Immortal Paladin 144 The Long Echo

144 The Long Echo

The mory didn’t end.

It shifted again, seamlessly, as if flipping to the next chapter in a story already written but now being read aloud with fresh eyes. The field of poppies faded. The lavender sky turned to grey. And when the light returned, I saw it.

.

Or at least, him.

David_69.

I stood on a ruined bridge beneath a shattered moon, decked in the full Paladin kit from my late-ga loadout: Radiant Fang, Iron rcy cloak, and that dumb over-leveled shield I used to call the Pancake of Justice.

And across from stood Alice.

But not the Alice I knew now. This was her at her most untrusting. Her most dangerous. Rosy hair stained darker by blood. Fangs bared. Cloak of shadows billowing behind her like wings of ink. The two stared each other down like fated rivals.

“You hunt vampires?” she hissed. “You call yourself holy, yet you swing your blade blindly. Do you not know who I am? Do you know my story? Do you know my pain? How dare you look down on ?!”

David, , didn’t back down. He gritted his teeth and leveled his sword. “You kill people!”

“I kill monsters!”

“Then we’re no different. But I still have to take you in.”

And that’s when the fighting started. Honestly, that wasn’t how I rembered what happened. Instead, I rembered the eting with more whining on her part and cussing my heart out as I chugged on an energy drink, and my ga avatar chugging on potions.

It wasn’t just a clash of swords and spells. It was a fight for one’s ideals. So yeah, it was a tough fight. Of course, David_69 had his own ideals. As for , I was just there for a different reason. Fla t void. Steel clashed against shadow. Light and dark coiled, wrapped, tore each other apart, and reford again.

I watched the battle from outside my body, detached and ghostlike, but I rembered every move. Every parry, and every counterspell. I rembered how hard that fight had been and how long it lasted.

What I didn’t rember back then was how hurt Alice looked when we first spoke.

“You don’t understand,” she had said mid-fight, bleeding from her side. “Every Champion cos at swinging. I expect it. I brace for it.”

David scowled, blade raised. “You’re an enemy of the Realm!”

She laughed bitterly. “Of course I am. What kind of world lets people like live?”

“But do I really have to fight you?” asked David with a pained expression. "Yes, I see your point... but..."

It was at that mont that I started to realize, watching from the outside, just how real this was. Even now, LLO remained distant from . Of course, I get the xianxia elents and have co to accept it, but the world of LLO? Back then, in Lost Legends Online, I thought it was just amazing writing. Just so dynamic NPC with a branching dialogue tree and a rare drop table. Alice was famous among the community. Half the player base hated her. The other half was obsessed.

And I? I was one among the obsessed. The one who... she spoke to, not just fought. I tried hard to look for a dialogue option, so I raised my Speech Stat as much as possible before that fateful encounter.

“Why do we fight?” I asked. “Just surrender!”

“Kill ,” she answered. “And I will find peace.”

She even acknowledged it now, standing beside in the echo of that battle. Her ghost-like form watched the reenactnt unfold with .

“That was… life-changing,” she murmured.

“You an the fight?” I asked.

She shook her head. “eting you.”

I looked at her, and for a mont, I forgot we were walking through her soul.

She continued, “Most Champions… Immortal Souls, as your lot called them… only saw as a monster. They’d draw their blades before I even opened my mouth. Didn’t matter what I said. But you were different.”

“Uuuh…” I nodded. “Yeah… makes sense.”

Technically, I drew blades first before I started talking. The cut-scene demanded it after all. The mory flickered again, another scene stitched into this dreamlike tapestry of her soul. Sa bridge. Sa moon, but less shattered now, as if rembering softened even the sky’s wounds.

The fight had dragged on for nearly twenty minutes, real-ti. Most PvP duels didn’t last a third of that. We weren’t just throwing numbers at each other. We were talking. And not like two players bantering over headsets. No, this was deeper and layered. Alice wasn’t just an NPC with a hot character model and OP vampire stats. She felt real. Her dialogue didn’t follow standard scripting patterns. Her lines changed depending on how I moved, when I spoke, even how much damage I took.

It wasn’t just programming. It was like she knew.

At one point, I tried to cheese her with a terrain exploit, so busted ledge jump combo I’d seen in a forum video, but she laughed.

