Lord Shadow - Chapter 1999 1999: Rune

Then, after what felt like an eternity, waiting, Azief suddenly realized what he should do

It is like some kind of information streamed into his mind. But it is not told to him in words, it is just like how some will guiding his instinct.

“I need to sacrifice the rune” this is what his instinct is telling him

Azief sighed and then he released the rune from his body. To bear a rune fruit, this rune must be sacrificed.

And the moment his heart and his mind sacrifice that rune, this place senses it

The runes come out from his Inner World and Azief eyes narrows as he sees the manifestation of his rune out of his Inner World.

This mindscape suddenly is now being colored by the aura of this rune.

“Argh!” Azief felt a pain like never before.

It is like his heart is being pulled from his chest.

Every fiber of his being felt the pain, every nerve screaming for relief

The pain is unlike anything he felt before.

He should not have any nerves or even pain receptors.

After all, he is an Essence Creation being.

An energy-based organism.

Pain….is the last thing….no, it is the only thing he would not feel.

But now, he feels pain

The feeling of his heart being ripped out should not have occurred.

This pain reaches deep into the soul.

Those who do not know about the soul, do not know the pain of the soul.

If you could understand the soul and could inflict damage to it, the pain is even more terrible than any physical pain

The soul is an immortal artefact if Azief had to give it a term.

And those who could hurt such an immortal thing…. how could such a thing not be something that is painful.

But most of the time people didn’t even realize that they had a soul.

Even the evilest among living beings had a soul.

The difference is that a pure soul could power up an entire Universe with the right magic.

But a dark soul, corrupted by evil, corrupted by desire to destroy and inflict pain on others, this kind of soul is rotten.

It is even useless than the dust beneath your feet.

He had to think of something to distract him from the pain.

It felt like an eternity and then the pain subsided.

He could feel the runes that he had sacrificed were still there in his Inner World.

But it is ethereal.

And it is dim.

It could not be used easily.

Azief sighed

As for what runes that is sacrificed, only Azief and this tree knows it.

He doesn’t know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but he pays a steep price.

He takes a deep breath and then when he releases it, he is back into the real world.

Only a second had passed in the real world.

Azief looked back at the tree.

“Did anything happen?”

Katarina, who is not far away, asked.

Azief smiles and nodded.

Then he looks at Erika.

“This is truly something magnificent, odd and curious” Azief mutters

Then the tree suddenly glows.

From one of the sides of the trees, a branch suddenly appears sprouting out from the trunk.

It was like the tree experience accelerated growth

And then from the branches there are leaf sprouting out.

and finally, there is a fruit coming out

Erika then walks toward the tree.

She opens up her palm, and something flew out from the temple.

It only takes a moment.

There is an object that flew and landed on her palm

A knife.

A very small knife.

Azief could sense the power of that knife.

It looks like an ancient knife. There is carving on the hilt. It seems to depict an event.

But it is not the carving that truly attracts his attention

It is the aura.

A death aura.

Destruction embodied.

That is the feeling that knife gave him.

“A special fruit requires a special knife. You could pluck it and it would not change the effect of the fruit. But using this knife, one would extract more from this fruit branch. After all, it is not every day, someone would make a deal with the tree and sacrifice their runes.”

Erika mutters to herself but her words echo around the tree. Erika then looked at Azief, smiled and spoke

“This fruit is yours. So, I must ask. Can you let me cut off the fruit and extract the sap that would come out after cutting this fruit from the branch?”

Azief thought for a moment and then said

“What use is the sap?”

“I have some ideas for it. Who knows?” and she smiles

“Maybe someday it will help you? Or maybe it would just help me. I could even send some of it to pandemonium to investigate its properties” Azief thought for a moment and then nodded

Erika smiled and she did not wait any longer.

She slowly cut off the fruit and then she waved her hand and the fruit floated toward Azief.

Erika on the other hand is more focused on the sap that is slowly dripping down from the cut branch

She brought up a flask and the flash hovers just below the branch, each drip of the sap falling into the flask

But Azief is different from her.

Erika could see that Azief is anxious to create the concoction

“Enter the temple. My Acolytes would guide you to my alchemy room. There is everything that you need to concoct the concoction there” Azief nodded

But before they go, Azief looks at Erika.

Erika also looks at him.

They gaze at each other for a moment.

They did not send any telepathic message or do anything.

They just look at each other.

Azief remembers her eyes and she also remembers her eyes.

Both of them know that they now forge another bond.

Azief didn’t know whether this was a good thing or not.

Katarina, who is standing beside Azief, could not understand the significance of this moment.

The only people that understood this deeply are these two people.

Azief has always been cautious with the Oracle because he always felt that this person wanted to use him somehow.

Azief is not wary of being used.

Many people use him. It is not something that he hated. People use him and he uses people. Sometimes, the most dangerous thing if you have no use

Some use his name; some use his influence.

He didn’t care most of the time because those who use his name and those who use his influence are also doing things he would want to do.

But the way Eika wanted to use him, he doubts it is something good

And the wariness he felt against her skyrocket even more when she learns more about Borgan.

Borgan is an Etherna that seems to have seen the entirety of time beginning to its ending

When the Etherna civilization was about to collapse and be destroyed, she probably created a countermeasure.

The rings are one of them.

And maybe there are others.

And if there are others, Azief believes it is the network of clairvoyants connected by the same source

The Veil. And who knows, maybe Erika knows more than what she is telling them.

And Azief is quite sure that Erika knows more than what she is telling.

But that is not the only thing that made him unable to truly trust Erika

It is that she has this same kind of feeling as Loki.

That mysterious feeling, like she is seeing things from a different dimension.

Erika on the other hand could also feel Azief wariness.

But there are some things she could say and some things she could not say

Unlike Wargod who dares to contend with the will of the Omniverse, Erika is still just a small fry.

Even in the future, her cultivation only reached Half Sovereign.

And that is even with all of the resources she piled up in her body.

They both simply looked at each other with these thoughts and Erika smiles while Azief harrumphed away

One goes to the temple; one goes back toward the entrance of the top of the mountain

The cold wind blows on the top of the mountain, but no one is feeling the cold, the stairway abandoned, God of Death appears, the eye that sees the future gleams.

Who wins and who loses, no one knows yet!

..

And Azief and Katarina walk to the temple.

Erika sends a mental note to her acolytes. Azief and Katarina enter the temple while Erika simply watches Azief back. She sighed

“Wargod meeting create a new kind of possibility. A new player? Or an observer who is bored?” Erika said to herself.

If Wargod did not meet Azief, there would be no such derivation.

Now, there is a derivation of fate and destiny unlike anything before.

Loki had been trying to change the future but even then, he makes his move carefully and gradual.

..