Chapter 40: The Echo of Broken Immortality

Zeimer pressed his thumb firmly against his throbbing temple, trying to suppress a rising headache. Having looked upon the literal manifestation of the Goddess with his own eyes, he didn’t doubt her existence, but he harbored an absolute, unyielding distrust toward the deity itself. Ian, whom the Goddess had designated as her ‘final love,’ had collapsed and lost consciousness, while half of the human empire had been utterly obliterated. Zeimer ground his teeth, bitterly pitying himself for possessing an overwhelming sense of duty despite lacking even a shred of genuine love for humanity. This was already his second time enduring this cycle.

A torrent of brilliant blue mana erupted from his palms, triggering a colossal, controlled explosion. His task today was to systematically level an entire abandoned town. The knights had already performed a preliminary sweep, clearing away the primary remains of the deceased. Yet, gruesome remnants always slipped through the cracks; whenever Zeimer fractured the foundation of an entire village like this, unexpected horrors had a habit of bursting forth from the unlikeliest places at the worst possible times.

Behind him, the fledgling apprentice mages from the tower either turned their heads away in disgust or vomited on the spot. Zeimer, however, didn’t bat an eye, continuing his casting without a single pause. In a world as cruel as this, one simply couldn’t survive if they let every little horror affect their mind. As the spell ground away the topsoil of the settlement and hollowed out the hidden basements, half-mummified corpses periodically erupted to the surface. Zeimer clicked his tongue in irritation, mechanically shifting the skeletal remains into a separate pile. He would aggregate them later and forward the spatial coordinates to the knights so they could handle the mass burials.

Having successfully vaporized one village, compressing the shattered debris and brickwork into a massive, dense boulder floating in the air, Zeimer immediately advanced to the next settlement. He was driving his body ragged, pushing himself to the absolute limit to conclude the first phase of reconstruction as swiftly as possible. The world the Hero had bled to protect had to endure for the next generation. To make that happen, the people needed to reclaim their ordinary, mundane daily lives without delay.

It wasn’t even noon yet, but Zeimer was already systematically demolishing his third target. Most of the towns allocated to his squad were relatively large hubs, boasting bustling market squares and multiple three-story stone structures. Smaller hamlets or regions that retained a modicum of structural integrity didn’t require an asset of Zeimer’s devastating caliber. The severe damage was concentrated at the northernmost and easternmost fringes of the continent—lands far removed from the capital that had been neglected and thoroughly trampled under the heels of the monster horde for nearly a decade. For those desolate regions, it was far more efficient to reduce everything back to absolute zero and build anew from the ashes.

He unstoppered his canteen and took a quick swig. The lukewarm water did absolutely nothing to quench his dry throat, but it was sufficient to rinse out the thick, gritty dust coating the inside of his mouth. Zeimer spat the water onto the dirt, then poured the remainder of the canteen directly over his head. After days of executing this relentless march, his focus was beginning to fracture from sheer exhaustion. He needed to lock his mind back into place. More than two months had already slipped away since the official end of the war. The chronic deficit of manpower was dragging the reconstruction process out far longer than anticipated, filling him with a creeping sense of urgency. If everything had gone according to the initial blueprint, primary clearing operations should have wrapped up by now, allowing uniform redevelopment to begin across the outer territories.

After detonating the final village assigned for the morning shift, Zeimer unclasped his dust-caked traveling cape and tossed it aside. Fine grit had worked its way into the strands of his hair, sticking to the sweat tracing his face and leaving him thoroughly annoyed. He wanted nothing more than to use a cleansing spell to wash the grime away in one sweep, but given his rapidly depleting mental acuity, he couldn’t afford to waste even a single drop of mana on personal comfort. Zeimer let out a sharp click of his tongue. He really was the type to actively seek out the most agonizing paths.

Extending his hands, Zeimer hoisted the collective debris of the flattened village into the open air. The shattered masonry floated at uniform intervals across the sky; only after meticulously scanning the hovering remnants to ensure no human remains were caught in the mass did he condense the rubble into a single, compact sphere.

