Chapter 1195: Against A Demigod
Chapter 1195: Against A Demigod
But understanding that offered no relief.
The pain remained real, and every death felt just as absolute as the first. Whenever I tried to approach him, my body would be destroyed. Whenever I attempted to attack, I would die before my power could even reach him.
Sometimes I simply stood there and watched him, hoping that refusing to react would somehow change the outcome, but even then the same invisible force would descend upon me and erase my existence.
Each death was followed by another awakening.
Then another death.
Then another awakening.
The cycle became impossible to distinguish from eternity.
At first, I counted them. I remembered the first hundred deaths, then the thousandth, and eventually even the ten-thousandth. I tried to use the numbers to maintain some sense of time and identity, convincing myself that if I could keep counting, I had not completely lost myself to the nightmare.
But eventually the numbers stopped meaning anything.
My sense of time disappeared first.
I no longer knew whether an awakening came seconds after my death or whether centuries had passed between them. My memories began blending together until countless deaths felt like a single continuous experience of agony.
The white expanse remained unchanged, the yellow-robed man remained seated in the same position, and the soul in his hand continued screaming beneath the edge of his knife.
I died again. And again.
And again.
Eventually, I stopped trying to count. There was no purpose in it anymore.
There was only the pain of death, the brief darkness that followed, and the inevitable moment when I opened my eyes again to find myself standing before that same silent figure.
One hundred thousand deaths passed.
Then a million.
At some point, even that number ceased to matter.
I no longer knew how many times I had died.
I only knew that every time I returned, the man was still there, calmly carving the soul in his hand, his expression never changing even once.
I had long since stopped trying to count the deaths when something finally changed.
At first, I thought it was another trick of the nightmare. A faint tremor passed through the endless white expanse, so subtle that I almost ignored it. The yellow-robed man did not react. His knife continued moving through the soul in his hand with the same calm rhythm, and the tortured screams continued echoing through the emptiness.
Then the tremor came again, followed by a faint golden radiance appearing somewhere beyond the horizon.
The man finally paused.
His knife stopped halfway through its motion.
For the first time since I had entered this nightmare, his expression changed. It was barely noticeable, little more than a slight narrowing of his golden eyes, but I saw it.
Something had entered his domain.
The golden radiance rapidly intensified, spreading across the endless white expanse like sunlight breaking through an impenetrable storm. I felt an unfamiliar presence within it, powerful and strangely warm, and then a voice reached me.
"Billion!"
The sound struck my consciousness like a hammer.
I looked toward the light.
A figure was standing within it.
She was barely recognizable at first. Her clothes were torn and stained with blood, her hair disheveled, and several wounds crossed her body. Yet the golden lightning surrounding her made her identity unmistakable.
Defender Aurora.
She looked directly at me.
"Wake up!"
The moment her voice entered my consciousness, the entire white expanse trembled.
The yellow-robed man finally stood.
His expression remained emotionless, but the knife in his hand disappeared as his golden eyes focused entirely on Aurora. He raised one hand, and the endless white world immediately began collapsing toward her. Walls of overwhelming authority formed around her from every direction, attempting to crush her existence before she could reach me.
Aurora did not retreat.
Instead, she raised both hands.
Golden lightning erupted from her body.
It wasn’t ordinary lightning. It was golden lightning filled with an unmistakable aura of reality itself, and the moment it spread across the white expanse, the nightmare began developing cracks.
"This is not your world!"
Her voice thundered through the endless space.
The lightning struck the cracks.
They widened.
The white expanse shattered.
Every death I had experienced, every moment of pain and every memory that had been repeated endlessly had been constructed within this false world. Aurora had found the foundation of the illusion and was tearing it apart from the inside.
The yellow-robed man’s expression finally hardened.
He raised his hand toward Aurora.
The pressure descending upon her became so immense that her knees buckled. Blood spilled from the corner of her mouth, and several more wounds opened across her already battered body. Yet she continued forcing her lightning outward.
"Billion!"
Her eyes locked onto mine.
"Don’t let him decide what you see!"
Something inside me snapped awake. The endless deaths suddenly appeared differently.
They were chains.
Millions upon millions of memories of death wrapped around my consciousness, keeping me trapped inside the nightmare. I had spent so long trying to survive each death that I had never questioned the thing actually imprisoning me.
I stopped running from them.
Instead, I turned toward them.
My consciousness surged outward.
The countless memories of my deaths began collapsing one after another as I rejected them. The white world trembled violently, and the yellow-robed man’s expression finally changed.
The nightmare shattered.
I was suddenly back in the Soul Sea.
My knees were pressed against the empty space as I struggled to breathe. Sweat covered my body, and my chest heaved violently as I tried to draw air into my lungs. My entire body trembled, and the memories of countless deaths still lingered within my consciousness so vividly that I could almost feel them happening again.
For several seconds, I could do nothing except breathe. Then I realized that someone was standing beside me.
I slowly turned my head.
Defender Aurora stood there.
She was in terrible condition. Her clothes were torn in several places, her hair was disheveled, and blood covered portions of her body. Several deep wounds remained visible across her arms and torso, while her face was pale from exhaustion.
Yet she was standing. And she was looking at me.
Only then did I understand what had happened.
She had found me.
Somehow, despite being injured and pursued by the Wardens, Aurora had entered the nightmare and pulled me out of it.
My gaze shifted toward the yellow-robed Demigod. He was still standing exactly where he had been before.
But his golden eyes were now fixed upon Aurora.
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