Last Born Of The Desdemona

Chapter 363: Chapter 363: Three Fundamental Truths

Chapter 363 – Three Fundamental Truths

’{Of Blood and Ashes}’

Cassius’s body began to transmute, changing into something that could only be described as blood and ashes.

He literally became an entity made of both, his body cracking and burning like fire, yet spattering like blood.

The surrounding fires paused for a heartbeat, unsure of what stood before them. Because before, the Primal Queen’s order had been to burn a human body.

Now what stood there was no longer human. It was something else. But what, exactly?

The Primal Queen of Fire, seated on her throne high above the sea of fire, watched Cassius’s new state and grinned, raising a hand to her mouth before cackling loud and hard, her body slouching forward.

"A {Legend}." she said, her eyes blazing with excitement and primal madness. "So you’ve obtained a Legend? Ah, at 18 years old, you said? Not bad, puppet! Not bad at all. But..."

Her mouth widened until her face split in two, daring anyone to peek inside.

"...do you think it’s enough?"

At those words, the fires kept burning. But now they knew what they faced: a {Legend}. So they adapted, sharpening themselves to burn that very concept.

So Cassius had only a brief respite before the agony resumed, and now it was worse, since the Primal Queen had increased its intensity.

Yet the Last Born didn’t care. He’d used his {Legend} because it carried the traits that made it easier to build a Skill from Fire, Heat, Ashes, and Blood.

With those traits, combined with his own Innate — which kept improving, helping him adapt to the surrounding fires and deepen his understanding of them — Cassius had everything he needed to begin creating his concept.

And he needed real progress within 10 minutes, since that was how long his {Legend} state would last.

So the Last Born of the Desdemona set everything else aside, every thought that wasn’t useful to his current task, and began to focus on exactly what he wanted to create.

To do that, he asked himself the fundamental question: what was the sun, to him? And that question naturally led to another: how did his thoughts about the sun connect to who he was?

That mattered most. Cassius wanted his own definition of the sun, one with himself woven into it.

The answers came quickly in that dreadful place where the Gates of Death seemed to be creaking slowly open.

The first answer that came to him was burn. It was natural enough, given what he was living through in that very moment.

The sun burns.

It was a concept he’d known since his time back on Earth. But in this world, as Cassius Desdemona, the words had come to carry the weight of grief.

He hadn’t forgotten how Coco Jones had died. He couldn’t, even if he wanted to. That innocent girl had been killed, burned to ashes, simply for being seen as too close to him, Cassius.

’I... I burn my enemies, and I burn my own allies, whether I mean to or not.’

That realization led him to the second answer of what the sun meant to him.

Nourishment.

Many things in the world needed the sun to survive. Human beings, for one, could barely survive in a world without it. The same went for plants and vegetation.

Life itself would have been something entirely different — something no ordinary mind could even grasp — without the sun to dictate the hours and the cycle of day and night.

But Nourishment held a more personal meaning too, one Cassius had only come to understand recently. It was through Sarah, his dear friend.

She’d told him something that had stuck with him ever since.

’Somehow you make people want to become better than they are.’

Those words had struck him, as they’d revealed something about himself he hadn’t consciously known.

But wasn’t that exactly what Nourishment meant? To help, to nourish someone until they became better than they were?

Not because Cassius consciously tried to. But because his mere presence pushed others to grow.

He wondered, in that moment, amid the pain and agony, if that was why Coco Jones had died.

Maybe because she’d been in the process of becoming better, and had been killed for it. Or maybe she’d refused to grow when the sun was so close to her, and death had come for her through burning instead.

Cassius didn’t know. He might never know.

But there was one last answer left — the third — about what the sun meant to him.

Because Cassius couldn’t stay close to everyone. His circle of loved ones was small. Yet the sun didn’t need to be close to light a path forward.

And that was his final answer: Illuminate.

The way he was already doing for his sect. The way he’d need to keep doing once the Church of the Reader was firmly established.

To illuminate without being close. To guide without being seen.

To—!

CRACK—!

’Arghhh!!’ Cassius’s {Legend} state cut off as he snapped back into his human form. He screamed in agony, his lips tearing at the stitches.

His mind slowed, cracking under the pain, but he held on even as his bones seemed to turn to oblivion. After all, he now had every insight he needed.

The Sun Burns. The Sun Nourishes. The Sun Illuminates.

These were his Three Fundamental Truths of the Concept of Sun.

And now that he had them, all that remained was to bring everything together into the creation.

’Ah... how long until I can use {Legend} again?’ Cassius thought, broken by the pain. Because he needed that state to complete the creation; at least, if he wanted to finish it in three days.

Otherwise it might take him far more than a week... if he survived that long.

His Snake of Adaptation was progressing steadily, and Cassius’s understanding of the fires burning him kept growing.

These fires were all distinct, and they were perfect material. But not only them.

Cassius would use everything within him to create this Concept of Sun.

The Primal Queen of Fire had told him that nothing he possessed truly belonged to him. That was true, alright. But what if he took everything that hadn’t originally belonged to him, and used it to build something that finally did?

That was who Cassius was, at his very core.

Someone blessed and loved by nearly everyone around him. Someone given, over and over, by ancestors who’d trusted him enough to hand him their precious skills and lifelong accomplishments.

Someone protected by his goddesses, or rather, by his mothers.

He was a product of their love, their trust, their affection...and now it was his duty to take all of it and build something that could bear the weight they’d placed on him, with a bloody fucking smile on his face.

After all, he was Cassius Desdemona. He was the Last Born of the Godkiller’s bloodline.

’E-Everything,’ Cassius croaked inside his mind, his right eye melting. ’Bloodflame, my dragon eye, my spirit eyes... and these fucking fires burning me to oblivion. Take even my bloodline, and build it. Build my sun.’

HISSSSSS!!!

The white snake hissed, and that hiss echoed loud enough for even the Primal Queen of Fire to hear.

In that instant, the Innate proved why it was special; why it was a conscious Innate, when most Innates carried no consciousness at all.

It took its master’s order and acted on it. It appeared behind its burning master, an illusory presence in that hellish world.

Its crimson eyes swept coldly across the space, and with the authority granted by its master, it opened its mouth wide...

"Devour. Devour. Devour."

...and devoured the fires around it, the Skills within Cassius that it needed, and the aspects of his eyes it needed.

Once it had devoured everything...

"HAHAHAHAH!" The Primal Queen of Fire cackled in madness and delight at the sight, the Fire State trembling under her laughter.

...Cassius and his Innate began the creation of the Sun.

BADUM—!

"SHOW ME, CASSIUS! SHOW ME!!"

—End of Chapter 363—