Chapter 52: His City.
Amon stared at the First Refusal.
"Hahahaha!"
It wasn’t a happy sound. Amon’s tired laughter seemed to say that after so many long years, so much hard work, he had thought he had finally overcome everything that threatened to bring him down.
Instead he was faced with one final problem, one that he couldn’t even try to hit.
"...You know, I’ve dealt with worse, right?" Amon said, rolling his shoulders.
The First Refusal’s eye narrowed.
"You have never dealt with me."
"No. You’re right."
Amon looked down.
Under his feet was an enormous expanse of a pale, carpet-like surface comprised of souls, prayers, memories of life that had been ignored by creation above.
He knelt down to the ground, his fingers extending to touch the surface.
The moment he did, a memory entered his mind.
A woman praying for her dying child. A soldier begging for forgiveness. A farmer asking for rain. A child asking God why his mother had disappeared.
Amon pulled his hand away.
He looked up, and for the first time since entering the domain of the First Refusal, the anger in his eyes seemed to have hardened into something colder.
"This isn’t food."
The First Refusal remained silent.
"It’s a grave."
The seals across its body pulsed.
"Everything rejected by creation eventually falls here, to me, empowering me.
I am what remains when existence says no."
Amon looked around.
"So you’re not destroying these poor souls?"
"No."
"You’re consuming only the rejected ones."
"Yes."
Amon’s golden eyes narrowed.
Then he smiled.
"Good. Trash collects trash, I see."
The First Refusal shifted.
"You dare!"
Amon raised his hand.
He was producing a thread of golden light, and the sealed domain was drinking it in as fast as he could make it, until it vanished from view.
Amon watched it happen.
Then he tried again.
This time he tried to change the shape of the golden light. Instead of increasing its power, he produced less of it, a single thread of it.
The domain swallowed it.
Amon smiled again.
The System flickered.
[Analysis function activated.]
[Analyzing environmental authority...]
[Error.]
[Authority exceeds current permissions.]
[Attempting secondary analysis.]
[Warning: This function has not been used since the Eden Era.]
Amon’s expression froze.
"...What?"
The System flickered again.
[Original Script Recognition.]
[User possesses incomplete compatibility.]
[Accessing forgotten function.]
A translucent panel appeared before Amon, looking very old. In fact, it looked so old that it was difficult to read the words on it.
[CREATION AUTHORITY: LOCKED]
[WARDEN AUTHORITY: ACTIVE]
[PRIMARY FUNCTION: MAINTAIN SEAL]
[SECONDARY FUNCTION: REWRITE SEAL]
[REQUIREMENT: UNDERSTANDING]
Amon stared at the final word.
Understanding?
The First Refusal suddenly moved.
One of the Refusal’s hands came crashing down to the ground. The shockwave was so powerful that it caused the entire domain to shudder. A wave of black, crushing pressure shot out towards Amon.
Amon crossed his arms.
The black pressure continued pushing against him. For several seconds he just endured it. Eventually he noticed something. The seals.
The System flashed.
[HP integrity declining.]
[Divinity integrity declining.]
[Tier 1 remains restricted.]
Amon dug his heel into the ground.
The black pressure continued to push against Amon for several long moments before he detected anything out of the ordinary.
The seals.
Every time the First Refusal attacked, several of the seals covering its body changed, not in a random fashion, but rather as if they were being rearranged.
Amon’s eyes sharpened.
"You’re not attacking me? What, you want to devour me? Like you devour trash?"
The First Refusal stopped.
Amon looked at the seals.
"Oh... you’re repairing yourself."
Silence.
Amon laughed.
"I see."
The entity’s eye opened wider.
"You understand nothing, immortal. My will shall come true."
"Maybe... perhaps."
Amon slowly lowered his arms.
"You may be right, but I understand one thing."
He pointed at the seals.
"You can’t destroy the prison. You have tried, but you can’t. Hades must have tried too, but failed."
The First Refusal’s body went still.
"You can only make it stronger."
Amon’s finger moved.
"...and every time you feed on their souls, you’re actually making the prison weaker. That’s it. Not too complicated, if I have to say."
The creature’s eye narrowed. Amon’s smile disappeared.
The First Refusal finally answered.
"You were always clever."
Amon looked toward the endless darkness.
"That’s why the Creator made me the warden of this prison. I am what stands between your freedom and eternal imprisonment."
"No."
The answer came immediately.
For thousands of years that had been his existence. Keep walking. Keep fighting. Keep saving. Keep surviving. Until there was nothing left inside him except the ability to continue.
Amon closed his eyes.
Then he whispered,
"But don’t worry. Not anymore. I will be your safety warden."
