Even Death Grew Tired of Killing Me Chapter 22 - 19

The chamber broke into motion.

Captain Edrin did not shout. He did not hesitate. The instant Astrae moved, he moved too, shield snapping up, sword drawing a clean arc through the air.

It was aningless.

She crossed the space without effort, her body blurring not from speed, but from authority. The world around her simply agreed she was already there.

Her strike landed.

Edrin’s shield scread as tal folded inward. The impact hurled him across the chamber, his body smashing into stone hard enough to form spiderweb cracks through the wall. He hit the ground and slid, blood streaking behind him.

Lyra fired.

Her arrows flew true, precise and lethal. They shattered before reaching Astrae, splintering into dust as if reality itself rejected them.

Tomas slamd his palms into the floor, his support field flaring as he forced stability into the collapsing space. The pressure eased for a fraction of a second.

The entity looked at him.

She stepped forward and brought her foot down.

The stone ruptured. The shockwave tore through the chamber, flinging Tomas aside like a discarded tool. He hit the ground and did not rise, blood pooling beneath him as his field collapsed.

I felt it then.

The sheer wrongness of her.

Not strength. Not magic.

War.

She turned toward .

Her gaze pinned in place. Not because I could not move, but because so part of my body understood what facing her ant.

She crossed the distance in a single step.

Pain exploded.

The world cut out.

I was on the ground.

Cold stone pressed into my cheek. My ears rang. My vision swam.

I tasted blood.

Soone shouted my na.

I tried to push myself up and failed. My body refused to respond.

She moved again.

Every ti she struck, it felt like the chamber itself flinched. Walls cracked. Symbols flickered. The seal groaned under the abuse.

From the outside, it looked like I was being battered, thrown aside, barely conscious.

In truth, I was dying.

Again.

And again.

Each ti, I returned to a mont where I was still alive, still broken, still within reach of her next blow.

She slamd into the floor.

Darkness swallowed .

Then I was back, coughing, lungs burning, bones screaming.

She crushed my ribs.

The world went black.

I ca back gasping, already collapsing.

She tore through with casual brutality, not even looking down half the ti. To her, I was no more important than debris.

To the others, it looked like I was being struck once, twice, then lying still.

To , it was a loop of agony.

I lost count quickly.

My mind struggled to hold onto anything that wasn’t pain or impact. Each return left slower, foggier, my thoughts lagging behind her movents.

She was not even fighting seriously.

She was venting.

Captain Edrin staggered back into the fray, blood running down his arm, sword raised again despite the way his shoulder sagged.

"Stay away from him!" he roared.

The entity glanced at him, annoyance flickering across her face.

She backhanded him.

Edrin hit the ground and didn’t move.

Lyra scread.

She scrambled forward, dragging by the arm, trying to pull away. Her hands shook. Tears streaked down her face.

"Don’t die," she whispered. "Please don’t die."

I wanted to tell her I already had. More tis than she could imagine.

She stepped closer. Her presence crushed the air. Breathing felt like pulling water into my lungs.

She stared down at .

Her eyes narrowed slightly.

"You’re still alive," she said.

Not suspicion. Irritation.

I tried to speak.

Blood filled my mouth.

She lifted her hand.

The pressure spiked. Everything inside shattered.

The strike ca down.

From the outside, it looked like my body went limp.

From the inside, the world was destroyed again.

When I ca back, my vision was swimming so badly I thought I had gone blind.

My limbs barely responded. My thoughts were scattered, fragnts of strategy and mory slipping through my fingers.

The chamber was ruined now. Cracks split the floor. The symbols flickered erratically, struggling to hold form.

The female entity stood at the center, aura flaring violently.

"This is tiring," she said. She raised her hand.

This ti, power gathered visibly. Heavy. Dense. Enough to erase what little remained of us.

I knew this one would end completely.

Not permanently.

But decisively.

I looked up at her, my vision tunneling, and the words slipped out without thought.

"You said you wouldn’t be sealed again."

Her hand paused.

Just slightly.

Her eyes sharpened.

