Chapter 98: Endless Chain(1)
It was truly ironic.
After everything that had happened with Manug, after finding out so much, after understanding it all, after being in so much pain and not really doing anything against those memories that were now constantly plaguing him, after losing Manug, his companion, after all of this..
He was in the same position as he had been before meeting Manug, all he had gained was power, he had gained the knowledge of actives, he had finally truly achieved the next rank, and so much more, but in the end, he just ended up completely alone once more, left, and forgotten by all, without even a home to return to.
Walking along the seemingly endless chain once more, this time one that was titanically huge, so big that he, himself, could be stacked atop over fifty times and it would barely reach the height of a single link of the endless chain that seemed to consist of thousands of such links, all connected to a singular far-away island as Cades already knew.
But he simply stared ahead, his one eye almost burning from the liquid that pressed itself out through it, a liquid that many people would refer to as tears, the lacrimal fluid, as he watched the endlessly extending ocean of darkness colliding with the endless expanse of the light that came from below like a desert that collided with a ocean and was swept away during an unnatural tide.
He was lost in thoughts, lost in the rhythm that resulted whenever he would take a step, and the next, and the one after that, and another, and all the rest, over and over again, he simply couldn't rip himself out of that very trance, lost in it all, not thinking but simply existing, watching it all happen over and over and over again in his mind, recovering the feeling of the pain while the screams almost stopped.
All the screams were gone, all except one...
The one and only scream that was left, it was loud and full of agony mixed with despair as bad as the one he had felt when he was dying from that invincible monster back on that horrible island with the endless forest atop of it, on the island that he still felt like he was standing on.
That scream, which had a gurgling undertone, was more so a constant mockery over everything that he ever believed, it was painful, but he knew whose voice it was, and that very voice was now screaming as loud as it could, stretching that one scream into an eternity, endlessly giving off a singular sound, the very note, the very scream that he could not stop thinking of.
It was a scream he had never heard while he was still with Manug, but it was undoubtably Manug's own scream, the gurgling was a big help in figuring that out, though it was still pretty clear to him from the beginning, already having heard his voice for a long time.
And now Manug's scream was resounding within his head, and it would never, ever stop, he was certain of that, he was certain that his scream would never leave him be, he was certain that this scream would even follow him when he dies..