Read Novel Full Chapter 1376: He Was
Chapter 1376: He Was
“The path to Logoth must be achieved, not taught. I can only guide you, but you must walk the path alone.”
Atticus felt Anorah vanish the moment she spoke, and the pressure resting on him deepened.
‘This is annoying.’ Atticus cursed. He had always found situations like this insane. He felt the same way during the life weapon’s trial.
To him, he could never understand why there was any need of not giving him the end goal.
If the katana had shown him the art from the start, Atticus was sure he wouldn’t have taken as much time as he did to learn it.
And he believed the same for this situation. He was trying to achieve something, why not just tell him what he was trying to do so he would simply just do it?
Atticus cleared his thoughts.
‘There’s no helping it.’ He had to focus, and focus he did.
He had gotten a monkish vibe from the whole thing, so he had determined that it would mostly deal with reaching a sort of enlightenment.
Atticus focused on everything he was currently feeling. The weight pressing him down. The smoothness of the floor. His body…
His body stole his focus. Right now, Atticus was the weakest he had ever been in his life. His mana was locked, and Will restrained. Not even the passive power of mana remained.
He felt… mortal. Like mundane things like thirst and hunger could kill him.
He had resolved to keep a leveled head throughout this ordeal. To calmly assess the situation and reach the best possible conclusion. No matter what, keeping a calm mind would bring the solution to light.
However, a day passed, and he found it impossible.
In this state, being forced down and not able to do anything, Atticus felt only one thing. Anger.
He had no more superior intelligence. Without mana to fuel his thoughts, it had reduced to the snail’s pace that was the ordinary mind.
Atticus found himself clenching and unclenching his fists. He fought.
His every instinct screamed to unleash his Will and burn the restrictions to bits. Just a little Will, and he would have his power back.
His overwhelming power that made him seem like he was on top of the world. That he could do anything.
He was a god. Gods do not grovel as he currently did. They dominate, with pure, absolute power.
Just a flicker of Will, and his power would surge back.
‘No.’
Atticus clenched his teeth, fighting the urge. He had never thought himself to be so drunk on his power that he couldn’t go a day without it.
‘The path. The path. The path.’
Atticus began repeating the words like a mantra, attempting to distract his mind from his apparent weakness.
It worked, as he found something new to focus on. However, it only lasted for a bit. By the end of the second day, anger overwhelmed every part of him.
“Shit!” He growled, struggling to stand. But the weight simply pressed harder on him. His body was filled with rage. He felt small, weak. Stripped of everything that defined him.
His anger kept on growing, and the only thing that kept him from using his Will was his pride. Doing so was cheating, and if he did, it meant he had simply wasted two days of his time.
The fourth day came, but it wasn’t in a blur. Atticus had felt every single minute, every single second.
Rather than the morning sunlight, what greeted him was thirst. Atticus couldn’t remember when he last felt thirsty. It seemed so long ago.
And though he knew that no normal human could go a day without feeling thirsty, not to talk of three, it did little to dampen his shock.
The thirst brought about another wave of anger, and Atticus found himself growling and attempting to stand.
On day six, Atticus’s anger gave way to pure desperation.
‘I need my power.’ The thought continued to thunder in his head all day. ‘Without it, I’m nothing.’
The thoughts circled like vultures around prey. By this point, he had begun clawing at the ground, leaving marks on the wood, nails bleeding. Atticus had never felt so desperate in his life.
Regardless, he didn’t unleash his Will. It was then he realized the extent of his addiction to his power.
The eighth day gave way to something new. Hunger.
His stomach growled, head fuzzy, and he felt a wave of weakness assault him. He was tired, and so were his thoughts.
‘What’s the point?’ The thought slithered in his mind. ‘You can’t do this without power. You’ve always needed it. Without it, you’re nothing.’
The silence of the room was deafening, and within it, Atticus felt truly tired. What was the point of all this? Was this even worth it? Was Anorah playing a prank on him?
He had thought it weird initially. She was a saint, right? Wasn’t she supposed to pray to some god or something, like all other saints do?