For the first ti since the fight began, her full attention focused on .

Not because she knew what I was.

Because she sensed sothing wrong.

Sothing that refused to behave like it should.

The hesitation cost my life anyway.

The blast hit.

From the outside, my body convulsed and fell still.

Inside, the darkness took again.

When I returned, my chest heaved violently, my body trembling as if it might fall apart without her touching .

My vision burned.

The number burned brighter.

Astrae stood tall now, rage coiling tighter around her, wings of pressure flaring unseen.

She lifted her chin and spoke, her voice carrying through the chamber like a declaration written into the world itself.

"I am Astrae Valyrix, a tiered goddess of war."

The na struck the seal.

Symbols flared. Stone groaned. The structure shuddered under the weight of a god reclaiming herself.

She did not look at when she said it.

She looked beyond us.

Toward sothing older.

Sothing unfinished.

And I knew, with a clarity that terrified more than her strength, that she was done holding back.

My deaths had taught her nothing.

But her rage had taught one thing.

If this continued, I would not outlast her.

I would simply run out of ti.

~~~

The mont Astrae spoke her na, the chamber stopped pretending it was stone.

It beca a battlefield shaped by her will.

The air thickened until every breath felt earned. Light bent around her body, not warping so much as stepping aside. The symbols carved into the walls flared, then dulled, as if they were ashad to still exist in her presence.

She moved.

Not fast. Not slow.

I realized, with a sick clarity, that speed was irrelevant to her. Distance ant nothing. Direction ant nothing. She acted, and the world corrected itself to match.

Captain Edrin rose again, dragging himself upright through sheer refusal. Blood soaked his sleeve, his stance imperfect but steady. He charged.

Astrae did not look at him.

She lifted her hand and closed her fingers.

The pressure crushed inward. Edrin’s armor folded. His sword snapped at the hilt. He was hurled backward and embedded into the far wall, stone cracking around his body like a coffin being sealed.

Lyra tried to reach him.

The goddess stepped once.

The ground ruptured between them, a jagged scar opening that forced Lyra back. She fell hard, rolling, barely managing to avoid being crushed by falling debris.

Tomas tried to raise a support field.

It failed before it could form.

Not broken. Refused.

Astrae finally turned her gaze toward us. Toward .

"This is not war," she said flatly. "This is delay."

She ca for again.

I triggered Failure Converter the instant I felt the pattern collapse. The skill flared, dragging fragnts of prior deaths into focus. Trajectories. Timing. Pressure shifts. I moved before she struck.

I still died.

Her attack did not miss. It adjusted.

Darkness.

Return.

I tried again. I altered my angle. I waited longer. I moved earlier.

Death.

Again.

Again.

And again...

My body was breaking faster than it could recover. Even with resets, the shock lingered. My mind started lagging behind my senses. I would realize I had been hit only after the pain arrived.

Death count climbed.

One by one.

I tried Death-Linked Burst.

Once per life, everything I had learned poured into a single mont. Perfect prediction. Perfect timing. Perfect execution.

The vision unfolded clearly.

There was no opening.

Not a hidden gap. Not a delayed strike. Not even a flaw that could be forced.

Astrae had no weak point.

The Burst fired anyway.

I moved with absolute certainty, striking where she would be a heartbeat later.

My attack passed through empty air.

She had not dodged.

She had simply never been there in the first place.

The backlash tore through . Bones shattered. Organs ruptured.

Death.

Again.

I ca back shaking.

Again, I tried to force Error Exploitation. I pushed instability into the environnt, collapsing weakened supports, turning fractured symbols into cascading failures.

The dungeon scread.

Astrae stood untouched at its center.

She did not even brace.

The chaos bent around her and dispersed.

"Stop," she said, irritation creeping into her voice. "You are noise."

She killed without looking.

Again.

And again.

Ti stopped behaving.

I could no longer tell how long I had been fighting. The monts between deaths shrank until they overlapped. Pain stacked on pain without space to fade. My thoughts fragnted. Strategies slipped away the instant I ford them.

Death followed death followed death.

I stopped rembering how many tis I had returned.

The number burned anyway.

It felt aningless now.

I was being killed faster than my mind could recover. Each return dumped back into a body already mid-collapse. There was no clean reset. No breath. No pause.

My consciousness started to sar.

I died standing.

I died falling.

I died reaching for nothing.

At so point, I stopped reacting.

My body moved on instinct alone, but my thoughts lagged behind by several deaths. I would feel pain before I understood what caused it. I would hear sound after the darkness had already taken .

Astrae was everywhere.

Her strikes did not feel like attacks anymore. They felt like corrections. As if my continued existence was an error she was smoothing out.

Sothing in cracked.

Not physically.

ntally.

I started to lose the edges of myself. mories overlapped. Faces blurred. The sound of my own breathing felt unfamiliar. I could no longer rember what it was like to not be in pain.

Negative infinite luck did not just bring failure.

It chained to it.

I understood then that this was hell.

Not because it would never end.

But because it could.

If this continued long enough, sothing inside would give way permanently. Not my body. Not even my mind.

Sothing deeper.

The part that knew I was still .

I felt myself slipping.

Astrae lood over once more, her silhouette sharp against the collapsing light.

She frowned.

Not in confusion.

In annoyance.

"You persist," she said. "Why?"

I tried to answer.

I could not rember the words.

My vision tunneled. My thoughts unraveled. The world narrowed to the space between deaths, shrinking until there was barely room for awareness.

If this continued, I would not escape.

I would dissolve.

Death would no longer be a reset.

It would be an erasure.

And for the first ti since my deaths began, I was afraid that my unlimited rebirth was actually a curse. Sa evil twin of my negative luck.

