CHAPTER 107: | THE EMPEROR'S DEATH
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Flashes of orange light flickered in and out of the world as the violent currents slowed before coming to an absolute halt, as if time itself stopped entirely.
BZZZZZT!
It returned in the next second as a molten heatwave erupted, creating a circle of explosion that flew outward just as purple flashes tore into reality.
A voice accompanied the destructive light.
"THE FIRST ZEN OF DISTORTION: LIERA STYLE: FIST OF THE DISTORTED EMPEROR."
Amara bit her teeth harder, pointing her hand at him.
Thousands of neverending tentacles flashed in and out of reality in a desperate flurry, aiming to decapitate him before time could pau...
BZZZZZT!
Her gaze narrowed into slits so dilated that her pupils were invisible.
Amara's expression was filled with desperation, she had poured all of her effort into this one final barricade.
Yet, the world came to a standstill before even one of her tentacles could brush his cheeks.
CLOCK... CLOCK... CLICK!
The sound of a broken clockwork clicking in every millisecond erupted in the stilled gray world.
This time, it wasn't I who had paused the time, but someone whose control over the flow of time had already hit its ceiling.
It was none other than the founder of Atlantis, the supreme god Ashin Sae Acoustine.
Even in the frozen time, my eyeballs moved creepily, watching her take her steps within the magic circle drawn in blood below her.
She smiled at her disciple, then tilted her head as she glanced at me for a second, her lips moving slowly.
"You must protect the one you loved this time..."
'Her words were directed at me, and I couldn't understand why she was saying that. Hadn't I always protected her?'
No...
'I didn't protect her... not with any genuine goodwill left in me. I saved her because she was helpful to my plan, not because I loved her... though the emotions I feel are faint.'
I took a momentary pause as I pondered my answer...
'Do I truly love her just because she loves me? No, it wasn't because she loves me, but because she was the most familiar to me, and I... need her for my plan.'
"Her love doesn't matter... I don't feel a thing, not even a shred of love for her... so hear me now, for I will protect her from any danger."
'Huh?'
'Why did I say that? How weird...' I stayed silent at the sudden internal revelation.
These emotions I had longed for had only now begun to blossom.
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So, it remained uncertain if I truly saw those two as merely a means to achieve my goal.
"Elara... Samantha... just what are you to me?"
I closed my eyes after blurting those words out.
It was unfamiliar to me that I was now starting to mess up my normally wise self over some trivial matter...
"Just what should I do to be free from this predicament?"
Ashin Sae Acoustine, hearing my words, merely touched Samantha’s feckled face, then ran her fingers across her lips before she grabbed her waist and pulled her closer.
Then she smiled as she pressed her forehead to Samantha's, and opened her enclosed blood-red pupils, which were as mystifying as ever, to glance at me.
"Allow me to give you an advice... oh, one who possesses no emotions... don't bother at solving this predicament of yours with mere intellect alone, since it will only lead to disaster... like I have."
Ashin Sae Acoustine merely watched the skin on her hands crack.
Creaak...
In the next seconds, it fractured into millions of pieces, crumbling into fine dust.
But she merely sighed at her own predicament, an existential crisis.
Instead of doing anything to survive, she suppressed her instincts by simply closing her eyes while embracing her disciple, who was now watching as her body disintegrated.
Samantha's gaze was cold and unforgiving.
She watched her Master, the Master who brought her to this height, a height she wouldn't even have dared to imagine in the past, in cold blood.
"Master, how foolish... sacrificing your clone for a glimmer of hope to free yourself from a prison of eternity... how foolish indeed, but an admirable struggle."
Her voice was cold, it was as icy as the white wasteland in the far north.
Then she opened her mouth, and razor-sharp fangs could be seen developing.
Ashin Sae Acoustine, witnessing the transformation of her disciple, was greatly satisfied that she, whose compatibility with the Darkness attribute had become a creature of the night, not an ordinary one, but something higher... higher than her, who was hailed as the empress of the night.
Samantha’s new fangs sunk down on Ashin Sae Acoustine’s pale neck, digging deep into her flesh.
Ashin was sent into a spiral of pain, her world turned white, then into something funny as she began to hallucinate.
But Ashin Sae Acoustine merely shrugged off the agony like it was nothing as she let her disciple continue.
Minutes passed, and Ashin Sae Acoustine noticed that her body was losing its vitality.
Her very existence was crumbling apart as her latent power was transferred into her own disciple.
Yet, she paid no heed to it, since she was satisfied at her own demise.
"What a cold-blooded woman you are, Samantha... I wonder if ever you will change in the future?"
It was her last utterance.
The last words of someone so great were just a light-hearted joke about her own disciple's heartlessness.
BZZZZZT.....
The gears of the world began to click as the buzzing of a bee erupted, and time resumed exactly at the death of Ashin Sae Acoustine.
BZZZZZT!
Then the world stalled before it stilled into stillness as the frame of the world lost its colors, settling into gray.
Time froze solid, thus stopping the time yet again for a brief moment.
BZZZZZT...
Time resumed yet again.
The thousands of tentacles lashing out a flurry of attacks hit nothing.
The man before Amara had disappeared into thin air.
With her left in confusion at the situation before her.
"Whereareyouwhereareyouwhereareyouwhereareyou!"
Her outburst could be heard for miles away as her tendrils spread outwards, lashing into the empty waters.
Every lash of her tendrils tore through the currents, creating a screaming destruction. The sound wasn't pain, but the sonic snap of a massive whip slicing the water like empty air.
"THE FIRST ZEN OF DISTORTION: LIERA STYLE: PALM OF THE ZENITH."
I smiled, then vanished in the next instance and reappeared from nowhere, settling just below Amara with my scalding palm already planted into her stomach.
TSST!
Amara’s tendrils quivered from pain, then lashed out everywhere, sending waves of impact flying in all directions.
The pain didn't vanish.
Instead, it raged, a blinding vice twisting in her stomach and growing more violent with every passing second.
She screamed and howled uncontrollably like a vanquished banshee.
"ITHURTSITHURTSITHURSTITHURTSITHURTSITHURTS!"
I watched her tendrils stop all of their movements, as they've then vanished and reappeared meters away from me.
But I only smiled at her futile attempts to get rid of me, as I had already executed the next step of this technique just now.
Amara was confused.
The hellish pain that burned her stomach was gone, replaced with the comfort of the cold waters...
"!!?"
She was confused that something cold and relentless was flooding inside of her body.
But before she could even lift a single pinky finger of hers to check what happened, all the activities in her body stopped as all she could see was a core grasped in the hand of her opponent.
"How....?!"
