Chapter 299 : “Please, kill me”
Chapter 299: “Please, kill me”
Beneath Frozen Furnace Castle, in a spiral passage that descended downward, Aureus Fernando was supported by a servant as he walked step by step downwards.
He did not know how long they had been walking — long enough that the servant’s arm had begun to tremble with fatigue — before they finally reached the depths.
It was a dark chamber; only a faint blue light could be made out in the gloom.
“You wait here,” Aureus said, and his arm left the servant’s support.
The servant bowed in response.
Aureus did not reply. He simply walked forward, and the servant stepped aside to stand by the doorway.
The ground ahead was suddenly covered by a layer of frost. It spread, passing over Aureus’s footsteps and continued to creep toward the entrance.
Aureus slowly opened his mouth. “Kastag, he is only an ordinary being, not food you were given.”
The frost did not stop; it continued to spread backward.
Aureus spoke again. “Do you want to die?”
The frost paused, then slowly receded.
Aureus’s thin frame continued forward until he entered a space so vast it could have contained a castle.
Most of that great space was occupied by a colossal body lying on the ground.
It had a humanoid shape, its body covered in white fur. Three pairs of eyes lay shut. The mouth, full of sharp teeth, had only the upper half remaining — its jaw had been torn off. A scar ran from shoulder to waist across its chest, and a massive bone stake had been driven into its heart. An icy, bone-deep cold clung to its body, and a pale-blue halo drifted where the giant lay.
A low, uncanny growl sounded through the space, but the fallen behemoth did not move.
“You seem to be recovering well,” Aureus said.
The low growl continued.
“Speak plainly,” Aureus ordered.
Silence filled the space. After a moment, a voice like that of an infant sounded: “Pull this stake out of me and I will recover immediately.”
“Outside is too dangerous right now; it isn’t suitable for your moving about, Kastag,” Aureus said slowly.
In the same infantile tone Kastag replied, “They’re only a few marquises. Once I’m healed I can kill one with a single slap.”
“No — not them. It’s the Lord of Annihilation,” Aureus said.
“The Lord of Annihilation!” Kastag shrieked in that babylike voice. “How did you draw the Lord of Annihilation? Quick, pull the stake out of me! I’ll return to the Exile Lands!”
Aureus said in a leisurely manner, “It’s too late. That is the Lord of Dominion. He has already taken most of the North. With your body, the moment you stand up you’ll be discovered.”
“Then leave quickly, and destroy this place so I’m buried beneath the earth; at this depth his will shouldn’t pierce through!” Kastag urged Aureus.
“Even you are so afraid of the Lord of Annihilation?” Aureus asked.
“Of course. Who wouldn’t be?” Kastag replied.
Aureus soothed him, saying, “You are a frost giant. After maturity, just stamping on the ground could drag a stretch of land into freezing cold.”
“Kekeke!” Kastag gave a thin laugh. “What am I? I’m only a phantasm. Even if my flesh were stronger than this land, even if my strength could freeze an entire sea, for the Lord of Annihilation, killing me would be as simple as thinking about it.”
“Ah — no, wait. Since the Lord of Annihilation is already focused on the North, he won’t be paying attention to us, will he?”
“Oh, great Lord of Dominion, I am a pitiful phantasm; I would not resist your will. If anything stands in the way of your rule of the North, it is this person before you. He is called the king of the North — oh, not a king before you.” Kastag’s infantile voice was obsequiously flattering; it made one want to vomit.
Hearing Kastag’s voice, Aureus’s gaze wavered. He slowly closed his eyes, and when he opened them they were calm. “Exactly how powerful is the Lord of Annihilation? If I bore the earth vein of the entire North, could I resist him?”
Kastag’s voice stopped abruptly; Aureus could feel the other regarding him with contempt.
“You were foolish to ask that, Aureus,” Kastag’s voice said. “Even if you carried the whole earth vein of the North, it would be useless. The Lords of Annihilation are beings beyond gods; they are the world itself. No matter how strong your body or power, you cannot oppose the world itself, and when the world rejects you, the world will correct you.”
“Even bearing the North’s earth vein, you could only slay lesser gods at best. More likely, the instant you took on the earth vein you would die.”
Aureus said, “But before this there were no legends of the Lords of Annihilation appearing. Some being must have once repelled them, so there must be a way to drive them back.”