The coastal village, which hadn’t felt a human footprint in ten long years, was transformed from a sinister graveyard of dilapidated, decaying structures into a sweeping, barren clearing overgrown with wild brush. Where the foundations of houses with basements had once stood, deep craters extending past a man’s height now pockmarked the open earth.

The lesser mages dispatched from the Magic Tower watched Zeimer with eyes full of absolute reverence and awe. To them, a man who could relentlessly unleash catastrophic, large-scale spells while simultaneously executing flawless spatial sorting must have felt like an outright monster.

The title of Grand Mage was never bestowed easily. It was an honor earned only after enduring ten agonizing days of screaming trials, surviving a face-to-face encounter with a Dragon, offering up one’s literal heart to the beast, and embedding a dragon scale directly into the vacant cavity. The younger mages, in particular, kept hovering around the perimeter of the clearing, desperately looking for an opportunity to strike up a conversation with the living legend. Zeimer picked up on their lingering presence immediately, but dismissed them entirely, finding them unworthy of his time.

In the regions closer to the capital—territories that had remained protected right up until the third defensive line was breached—the settlements still retained their basic architecture. Staring at the craters, Zeimer sucked in his cheeks, a deep dimple forming as his mind drifted back to the time he had attempted to forcibly rewind the chronal flow of an entire village, an experiment that had left him bedridden for three agonizing days. The village he had targeted back then hadn’t even been particularly large, but chronomancy demanded a fraction of the caster’s very soul as a toll, causing a catastrophic drain on one’s psychological stability. Ultimately, Zeimer had concluded that it was vastly more efficient to tear everything down and rebuild from scratch, leading him to personally hunt down the most devastated zones on the continent.

Slouching forward into a crooked posture, Zeimer sat down on a low, jagged tree stump, tossing his heavy cape carelessly onto the dirt. He spread his legs slightly, resting his elbows against his thighs as he interlaced his fingers.

As he sat with his head bowed to the earth, a sudden shadow fell across his vision, causing him to look up.

One of the apprentice mages, who had been hovering nervously in the background, had finally summoned the courage to step forward, cautiously holding out a clean towel.

“What is it?”

“I-I noticed you were covered in grime, so I wanted to help brush off the dust……”

“I don’t need it.”

Zeimer scowled deeply, dropping his head right back down. Very few Grand Mages remained alive on the continent. In other words, there were barely any individuals left who possessed a dragon scale capable of exuding an infinite reservoir of mana. His current exhaustion wasn’t due to a lack of energy, but a severe depletion of mental stamina; thus, having a lower-ranking mage interrupt his attempts to maintain focus with idle chatter was nothing short of an absolute nuisance.

Despite his scathing rejection, the young mage stepped closer, delicately using the towel to brush away the thick layer of grey ash settling over Zeimer’s shoulders and back. She looked as though she desperately wanted to dust out his hair as well, but lacking the sheer audacity to touch a Grand Mage’s head, she confined her frantic movements to his uniform.

Though he felt the careful, rapid strokes clearing the fabric of his clothes, Zeimer found the simple act of waving her off too exhausting to bother with, closing his eyes once more.

Ian.

The horrific imagery of the Hero’s final moments kept flashing behind his eyelids like an unbidden ghost. There was no such thing as an investment without a return in this world. Ian was supposed to be the Goddess’s final love—so what cataclysmic price had the universe extracted from him in exchange?

Having cleared the worst of the dust, the apprentice mage pulled the towel back and prepared to retreat, but Zeimer called her out before she could take a step.

“Hey.”

“Yes?”

“Hand that over.”

The young girl blinked in confusion, raising the towel in her hand. The fabric was already thoroughly blackened and soiled by the dirt she had just brushed from his own clothes. She looked entirely incredulous that a Grand Mage renowned for his severe, borderline pathological germaphobia was actively demanding a filthy rag.

“Yes, that. Hand it over.”

