Read Novel Full Chapter 362: A Fixation with a Star
Chapter 362: Chapter 362: A Fixation with a Star
Chapter 362 – A Fixation with a Star
Cassius’s eyes darted around the world of fire he found himself in, widening by the second.
The sensations his body was picking up were completely unlike anything he’d felt before, making it feel as though he’d stepped into an entirely different world.
The moment he arrived, the heat of the space around him was enough to burn his clothes to nothing, leaving him bare in an instant.
But the heat didn’t stop at his clothes, it slammed into him, burning him in a way Cassius had never felt before.
He gritted his teeth, floating in the air, held there by the Primal Queen, who watched him with a mocking expression, her power so overwhelming Cassius couldn’t even look at her without feeling like his eyes were being scorched from the inside.
He snapped his gaze away, chest heaving. Sweat clustered all over his body, his lungs straining just to pull in air.
The Last Born had been in the Chamber of Fire for a couple of seconds at most, and he was already at the edge of unconsciousness.
"And you dared be so arrogant in front of me, puppet?" the Primal Queen spoke, looking at Cassius with open disdain. "You can’t even look at me, and you can’t survive even this low a temperature for more than three minutes."
Cassius didn’t respond. He couldn’t. His breath was trapped in his throat, and he was struggling badly.
His left eye was trying to activate, but something — the Primal Queen’s authority, it seemed — kept forcing it to stay dormant.
He began to wonder if coming here over mere provocation had been the wisest choice.
[Cassius!] Ananke’s voice suddenly echoed in his mind, deeply worried and confused. [Cassius, what are you doing in the Spirit World?! A human needs a certain level of connection to a spirit just to enter here!!]
[And this damn Spirit Ruler!] Marvela hissed, glaring at the Primal Queen. [How dare she!]
"Ah!" The Primal Queen tilted her head upward, her eyes burning even brighter. "Some gods, in my chamber? My own chamber?" Her grin widened further and further, offering a glimpse inside her mouth, and it looked like hell itself. "Who gave you the right to taint my chamber with your presence?"
She opened her mouth wide, and...
"BEGONE!"
KABOOM!!!
The link between Cassius and his goddesses was blasted apart entirely, burned to ash, and Cassius coughed up a mouthful of blood, his eyes wide with horror at the sudden emptiness inside him.
Anger burned in his chest as he snapped his gaze back to the Primal Queen, whose grin never faded.
The moment his eyes settled on her, they began to burn, the agony enough to make a veteran soldier scream. But Cassius held it in, his fury only growing.
"You! What have you done?"
"Whatever I liked," the Primal Queen answered lazily. "What? It’s my chamber, puppet. Uninvited guests aren’t welcome."
"You—!"
"Tut, tut, tut." She lifted a flaming finger and pressed it to her lips in a silencing gesture. Instantly, a thread of fire appeared and stitched Cassius’s lips shut, silencing him.
His eyes bulged with pain, and deep inside him, his Snake hissed at the same agony.
"Enough talk, puppet. Show me what you so boldly claimed you could, in my presence." She lifted her right hand, and...
"Here is the environment. Here, where every spirit fire exists in perfect harmony, by my authority. Here, Cassius Desdemona, is what you sought. Now do it."
...her hand fell.
A flaming fist appeared above Cassius and slammed him deeper into the world of fire.
"To give you at least some chance, I’ve lowered my fires’ lethality to a third of normal."
Cassius barely registered the words before he found himself surrounded by fire on all sides, in every color, burning him with a crudeness that was maddening.
His mind slipped, reaching for the comfort of unconsciousness, but he refused to let himself have it.
Even with his mouth stitched shut, Cassius gritted his teeth and forced himself to look at the fires around him.
A terrible mistake.
His already-burning eyes burned even further, and he couldn’t even scream in peace.
He shut them again instantly, shaking as the flames consumed him. By then his skin had already peeled away, leaving muscle and everything beneath it terribly exposed.
Some fires were cold as permafrost, others calm yet relentlessly persistent, and some were poisonous.
Others still had lightning woven through them, making it all the more hellish.
Cassius realized he’d overestimated himself again. He’d had no idea what level of power a Primal Queen wielded, especially within her own domain, yet he’d let himself get swept into her provocation and accepted the challenge.
His left eye wasn’t working, which crippled his fire power and understanding to a mind-boggling degree.
Cassius Desdemona felt completely helpless for the first time in a long while.
And yet...
HISSS!!!
...something deep within him was angry. Something that belonged to no one but him. Something no one in the heavens or on the earth possessed.
His own Innate, the Snake of Adaptation.
Cassius’s heart began to pound faster and faster as his body crumbled further, like a house of cards blown apart by wind.
Slowly, something pulled his mind free from the bounds of his body, and he found himself somewhere within himself he hadn’t even known existed.
It was a completely white world, with nothing inside it but that same immaculate whiteness.
At the center of that world was a snake. A white snake. Not gargantuan, but big enough to be called a giant.
The snake’s crimson eyes settled on Cassius, who stood there naked, confused, still reeling from the mind-numbing pain of a second ago.
But the confusion faded quickly, once he understood what stood before him.
"I failed you once, Master," the white snake hissed, its crimson eyes so much like Cassius’s own. "That day, with the lightning blessed by a god, I failed to make it yours."
"You’re my Innate," Cassius said breathlessly, more a confirmation than a question.
"I won’t fail this time," the snake said. "But I can only succeed if you can endure long enough."
"The fires are outrageous," Cassius frowned, shivering inwardly. Never in his life had he felt pain like this.
Even Emrys’s attack during the Entrance Test would look like a joke next to these flames.
"That’s what you asked for, Master," the white snake replied. "You wanted an environment, you got it. You wanted to create something of your own, now you have the chance. And no other environment will suit what you want to achieve better than this one."
"What I want to achieve?" Cassius echoed. "How do you know what I want to achieve?"
"I am..." the white snake seemed to smile, "I am your Innate, Master. I’m everything you’ve been, everything you are, and everything you want to become, all in one entity. I know you, because I know myself. And because I know myself..."
Cassius’s mind began to drift back into his own body,
"...I know you can survive this, and create what you’ve always wanted to create."
The pain returned, worse than he remembered. But this time, even as his mind screamed in agony, a part of him remained oddly calm.
It was as if Cassius had set aside one portion of his mind to think, while leaving the rest to feel the pain and react to it.
That was when the Cursed Quest he’d received upon entering the Spirit World resurfaced in his mind.
The task was simple, and direct: Prove the Spirit Ruler wrong.
But how? What could Cassius possibly create that would be worthy in the eyes of a Primal Queen?
Only one thing came to mind, and it wasn’t necessarily a Technique or even a Skill.
What the Last Born wanted, and had always sought, was the sun. He’d never known why, and had never really tried to find out, but he’d always been fascinated by it.
He’d wanted the Sun epithet instead of Earth when his sect was created. And later, even before he knew the White Phoenix lived inside the sun, he’d wished to step into it.
It was a strange fixation, but one that had lived inside him for a long while, nonetheless.
Now Cassius had the chance to create something that would let him reach that state... that concept.
Because now he understood he needed more than just good fire manipulation to reach the sun. He needed something more.
And he was standing in a place that held every spirit fire that existed.
HISSS!!!
A snake loop appeared above his head as Cassius seemed to slip into a trance. His body was still burning, but now he had a direction to move towards.
He wanted to create the Concept of Sun. His own understanding, his own perception of the sun.
And for that...
’{Legend}...’
...he needed to become, for one brief moment, something more than human.
’Of Blood and Ashes.’
—End of Chapter 362—