~~~

Before my two-hundredth death, I was aware of exactly three things.

The first was the taste of blood.

It filled my mouth, tallic and thick, seeping down my throat no matter how shallow my breaths beca. My chest barely moved anymore. Each attempt to inhale felt like dragging air through broken glass.

The second was pain.

Not sharp anymore. Not clean. It had dulled into sothing vast and suffocating, like being subrged beneath a weight that pressed from every direction at once. My limbs no longer answered . I couldn’t tell where my body ended and the stone floor began.

And the third was my arm.

My left arm lay twisted in front of , fingers half-curled, palm slick with blood. Wrapped around it, faint but unmistakable, was the thin black line that had replaced the strand of hair Madison had tied around my wrist.

It looked almost like a vein.

It pulsed once.

I stared at it without really understanding why it mattered. My vision blurred. The world wavered. Astrae’s presence crushed everything else into irrelevance, yet my mind no longer focused on her.

Instead, a face surfaced.

Madison Ultima.

Not in motion. Not speaking. Just standing there the way she always did, soft expression untouched by chaos, athyst eyes calm and distant, as if the world’s end was sothing she could afford to observe rather than fear.

I didn’t know her well. I knew that.

We weren’t close. We hadn’t shared long conversations or confessions. She had helped , yes, but never explained why. Never lingered.

And yet, as my consciousness slipped, she was the one my thoughts reached for.

Not my parents.

Not the team.

Her.

It felt strange. Almost wrong. But at the sa ti, it seems natural. As though it was given.

But the feeling underneath was clear.

Madison wouldn’t give up here.

The thought wasn’t logical. It didn’t co with reasons or argunts. It simply existed, firm and unyielding, like a rule my heart had accepted long before my mind caught up.

I exhaled weakly.

Then the world froze.

Not slowed.

Stopped.

The blood no longer flowed. The pain no longer advanced. Astrae’s form, mid-motion, locked in place like a painting abandoned by ti.

And sothing vast turned its attention toward .

Death arrived without ceremony.

The pressure changed first. The air lost weight. Sound vanished. The unbearable tension that had crushed my mind loosened, as if soone had unknotted a cord around my thoughts.

A presence lood over .

It stooped.

Death.

It looked around slowly, gaze drifting over the frozen battlefield. It paused briefly when it noticed Astrae.

No reaction.

No fear.

No anger.

Just acknowledgnt.