Atticus suddenly realized that he never truly knew the saint. Yet, he had allowed her to do all of this without any contract binding them. Had he truly trusted a stranger?
‘She’s lying to me.’ Another slithering thought. She was a liar. This training was all but a sham. Just a flicker of his Will, and he would break out of this.
Was there truly a thing called Logoth?
‘Logoth.’ The word sent a shudder through Atticus. Something he couldn’t understand. Without knowing, he began repeating it in his head.
‘Logoth. Logoth. Logoth. Logoth…’
Atticus found the noise in his head had calmed, replaced with only one word. Logoth.
On day ten, Atticus reached a new state of calm that frightened him.
The thirst and hunger were still very much there, but his mind was no longer screaming for his power. The reflex had dulled, he realized. It was still there, but rather than a roar, it was at the back of his mind.
He began to notice other things. His calm breaths, his steady heartbeat. The weight was pressing him down on the ground, but he realized it hadn’t killed him.
He was not his power. His power was not him.
He could exist, without his power.
‘It’s just a tool.’
For the first time since this lesson began, Atticus felt a disconnect. Like he was on another plane from his power. He was the one in control, not his power.
And finally, on the eleventh day, a silence spread within him.
The crushing weight pressed down on him. His hunger growled inside him, and the thirst clawed at his throat. But he was silent, like an empty husk.
He felt no urge to do.
And in his mind, one word thundered.
‘Logoth. Logoth. Logoth. Logoth.’
The reflex loop had been broken. He no longer needed his power to simply exist.
He was. And that was enough.
…
As the High Synod of Light argued with one another, a smile boomed on Anorah’s face.
‘He did it.’
It was a beautiful sight, and many would even claim it was a blessing from the heavens to be able to witness such beauty. Unfortunately, Anorah made sure to hide it well. No one saw her.
For a second, the bickering of her council blurred in her ears. Her attention was stolen by the man currently training thousands of feet underground.
The enigma.
Anorah had met many men in her lifetime, well, at least in her current one. Ever since awakening her mark, she’d known this wasn’t her first life, though the memories of the other eluded her.
Still, in all her years, she had never met a man quite like Atticus. Most people spoke with one of a few intentions in mind: to dominate, to manipulate, to impress, or to deceive. But Atticus… he had done none of those things.
He had spoken no false words. In fact, he had matched her openness with a quiet honesty of his own. It had shocked her, disarmed her even.
Anorah had never encountered anyone like him before. She found herself so drawn to his nature that she offered to share something precious, one of the last lessons her father had given her before his death. The path of the Logoth.
Her demand that he ally with the resistance was merely a way to reassure herself that she wasn’t losing her mind.
After all, only an insane leader would offer to teach something of such importance to a stranger, right?
‘Wrong.’ Anorah shook her head, smiling smugly. If she had been insane, then she wouldn’t have demanded that he allied with the resistance, right?
Yes, only smart leaders do that. She wasn’t insane. She was smart. Very smart.
“Saint…”
“Saint Anorah.”
Anorah shook her head, snapping out of her thought. She realized that the whole council was staring at her, silent.
“What?” Her expression flickered cold. Mask worn.
A man named Kaino Kong cleared his throat. He was one of the High Synod, the council members and the people responsible for making the decisions in the resistance, well, second to the Violet Saint herself.
“We require you to make a decision, Saint.”
Kaino flinched as Anorah’s gaze fell upon him. He felt like being stared at by the abyss.
He was an aged god with respectable power in the resistance. Hardened, after constant battles.
However, there was an unreachable depth to her stare, emotionless, like she was merely staring at a thing rather than a god.
“On what?”
Kaino held back his flaring anger.
“Our captured people, Saint. Every second they rot in the Willguard’s prison is a wound to the resistance itself, a reminder of our failure. We need to free them, before that wound festers beyond repair.”
He said, glancing around the room for support. He got a few nods from some of the other council members, those loyal to him, but the others, some who were loyal to the saint, and others who simply wanted to stay away from his enmity with her, remained silent.