“Ah, yes!” Kastag suddenly remembered something and exclaimed as if enlightened, “Someone must have fooled me; the Lord of Annihilation wouldn’t come out of the Annihilation Plane.”
His tone turned wary. “Are you trying to trick me? We agreed on food in exchange, and you always like to squeeze information from me!”
Aureus was silent for a moment, then said slowly, “I lied to you. The Lord of Annihilation had not occupied most of the North.”
“Hahaha, I knew it — how could the Lord of Annihilation appear in the material world?” Kastag said with glee.
Aureus continued, “But the Lord of Annihilation has appeared. In the east of the North it has already dropped an anchor point and occupied a marquisate, converting its people into fiends. So far it has not advanced against us.”
Aureus could not speak further; Kastag’s screaming cries made his ears ache.
“Waaa! The Lord of Annihilation dared to come out — that person must be dead or sealed! Waaa, we’re all going to die, waaa, those things will come out. I don’t want to die, Aureus — I’m still a child only twenty thousand years old!”
“No — no, I can’t be killed by them. They’re too terrible. Aureus, you should kill me. At least being killed by you will only hurt a little.”
“Please, Aureus, kill me.”
Aureus listened to Kastag’s wailing in silence. Only when the cries dwindled to sobs did he ask, “Who is this person you keep speaking of?”
Through tears Kastag answered, “Who am I to know? Am I fit to know such a great being?”
Aureus patiently said, “According to you, that person is the only one who could save us, right? I suppose you don’t want to actually die, and neither do I.”
Kastag said, “But I only know of such a person from bloodline memory. You wouldn’t — ah, no, you are only a human; you are not worthy to know. Beings at their level can not only erase any life at will, they can erase their own existence.”
Aureus pressed on. “You told me there were beings at the same level as the Lord of Annihilation.”
Kastag said, “Yes: the Original Sins, and those Progenitor gods. Ha — now I get it. You want to threaten the Lord of Annihilation with them, like when you frightened me as a child? No, that’s impossible. The Original Sins surely would not destroy the world, but those Progenitor gods, after being sealed so long, the moment they come out they will destroy the world — they want a pure world. Compared to them, the Lord of Annihilation might actually let you live.”
Aureus felt a twinge of helplessness and asked, “Truly, there is no way at all?”
Kastag said, “No... ah, no — perhaps there is.”
Aureus listened intently.
Kastag continued, “You could pray for the favor of some great lord and gain its protection, and eventually be taken to the Annihilation Plane. Then the Progenitors wouldn’t kill you. But as an ordinary person, going to the Annihilation Plane would only make you a fiend.”
“Since you can already see the anchor point, you must know those fiends. If you can accept fiends as being alive, you could also consider pledging yourself to some great lord.”
“Oh, if only I weren’t a phantasm — otherwise I’d kneel before some great lord and beg to be allowed to live,” Kastag sighed.
Aureus turned and left.
He had people fetch the fiends, and those fiends had already lost their will; they were nothing but puppets of the Lord of Annihilation.
“Don’t go, Aureus! Kill me — kill me now! Waaa, those beings are too terrible!” Kastag began wailing again.
Aureus left the vast chamber and the servant immediately stepped forward to support him.
He glanced at the servant and the man simply continued his duties without reacting to the earth-shaking wails that had come from Kastag’s eerie infant voice.
Of course the servant had not heard them; only someone bound by a contract with Kastag could hear that voice.
The Supreme King of the North either completed the final trial of slaying the dragon or accomplished great deeds; the ancestor of the Fernando family had achieved greatness by “killing” a frost giant that had come from the Exile Lands into the North.
That was how it had appeared to the people of the North. In truth, that ancestor of the Fernando family had not been from the North at all — he came from the woodlands and had only pretended to be a northerner.
Before he became Supreme King he had not even been a warrior; he had been merely a scholar’s apprentice.
Yet after that ancestor became Supreme King, the pure loyalty of the northern people had ensured he never had to fight a second battle; those northern warriors would crush every enemy in his path.
How had that Fernando ancestor — who wasn’t even a warrior — killed the frost giant?
Naturally: he had told that twenty-thousand-year-old child that there was something delicious here. So the child had run over and been impaled on that giant bone stake, and the scars on its body were the remnants left behind at this place.