“Oh no,” she’d said, sidestepping the trick like she’d seen it a thousand tis. “Not that again. Champions always try that rock-hop thing. Did soone on your ‘chat board’ suggest it?”

That line hit like a glitch to the fucking gut. Most players would complain how dialogues like that would ruin imrsion. But LLO's players weren't 'most' players. I was the sa. Alice knew. Or at least, she knew enough. LLO’s world wasn’t supposed to break imrsion like that. And yet, there she was… sounding like she half-understood what a player was, what a forum was, what a cheese strat was.

“What are you?” My character asked mid-fight, breath ragged, shield cracked, and Radiant Fang glowing at half-durability.

Her eyes glead like blood-stained garnets. “I’m soone the gods forgot. I was a daughter of light once. A Holy Woman. Now I live in the dark and pretend not to miss the sun. Now, kill , wandering adjudicator! Deliver !”

That was the turning point. Not just in the fight, but in the questline. We didn’t end it with emptying each other's HP. It ended by choice. My choice. It was truly a miracle. Sothing at that ti regretted being unable to take a record of.

“I don’t want to kill you,” I’d said finally, lowering my weapon. "Please... not like this..."

“Then what do you want, Paladin?”

“I want to understand you. To help.”

She’d gone quiet for a long ti. The wind howled between us, carrying motes of ash from a world forever burning. Then she said, “Find a cure. Free from this curse. And in return… I’ll teach you the one thing your light has never given you.”

That was how the Exalted Renewal quest began. Back then, I thought it was just a prestige-line hidden unlock. Maybe a faith-locked Paladin passive, or a bugged interaction between Warlock and Priest legacy paths. But now, standing beside Alice in this echo of mory, I understood sothing I didn’t before.

It wasn’t a bug. It wasn’t a feature.

It was her choice.

The system hadn’t assigned her to give that skill. She had chosen to teach .

Back then, I hadn’t known how any of it worked. The NPCs of LLO… they weren’t normal. They spoke like they lived in so fantasy realm, sure, but their word choices always had this offbeat quality to them. They didn’t say “level up,” but they’d talk about “refining their Path” or “advancing their Soul Brand.” They didn’t say “Class”—they said “Calling.” EXP was “Karmic Light.” Dungeons were “Wounds in the World.” It wasn’t just flavor text. It felt real. Too real.

Even now, watching the scene replay from the inside of Alice’s soul, I could hear it in her voice.

“You think this world is simple,” she spat as she bled across broken stone. “You think there’s black and white. Good and evil. But everything here is dying slowly. So of us just decided to die faster. I want to die! But you refuse to let die! So choose, stab your sword through my heart and save , or let suffer despair with the lie you call hope!"

I rembered how I’d paused. How I had genuinely hesitated, sword half-lowered. Maybe it was a trick? But it couldn't be a trick. I wanted to believe she was telling the truth. “You don’t have to die,” I said. “You’re smart. You’re strong. Just… surrender. We can find a way to fix this.”

Her expression twisted like I’d slapped her. “Fix? Fix?!” And then, softer: “You think I haven’t tried? Give a clear answer!”

That was when I made her the offer.

“I’ll do it,” I said unconsciously into the mic, feeling caught in the mont. “I’ll find a way to cure your vampirism. I’ll grind whatever questline it takes. I’ll burn all my mats, spend all my tokens, reroll my damn build if I have to.”

She blinked. For once, no biting retort ca. No spell. No sudden strike. Instead, she said, “If you an that… I’ll teach you sothing. Sothing lost to ti. A skill once taught to when I still wore white robes and carried a sun-marked scepter.”

“Wait, you’re talking about…”

“Exalted Renewal,” she whispered. “I will teach it to you. Now. Let's do it now.”

Even hearing the na gave chills. Back then, I thought it was just another cool, overdramatic spell na. But it wasn’t. It was an Ultimate Skill. One of the old legacy ones, from the early patches of LLO that people barely rembered.

But that wasn’t the problem.

Alice was talking to via the headset.

I rembered the interface… flickering, almost reluctant to let it happen. But it did happen.

