Chapter 464: Devourer of Sun vs Creator of Sun

Chapter 464: Chapter 464: Devourer of Sun vs Creator of Sun

Chapter 464 – Devourer of Sun vs Creator of Sun

Cassius was simply speechless. No, saying speechless would be the understatement of the century.

He stood there, pain racking his nervous system so hard, so profoundly, that he was beginning to wonder whether it was that very pain making him hear such nonsensical things.

Because he just couldn’t believe that his initial goal of saving his Family, which meant taking the Third Book from the Hands of the Holders in the broader sense of the term, had just turned into one where he needed to free some kind of being before the end of... existence.

’Wait.’ Cassius’s thoughts halted as if they had just bumped into a wall. ’Isn’t that... practically the same? I was meant to take the Third Book anyway. And taking that Book means going against the First and Second Holders. Either way, I was going to... fight them. THEM. Oh. Wait a damn minute. So the First and Second Holders are the ones chaining my family?’

So that was why none of the Desdemona ancestors had left a body behind after their deaths.

’Because they aren’t dead. All of them are chained by Them. Now, the question is why?’ Cassius thought, coughing, kneeling on the ground in wretched agony, but still refusing to break his train of thought. ’Why not kill my ancestors for good? Does keeping them alive bring them something?’

Unending.

Whenever some questions were answered, new ones always popped up out of nowhere. It was like a bloodydamn rabbit hole so deep that he risked his own sanity if he wasn’t careful.

Madness.

’Now I know why most gods end up with a few screws loose.’

Because knowing too much wore down the mind. And the desperate need to escape, to find something that could make one feel better again, often led people down the path of eccentricity.

For it was through those very eccentricities that many found something capable of pulling them out of their tormented existence, if only for a moment, and granting them a little respite.

’And I am walking that path,’ Cassius thought, almost giving a twisted smile on his golden-boned skull of a face.

"This is fucked up," he moaned, blood seeping from his burned lips. "This... is completely fucked up. How did we get to this point? And how... just how is Kaden involved with this guy called the First Vaelgrim, and why are the Holders part of... this? And Desdemona? How—! Argh, damn it!"

Cassius could no longer afford to speak.

He was completely exhausted from dealing with the flames of the sun. His Sun Core was improving at an incredible rate, yes, but there was a limit to what a human body, no matter how special, could withstand before breaking down.

His limit was higher than most on earth at the same level. Yet there was a limit.

And he was reaching it.

"Ah," Blanche sighed, looking down at him. "It’s useless talking to you when you are about to die, even after I weakened the flames touching you so much."

"Well, excuse me for being a Second Rank human standing on a bloody sun."

"Anyone with your bloodline and power could have done it."

"Exactly," he coughed. "There is no one else with both my bloodline and my power, so let’s drop the discussion before we spiral into another talk of endless possibilities. You do love talking about ’if’ and ’maybe.’"

"Insolent, aren’t you, little vermin?" Blanche hissed, and her huge, bestial phoenix body burned with a pristine, immaculate fire.

Cassius shielded his left eye from the burning brightness, yet forced himself to witness the majestic scene in front of him.

The scene of Blanche, the White Phoenix, taking on a human appearance.

There were no words to describe the woman of the sun standing before him after the flames dissipated, parting like a sea split in two before a man.

No words, except that looking at her, Cassius felt the ridiculous urge to bow down and worship this woman.

Now, that was something that made his heart go cold with fear.

It felt as if all the majesty, beauty, and lethality meant to adorn her phoenix body had been compressed into the shape of a human, making the impact far greater and grander than before.

Blanche stood tall, around eight feet, with pale, luminous skin that looked as if fire was burning just beneath it. Her hair was white, swept up high with a few strands falling loose, and held together by a hairpin made of a white bone whose origin Cassius didn’t know.

Her eyes were the same white, but now slitted and burning with a brighter hue. Her eyelashes were so long and white that whenever they fluttered, it felt like a small shower of fire particles.

Blanche wore a regal white empress’s robe threaded with a few golden strands that reached the floor of fire below, and somehow it made the fire of the sun look pale in comparison to her own.