Zeimer suppressed the irritation bubbling up in his chest, repeating his command with what he considered a monumental display of patience. Only then did the mage dumbly extend her arm, surrendering the cloth. Snatching the towel from her grip, Zeimer casually wiped down his face. No matter how filthy the rag was, it was infinitely better than leaving the thick paste of sweat and ash to cake across his skin.

Scrubbing his face with aggressive, agitated strokes, Zeimer let out a heavy sigh. One of his long legs, extended straight out into the dirt, trembled intermittently from muscular fatigue; with every tremor, the subtle, elegant sheen of his black trousers caught the midday sun, shimmering softly. Sighing had become an involuntary reflex for him long ago. Casting his gaze over the cleared site, Zeimer surveyed the surrounding mages who were sprawled across the dirt, resting haphazardly. Every single one of them was staring blankly at their staves or focus gems. There wasn’t a single shred of vitality among them; the entire camp was enveloped in a suffocating, somber atmosphere that resembled a dense bank of grey fog. Zeimer despised that look. If they had truly been gifted a future by the Hero’s sacrifice, shouldn’t they be living out their new dawn with brightness and unbridled vigor?

Back during the campaigns, even when Ian sustained injuries that should have been instantly fatal, he would always watch the flesh knit itself back together under the swell of his violet holy aura, wearing an entirely detached expression as he muttered like a broken habit:

“I cannot die.”

But had that truly been the truth? During those final moments in the office, as Ian’s body violently rejected every thread of holy light and mana, filling the vacant vessels of his soul entirely with a suffocating, dense demonic energy, he had looked like a creature standing on the absolute threshold of death. The final eruption of Ian’s holy power had successfully purified the entirety of the Empire, and his residual mana had restored life back to the soil of this world—but in the end, did that mean Ian was truly immortal?

Zeimer didn’t have the answer.

A profound, suffocating sense of helplessness washed over him. As Zeimer stood in the Imperial office, watching Ian vomit torrents of blood before losing consciousness entirely within Felix’s frantic embrace, an absolute despair had taken root in his chest.

The sight of Ian clawing at his own throat, gasping erratically for air while wheezing that someone was actively strangling him, was a clear indication of a deep, systemic collapse. Felix had evidently realized the gravity of the situation as well, utilizing his imperial authority to immediately force Ian into a deep, magical slumber. Yet, even after losing consciousness, Ian’s fingers had continued to frantically scratch at his neck. Fortunately, his fingernails had been clipped short, preventing him from tearing his own flesh open, but the raw, angry red welts left behind on his throat were unavoidable. Zeimer dug his fingers into his hair, his mind spiraling into bitter self-reproach. He should have been more aggressive. He should have used physical force to stop Felix from pressing the Hero any further.

If Ian had ultimately resigned himself to running along the tracks of destiny, then Zeimer would simply have to fight twice as hard—both for Ian’s sake and his own—to shatter those rails and tear him away from the Goddess’s script.

The heavy double doors of the chamber were suddenly thrown open with a violent crash as Claire, having rushed to the palace the moment the news reached the barracks, burst into the room.

“Your Majesty! Ian—!”

By the time the Commander arrived, Ian’s face had already been wiped clean of blood and his stained clothes had been replaced. Zeimer had personally pried the Hero’s lips apart, discovering that the inside of his mouth—which had been pooling with viscous blood just moments prior—was entirely raw and ulcerated from the corrosive nature of the fluid. He had carefully rinsed the blood from Ian’s mouth while the boy rested against Felix’s frame, gently applying a soothing salve to the wounds. Today, the thick, malevolent demonic energy radiating from Ian’s blood felt exceptionally foul and toxic.

Claire was breathing heavily from his frantic sprint, still clad in his dusty training uniform with beads of sweat tracing his forehead.

Zeimer slowly tore his gaze away from Ian’s pale, still features, raising his eyes to look at Felix and Claire in turn. The core vanguard had gathered around Ian’s side once more. It seemed that this time, too, it would require every single one of them to weather the storm.

Was Ian truly still among the living? Zeimer simply couldn’t tell.

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