Chapter 272: You Can Hate Me, but You Will Obey

A sudden system window appeared before Max, its letters burning with an unfamiliar mixture of gold and black. Darkness shifted within each golden stroke, making the words seem to move even after they had finished forming. He faltered for a moment, his eyes narrowing at the message blocking his view of the horizon.

[I have already told you that without me, you are a nobody who would die before a candle could burn out. You can hate me all you want, but I still need you for one purpose: to free me.]

Max read the words slowly, his eyelid twitching as he tightened his jaw. Even now, with blood drying across his body and his people dying far beyond his reach, she had come to remind him of what he owed her.

“Fuck off. Honestly, find somebody else to save your useless ass.” His lips twisted as he forced another step forward. “Oh, I forgot. You can’t.”

The window remained before him, following his movements.

“And you aren’t doing much to help me reach that precious goal of yours either. What have you been doing all this time? Hiding? Sitting quietly in your little prison?” He spat onto the ground. “Comfortable in there? I hope you fucking rot.”

Max continued walking, though each uneven step covered painfully little distance. His wings hung behind him, their weight pulling at his wounded back whenever he tried to straighten. The mana he had consumed from Henry’s prison had kept him standing, but the strength needed to fly still refused to come.

[You are too weak to return to your city. It has fallen. Everyone is dead.]

His foot stopped above the ground before slowly settling into the mud.

“You’re full of shit.”

Max struck the window, his fist passing through the letters without disturbing them. The force pulled him off balance, and he stumbled forward before catching himself, breathing hard through his nose.

“You just told me Rosalia was safe.”

He stared at the screen, waiting for an answer, but the next message appeared without acknowledging his words.

[The enemy army has already captured your creation. Returning with your current strength would be suicide.]

“I don’t care.” Max tried to walk through the window, his gaze fixed upon the land beyond it. “I can’t let them believe I abandoned them. Whoever is still there, whoever is waiting… I have to go back.”

[You can abandon them, and you will.]

The screen flashed crimson.

Max stopped so abruptly that his next breath caught inside his throat. His void heart contracted beneath his ribs, squeezing with a force that bent him forward before he could understand what was happening. He clutched his chest, his fingers digging against it as another crimson pulse crossed the window.

His vision blurred. The ground tilted beneath him, and his knees began to fold, but his mana heart beat harder, keeping him conscious through the pressure crushing the other.

“W-what are you doing?”

Max raised his head toward the screen, his eyes burning with hatred. He tried to gather his void, to force it toward the window again, but another contraction tore through his chest and left him struggling to breathe.

[I cannot allow my finest hero to die for a few meaningless mortal lives. You are reckless, naive, and inexperienced. It was my mistake to let you come to these lands before you were ready. I should have tempered you into the proper weapon you were meant to become.]

Max barely registered the rest of the message after reading what she called his people.

Meaningless.

The people who had trusted him, the ones who had worked beneath his walls and welcomed him home, meant so little to her that she could dismiss their deaths while demanding he dedicate his life to her freedom.

He spat blood onto the ground and forced himself to straighten, his hand still pressed against his chest.

“You fucking meaningless slut… watch what you say about them.”

The words came out low, broken by the effort it took to breathe, but he kept his eyes upon the screen.

“The only meaningless life here is yours. And I’ll be the one to take it when I reach you.” His fingers tightened over his heart as the pressure returned. “I swear on my life, you’ll pay for this. For all of it. You’ll pay with your own fucking blood.”

Even the hatred he carried for his mother paled beside what he felt toward the woman speaking through those letters. She could feel him resisting, could see him struggling to remain on his feet, and still she continued as though his anger were merely an inconvenience she had expected.

[Hate me if you wish. You will remain my tool for as long as I need you. Enough playing around, Max. It is time for you to truly grow in power.]

Dizziness struck before he finished reading.

Max reached outward, searching for something to hold as the landscape stretched strangely around him. The distant horizon blurred into the crimson sky, and the ground beneath his boots seemed to shift despite his efforts to plant them more firmly.

He dragged one foot forward. Then the other. His body felt increasingly distant, his legs slow to answer even as panic drove him to move.

[You will not see these lands again until you possess enough power to crush the enemies you wish to destroy, and those who wish to destroy you.]

“What are you doing…?”

Max looked past the window toward the direction of Blackspire. He tried to spread his wings, ignoring the pain tearing through his back, but their edges were already blurring before his eyes.

“Don’t— No!”

He lunged forward, one hand reaching toward the horizon as though he could somehow hold himself within the world he was being pulled away from. His boot scraped through the mud, leaving a shallow trail that ended abruptly as his body vanished.

The rest of his protest disappeared with him, leaving only blood upon the ground and crimson rain falling through the space where he had stood.