Exalted Renewal

[Paladin Legacy / Ultimate Skill]

“Requires death to activate. Fully consus the user’s Divine Soul to resurrect with one final burst of divine energy. All conditions must be t. Cannot be triggered by external resurrection effects. Death cos to us all, but so get a pass until Death decides you have had enough."

The confirmation window appeared like a divine decree, written in gold-edged script.

But the cost? It was steep.

To learn it, I had to sacrifice skills. Not just dump points like normal, but permanently recycle them. I let go of three Divine Word series abilities: Word of Radiance, Word of Binding, and Word of rcy. Each one had gotten through nightmare dungeons and solo runs. They were pretty useful in PvP too. They weren’t just numbers. They were part of my identity as a Paladin, so it hurt when I gave them up.

Alice hadn’t even blinked when I told her I was ready.

We stood together in the ruined sanctum, just past the bridge, her stronghold, if the ga’s HUD was to be believed. She raised her hand, and I felt the ritual start. Symbols carved themselves in blood through the air, looping in runes I didn’t recognize but sohow understood.

“This is a Blood Pact,” she said. “Not just a re quest binding. If you break it, truly break it, you won’t just die.”

“I’ll beco your thrall.”

She didn’t deny it.

“You will lose your mind. Your will. You’ll beco the thing I fought so hard not to be. And then you will serve … until you fulfill your end of the bargain.”

I hesitated only a second, then said, “I’m in.”

I rembered the sound of her voice when she whispered the final word to seal the pact. A kind of mournful acceptance. Not hopeful. Just tired. Like soone who had been disappointed too many tis to believe anymore, but who still dared, just once more.

The mory shifted again.

And this ti… it burned.

I found myself in the sky. No bridge. No Alice. Just a sun that flickered like a dying candle over a broken landscape. Glitched textures, missing assets, monsters frozen in T-poses, or twitching spasms. LLO was falling apart.

This was the end.

I rembered it, vividly now. The week the servers started hemorrhaging players. People logged off and never ca back. Skill trees bugged out. Certain abilities wouldn’t activate. Crafting failed unpredictably. So quests locked permanently. Even movent started to break, avatars clipping through geotry or falling forever into the void.

The devs had gone silent. The subreddit turned into a graveyard of bug reports and conspiracy posts. Most players called it an unbalanced ss and bailed. But the ones who stayed? We weren’t there for gaplay anymore. We were there for the NPCs. Because sohow, even as the rest of the world collapsed, they didn’t break. They mourned. They panicked. They held funerals for villages that despawned, which later was found out got wrecked by angels. They cried when their scripted gods stopped answering prayers. They rembered , even across play sessions, even if I created new accounts.

They’d ask:

“Where have you been?”

“Have you co to help?”

“Please… don’t leave us again.”

That was why it had a cult following, why people were so obsessed. And why, when I died, truly died, in the ga, not from a glitch or logout tiout, but perma-death at so virus bugged-out eldritch hands, sothing broke in more than just the system.

The mory pulled forward. Faster now.

I saw Alice again. Not as a boss. Not even as a quest-giver. Joan was with her, looking the sa as the day I t her in the ga. Then Alice turned toward the broken dungeon where I fought an eldritch abomination, and began weaving a spell. One the ga had never logged. One that didn’t exist in any datamine.

A Soul-Seeking Rite.

I watched, stunned, as she and Joan gathered mana and tore a portal from where I had my last fight in the world of LLO.

The mory kept shifting.

I saw them after. Lost. Wandering.

The language was a nightmare for them. No interface. No auto-translations. They had no idea where I’d gone or what world they’d landed in. I watched Alice try to barter with a passing rchant by drawing runes in the dirt. Watched her cry when she realized the locals couldn’t understand anything she was saying. Joan had tried to write out spell glyphs, but even those twisted midair, this world rejected their systems.

And yet, they kept going.

Day by day, town by town.

Looking for .

Joan refused to feed for weeks. Alice pawned old gear to buy food and information. A floating skull: ancient, lecherous, and far too interested in Alice’s “unusual soul structure”, eventually began translating and teaching them the local tongue. Slowly. Painfully. They suffered. But they endured.

