Chapter 499: The Executioner

"Your sacrifice, Ae#&%... is accepted. Through you, the gifts of Celestial power shall be given to the mortals, and your deeds, though unknown, shall echo through the epochs, until the end of all things."

Light fell from the highest heaven, and it took him apart.

You know, I have watched a great many things die. I have been a great many of them. What happened on that platform was not a death, and I do not have a word for it.

The light took him apart cell by cell. He made no sound through any of it, even though I thought it must have been unbearable. I watched the light enter his body, go up his arms and across his chest, and as it faded it carried away pieces of him until there was nothing left.

I saw his skin and muscle and bone vanish into that light as it rose into the air, and when the light was gone, his soul was left standing there, and I had never seen a soul like it.

If I had not watched his body disintegrate, I would have thought nothing had happened at all, because his soul was an exact replica of the body, except that it glowed with an inner light I cannot describe.

The light that had taken his flesh came again for his soul, and in the distance I could see people fighting to reach him. In the end there were some there who did not want him to take this path.

My eyes could not leave him. The soul did not come apart in pieces, the way the body had. It came apart in things.

Things that had names. The things he had felt. His joys and his sorrows. His memories.

Somebody’s face went past me, a woman I think, and then a house with a low door. A hand holding a smaller hand. Somebody laughing at something he had said, very long ago, in a room with the light coming in sideways.

Then I saw a battlefield, and this man standing alone in front of a gate, and in front of him demons that covered worlds, and I knew that at the end of that day only he was left standing. He was the greatest warrior of an epoch, a being worthy of being eternal and invincible.

He had said that he had loved, and I had seen a small fragment of it, and he let all of it go. Every single thing, in front of a crowd, and the last thing I saw leave was the kindness in his eyes, which stayed longer than anything else and was the final thing lifted out of him.

What was left standing on that platform was a shape, like the last of his shadow lingering, refusing to leave this place and his people.

The woman I had taken for a priestess climbed onto the platform with her white and gold robes dragging through the light that was still falling, and she stood in front of the shape, and she was shaking.

"My lord," she whispered. "Do you know me?"

The shape looked at her. "No," it said.

After a while the shadow vanished, and the weeping woman jerked as if she had been shaken awake, and she looked around herself with her eyes full of confusion.

"Why am I crying?"

∞

My vision was dragged away from that place, up into the heavens, and I saw the light that had left the man’s body rise past the ships and the fleets and the creatures of shadow and light. It rose until it was above the burning worlds, above the dying stars, above everything.

I followed it. I could not do anything else. My consciousness was tethered to that moment, to that memory, and I watched the light cross the void. It passed through galaxies and nebulae and through the armies fighting the war against the demons.

And then it plunged down into those places full of conflict, and something began to change. I could feel it. There were countless stars that were meant to die and did not, because this light had found them, and it had given them the chance to rise against the darkness.

Understanding came to me, and it was bleak. He had not ascended into one of the great cosmic tiers. He could have been something greater than gods and demons. Instead, he had given up eternity to save a universe that would never remember his name.

The greatest Transcendental Warrior of an epoch had chosen to be forgotten.

∞

As suddenly as it had taken me, the vision ended, and I returned to my body of flesh and pain.

My status screen was still flashing in my head. My internal clock told me that no time had passed at all, and the vision I had seen could as well have been a figment of my imagination, and I knew it was real.

I had no time to focus on what had changed before pain radiated out of the core of my consciousness and put me on my knees. You know me. Anything that can bring me to my knees is truly painful. It was almost as if a part of my soul was being taken apart and stitched into something... else.

[ Demon Slayer (Epic) — dissolved. ]

[ Reconstituting. ]

[ ... ]

[ ... ]

I have had Titles evolve before, and this was different. I could feel the shattered layers of Demon Slayer flowing through my channels and my soul, touching every part of me before going deeper, into the layer of my soul that not even I can reach without guidance, until it reached the engine at the bottom and touched the Pivot.

Then the Title went around it, almost dismissively, I thought, and settled into me, laying foundations I was not strong enough to see.

[ ... ]

[ Title acquired: Abyssal Executioner (Mythic) ]

∞

The Hollow Avatar had told me that demons were only the edges of a great evil, and that the true battle was between light and darkness, death and life, the Abyssals and the Celestials.

I had gained Demon Slayer to kill demons. Abyssal Executioner felt like a Title meant to end the things that make demons.

To be an executioner. I mean, there are worse fates.

I pushed my consciousness into the Title to see its full description, and it opened in front of me.

[ Abyssal Executioner (Mythic) ]

[ Of all bearers below Transcendence, this one has rendered more demonic life than any recorded holder of this Title. ]

[ Effects: ]

— All Celestial-tier skills: unchained. Growth ceilings removed while Title is equipped.

— Demonology skill growth increased by a vast margin.

— Absolute resistance to demonic forces, physical, sensory and soul-based. Only Transcendental-tier demonic entities can bypass this resistance.

— Demonic concealment: bearer is unreadable to demons below Class Six.

— Moderate chance upon future kills of acquiring a Celestial skill.

— All demonic essence absorption rates increased by 400%.

— New Ability: Nine Heaven Pillars — Unlocked

— New Ability: Abyssal Judgment — Unlocked

— New Ability: Executioner’s Mark — Unlocked

[ Growth: ]

— This Title can evolve through continued demon kills.

— Kills of higher-ranked demons contribute substantially more than kills of lower-ranked demons.

— Evolution thresholds are unknown to the bearer until reached.