Chapter 152: DAMN YOU, SULTAN
"T-Teacher."
The word cut through the darkness like a most sharp blade.
It came from Safira.
Her voice was weak, but he heard it clearly.
She called him Teacher.
Not "Stranger" like she usually did.
Not "old man" like Huda did.
Teacher.
Her Sultan.
She had realized who he was.
Malik's mind raced.
Was it the Stranger's Necklace?
Had she noticed it in his palm during all those moments he had used it, even though he kept it clutched in his palm, hidden away from them?
Did she recognize his fire or the way he fought?
Many thousands of questioning thoughts tore through his mind, each one worse than the last.
She had seen his weakness.
His biggest secret was laid bare to her.
The old man before her was not some random Seeker; he was her Teacher, the Sultan, the man who had pulled her from a cage in the First Layer and taught her to heal.
Was she about to call him a fraud? Call him out for using them, lying to them, for hiding behind a mask while they bled for him?
"Take this... please."
No.
None of that.
Before his trembling eyes, she took off the ring on her pinky—the same one he had noticed at the beginning, matching Huda's—and shoved it into his hand.
Her fingers were cold, her grip weak, but she held on just long enough to make sure he had it.
Ding.
A system notification bloomed in his vision, blue and bright against the darkness.
—
╔════════════════╗
║HOLY RELIC DETECTED!║
╚════════════════╝
[Holy Relic: Escape Ring]
[Description: Fate can not catch its wielder... at least not in its first attempt.]
—
Despite its less-than-helpful description, Malik understood the relic's use.
He realized exactly what this Holy Relic could do.
No matter where he was, he could return to wherever the anchor point had been placed.
A single chance to cheat death.
Only the bearer of the ring could do so.
'...no.'
Safira and Huda could have always escaped.
The ring had been on her finger this entire time—through the yellow desert, through the storm of light, through the Abyssal King, through the fog, through everything.
They could have left whenever they wanted.
But they didn't.
As Huda had repeated earlier, this was merely a scouting mission. Their first attempt. They never intended to dive this deep.
The plan had been to go down, gather information, and return.
Not to fight Venerables and Abyssal Kings.
Not to crawl through fog and flee from beings that should not exist.
But they didn't escape.
No matter how bad it had gotten, no matter how close they came to death, they didn't leave.
There was no need to wonder why.
It was because he was with them.
The two felt responsible.
They had invited him to join their cohort, promised to protect him, taken him under their wing. And when things went wrong, they stayed.
They fought and bled.
Huda, for all her complaining, never even thought of leaving him behind. She cursed him, called him bad luck, accused him of making Demonic oaths—but she never once suggested they abandon him.
And Safira, despite realizing who he was, didn't even question him. She didn't demand answers nor call him a liar.
She didn't even ask why he had hidden his identity.
His disciple just gave him her ring.
'Dammit.'
Malik couldn't believe it.
"Teacher."
And to make things worse, she spoke again.
"I am so sorry... but I'll be going first."
She was apologizing to the teacher who had used her while hidden behind a mask, letting her believe he was just a helpless old man.
Just as those words left her lips, pain overtook her.
Her eyes rolled back, her body went limp, her hand slipped from his, her head lolled to the side... and she joined Huda in her sleep.
It was obvious what she was asking.
Safira wanted him to leave her here.
To take the ring and escape with Huda.
'Dammit, dammit, dammit!'
Malik felt rage building in his chest, rage directed towards himself.
He had failed them.
Over and over, he had failed them.
He couldn't protect them from the Venerable. Couldn't protect them from the Abyssal King. Couldn't protect them from the fog or the labyrinth or the closing gate.
'...I don't care.'
Angry at himself once more.
'Take my life force. Take what all I have...'
But yet again, he wasn't going to give up.
"DIVINE KINGDOM!"
His voice thundered through the darkness, echoing off walls that were too far away to see.
"AWAKEN TO YOUR SULTAN!"
Never was he going to give up.
"AWAKEN TO ME!"
His Soul trembled from something deeper that had been sleeping since his fight with the Angel, waiting for this very moment.
His Archive of Fate made itself known.
The six locked Runes rattled in their prisons, shaking against their chains, desperate to become one. Desperate to respond to their Sultan's call.
