The Wrong Kind of Immortality

The sight was so unexpected that Orestis froze.

It was that hero. Or a man who looked exactly like him—too much like him.

“It can’t be,” he murmured.

That hero would not be born for another thousand years. This couldn’t be him. And yet there he was, lounging against the wall of Lyse’s temple as though he had every right to exist.

For a moment, Orestis wondered if he was seeing things. Wondered if he was wrong.

But no. The hero had been Lyse’s Chosen. For this man to be sitting outside her temple was too much of a coincidence.

I have to be sure—need to be sure.

He pulled on divine power—hard—and covered himself with layers upon layers of defensive wards and enchantments. The ones on his current gear would not be enough. Not if it really was him.

That idiot hero had been strong enough to face gods. Strong enough to face Orestis at his peak. If this was the same person, he needed at least this much.

The sheer volume of divine power drew every eye on the street. It also drew the hero’s.

Orestis rushed at him.

The hero watched him approach. He didn’t stand. He didn’t flinch. He merely raised his eyebrows in mild inquiry at the sight of a boy covered in divine power sprinting directly at him.

That calm curiosity. That complete lack of fear.

It is him!

Orestis seized his collar in both hands and hauled him into the air. “How in the hells are you here!?”

The hero let himself hang limply, tilting his head with casual disinterest. As if he wasn’t being held aloft by a stranger in the middle of a public street.

“Do I know you?” he asked calmly.

“It’s me! Orestis!”

He looked genuinely confused. “Who?”

Oh. Right. I never told him my real name.

“The last time we met, I poked a hole in your chest and we both crumbled to dust.”

The hero’s eyes went wide as recognition, shock, and fury arrived in rapid succession.

“You!”

The hero’s hand came up, aura flaring—

“You really want to start a fight here?” Orestis said. “In the middle of a city? Everyone around us will die.”

That made the hero stop. The aura flickered. The hand lowered—not from fear, but from the reluctant calculation of a man who knew the threat was real.

“You evil bastard,” the hero said through gritted teeth. “Taking the whole city hostage.”

“I prefer the term ‘strategically aware.’” Orestis set him down but didn’t step back.

Of course, he didn’t really want a fight either. As he was now, he was far too weak to beat this hero. And while he didn’t care about the city, there was no way he would let any harm come to Eirene. Which meant that Orestis didn’t actually have any leverage over the hero at the moment.

But he doesn’t need to know that.

“Now that you understand the situation—start talking. How are you even here?”

The hero straightened his collar with exaggerated dignity. “Don’t be so smug. I know your weakness now.”

Weakness?

“What weakness?” he asked, even as his mind raced. Had this hero finally discovered a weakness in his old curse?

Is that how he managed to kill me in the end? If there is a vulnerability I don’t know about, I can—

“I remember how you dodged my spit back then,” the hero said, with the grim satisfaction of a man revealing a trump card. “I won’t hesitate to spit on you again!”

The declaration was so absurd that it left him speechless.

Orestis stared at the idiot as he thought back to that fateful day. He recalled that particular moment.

“I dodged your spit because it was disgusting, you moron!”

The hero paused. “Oh.” He deflated visibly.

Orestis sighed deeply and pressed a hand to his forehead, rubbing fiercely.

This. This is the kind of material I had to work with. I’m fortunate it only took me a thousand years to die.

He looked up, reminded of the actual point. “What’s up with this curse you had? Is there a way to turn off the regression?”

The hero’s expression changed—the bravado vanishing, replaced by something sharp and angry.

“That’s right! This is your doing!” he cried as he grabbed Orestis’s collar.

Orestis saw the hand coming but let it happen—there was no aura behind it; just indignation. The hero pulled them face to face.

“Give it back! No—get rid of this curse you gave me!”

Orestis paused. “What do you mean, ‘gave you’?”

“This body! What kind of body is this? I can’t feel anything! Nothing hurts—actually, that part’s fine. But I can’t feel any pleasure, you bastard! You did this on purpose, didn’t you!”

Wait. Seriously?

The implication was just so utterly satisfying, that Orestis felt a smile begin to form.

“Do you know what I’ve been through these past seven years?” the hero continued, his voice rising. “Only you could come up with a curse so evil! To actually deprive me of the best things in life!”

