Fate is so amusing,” it declared, staring deeply into Hadjar’s eyes. “I see your face, ant, in the intricacies of fortune, on its countless roads. Fate has prepared a
nother meeting for us. I won’t kill you today, brave bug.”
Instead, it leaned over to Hadjar’s ear and began to whisper.
Oh, demons! I wish it had remained silent!
Its whisper was like the ominous cawing of crows, the crying of a mother over her deceased son, or the despairing wails of a king as he watched his country burn before his very eyes. Its whisper was like the worst death Hadjar could’ve ever possibly imagined.
“My name is Helmer. You’ve met the Lord of Nightmares today, and you have survived.”
Helmer disappeared back through the rapidly vanishing slit in the universe. After his departure, the birds continued their flight, the ripples of water reached the pond’s shore, and the leaves plucked by the wind finally fell to the ground. As the world began to move once more, the General’s body collapsed to the cracked floor with a bang.
The castle shook, towers collapsed somewhere, and the cries of the fleeing people filled the night air.
“L-l-l-et’s get out n-now,” Nero stuttered, sliding his sword back into its scabbard.
Hadjar could only nod.
They tore away a huge tapestry from the collapsing wall, affixed it to the floor as best they could under the circumstances, and began to climb down the cliff face.
Chapter 82
They were sitting in Hadjar’s tent, and General Leen was no longer there. She had just nodded to them silently as they’d entered and returned to her tent. Echoes of the celebration could still be heard throughout the city, but Hadjar and Nero weren’t really interested in celebrating anything.
They sat back to back and couldn’t bear to part with their blades. Serra hadn’t been able to get a word out of them for over an hour now. She was going crazy with worry. The panic was reflected in her eyes, the same as the emotion that had remained in Nero and Hadjar’s eyes too. Fear. Real fear.
“The light,” Hadjar croaked suddenly, remembering the gloom under Helmer’s feet as it had stood before them.
“You’re right,” Nero agreed. “More wine.”
“What’s happening?” Serra shouted, but she was once again ignored by the pair.
Hadjar abruptly threw the paper covering the chests to the floor, opened the lid, took out an armful of candles, and then placed them all around the tent, his hands trembling as he did so. Nero somehow managed to open three voluminous bottles of strong wine at the same time.
Serra only took a sip, looking at her companions worriedly. They drained the bottle instantly. Stained with red wine, they looked at each other, and Nero picked up the second bottle.
When they sat back down on their chairs, they didn’t just have their swords in their hands, but also glasses overflowing with wine.
The white kitten, Azrea, crawled out of her skins and mewed anxiously, joining the increasingly astonished Serra in worrying about the men.
“Nero, speak to me.” Serra knelt down in front of the pale-faced warrior. She had never seen him and Hadjar in such a state before.
“Don’t be quiet, please,” she implored them. “What happened at the castle?”
Only after another half an hour, and two more bottles of wine, did Hadjar begin to speak. Despite the amount of wine he’d drunk, he didn’t feel drunk or even slightly intoxicated. Nero found that he felt the same way.
“What did you see?” Hadjar asked his friend.
“Only a few red flashes, and then the southern wall of the castle collapsed and began to fall apart like a house of cards. Then you ran over, grabbed me, and we disappeared. I honestly didn’t think people could run so fast.”
“Did you notice the frozen birds?” Nero sipped some more wine. “Or the frozen water?” he asked Serra.
“You’ve had too much wine,” she replied, but she left the bottle with the men.
“That means you haven’t seen them, then,” Hadjar said slowly.
“I don’t know what you mean. Explain it to me. Right now.”
The tent went quiet. Only the burning candles made a bit of noise occasionally. Hadjar had gone slightly overboard with them, and now there were so many lit candles in the tent that there was no place left for the shadows. But even that couldn’t calm the souls of Nero and Hadjar.
Hadjar had naively believed that he had experienced enough horror and fear in his life, and would never again be afraid of anything. In any case, he would be able to overcome his fear. Damn it, he wasn’t a coward!
He had fought against practitioners who’d been stronger than him by an entire level of cultivation! He had fought against hundreds of nomads, defeated monsters, and hunted Alphas. He wasn’t a coward…
But what he’d seen in the castle meant that what he felt now couldn’t be called ‘courage’, or even ‘fear’.
