LEVEL 0 IMMORTAL-Chapter 191: You Endure The Wrath of Death
Yseult looked at the Angel, who had been alive when Ascendants were rising, and gods were falling, when the world was being remade in blood and fire. After all of this time, his strength should have reached a ridiculous level, even reaching the level of Ascendancy, but he was a cog in the machine, and his position had become fixed... and he had allowed this injustice to happen, and for this reason, he was going to die on this day.
Like all Angels that were born during the age of the gods, they were truly ageless unless they were killed. Perhaps this was one of the reasons they had lost all desires for advancement, or maybe they knew of secrets that only the Ascendants were worthy of... but at this moment, it no longer mattered.
Yseult remained silent, her long white hair being carried in the wind, highlighting the dual colored wings behind her... her curse and shame.
Noticing her silence, the Angel chuckled. His face was extremely young, like an eighteen-year-old youth rather than a being who must have lived for more than a million years. "Daughter, I have been your teacher, mentor... I have shown you what it means to be an Angel. Child, I taught you how to hold a blade, I shaped your wings, and showed you how to find the quiet in the midst of slaughter. I have never been so proud, Yseult, and still, you strike me down... your own father!"
He looked down at his body, where golden blood poured from a hundred wounds. They pooled beneath him, hissing where it touched the stone. Both of his arms were gone, torn away at the shoulder. His chest was a ruin, a hole punched through it so cleanly that she could see the mountain behind him through the gap.
What was amazing was that he had no heart, and his core had been shattered, and yet, Yseult could still hear his heart beating... the talent of her father was ridiculous, and he would not die, even if there was no more life left in his body. To kill him, she would have to be much more... vicious.
Yseut stopped before him, her shadow fell across his face, and her father sighed,
"You are late."
"I came when it was over."
"You came when you knew I would be too weak to stop you." He smiled, "I taught you well, if you had been here a moment before, I could have killed you and preserved my flame for longer."
She said nothing. There was no point in denying it. He must have known that this day would come; he had been there when Fate had fallen, and he had gained some of its powers, a portion of that power had been passed down in his bloodline, and Yseult had gained some of it.
Yet like all Angels, he did not know how to back down, and he accepted what had happened as a result of his own failure. There was one chance in a thousand that Yseult would have won this fight, and yet she did, and so he could not complain... she deserved this victory.
"I hid them well... did you find them?" he asked.
She reached into the space beside him. Her hand closed around something that had been hidden there. This space was only going to open at the end of this Angel’s life, but how could it ever be opened when the Angel was immortal and would live forever?
The answer was always simple... kill the immortal, and open the door that should never be opened.
Yseult grabbed an item, and she pulled it free. It was a stone blade, its surface smooth, and its edges sharp. She tucked it dismissively aside and reached into the space again, which was beginning to collapse.
She continued pulling out different treasures that would amaze the world if they were revealed, but Yseult was not interested in those, and she was being extremely careful because some of the items she was pulling out of this storage were so powerful and complex that they would draw her attention for too long, and she would lose the opportunity to get what she wanted.
The space had nearly closed when she reached inside one more time, and her fingers closed around a small cube, no larger than her palm, its surface etched with runes so dense they seemed to move and breathe, pulsing with a light that was not Lumina, but older, as if it had been forged in the spaces between stars.
"The Heart of the Forge," the dying Angel sighed. "The first Alchemistry Crystal. It can reshape anything, stone, flesh, destiny itself. This thing should never see the light of day, Yseult. Its purpose has been fulfilled, and the gods are dead. Do not resurrect a monster that you cannot control."
Yseult did not reply to him as she turned her back and was about to leave while carefully placing the cube inside her Lumina Space.
"Would you not hear my last words, daughter?"
Yseult stopped, and she turned around and waited for him to speak.
The golden blood around her father rose up and took the shape of a hand. This hand reached towards her, and the fingers brushed her cheek, leaving a smear of gold across her skin.
"To save the world," he said, "we cannot break it."
Yseult could feel the immense power in this hand her father had just made, and she did not flinch; she knew he would not kill her at this moment, even when she had just placed herself in his mercy.
Her father was many things, but he was not a liar. Her eyes met his, and for a moment, there was something there that might have been grief, or might have been rage.
"The world is already broken," she said, and she walked up to him, her hand closed around his head, and her fingers found the base of his skull.
He smiled. "I know, but this is the best we can do to make the world work."
Yseult whispered, "It is not good enough. You have spent too much time in the heavens and forgot the earth," and she pulled.
Her father did not scream; he did not even make a sound, even as his flesh tore and his bones snapped.
The last of his golden blood fountained from his neck, and his eyes kept staring at her for too long before the life left him, and his head turned to ash.
From that ash a light exploded that was not Lumina or the light of the sun, stars, or anything that could be found in this world; it was the light of an Angel’s death, and an extremely special light for that matter, as it had burned for millions of years and was finally, at last, allowed to go out.
The light hovered in front of her for a moment as if waiting for her to claim it, and Yseult did not move, and then after a few seconds, the light exploded.
It had exploded the instant the falling fortress slammed into the ground, and this descent had happened in the middle of a mountain range.
The explosion of this light released a shockwave that tore through the mountains, leveling them and grinding them to dust, scattering them across the entirety of the continent that would bear the scar for the rest of time.
Yseult stood at the center of it, her wings spread, and her remaining hand raised. The light washed over her as she endured the wrath of her father’s death.
