Chapter 227: Torch (5)
Seria was captured.
Worthless information.
Because Badelots was dead.
Seria's light was weaker than that Inquisitor's.
So she couldn't be used as a asure to gauge Torch.
In fact, even if it had value, nothing would change.
An opportunity that hadn't existed in his previous life, one he absolutely couldn't miss. He had to kill him.
The flas flowed like a river. Each small droplet resembled the Sun. A scale and power only possible because this was the Sanctuary of Fire.
However, that was the sa for Torch.
The land where the Sun of the past was born and announced, a land for fire. The Sanctuary of Fire was preparation for Aten as well.
The flas blanketed the entire area.
Their form looked exactly like a dense forest.
It was Harad's magic. Another preparation he had layered atop the preparation called the Sanctuary of Fire.
Fire becos easier and more intense where fire exists.
Creating that environnt artificially with his own magic.
Because the opponent's Origin was also fire.
Unlike natural environnts, magic has ownership. This fire resembling rivers and forests existed solely for Harad.
"You are laying the groundwork. Excellent."
To use a war analogy, it was like moving supplies first.
Aten noticed that intent at once.
And seized it.
Part of the fire that had dominated the area changed in nature. Heat was transmitted from the skin it touched.
Not the Sun, but gentle fire. Not Harad's fire, but Aten's. Its scale was half. Its power fell sowhat short.
"Torch."
Harad finally realized the definition of that Origin.
Fire spreads to torches.
Harad's fire transferred to Aten's.
They had seized Harad's magic and made it their own preparation.
The theory of Origin superiority applies when realms are roughly equal. Harad imdiately realized he was not yet roughly equal to Aten.
"You are still hasty."
Correct, yet incorrect because he was weak.
"You have not been idle in Predation. Most excellent."
Aten smiled amidst the gentle flas.
"I truly should have fed you the heart."
Purification is whittling away.
Through martyrdom, accumulating and accumulating until the demon dies.
Magic is accumulation.
Grasping preparations and foundations one by one, building while gauging and comparing heights.
If the height can be surpassed, surpass it. If not, give up.
That's what mages are.
Harad had done the sa.
Of course, he had never given up. If realms weren't roughly equal, he just forcibly climbed the stairs. Because he knew the thod through regression.
However, he had observed the process until then.
He would continue to do so. Because that was the mage's right path and correct answer.
There was no reason not to follow that answer sheet.
He had grasped and accumulated and forcibly surpassed until now. The opportunity to forcibly surpass ca only once, but that's why he had been able to surpass it.
It would be the sa this ti.
He had only just gauged and compared one thing.
There were still countless things left to grasp and accumulate. He had to gauge and compare and surpass them all.
"Aaah!"
That's when Aten scread.
Though buried in fire, Harad could see that face all too clearly. They were smiling.
"Harad!"
"......"
"At least my son!"
Snap.
The sound of sothing breaking was heard.
Before he knew it, a hand had torn through a chest, pulled out a heart, and the sound was the blood vessels hanging in clusters from that heart snapping.
"Aah!"
Aten shrieked in ecstasy.
"O King!"
While beholding the Sun.
***
The Sun.
Belongs to a woman.
That prophecy hints at the King's return.
But the Tower of the Sun was enraged.
Such nonsense, how dare they.
Because the Moon had made the prophecy.
Because it dared presu about the King's return while prolonging life with the Embers bestowed by the King.
They had lost their original intent. Forgotten grace. Abandoned faith. The Moon, which had been rely a star, built a tower and beca intoxicated with its prosperity.
That's why the Tower of the Sun was enraged.
No, had been enraged.
The Red Tower is not.
Original intent was forgotten, grace faded, and faith was corrupted.
The Red Tower does not rage at the prophecy but awaits it.
Relies on the Moon and does not doubt.
'Fire.'
Why had it declined so pitifully?
Because it lost its center.
The Sun, the King.
That's what the Red Tower says.
An excuse the Tower of the Sun would never have uttered.
The King bears no fault. That's what kings are.
The asure must be directed solely downward.
Who dares judge the King?
When the King is absent, being buried in darkness.
How can fire that relies on sothing other than fire exist?
When only fire alone should beco one.
Why not rage?
When fire must blaze.
The King's absence is not the problem.
The fires that should serve the King have grown feeble.
That's why it declined into the Red Tower.
Fell into such absurd dreams as the Moon prophesying the King.
The fire of the Tower of the Sun is not.
Fire must blaze. Destiny is permitted only to the King. Those who are not the King must find their own destiny.
Aten, the extinguished Torch, was witnessing that they had found the answer.
An answer reached by using Iagar as nourishnt.
Aten had found that destiny on their own.
"If weak, one cannot protect more widely."
The Harad of Iagar was weak.
Though destined to beco King, he denied that destiny.
Han he not denied it, Iagar would not have beco nourishnt.
It was not Harad's fault.
