R-a - Volume 4 - Chapter 40 (Patreon)

R-a - Volume 4 - Chapter 40 (edited-v4)

(Note: I’m also considering placing this chapter (and the next one which continues it) near the end of Volume 4, instead of here.)

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A light, fluttering Aurora Borealis illuminated a desolate world.

In one particular corner of this planet, in a deep, dark crater hobbled next to the remains of a once majestic mountain range…

There sat a man, alone.

Time seemed to ooze by at a crawl, the shimmering lights in the sky above illuminating a silent, still scene.

Slowly, the man inhaled.

Slowly, the man exhaled.

Dust drifted through the air around the man, coloring his skin a lifeless gray.

As he sat alone in a ruined world, Constantine Lancaster looked down at his hands in a long, studied motion.

His fingers were covered in bloody scrapes and bruises, stained black with dirt and dust. Small gashes had ripped apart the webs between his fingers, and the few parts of his skin that weren’t coated in grime were pale from blood loss.

After another long moment, Constantine’s tense muscles relaxed as his shoulders slowly slumped forward.

He inhaled.

He exhaled.

The Vile King shut his eyes and clenched one of his fists, his entire body trembling uncontrollably with emotion. The movement caused a single drop of blood to drip from his gruesomely injured fingers, steadily merging with the grime that coated his hands, unable to break free.

“I am experiencing shock right now.” He analyzed aloud, his voice almost mechanically cold.

He felt shock. Regret. Remorse.

Horror.

Constantine’s mind was swept over with a massive wave of emotions, all meshed together, held at bay only by the unending, ceaseless rage that was flowing through his veins.

“I failed.”

The moment he spoke, Constantine’s eyes opened, and the reality of the situation finally seemed to set in upon him.

Not long ago, a grand battle had taken place…

The greatest battle that humanity, in the second timeline, had ever been a part of.

A battle that Constantine lost.

“And now, because of my hubris…”

Constantine’s words echoed out quietly as he sat alone in an empty world.

“Everyone is dead.”

The vast army of talented warriors he had spent years cultivating had been slaughtered down to the last man. Humans with unique Abilities, talents that had blossomed under the influence of his Seeds, men and women that were both highly-trained and highly-skilled.

An army of brave heroes united by him to save humanity…

Lost in a day.

Constantine slowly rose to his feet, his gaze drifting forward, to the ground of the crater he was in.

Planted in the earth before him, at the very center of this dark crater, sat hundreds of crudely crafted stone monuments, spread evenly in rows a dozen deep.

Tombstones.

Constantine inhaled.

Constantine exhaled.

He lay witness to the price of failure.

The Vile King walked forward until he reached the first tombstone on the front row, his steps measured and calm.

He then knelt down until he rested his right hand atop the rough block of stone.

He paused for a few seconds in this position, and then began to speak.

“Ahmya Suzuki. Your journey has reached its end. You died with honor and dignity. May your soul find rest.” Constantine read the name he had carved into the tombstone aloud, his words slow and orderly.

He stood up.

He took a few steps to his right, until he was in front of the next tombstone.

Once again, he knelt down on the ground and rested his hand atop the crude stone monument.

As he came to a halt, another drop of bright red blood fell from his battered hands. The drop landed on the front of the gravestone, where it painted a jagged, violent trail that would remain forevermore.

“Celine Monet. Your journey has reached its end. You died with honor and dignity. May your soul find rest.”

Constantine stood up, and, methodically, began to repeat this process, over and over.

Minutes slipped into hours as the man went from grave to grave, reading the names of the fallen aloud and blessing them to rest soundly.

By the time the Vile King reached the final tomb maker in the last line of graves, every step he took caused his body to heave with exhaustion. His entire face had turned sickly pale from blood loss, his muscles desperately crying for him to rest. Even his breathing had long since turned ragged, his lungs burning and his breath shallow.

“Chen Yang. Your journey has reached its end. You died with honor and dignity. May your soul find rest.”

Constantine took one, final stumbling step forward past the final grave marker before he collapsed, refusing to let himself lose consciousness.

Instead, he shut his eyes tight as he fell down on one knee, propping his back up against the edge of the final gravestone. His chest heaved as took several long breaths, giving his muddied thoughts time to come together.

He breathed in.

He breathed out.

Time marched on.

“I cannot change the mistakes of the past.” Constantine spoke to himself in a raw, raspy whisper, his head tilted upward toward the sky.

“I can only endure. And endure. And endure. And look to the future.”

Slowly, the mass of seething emotions within the Vile King began to calm, a feat that was far more impressive than it might appear.

Constantine’s invasive Seeds were a power that humanity, Micheal included, had researched more than any other. Many secrets about them became well known facts as the first timeline approached its end… but humanity didn’t find out everything.

The Empyrean Soul Root Ability was publicly known as a power that came with no negative drawbacks… but this was not actually the case.

Constantine’s Seeds functioned on an incredibly intricate level.

Everytime a human imbued with a Seed died, that Seed returned to Constantine, bringing with it tidbits of the Seeds memories, emotions, feelings, and thoughts. This action was involuntary, a facet of his Empyrean Soul Root Ability that Constantine himself could not direct.

The connections he formed with his Seeds were deeply intimate. They had to be, for that was the only way such a broad network of individuals could simultaneously fall under his influence.

That deep connection came at a cost.

In the split second where a Seed returned to him and perfectly merged with his Soul, there was a brief moment where Constantine felt everything his Seed had just experienced, as if it was Constantine’s own experience.

