Cthulhu Gonfalon

Chapter 984: Tenacity (Part 2)

In the center of the hall, at the side of the Holy Avenger, a spark of fire was burning. Although it was extremely weak, it gave off an extremely powerful vibe. The flame illuminated and protected all the light balls present in the hall and protected them staunchly against the evil order of the entire new world.

The flame was even able to split into several waves, and its protection encompassed the remains of several temples on the floor. Even the great Divine Power and orderly Sui Xiong only noticed its existence after a while.

Sui Xiong carefully flew to where the flame was. He was afraid that if he used too much strength, he would extinguish this weak flame. Within the flame, he saw a figure of a Pighead. This Pighead was old and ugly, and as thin as a skeleton. It was as if he only had one layer of skin left wrapped around his bones. It was a horrifying sight to see. Even so, one could see that the Pighead’s facial expression was one of anguish. It was clear that he had gone through great pain.

The Pighead’s body was shaking as he propped himself up with a cane, carefully straightening his posture. It was evident that a lot of effort was required for him to maintain his balance given the pain he was in, and for him to not simply crash and fall onto the ground.

Sui Xiong took a few seconds to recognize who this Pighead was.

He was the newest god out of Sui Xiong’s underlings, a god of salt-making, “Salt-Pig” Fira Kenji. It was not surprising to Sui Xiong that Fira Kenji had appeared at the final front against the God of Light’s new order. He was well aware of Fira’s loyalty towards him. However, Sui Xiong was extremely befuddled as to why Fira Kenji was standing in front of the flame, as if he was being burnt alive. Furthermore, where had all the other gods gone?

Sui Xiong had a few guesses in his head, but he willed them to be untrue. Trembling, he reached out a shaky hand into the flame.

An extremely familiar strength could be felt, and it was made out of bravery, steadfastness, light, loyalty and tenacity. Sui Xiong, of course, knew the source of this strength was Leon. Although the demigod Leon Igor was much stronger in Sui Xiong’s mind, this was the basic core of his strength without question.

Accompanying this strength was another unique strength. This latter strength had a similar nature to the new order and was probably left behind by the Master of Order. However, it was already extremely weak and did not have any intelligence left. It was just spinning on the spot in a fixed direction aimlessly. This strength continuously maintained itself and its spinning movements through the flame in order to maintain the boundary surrounding the temple and to prevent the new order from fully shutting out the old order and removing the last traces of it.

Once Sui Xiong reached his hand into the flame, that unique strength immediately tensed up and tried to gain energy from Sui Xiong instead of maintaining its efforts. The way that it tried to do so, of course, was by burning up. If Sui Xiong wanted to, he of course could prevent himself from getting burnt. However, instead of pulling away, Sui Xiong transferred much of his energy to the flame, allowing it to grow from a weak spark to a steady fire that illuminated the entire hall.

Under the illumination of the fire, several paintings appeared on the walls surrounding the hall. These paintings were extremely familiar to Sui Xiong and, combined together, formed a long scroll that told a story. Sui Xiong used divine thought to cast a sweeping glance across the scroll and quickly understood its contents. This long scroll detailed the resistance of the old order towards the new order. Just as Sui Xiong had guessed, when he had brought his entire God Kingdom and fell into the Main Plane, he had been sent to where the God of Virtue was while his God Kingdom had been torn apart and used as the foundation of Void City to build the foundation front for the resistance against the God of Light.

After a period of time, the Master of Order stopped fighting the God of Light and retreated to Void City. In that war, he had become wiser and thus used this Sanctuary as a defensive front, allowing him to eventually halt their battle and hold off the God of Light.

In actuality, if the God of Light had used all his powers, even with this added front for the Master of Order as well as the assistance of other gods, he could still have won. However, due to unknown reasons, the God of Light left without a trace and never returned again to personally attack Void City after he tried once and failed initially.

Of course, this did not mean that he had forgiven everyone. After the world’s order had changed, Void City became extremely isolated and different from the rest of the world. In order to preserve this defensive line, the gods thought up many ideas and used up much of their strength. However, they were unable to maintain their efforts over time. In the end, the defensive line was forced to retreat several times until there was only the core of the God Kingdom left, Sui Xiong’s “brain,” which was used to create the temple Sui Xiong now stood in.

Now that they had retreated to this point, everyone was at a loss as to what to do. Most people had been sealed in the underground hall. As they were totally excluded from the new world order, they could not continue to live within it. As for the gods who slowly streamed in after escaping, they also had had no other choice other than battling till their deaths as they could not fit into the crazy and mental new order under the God of Light.

With the loss of any hope, the patron saint of Void City, Leon Igor, had of course stepped up. After having a long discussion with the Master of Order, they finally found a solution to their problem. Leon had stuck his own divine sword in the lobby while the Master of Order had left his physical body, transforming himself into a unique flame. This flame was naturally weak in strength but was able to provide the others with much strength in order to protect this remaining temple and reject the new order of the world.

The first god to jump into this flame and burn was Leon. He had set his entire being on fire, including his physical body, soul, divinity… All of these were lit up and they glowed as a ball of bright fire, like sunlight. With such a ball of fire, the temple was finally secure. Although the gods were saddened by the falling of patron saint Leon and the Master of Order, they could finally take a breather.

The fire’s strength was not infinite, however. As days passed, the fire became weaker by day and eventually became insufficient to protect the temple alone. Just as the fire was about to extinguish, the God of Justice, Yorgaardman, had jumped into the flame and took over the duty of protecting this temple from Leon as well as the obligation to protect everyone’s last hope.

Afterwards, many other gods took turns to take over this role. There were other gods, evil gods and demigods who could not bear to come to such a grisly demise and rushed out to fight to their deaths instead. The last one to become fuel was the weakest god in the temple left, the god of salt-making, Fira Kenji. On the scroll, many gods had left their final will and messages before becoming fire fuel. At the end of the scroll was Fira Kenji’s final words:

I am Fira Kenji, a Pighead with not many skills. I was only able to gain much and become a god through a lucky invention and the aid of the Void Mask Lord. Many have said that I am the weakest god. After a while more, I will accompany my comrades before me and become a part of the flame. I will attempt to use my little strength to protect this place, the last resistance front of the old order. I do not think that our stubbornness in resisting the new order is wrong, and neither do my comrades. The fact that we had all taken turns to join the flame shows our fight for our last face and beliefs. We do not seek victory but simply to defend our values and protect those who believed in us and stood by us till the end.

Perhaps this fire will one day be extinguished and the people we wanted to protect will die as well. However, we fought to the end, be it win or lose, we never gave up. The value of one’s life is not in how strong or weak a god they were. Rather, it lies in the amount of bravery one shows in facing enemies and death. I’m not sure whether these scrolls will be preserved and passed down. However, I believe that even under the cruel and dangerous new order, there will always be others with the same courage as us who are willing to fight for their beliefs even in desperate times or when facing death.

Finally, I hope our beloved Void Mask Lord will be able to come back. I hope that this scroll, which contains all our last wishes and hopes, will be preserved enough to be presented to you. I hope that you can fight evil and achieve victory, bringing this world back on the correct path.

We are sorry that we could not wait for your return, but we will always bless you.

This flame may one day die out, but our blessings and loyalty towards you will never falter!