Chapter 160: An Angry Father
His return here was Fated.
As was the sapling Zaqqum that was withered down to its bones before him.
The one root connecting it outward had been severed by his Spine Splitter.
A double-bladed, curved white sword.
It had a beautiful inscription running the length of its edge.
The sword of Lions.
His sword.
It had forever withered the root.
Now he could extract it without condemning their realm to ITs embrace.
Finally, there were no more obstacles.
This was the moment.
Malik walked forward and gripped the hilt.
He took a deep breath and...
"Hup."
Began to pull!
The blade shrieked as it moved, vibrating the ground, sparks spitting from the wound.
It was stuck.
Malik snarled under his breath and pulled harder.
GRRRRRNNNNNK—SKKKRRTTT!
It pierced out, inch by inch, only to stop again.
Malik leaned forward, his eyes locked on the quivering hilt.
One more pull, even harder this time.
Every muscle in his body strained.
His Goliath’s Fall was entirely maxed out.
KRRRRRAAAAAAANGHHHHHHH!
Spine Splitter chewed into flesh-that-wasn’t-flesh, tearing through something that didn’t bleed yet didn’t yield, expanding the crack along its edge, forcing him to pause for the third time.
"Huuuuuup—"
Unrelenting, Malik sucked in a breath, stepped in, and pressed his weight forward until his boots dug trenches into the ground. Smoke curled from his skin. Heat roared off him in waves as his muscles swelled, veins nearly bursting.
He could not be stronger than this.
SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!
Spine Splitter began to scream, a drawn-out wail that tore the very air apart.
It was trying to leave a concept of reality itself, its existence as a Holy Relic beginning to fracture from the strain.
This was a sword that could cut through anything, as long as the wielder had the Will.
And Malik, despite everything that had happened, still had every last drop of it left to give.
Corruption fought back, resisting its ever-so-sharp edge, but—
KRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACKKKKKKHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
It couldn’t hold.
The root let go as the world’s spine cracked.
WHHOOOMMMMM!
A shockwave tore outward, lifting Corruption into the air, tearing at what stood for atmosphere here, rattling the horizon, or rather, the branch far above him.
Spine Splitter had slid free.
This was a weapon with no equal.
A blade carved from something that didn’t even exist in this world.
Something bestowed upon him by IT, a being even Gods preferred to avoid.
Malik smiled.
"You..."
A broken smile, of course.
"You’ve been a good sword."
It hummed again, welcoming its owner.
"Have you forgiven me?"
The sword glowed, and he smiled further.
"Of course... what did I do to deserve a sword like you?"
With that, Malik stood there, his sword raised, calmly watching the resisting Corruption float.
It spread through the realm, dissolving into it, returning to wherever it had first come from.
"You are to never return to Devil’s Maw..."
This infection would never spill back into his realm.
"A new Angel protects it."
So Malik kept his eyes on it, tracking every wisp, wanting to be certain of its erasure. The flow. The direction. The way the leaking Corruption drifted upward.
His eyes noticed and documented everything.
And he began to notice a pattern.
A pattern he remembered full well.
All of what went high had gone East.
Corruption flew under the sky, never absorbed.
Never like the rest of the world around it.
The sky almost acted like a barrier.
It blocked Corruption from going up.
Yeah.
Earlier, it had been stained with Corruption.
’Stained.’
’The sky...’
This black above wasn’t a sky at all.
All of that above him was a branch.
A branch belonging to the actual True Zaqqum.
A tree so enormous it wasn’t just part of this Gate; it was the entire structure of Hell itself.
A pillar piercing through the Seventh Gate, the Sixth, the Fifth, straight down to the First. Maybe even further. There was no real way to tell where it ended.
So what Malik ended so long ago was nothing at all.
A twig off the true curse terrorizing them all.
His lips didn’t move, but there was a nod.
’...this is my enemy.’
The True Zaqqum was connected to something far beyond him and the very concept of Death itself, its lifeline bound directly to the True Sultan, whom Malik was molded to replace.
No wonder every Sultan before him had only delayed the Fall.
This was far, far above their paygrade.
Even now, it was above him.
To even challenge that, he’d need to be a Class One.
No, a Class Zero.
A being whose existence sat above the very Laws of reality itself.
Much like the Tree of Life in the East, attacking it was a lost cause.
But, of course, Malik didn’t care for that.
He had long since known how unfathomable his enemy was.
IT was capable of twisting the Will of all in existence; this was nothing.
Malik was now more interested in how he could get out of here.
Ding!
—
╔════════════════════╗
║NEW HOLY RELIC ACQUIRED!║
╚════════════════════╝
[Holy Relic — Spine Splitter]
[Description: The Sultan’s only sword, a boon that led to a curse.]
—
He looked at the sudden notification and chuckled softly.
Besides noting just how accurate that description was, Malik sensed what it was trying to tell him.
"A Demon is stalking me."
Spine Splitter shook, and he took a stance, preparing himself for combat.
His sword arm moved before his chest while his left stayed behind his back.
The sword’s edge began to burn black, his Scorpion’s Sting.
All of a sudden, almost sprouting out of the ground, was a... man.
A man with a body that was half snake, half human.
Interestingly, Malik found the thing familiar.
Both its snake and human sides.
This man was the one he had almost killed.
The same one he let escape because he didn’t want to risk chasing when he barely had any time left on his Soul Glyph.
Malik knew its snake side from the black skin.
Back then, in the East, he had killed a snake with the same skin.
Not only that, he had also killed a Crowned Demon.
The same Corruption flowing through their veins...
"A Crowned Demon took you."
Flowed through this man.
"You are its father, aren’t you?"
A Fallen human, and...
"DIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
An angry father.