Then it looked back down at .

I felt its annoyance before it spoke.

A long, tired sigh escaped it.

It waited.

I realized, dimly, that it was waiting for to finish dying.

The mont my consciousness slipped completely, darkness folded inward like a closing curtain.

Sothing hooked into .

Not painfully. Not gently.

Decisively.

My awareness was pulled free, yanked away from the battlefield, from my broken body, from the stone and blood and rage.

When sensation returned, I expected pain.

Instead, there was silence.

Complete, profound silence.

I floated.

There was no ground beneath , no sky above. Only an endless darkness that didn’t feel hostile. It felt... still.

Almost peaceful.

For a terrifying second, I wondered if this was what being dead was actually like.

Then a voice echoed through the void.

"You again!"

I tried to speak.

Nothing happened.

No sound. No breath. No body.

A shape erged from the darkness.

Small.

Very small.

A small figure stepped into my vision, cloaked in an oversized black robe that dragged slightly along the ground. A bone-white mask covered its face, smooth and simple, eye sockets dark and unreadable. A scythe far too large for its body rested against one thin shoulder, its blade dull and ancient.

I had the strange feeling I had seen this figure before.

Not clearly. Not recently.

Just... sowhere.

The little reaper tilted its masked head.

"Oh. Right," it muttered to itself. "You can’t talk."

It flicked a bony finger.

Sothing loosened inside .

I gasped.

"What do you an... again?" I croaked.

The reaper stared at .

Just stared. The silence stretched.

Then its shoulders slumped.

"Oh," it said, tone shifting into sothing between annoyance and reluctant understanding. "Yeah. That tracks. You wouldn’t rember."

It tapped the side of its mask with the handle of the scythe.

"Makes sense. Annoying sense."

I tried to ask what it ant.

Death growled softly.

"Quiet," it snapped. "This ti, you stay dead."

The words should have terrified .

Instead, relief flooded through so fast it almost hurt.

Good.

If I went back there, I wasn’t sure my mind would survive it. The deaths had co too quickly. Too relentlessly. I hadn’t even had ti to process one before the next tore through .

Staying dead sounded rciful.

Before I could respond, I felt sothing tighten around .

A pull.

I realized, distantly, that I had no body.

I looked down.

Where my form should have been, there was only a drifting wisp. A small, rounded core of faint light with a trailing tail of smoke that curled and faded into nothing.

A soul.

Mine.

The reaper hooked the scythe through the misty core with surprising gentleness.

"Ugh," it muttered. "Extra work."

Then it dragged along.

The darkness split.

Light spilled through, soft and gray, revealing a space that defied definition. It looked like a castle, but not really. Walls rose endlessly without texture. Pillars stretched upward until they vanished. The ceiling, if it existed, was too far away to see.

It was enormous. And filled with movent.

Hundreds.

No, thousands.

Tiny figures fluttered through the air. Others bouncing.

They were shaped like droplets of water given form, bodies semi-transparent and softly glowing. Small batlike wings flapped behind them, carrying them in uneven, playful arcs. Each held a tiny scythe no bigger than a needle.

They noticed us.

Instantly.

"Master!"

"Master, master!"

"Where did you go?"

"You should let us handle it!"

Voices overlapped, high-pitched and breathless, circling the Death in excited swarms.

One of them spotted .

"It’s him!"

"The weird one!"

"The bad soul!"

They crowded closer, poking at my wisp-body with their tiny scythes.

"You make master work more!"

"No redemption!"

"Throw him in the fire!"

I drifted helplessly, unsure whether to laugh or panic.

Then the reaper slamd the butt of its scythe against the unseen floor.

"Enough."

The sound bood.

The tiny deathlings froze midair, then scattered with disgruntled chirps, vanishing in soft puffs of gray light.

Death turned back to , mask tilted in a glare I could sohow feel.

"I’ll make sure," it said slowly, "that you don’t give extra work."

Then it tugged the scythe again and dragged deeper into the vast, unknowable space beyond.

And for the first ti since my deaths began, I had no idea where I was being taken.