Everything.

In a broader sense, every time one of Constantine’s Seeds died and successfully returned to him…

Constantine was made to experience death.

Real, true death, of body, mind, and Soul. 

He felt the sheer, guttural horror that filled one’s body as their grasp on life fled. He lived through the terrifying silence as one’s senses were replaced with blank, empty nothingness. He underwent those last confused tremors as death finally arrived and his sense of identity began to fall apart…

And, then, he felt his consciousness ripped back to the present as the connection between body and Soul abruptly ended.

These were things a human should only experience a single time, at the very end of their life. Living through such a horrifying ordeal multiple times was a traumatic burden few humans could even conceptualize.

Living through that burden 700 times in a single day was far, far worse.

Unimaginably so. 

A lesser man would have been driven insane.

But not Constantine Lancaster.

He would not allow it.

Constantine’s sorrow faded into the background. His sense of horror grew still.

The shock that felt like it might overwhelm him slowly morphed into peaceful acceptance.

As the Vile King meditated quietly, he shoved the last bits of regret and remorse to the farthest corner of his heart, clearing them from his consciousness.

Finally, he was left with a single emotion.

Anger as cold as ice, rage as black as the night.

“Why did I fail?”

He finally uttered aloud the question that he had pushed off until this very moment, his mind beginning to race with dozens of thoughts at the same time.

“What went wrong?”

Several days ago, Constantine had captured and interrogated multiple ‘Yil’ scouts and learned about the creatures known as ‘Deities.’

In particular, he learned in great detail about the existence of Ashroth the Immortal, the Titled Deity that held absolute power among the Yil.

The shocking discoveries he made had seen him mobilize his Seeds across the Layers, seeking out any information about ‘Deities’ that he could find. That effort saw great success, culminating in him obtaining independent verification of another ‘Tribe of Deities,’ one that had originated from the Second Layer, ‘The Toren.’

After he organized all the information he had gathered, it took the Vile King less than an hour to reach a conclusion.

The Yil, both in the form of their leader Ashroth and in general as ‘Deities’, represented an unacceptable threat to humanity.

Constantine had always firmly believed that Humanity desperately needed to grow stronger.

Only by overcoming countless trials and tribulations would it be possible for the human race to survive the 7 Layers. Humanity, if he did not force such growth, would surely perish.

However…

‘Growth is a step by step process. A man can not pick up a blade and master it in a day.’

To achieve the most optimal level of growth, to explode humanity’s potential to the absolute limit…

The trials and tribulations humanity came to face had to emerge in a precise, controlled manner.

They needed to be nightmarish enough to push humans to their absolute limits, while at the same time, not so oppressive as to annihilate humanity’s population.

There must be balance.

‘Humanity is not ready to face the Yil.’

These creatures were like nothing he had ever seen. Unreasonably powerful, unreasonably resilient, everything about them was unreasonable, from their Traits to their logic-defying Titles.

Thus, Constantine found himself faced with two choices.

He could leave the Fourth Layer and move on to the Fifth, avoiding the Yil incursion entirely. As long as he kept his movements subtle and acted carefully, it wouldn’t be a problem to hide within the shadows and focus on accelerating humanity’s growth in the background.

Or…

He could remain on the Fourth Layer and seize the initiative. Instead of fleeing from the Yil and leaving an uncontrolled disaster to roam freely, he could use the knowledge he had obtained to his advantage, and lay a mighty direct ambush.

Constantine knew the exact location where the Yil would appear. He now possessed in-depth knowledge about the tactics, training, and skills employed by the Yil within the past several centuries. His understanding of Yil biology had grown to an expert level, one that only continued to deepen as medical teams formed by his Seeds performed biopsies on the Yil corpses.

‘In the end, the decision is obvious.’

There was only one choice he could make.

He had to attack.

If he didn't, then who would?

‘In three days, the Titled Deity Ashroth, is going to appear alongside a brigade of a few hundred Yil.’

The Yil Tribe of Deities had a relatively small population, numbering in the thousands. The army accompanying Ashroth stood around 300 strong, and represented a sizable percentage of their populace. 

‘There will never be a better chance to eliminate Ashroth than there is now.’ 

The sheer illogicality of Ashroth’s ‘Title,’ made Constantine extremely uncomfortable.

It was a threat he could not fully comprehend…and that was very, very dangerous. Worse, Ashroth was not the only ‘Titled Deity’ that existed.

‘Humanity has begun to grow, splendidly, in ways I could have never predicted.’ The moment he had that thought, briefly, an image of a young, brown-haired man wielding a blade that glowed with gold light flashed in Constantine’s eyes.

‘I cannot allow an existence that would disrupt that.’

And so…

Constantine did what he had been doing ever since he arrived on the 7 Layers.

He investigated what he could, prepared for what he could not…

And then, once more, stepped forward to pioneer humanity’s frontline in the face of the unknown.

And because of that... the history of the 2nd timeline began to fundamentally shift.

The waves Micheal cast upon the Layers below finally spread their wake to those that had reached the highest peak above.  

On that day, 3 years and 308 days sooner than in the original timeline…

Constantine Lancaster came face to face with one of the most horrific creatures found throughout all of existence.

An appalling monstrosity of immeasurable power.

An aberrant existence that defied logic and reason.

A nigh-absolute being that reigned supreme on the 7 Layers.

A Titled Deity.

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