The smile widened.

This idiot really inherited my curse?

“—do you have any idea what it’s like? No, you surely know! Wine does nothing! And women—”

The more the hero talked, the wider Orestis’s smile grew. Then, gradually, as the actual content of the complaints registered, the smile began to slip.

He was not lamenting the existential horror of living forever without purpose, or the psychological toll of never being able to truly experience any pleasures in life.

No, this idiot was complaining about his love life. Or rather, being unable to experience the more carnal aspects of it.

“—and now I can’t even reset when I fail to woo them. But that would still be fine if I could—”

The more he listened, the more irritated he became.

Orestis thought about the regression ability. How it restored the person to ten years of age upon death. How Orestis must have killed this hero dozens—hundreds—of times over the centuries, each death sending him back to try again.

How long has he actually lived? A hundred years? More?

The hero could have become the most dangerous opponent Orestis had ever faced. The skill, the power, the sheer relentless persistence—all of it built through lifetimes of repetition. Endless chances to find a solution to kill an immortal.

And yet, why is it starting to sound more and more like he spent most of his time chasing women?

He felt a vein pulse in his temple. He didn’t feel like listening to his bullshit any longer.

Orestis pulled his dagger from his belt and shoved it into the hero’s throat to shut him up.

Gasps erupted from the surrounding crowd. Orestis ignored them.

The hero blinked in surprise but was otherwise unharmed. Which was to be expected.

“How long,” Orestis asked, his voice barely controlled, “did you spend fighting me?”

The hero calmly reached up, gripped the dagger, and pulled it free. The wound sealed instantly, the body simply refusing to acknowledge the damage.

He examined the blade with mild interest. “Three hundred and forty-seven years, four months, and eleven days,” he replied as he tossed the dagger over his shoulder.

Orestis chose not to dwell on the absurd precision of that figure.

“Are you telling me,” he said, nearly grinding his teeth, “that you spent three and a half centuries with the ability to regress, and you wasted it chasing women?”

“I wasn’t wasting it,” he said, looking mildly offended. “I can easily do both!”

“You absolute imbecile!” Orestis shouted, barely holding himself back from escalating things. “If you had spent even a fraction of the effort you put into chasing skirts on actually finding a way to kill me, I would have been dead and buried centuries ago!”

“What do you know?” the hero shot back, frustration cracking through. “I did try! I tried everything! You were unkillable! A cockroach! No—even cockroaches have the decency to die and let others take their place!”

That just meant he hadn’t tried hard enough! Maybe now, he would actually focus on the task at hand!

“Well, joke’s on you,” Orestis told him. “You can enjoy being the cockroach now. Damned cockroach hero!”

“You take that back! No—take this damned curse back! And give me back my blessing!”

That word made Orestis pause. “Blessing? You mean the regression was something Lyse gave you?”

“Don’t take the name of My Goddess so casually!” the hero snapped, incensed.

“Just answer the question, hero.”

“The name is Maxim!”

Orestis glared at him, then lifted a hand toward the gathered crowd, gathering divine power in his palm. A bluff—he had no intention of using it. But the hero—Maxim—didn’t know that.

“Hey, calm down!” Maxim said quickly, eyes darting to the crowd. “It wasn’t from her. I got it long before I became her Chosen. From some weird shrine.”

A shrine?

Orestis was immediately intrigued.

He redirected the divine power—reduced its intensity—and constructed a three-dimensional image in the air between them. It was a structure he could never forget; stone, ancient, covered in symbols he had never been able to decipher. The shrine where he had received his own curse, a lifetime ago.

“Did it look like this?” he asked.

Maxim looked a bit surprised. “Yes. Almost exactly like that.”

Something cold settled in Orestis’s chest.

The same shrine. But different curses? Is it really possible? No—I need to confirm this.

He expanded the image, zooming out, constructing a map of the human continent, Aethera. He kept the shrine’s location marked as a thin pillar of light.

“Was it here?”

Maxim glanced at the map and shook his head. “No.”

He then used mana to construct a map similar to the one Orestis had made. But the map did not depict either Aethera, or the demon continent of Asureth. Instead, it showed Valdren, the central continent.

