408. Meeting Malefic
Kai didn’t know when he opened his eyes.
He didn’t know where he was either, but the moment his awareness settled, a part of him understood something instinctively.
This was real. What he was seeing was not just a dream.
He stood in a vast darkness. There was no mana here or air—nothing that should have let him live, and yet he was somehow still breathing. Nothing in front of him looked blurred or unreal either. His mind was clear, so was his sight. He remembered exactly what had happened last. He had fallen asleep after returning to the Valkyrie Tower and after killing Dravros.
And still, he knew this was not a dream.
For a brief moment, the thought crossed his mind that this might have been some kind of curse Dravros had managed to leave on him without Kai noticing.
He dismissed it almost immediately. Blood drinkers didn’t work like that. So what was this?
If it had been some lesser illusion, then it should have tried to throw his mind into chaos by now. That was how such things worked. They dragged a person into panic and confusion until they could no longer tell what was real. For an experienced Mage, illusions were not hard to break so long as one still had their senses. But this…
This was something else.
Kai had already tried using spells to break it. He had pushed them out into the darkness, but nothing had happened. The darkness had simply swallowed everything. That alone told him more than enough.
If this was an illusion, then it was one far beyond anything he understood. And that left him with two problems.
The first was obvious. He had no way to do anything about it.
The second was worse. If this place was meant to break his mind, then why had nothing happened yet?
By then, he should have already felt pressure, strain, something trying to grind at his thoughts. But there was nothing. No voices, pain or pull on his mind.
And because of that, another question rose in him, one just as important as the first.
Who could even create an illusion this strong? That was the most important question of all.
There were not many Mages in the world who could trap Kai in something like this. If there were any at all. He knew of two Fifth-Circle Mages for certain, and he assumed there had to be a few more. As for the sixth circle, he was sure there might be one or two hidden somewhere, but beyond that, there should have been no one. The current era simply did not give Mages enough safe paths to advance that far. Most who tried would end up killing themselves long before reaching such a height.
So unless Kai had enemies he did not know existed, there was only one answer left.
Only one being that could have done this.
For a brief moment, he even questioned whether that was possible. Then his mind ran through the ways it could be, and the doubt vanished. So finally, he lifted his voice into the darkness.
“Malefic. Is this your doing?”
For a few seconds, nothing happened. It was just him and the eerie silence.
Then the darkness around him began to move.
Kai’s heart dropped at once as a vast amount of dead mana started gathering all around him. Before he could react, before he could raise a spell or even take a step back, two huge eyes formed inside the darkness. They were black just like everything else in that place, but still distinct enough that there was no mistaking them.
Then, they opened.
In the very next second, pressure crashed down on him.
It was so heavy that Kai dropped to his knees immediately. It felt as though a mountain had been placed across his shoulders, something vast and ancient that would not stop pressing until it crushed him flat. Even so, while his body shook under it, Kai understood one thing clearly.
If he stayed kneeling here, it would be the most pathetic thing he had ever done.
Moreover, this was not the real world.
It was an illusion, and illusions didn’t follow the same rules as reality. As long as a Mage still had their senses inside one, they could force far more of themselves into resisting it. That was always one of the flaws of illusions, at least against someone strong enough to understand what was happening.
So Kai used as much mana as he could.
He pushed it through his body and against the pressure crushing him down, and in the end, even though it still forced him lower for a moment, he stopped his legs from folding completely and remained standing.
A short laugh echoed through the darkness. Then a deep, gravelly voice spoke.
It was not truly a sound. It felt more like something speaking directly inside Kai’s mind, pressing into it without asking. He hated the feeling instantly, but he still listened. “I expected at least that much from the man who refuses to bend to fate.”
Kai didn’t answer right away.
The voice lingered inside him, and just hearing it made him feel dirtier than he had in years. There was something rotten about Malefic, something thick and murky that made Kai’s whole being want to reject it. More than that, he could not forget what this creature was.
This was the thing that would drag hundreds of millions into centuries of misery if no one stopped it.
When he stayed silent, the voice spoke again. “Why are you quiet, Fatebreaker?”
“So you know who I am.”
The reply came at once. “I know enough. Enough to know that you must be removed. Enough to know that you are a problem in my divine quest.”
Kai let out a cold snort. “What divine quest? Destroying the world as we know it?”
“No,” Malefic said. “That is only how you see it. I am the Endbringer. This is my divine quest. I am bringing salvation to this world.” It continued, “Every being moves through the cycle of life and death. Without that, life itself loses meaning. The world is no different. It cannot escape that cycle. I was born to make sure of it.”
Even under the pressure crushing down on him, Kai frowned.
He had heard things like this too many times before, from people and from history both. Everyone wrapped their cruelty in philosophy. Everyone tried to make it sound like what they were doing was not born from their own desire, but from some greater purpose that others were too blind to understand. To Kai, it was all the same in the end.
It was all foolish excuses, nothing more.
“You just like destruction. You don’t want to end the world because you see it as some natural ending. You want to do it because you enjoy being the one who ends it. There’s no greater goal in that. It’s just your hatred for this world!”
Malefic went silent. Slowly, the darkness around Kai began to move closer.
He stiffened on instinct, but he already knew this thing could only go so far with him here. Even so, the darkness kept creeping in until it stopped right in front of him, hanging there like a living wall. The eyes inside it stared down at him with an intensity so great that Kai felt as though the weight on his body had doubled, but he still forced himself to hold that gaze.