Not the King but the surroundings, Iagar was the problem.
The world's sounds were severed.
The earth boiled, rose, and prostrated itself flat.
Aten felt they were beholding. The land where a King was once born and the Sun began. The Sanctuary of Fire was bowing low to the new King.
Aten gazed up at that King with utmost reverence.
Their eyes had long since evaporated, but they clearly felt the King's Manifestation. Their breath was choked, but it didn't matter. Aten's body had already softened and flowed like molten iron.
The world would be more beautiful.
Aten was certain without needing to see or hear.
It was such a mont. Eyes evaporated so they couldn't see, ears lted and buried so they refused to hear, mouth and tongue gone so they couldn't contain it. That is what a king is.
That's why Aten rely felt.
That heat, radiance, attraction that the Drear of the Red Tower couldn't understand... Aten thought they were being pulled. The King was summoning the retainer.
Aten dared not explain that vague summons. But they clearly felt that the King needed them. That they were being caught up, and must be caught up.
Beneath the Sun.
Compared to the Sun, a very small, shabby torch manifested.
At the end of that extinguished torch, gentle fire blood. It was Aten's fire. It flickered precariously like a candle before the Sun.
Beneath it, Aten's lting, flowing body solidified. Molded into a crude human form.
However, Aten was clearly alive.
They knew better than anyone the destiny they had found and their role.
Wind swept violently. Simultaneously pulling. An irresistible destiny, one that must not be resisted. The precariously flickering torch was caught up in that destiny.
The Sun.
Origins are eternal. And perfect.
But not an existence to be served.
The King is not.
An existence that advances along given destiny, and that gait and end are foolish and imperfect.
That's why an existence to be served.
For the reality called King, the retainer must induce foolishness. Must supplent imperfection.
The King had to trample the retainer and advance.
Eventually the trampled retainer would blaze together with the King.
......That was the destiny Aten assigned to themselves.
A gentle torch settled atop the Sun's surface and crawled. Kindling fire where fire was lacking, carrying heat where it was less hot, and filling hollows.
Then it beaded at the end of the Sun's surface and dripped down to the ground. It touched the heart pulled out by the King's hand.
The touching fire flowed out like thread atop the heart and thickened. Becoming a form like blood vessels, it returned the heart to the King's breast.
The torch that returned the heart flowed gently.
Those flas filled the hole where the heart had passed. So beca bone, other parts beca muscle and flesh and skin.
Eventually it spread throughout the body centered on the heart.
At first it spread in lines, then soon like disgusting bugs it poured out countless legs and enveloped the King's entire body. Blazing that way.
Within that fire, the King's flesh lted away.
Soon it blazed and cooled. First the outside lted, later the inside lted and cooled.
Each ti that series of processes repeated, the torch weakened. The King grew stronger.
Aten's body, which had cooled and hardened, began to soften and lt again. Not because the torch had weakened.
Because the Sun that rose in the sky, the torch had supplented that imperfect Manifestation. Because it had assisted the precarious King to no longer be precarious.
That's why Aten smiled broadly while lting.
"That which cannot shine on its own, how could it prophesy the master?"
How could that re Moon know the will of great fire?
When the King had returned before their very eyes.
"So O King, please prove it."
Tssss.
A very small sound of fire extinguishing was heard.
Simultaneously a sound of fire kindling.
A torch transfers fire, and fire transfers to it.
Transferring all the fire accumulated during life, the King's fire transferred to the extinguished torch.
"I am Torch."
Though this flesh was closer to a lting candle, Aten was clearly a torch.
That torch blazed while implying a great signal.
"I am Aten."
That na would beco a beacon and symbol.
As a beacon it would announce the King's return to the Otherworld.
Through death it would proclaim that the King's era had opened.
"The torch that opens the new age."
The torch would beco part of the Sun and be immortal together with the King.......
"Indeed."
A voice was heard then.
"Molding the King, announcing, and dying."
No, not a voice.
Aten's ears had already lted. The atmosphere had fled early, fearing the Sun.
"That must be the death you desire."
Yet that voice was clearer than anything.
It felt like being forcibly shoved into the head. Sothing enormous was pressing down on Aten.
"Then this must be the cruelest thing in the world."
The vision that had gone blind from lted eyes grew darker still.
The darkest and most enormous darkness among all darknesses experienced in life.
Aten felt it was a sword.
A sword darker than anything in the world cut the Sun that had risen in the sky. Split in half, it fell and shattered.
Then it cut the fire that had soared high into the sky.
The beacon called Aten was extinguished. The lting flesh cooled again.
"......Serzila!"
Aten, caught mid-lting, twisted grotesquely and cried out. A scream and fire both. That fire, the darkness casually devoured.
"I told you. Not the King's but mine."
The blind vision grew darker still.
Aten felt the darkness had opened its maw before their eyes.
"You killed him."
Jet-black.
Serzila spoke to soone.
"So I shall kill you."
This ti to Aten.
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