It was as if... if ... all his nightmares had come to life through this one terrifying vision. As if he hadn’t just looked at the face of the bottomless abyss, but had fallen into it. It was inexplicable. Only an ant that had been frightened by the roar of an Ancient Tiger could ever truly hope to understand it. Hadjar was the ant. The question here was… Who was the Tiger...
Hadjar drank two gulps from the bottle. The wine didn’t help him forget, but at least it warmed him enough to help him cope with the cold he felt filling his body.
“We didn’t kill the General,” he tried to explain.
“Then who did?” Serra asked as she turned slightly pale, observing her friends’ unusual state.
“I have no idea,” Nero admitted. “He only spoke to Hadjar.”
Hadjar gasped, remembering the voice of the creature. Gods and demons, its voice alone could stop the hearts of less hardy practitioners. Hadjar was sure that Helmer could’ve killed most, if not all, of their army by saying only a few words. Provided he even needed to speak at all. When he had ended the General’s life, his mouth hadn’t even moved.
“He introduced himself as Helmer, the Lord of Nightmares,” Hadjar explained, his voice barely above a whisper.
Serra shuddered. Now she looked really pale.
“Helmer? Are you sure?”
“As sure as I am of the fact that I see you in front of me right now.”
The girl shuddered again. She picked up a bottle of wine, opened it, and took a long swig. Placing the bottle back down, she took a deep breath and spoke.
“He was holding a bleeding sphere in his hands,” she said. “Revived nightmares were swarming under his feet, and hungry jaws bared their teeth at the edges of his cloak…”
“How do you know?” Nero asked, stunned.
Serra didn’t answer straight away. Instead, she took a chair and leaned back against her friends’ shoulders so they sat in a triangle. Only after draining her first bottle of wine, and taking a huge gulp from a second one, was she able to continue.
“You know nothing in these backwoods. Today, you are both lucky and yet unlucky.”
“Well, we survived,” Hadjar said, slowly starting to pull himself together.
He had met Traves on his life’s journey, so it was easier for him to realize what had happened to them this evening. Traves had been much weaker than Helmer, but he was still more powerful than most could even begin to imagine.
“You met an Immortal.”
“Immortal?”
Serra took another swig of wine.
“The path of cultivation is an extremely long one, this much you already know, and each new step is a game of hide-and-seek with death. That’s what my Master said, at least. But there are those who have reached the end of that path, who’ve reached the top. They reached immortality at the very peak of their journey. Their grasp on the fundamental truth of the universe is so deep that they can control the elements and space as they please. Some of them are even able to play with time itself. They didn’t just touch eternity, they found it. They are called the Immortals.”
Hadjar and Nero listened carefully to their friend’s story. They hadn’t heard about any of this before—even in the numerous children’s fairytales and myths
. However, they had heard about the ring glittering on Helmer’s finger.
“One fairytale says that a peasant boy found a ring in a river. A ring in which he could hide his entire flock of sheep, and there would also be room left for his parents’ house. It was called a ‘Spatial ring’, as a wandering Scholar explained to him, and he offered him an elixir in exchange for the ring that would make even the weakest boy into the strongest of heroes. Our parents used to scare us with stories of Helmer when we were children.” Serra sipped more wine as she recalled the details. “It was said that if we behaved badly, then Helmer would come to us at night, and he would show us one of the nightmares. And if we got very frightened, he would turn us into a lump of fear, and we would follow Helmer forever more. The Lord of Nightmares would be our lord from then on.”
“Did you believe it?” Nero asked.
“No one believed it.” The girl shook her head. “I would never have believed it myself, especially now, if I hadn’t listened to your story. The Master once talked about the Immortals as though they were a myth. I think he just wanted to show us how long the journey of cultivation is and that a worthy reward would be waiting for us in the end.”
“Immortality,” Hadjar said slowly. “I wonder what stage that is…”
“Only the Lord stage has been mentioned in the Master’s scrolls, but I know for sure that the Emperors of Laskan and Darnassus are at that level—and believe me, they aren’t Immortals.”
“The Lord stage?”
“Yes.” Sera nodded. “That’s the stage that follows immediately after the Spirit Knight. But the difference between a Lord and a Knight is the same as between a jerboa and a mountain lion. It’s a huge advancement—the same as reaching the level of a Heaven Soldier after the Transformation Stage.”
Hadjar looked at his reflection in the empty bottle of wine that he still held in his hands. He wasn’t an ant compared to an Ancient Tiger. No, he was actually a microbe crawling around on an ant’s back.
Dragon Heart: Iron Will. LitRPG Wuxia Series: Book 2 Page 5
