*Achoo!*
A sneeze ca from atop the head of a Rank 4 Nightwalker. That very head was currently in the process of sliding off its neck. Yet, in that sa instant, a massive, weirdly shaped hand cut through the air and smashed into the head. An explosion of blood and guts occurred, with Cassius's tiny figure calmly levitating above the carnage.
"Ya know, at first, you guys managed to kill a few hundred tis," he said, his voice several notches icier than it was a few hours ago. "Now, however… Now, you bunch are just oversized twinks."
"SCACACACA!!!" x13
The last remaining Rank 4 Nightwalkers released hair-tingling screeches that echoed through the lands. They were all extrely angry, with the one that just accidentally splattered his brethren's head being especially livid. Every single one of them crushed the land beneath them in an act of leaping at the insignificantly small flying figure.
"How pointless," Cassius coldly uttered. Raising both his hands, emotionless versions of Lilith and Mora appeared. "You lot already lost your chances at killing . You know why?"
His figure faded out of reality.
Entering the tistream, he zipped forward, slashed out an unknown number of tis, then reappeared behind the Rank 4 Nightwalkers.
"It's because I'm stronger. Thanks to you, I'm stronger."
SPURT! SPURT! SPURT!
The colossal bodies of the last 13 Rank 4 Nightwalkers experienced thousands upon thousands of absurdly sharp slashes in an instant. Lines of blood spread throughout them, and when those lines beca too prominent, blood bubbled up and burst outward. Limbs were removed, heads were sent sailing, and all the Rank 4 Nightwalkers collapsed into a pool of their own blackish-red blood.
"I'm simply better," Cassius said without looking back. "I'm better because the things I fight force to beco better. You were better for a long ti… Then I beca better because of you. How laughable is that? Ha…"
He ran his bloodied hand through his long raven-black hair. His slightly crazed and distorted voice ford a cackle that emulated just how much of a toll dying so many tis had taken on him.
Even now—even after all he had gone through—death still affected him.
"Quite laughable indeed," he muttered, his voice cracked, his soul trembling. "I'm so laughable…"
Cassius settled down in a sea of Nightmare blood. His crooked smile—frozen in place—stayed as a reminder of who he had to beco in order to die. In order to cope with dying.
Dying…
"I must beco numb… I must," said Cassius, pulling down on his frozen expression with the sa bloody hand. "If I am to continue becoming stronger—if I am to decide how I wish to live my life—then I must figure out how to not feel…"
However, what his deaths did to him were not so simple. What they made him feel was not just on the surface level; it was sothing that located every nook and cranny of his existence and…whacked. Whacked and whacked and whacked, making sure that he knew true pain—and that he rembered.
To forever rember each and every death… and to be constantly reminded of them… That sort of pain—it was not sothing any normal person would be able to endure.
At least… At least not without losing their minds in the process.
— After 10 minutes of sitting listlessly —
Cassius—now appearing perfectly apathetic—rose from the sea of Nightmare blood. He took out Mora and Lilith, then used them in conjunction with his Vampire Duke Bloodline to absorb all the blood in the vicinity.
The corpses of the Rank 4 Nightwalkers quickly dried up into husks, with many such husks scattered throughout the barren land.
"That's that," Cassius said with a forced grin, trying his best to reform the emotions that continuously slipped away from him. "Now, I just need to head over there and find out why that worm is here…"
In front of him—a few hundred miles out—there sat a Temple. The Temple was roughly the size of a large town; it was made of black bricks, each one exuding an aura that felt denser than most Dark Miasma. Tendrils of a similar elent crawled around the outside of the Temple, giving it an extrely ominous aesthetic.
Inside the black Temple, however, was only a single heat signature. One that could be found sitting in the deepest depths of the Temple, unmoving.
"Sothing is rather odd about that heat signature, though," Cassius said, suspiciously narrowing his eyes. "A part of it is cold, almost lifeless. How… How very odd."
Wishing to get a closer look, he sprang up like a broken coil. The sound barrier was shattered thousands of tis as he zipped through the skies.
Upon making it close enough to the ominous black Temple, Cassius descended to the ground like an Immortal. He looked up at the hundreds of large brick stairs leading to the Temple's zenith point. Up there was a softly glowing blue fire, one that greatly contrasted with the rest of the Temple.
In an instant, Cassius's fleeting figure ascended the stairs and appeared in front of the glowing blue fire. Yet, in the very mont he reached his hand toward the fire, the fire vanished. It seeped into the Temple's roof before shooting downward, going into the very depths of the Temple.
Luckily for Cassius, though, a hole wide enough to fit him inside was opened in the Temple's roof.
Without hesitation, he fearlessly dropped through the hole.
Below him was an endless air of darkness, one that seed to grow larger the further he fell. Eventually, it reached a point where, even with his Magic Sense active, it felt like the insides of the Temple had no limits.
This fact… It puzzled Cassius to no end.
"I noticed it when I touched the material that makes up this Temple—which felt indestructible—but this place is special," he comnted, continuing his fall. "Very special."
He had fallen more than long enough to reach that heat signature if based on previous trics, but once inside the Temple, things changed. Ti and space warped, leaving everything distorted and undesignated. What once appeared relatively close was now unbelievably far away.
However, fortunately for Cassius, after experiencing half an hour straight of falling through endless darkness, he finally saw sothing different. A light. A bright white light that grew larger and larger beneath him the longer ti passed.
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