He opened them.
"Do you know why? Because I don’t need to destroy the prison."
Golden light returned to his hand.
Instead, he started to punch out the first seal of the original script on the ground.
One seal lit up.
Then another.
The First Refusal recoiled.
"Wait, what are you doing?"
Amon’s hand trembled.
The effort to access the System via this method was enormous, given that his stats were capped, his Tier 1 authority was restricted, and the System in question was ancient.
[Warden Authority recognized.]
[Seal interaction permitted.]
[Attempting temporary alteration.]
[Warning: Alteration may destabilize entire domain.]
Amon gritted his teeth.
"Then let’s destabilize it."
The seal beneath him cracked. Not outward. Inward.
The darkness under his feet folded up suddenly, making a path. But it wasn’t a way for him to escape. It was a connection.
Amon could sense other things in the world too. Heaven, Hell, the mountains of earth, and even the small village he had left behind. And there was something else, a presence that was all too familiar to him.
Amon’s expression hardened.
"Liliana."
The First Refusal laughed.
"She has already begun. My perfect vessel."
Her smile faded. Why? Because she finally knew. Why Amon insisted on saving people, saving the world and its people. Because of the missions.
No.
They were just tools for him. Them and their faith. They were simply remembering Amon. Acting like a foundation, like anchors. Living anchors. And as long as they remembered him as strongly as they did, the world would continue to go the way he wanted.
Liliana understood immediately. She understood the hypocrisy of it all.
"So that’s why."
The black cracks in her eyes widened as she felt the hunger of the one who had been left behind. The voice inside her whispered, More.
She touched her chest.
"You want to fix things? Fix the hypocrisy of the world?"
The answer came as hunger, and what did she do? She laughed, basking in her newfound hatred.
"Then take me, me and all of my memories, and let’s take theirs as well."
She looked toward the three visions.
"Take everything."
The undead demigods moved, following her like puppets, their own embers rising from their core.
Doom!
Hades, from the Second World, laughed, looking down upon this particular city.
"Amon, you tried to be a god. Now face your reckoning..." he muttered, his body gradually burning in pure divinity. He had laid out many spells everywhere, linking up.
Over the ruin of the city in the Second World, where there was no sun, no Apollo. Only a pale circular shape seemed to hang above the horizon. It gave no light. It simply watched. Hades simply watched.
Then she appeared, Liliana, as she walked into the heart of the Second World’s many cities. The many buildings and temples belonging to angels crumbled.
The skyscrapers that belonged to the high gods, those too crumbled. Rather than neat streets, dark roots had grown to form tangled paths. Broken gods of the past, the so-called dead titans, some of them decapitated, rose from the earth in twisted stone.
In the center of the city there was a massive stone monument with the likeness of a man with golden hair. It was Amon.
The city was Amon’s.
Amon had never brought her here. Liliana stopped, dumbfounded.
As she reached out to touch it, her fingers ran over the stone.
"You were here. You built this city, a paradise, without me."
An answer came from behind.
"No. This is no paradise, Liliana."
Liliana turned.
The Oracle had followed her to this spot of desolate ruin and stood at the end of the street. His tattered coat still hung on his slumped frame, and the two objects that comprised his obsession still hung from the two pockets.
Liliana smiled.
"Brother... it’s been long. You were hiding here, in his made-up world, while I... me... drowned in demigods’ blood, roaming all around the world at the edge of death!"
"Sister, calm down. You are not yourself right now. You’re becoming something else."
"I know. With this darkness, this power, with the power of the one who left it all behind, I am now something better. Something much, much better."
"No."
The Oracle’s eyes moved toward the cracks in Liliana’s face.
"...I had warned Master not to take you in. I guess I was right all along."
Liliana’s smile disappeared.
He dug inside his coat for the two pieces of metal that were always there. One of them glowed a deep, angry red. The other was a perfect, empty black.
"If this continues, you will no longer be immortal. You will become someone who holds all the dark secrets of the world."
Liliana stared at him.
"Indeed... the first witch," she muttered, giving herself a name. "How’s that for a name?"
"Sounds dark and evil."
"Indeed."
"You are here for the followers of Amon, our brothers and sisters?"
Liliana tilted her head.
"I always knew I wasn’t the only one. He must have plenty..."
The Oracle sighed.
"And you still think you’re doing this because you hate him."
For the first time, Liliana’s expression changed. A flicker. A tiny crack. Then the black voice inside her whispered, More.
Liliana smiled again.
"I don’t hate him."
The Oracle stared at her.
Liliana looked at the statue.
"I hate that his love doesn’t belong to me."