The dragon spoke again.
“You think you are fighting to save this world. What a useless ambition. You are just a peck of dust. You can't save anything.”
This time the voice hit harder inside his mind, louder and heavier, but Kai pushed through it and spoke. “And yet you’re here talking to me.”
For a moment, the darkness said nothing. “I am here because somehow, against fate, you are here. I do not know how. I do not care how. I only know this—you cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the future I am bringing to this world.”
“You haven’t done very well in that regard. I killed Dravros not long ago, and he died as pathetically as the others.”
The dragon’s voice came back without the slightest change in it. “I never tried. Those were merely the ones who serve me, and servants are worth nothing. If you think otherwise, then your death will come even sooner.”
Malefic paused. The darkness around Kai kept swirling, but now it felt calmer in a way that only made him more wary. When Malefic spoke again, its voice felt colder.
“Our time is ending. Yours. Mine. This world’s. But before I send you back, I will show you why you should step aside. Kill yourself, and all of this will become easier.”
Kai opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, his vision twisted.
The darkness vanished. And in its place, he saw ruin.
A gigantic dragon made out of living void was burning everything below it with dark flames. Entire cities vanished in seconds. Streets, walls, towers, people—everything was swallowed before most of them even understood what was happening. Kai saw Mages rise to fight it, but they only lasted for moments. A single swipe of the dragon’s claws tore through them and the sky around them alike, as if reality itself had become fragile in front of it.
There was so much death that Kai’s mind stumbled trying to take it in. It felt like he had been dropped into the last day of the world and dragged through the bodies that were screaming for salvation.
And it was not just one place. That was the worst part.
Below Malefic, huge vines of dead mana crawled across the land in every direction, spreading darkness into everything they touched. Cities fell. Forests blackened. Rivers turned wrong. In only hours, the whole world was being drowned in a depth of corruption that Kai knew no one would ever recover from.
For one terrible moment, it reminded him of the future. But only for a moment.
Because this was worse. He had already lived in a world that had been destroyed, but this was different.
Right now, he was standing in a world while it was being destroyed in front of his eyes.
The visions only grew worse with every passing moment. It was already horrifying enough to watch the world burn from above, to see cities vanish under dark fire and dead mana, but then the view changed. Suddenly he was among the people below. He saw men and women trying to run. He saw parents pulling children into their arms and trying to shield them with bodies that meant nothing in front of that kind of destruction. He saw people clinging to hope, to the stupid belief that if they only endured a little longer, it would stop.
It never stopped.
And even for the ones who survived the first wave, there was nothing left to survive in. The world around them was ripped apart and twisted into something no one could truly live in. Then came the part that made Kai’s stomach turn even more. He saw minds break. He saw people lose themselves and turn into weavers, their souls trapped inside bodies that no longer listened, bodies that had lost all reason and all humanity.
It was all too much.
And through every part of it, one voice kept ringing through his head. That no matter what Kai did, he could change nothing.
That he might be outside the bounds of fate, but the people below were not.
That he would never be able to do what he wanted. That the cycle of life and death existed for a reason.
That he was no immortal.
That he could not stop what was coming.
The ideas kept striking him again and again no matter how hard he resisted, like bells ringing inside his skull without pause. In the end, Kai screamed as pain tore through his brain, sharp and sudden, like thousands of needles being driven into it all at once.
Then, through that pain, other voices started calling for him. Kai couldn't understand them nor did he knew those voices.
There was only pain, ruin, and the sound of the world ending. His lungs were suffocating, he gasped for air—
He woke up with a sharp breath.
His eyes snapped down at once to his own hands and the blanket over him. For a second, the destruction flashed through his mind again.
Before he could spiral into his thoughts, a familiar voice broke through it.
“Lord Arzan… are you okay?”
Kai turned his head and saw Amyra there beside him, looking at him with tears in her eyes and worry all over her face. Right behind her stood Neris and Kael, and neither of them looked any better. The moment Kai saw them, the visions finally stopped pressing at his mind. He immediately pushed a wave of cooling mana through his body just to steady himself, then took another breath.
“Yes. I’m okay. How long was I screaming?”
Neris answered first. “Over an hour, Your Majesty. We didn’t know what to do. You would not wake up no matter what.”
Kai nodded slowly. “Don’t worry. I’m okay.”
But that was not really true. He was not okay at all.
The conversation with Malefic kept echoing in his mind, word after word, and no matter how much Kai tried to push it aside, it remained there. Even so, he forced himself to calm down. Letting it shake him now would do nothing useful. If anything, one thing had become even clearer to him.
If Malefic was already reaching into his mind, then it was only a matter of time before he showed himself properly.
That was the easiest conclusion to make.
Kai had already killed at least three of its major servants. A creature like that was not going to keep sleeping while he kept doing that. And once that thought settled, another question rose in him, one he could no longer avoid.
If Malefic appeared right now, could Kai actually defeat him?
Even with everything he had.
The elves, the kingdom under him, all his… power? could he really stand against the Endbringer?
Deep down, Kai already had the answer. He just didn’t want to accept it.
That hurt more than anything else.
But with that pain came one more truth, and this one he did not let himself look away from.
Kai needed to become far stronger, and he needed to do it fast.
***
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