The seals that had held them in place—placed there by his own body to protect his own might—began to crack.
This was only the seventh layer.
FAILURE WAS NOT AN OPTION.
"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
The Runes broke free.
One by one, they unlocked.
Yes, not completely, but enough.
Enough to give him what he needed.
His peak Goliath's Fall activated, the power flooding through his legs, knitting his bones back together, restoring what had been shattered.
Safira's earlier healing had made the difference. She had repaired the damage, kept his body intact, and had given him a solid foundation to build on.
Without her, none of this would have been possible.
Malik gently smiled despite everything.
He could feel it now...
The power he had missed so desperately.
His fight with that Angel had truly taken its toll, but no more.
No more.
It had arrived.
One minute of being absolute.
Malik looked down at Safira's limp hand, or rather, at the ring still on her pinky. Then he looked at Huda's hand, at the matching ring there.
Now it was his turn to send them home.
He carefully put the ring back on Safira's finger, then he held her hand, his fingers wrapping around hers, and touched the Holy Relic on her pinky.
Malik did the same with his little sister as his other hand found Huda's, and he pressed his thumb against the ring, activating its spell.
Once done, he looked up.
A Soul-crushing pressure was coming.
The beast had found them.
A slab was falling.
"May you return home."
The moment those words left his lips, the two disappeared without a single sound or distortion.
They simply vanished, as if they had never been there at all. As if Fate had erased the fact that they had ever come down here in the first place.
Now that they were gone, and nothing was left holding him back, Malik let out a rumbling sigh.
The sound of it drowned the darkness around him, filling the void with something that was not quite peace and not quite resignation.
Something in between.
Immediately, using all of his Rukh, his body grew.
The transformation was sudden and violent as his muscles expanded, his bones lengthened, and his skin stretched tight over new mass.
He grew and grew, his form doubling, tripling, quadrupling in size until he was no longer a man but something closer to a giant.
His fall halted. The darkness stopped rushing past him, and he hung there for a moment, suspended between the abyss above and the abyss below.
Then he used Devil's Footsteps.
He tore through the darkness like a blazing streak of fire and fury, his massive body cutting through the void at speeds that should have torn him apart.
The wind screamed around him, the darkness shrieked alongside, and he pushed faster... more.
Malik picked up so much speed that his body began to crack.
Hairline fissures spread across his skin, leaking light... leaking Rukh, his very life.
But, of course, he didn't stop.
There was nothing that could—
KKCCRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACCK!
The slab reached him.
All of that speed was halted at once, crashing into that realm of stone.
"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
A roar tore from his throat, and Malik pushed against the stone with more than all of his strength.
His trembling hands pressed hard into its surface, digging through the gargantuan slab that was trying to push him back into the darkness.
He raised it.
Slowly.
Inch by inch.
Malik raised the slab.
It groaned and cracked, and Malik's fire erupted around him, charring everything within reach.
The heat was immense, so intense that the air itself seemed to catch fire, and the stone began to glow red.
Steam left his skin in great billowing clouds, and his legs—newly healed—pushed against the void below, finding purchase where there should have been none.
The slab began to crumble.
It disintegrated under his force, turning to dust and ash, and the beast that housed this labyrinth began to wail.
The cry was terrible, almost like mountains grinding together and splitting open... it was far too resonant.
The gate was before him now.
Its mouth.
Open and wailing, the sound pouring through.
Malik closed his eyes.
He focused his body, every fiber of his being. He felt his Rukh flowing through him, his Runes pulsing in time with his heart, and the Archive of Fate turning over in his Soul.
Then he spun.
His body twisted, and he kicked the dying slab above. The force of the kick sent him rocketing through, straight towards the gate.
The slab crushed the air behind him.
But he was already gone.
His feet touched the gate.
Behind him, the crumbling slab fell.
It wasn't something he could destroy.
And yet, there was no need to.
Malik escaped.
He stumbled through the gate, his body crashing onto solid ground, his lungs heaving, his heart pounding.
"DAMN YOU, SULTAN!"
The word echoed behind him, swallowed by the closing gate, lost to the darkness.
He had made it.
He lived.