Cassius didn’t know why, but he had the ridiculous impression that the Sun was weeping when this beast took on this shape.

And that was frightening.

Now, looking at Cassius, Blanche twisted her rosy lips into a cold sneer. "So insolent for a mortal facing a divine. Is that how you treat everyone? Even those who can erase you?"

She took a step, and with that single step, she was right in front of him.

With a majesty beyond anything he had known, the White Phoenix squatted down to his level, and Cassius amused himself by imagining that the sun itself was bowing to him.

That delusional thought, or maybe not so delusional, ended as fast as it came when Blanche reached her index finger towards his chin.

Cassius cried out at the heat of that simple touch.

His chin literally exploded for a heartbeat before Blanche healed it again, before he could even fully register the pain.

"There are so many things I want to do to you, Cassius," she said, her eyes transfixed on him. "So many things that you can’t even begin to fathom. Now you will look at me and think I am unfair, but this is what happens when someone hasn’t forgotten past mistakes and is very petty."

"Pettiness... makes women ugly, White Phoenix."

"I think it gives them a certain charm," she said, a faint smile on her lips. "You should know better."

"I wouldn’t, actually." He coughed again.

Without wasting any more time, a coat of white fire draped Cassius from head to toe. His wounds began to heal at a visible rate, his limbs regenerating from nothing.

Even his Sun Core was getting better, purer.

He looked at Blanche in surprise, and she returned his glance with casual indifference. "You need to be useful to plan anything worthwhile." She stood up, then began to walk deeper into the sun, the flames parting to make way for her like an empress walking towards her throne.

And indeed, deeper into the sun, Cassius glimpsed a mighty throne hovering in the sky.

Behind the throne was an exact replica of the Sun of Sunu Gaal, but with almost half of it devoured by a terrible whiteness, the other half struggling to fend off the... infection.

"Rise, then, Desdemona." Blanche’s voice echoed with regal authority as she ascended the flaming steps of her throne. "Come. Walk upon this Sun with my permission. Approach me with my permission. Breathe and live with my permission. Stand before me with my permission. Open your ears, close that irritating mouth of yours, and listen."

She sat upon her throne, and Vorn take his soul, Cassius learned at that exact moment what it meant to embody something so profoundly that one ceased to merely possess its power and became the very thing itself.

At that exact moment, Blanche was the Sun.

And like the Sun, she could give life through her rays of light, or bring destruction through her searing heat or the darkness of her absence.

And at that moment, he knew...

"You are under my Will. And you live by my Permission," Blanche declared, looking down at him with one leg crossed over the other.

...he was inside the Territory of an Error.

"Do you deny it, Last Born?"

Cassius coughed for a moment, trying to get a feel for his body.

He felt it, felt the power coursing through him, and slowly rose from the ground, his bones cracking like thunder as he straightened himself.

Once fully upright, still naked but with his body restored to its flawless state, he stared intensely at the White Phoenix for a moment while rolling his shoulders.

Then he used his plasma to conjure a regal, princely white robe with stripes of red, resembling those worn in ancient times.

He raised both hands, lowered his head slightly, and tied his hair into a ponytail, then checked whether the earring his grandmother had given him was still in his ear, followed by the cross-shaped necklace his wife had given him long ago, back at the Academy.

His gaze then fell upon the wedding ring on his finger, and after staring at it for a heartbeat, he raised his hand and kissed the ring, as though offering a silent prayer that only she could understand and answer.

Then he offered his praises to the Queen of Fate, the Lady of Luck, and Sleeping Beauty.

When all of that was done, Cassius stepped forward, following the very path Blanche had just taken, and replied with his eyes transfixed on her face.

"My body might be subject to your Will, White Phoenix, but my own Will is not," he said, his voice steady, his eyes bright, and a smile resting on his angelic face. "But I’m not here to prove that you cannot break me. I’m here to learn more about this world, and about myself at the same time. So, would you do me a favor and humor me?"

Blanche smiled thinly. "I will humor you."

A throne appeared in front of the White Phoenix, far smaller than her own, but still regal in its own way.

"Take a seat, Lightbringer," she said. "Let’s talk about why you have failed so many times."

—End of Chapter 464—