A single point of light marked a location inland, near a mountain range.

If there’s one shrine in Valdren, and one in Aethera, could there be another on Asureth? And would it have a different curse?

Something to think about later.

“Hey, since you apparently still want to die,” Maxim said, his tone shifting to something almost reasonable now, “how about we fix this? Remove this curse. Return my blessing. I’ll happily kill you afterward.”

“If removing that curse was so easy, do you think I would have spent a thousand years trying to get rid of it?”

Maxim’s face fell.

“In that case, let’s switch back. Recreate the last encounter. What combination of powers did you use to burst my heart? That might be what triggered the switch.”

Orestis mentally recoiled at the very idea.

“Forget it!” he said immediately—vehemently. “I’m never taking that curse back.”

Then he added, “You’re welcome to take yours back, though. Just tell me how to turn off the regression and I can die in peace. You can go back to the shrine on Valdren and get cursed again afterward for all I care.”

Maxim shook his head. “Doesn’t work that way. The regression point can be adjusted—I can choose when to return to. But the ability itself can’t be disabled. Believe me, I tried.”

There was a slightly haunted expression on his face when he said the last bit. It was an expression Orestis had seen often enough in the mirror, once.

Figures. Coming from a similar source, his curse was bound to be similarly stubborn.

As he studied Orestis, Maxim’s combative energy seemed to completely drain away. “So what now?” he asked.

Orestis exhaled. “I don’t know. Yet.”

If the regression point can be adjusted, maybe it can be studied. Modified. Maybe even disabled, eventually. The idiot is clearly not the type to have experimented enough.

Something to work on.

He should probably go look at the shrines as well. With a second one to compare with, maybe he’ll discover something new. Like whether the curses could be modified, or separated.

A moment later, Maxim said, “I know what you can do. Fix the other problem you caused instead of standing there brooding.”

Orestis raised an eyebrow. “What ‘other’ problem?”

He had no obligation to help—but he didn’t mind doing so if it meaningfully advanced his goals.

“My Goddess hasn’t spoken a single word to me since I arrived in this time. She’s not responding to my prayers. She’s even preventing me from using any of her blessings,” he said, aggrieved.

That explained a few things. From what Orestis recalled, Maxim’s control over divine power had always surpassed his skill with aura and mana.

I was wondering why he never activated any of his blessings or used divine power.

Maxim shot him an accusing look. “I think it’s because of your curse. This body—it must be repelling her somehow. It’s unholy, or corrupted, or—”

Orestis rolled his eyes.

What is up with this idiot’s overactive imagination?

“It’s not the body,” Orestis interrupted. “If the curse repelled divine attention, I would never have been able to interact with gods at all. Besides, Lyse did speak to me once or twice, back in the day.”

“Then why isn’t she speaking to me?” he asked, sounding even more offended. “And don’t say her name so casually!”

He ignored the last part. “That’s between you and her. I can’t help you with your goddess.”

Maxim stared at him, clearly unsatisfied. But Orestis had nothing more to offer on that front. Nothing he was willing to volunteer freely, anyway.

Orestis had his own suspicions about why Lyse might be avoiding her future Chosen. If he was right, then Maxim had simply appeared in this era—likely through some fluke related to the immortality curse. His unchanged age from their last encounter supported the theory.

Which would mean, from Lyse’s perspective, a man had suddenly appeared from nowhere, bearing blessings she did not remember granting. That would be enough to raise suspicion in anyone, let alone for someone as meticulous as her.

Restriction, avoidance, and observation was the most ideal approach in such a scenario.

“By the way, do you know those two?” Maxim said, pointing a finger somewhere behind Orestis.

“Two?”

Orestis turned fully.

The sight of Eleuthera munching on popcorn while watching his antics was a scene he was quite familiar with—he’d experienced it several times in his past, after all.

This time, however, Eirene was also standing beside her. Also eating popcorn.

A goddess and her Chosen, standing side by side, each with a bag of popcorn, serenely observing him while he screamed at a stranger in front of a temple.

In hindsight—not his best moment.

Still, he had to address the behaviour. Not his—theirs.

Orestis glared at Eleuthera. “You’re being a bad influence!”

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