Now, here, in the remnants of Alice’s soul, I stood beside her and watched it all again. Watched as she walked through a world that didn’t want her, again, just to find . She didn’t say anything. But she didn’t need to.

I turned to her, voice quiet.

“I’m sorry you went through all of that.”

"Don't mind ," She shrugged. “I was the one chasing a ghost.”

“You weren’t,” I said. “You found .”

For a mont, she smiled. A real one. Not the bitter, crooked one she used to wear. Then she reached out and placed her hand gently over my heart. “You still have it,” she said. “The spark. The one that makes you worth dying for.”

“Hey now, I might get the wrong idea,” I looked at her, stunned. “Moreover, I thought I was the one who was supposed to die for you.”

The mory pressed on, bleeding from one mont to the next like ink across parchnt. The world dissolved into ash and starlight, and the world shifted again. I found myself above it, distant and bodiless, watching like a silent god peering into a page already written.

Darkness. Trees. Mist that curled like smoke.

The Black Forest.

Even now, in dreamlike recall, I felt the heavy, pressing weight of the place… like the air was thick with secrets. I rembered fighting with them side by side. We’d won, eventually. If you could call surviving winning. The thing dissipated into glitch-light, leaving the forest silent again. The three of them limped out, two in soul, one in body.

The mory shifted again.

The Great Desert.

Endless dunes stretched beneath a white-hot sky, but the sand didn’t scorch… No, it pulsed with heat like a heartbeat. The three wandered, clothes ragged, and Lu Gao half-starved. They found the village by accident… Sandthorn, the oasis hidden in the lee of a ridge-like dune, with palm roofs and soft-spoken people who asked no questions.

Alice and Joan, or rather Aili Si and Cho An, as the locals called them now, managed to adapt to the village rather well. Lu Gao, of course, kept his own na… nobody ever tried to rena him.

They stayed. They settled. And I... watched.

It had felt like years since I’d seen them like this. Not just surviving, but living. Alice trained Lu Gao in actual martial drills, correcting his footwork, running him through movents using a sand-worn staff. At night, they sat by the communal fire and listened to the elders tell stories, using the few words they’d managed to pick up.

The villagers adored Joan. They whispered of her kindness, her strength. How she could sing and lull children to sleep. They brought her flowers. Dried dates. Laughter.

And then the sky broke.

It started with one angel. Then three. Then more.

They appeared in the dunes like statues, as if rembering they used to be gods. Wings too bright. Eyes too empty. Heaven’s software wrapped in sothing too clean, like sterilized death.

I saw Alice’s panic the mont she recognized them.

She didn’t hesitate.

She forced a scroll into Lu Gao’s hand, forcing him to teleport. He tried to resist, tried to stay, but the spell was already unraveling beneath his feet.

The teleportation tore him away.

She turned. The angels hovered over Sandthorn now.

I saw her choices.

I watched as she fought. Fire, shadow, light, illusions… all of it. She summoned spells I didn’t recognize, cracked the sky, and collapsed two of them with a demonized version of the chant from her Holy Woman days. But they multiplied, absorbing the villagers they touched. With every life taken, they grew stronger, cleaner, and more chanical.

And Alice…

She made the only choice she could.

She began killing the villagers herself.

Clean, rciful strikes. Magic that unmade them faster than the angels could claim them. Her face was stained with tears and blood. Her voice trembled with every invocation.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I wanted to save you.”

Her hands shook. Her soul splintered. But she didn’t stop.

She killed them all.

Only ashes remained.

And the angels left her alone.

In the dream space, I turned to her. The ghost beside . The echo of her. She didn’t look at . She stared at the scene like she could still sll the fire, still feel the heat on her skin.

“I didn’t want to do it,” she said finally. Her voice cracked.

“I know.”

“No one else would’ve understood.”

“I do.”

She finally turned to . Her eyes, so often sharp, looked tired. “Do you hate for it?”

“No,” I whispered. “I think… I think you saved them.”

That was the truth of it.

Even now, this world was cruel. The rules were different. The stakes were higher. And Alice—Aili Si—had done what no Paladin, no Champion, and no so-called hero could have done. She sacrificed her own peace to protect their souls.

The mory shimred, fading.

She had waited for .

Through black forests, cursed beasts, broken language, and holy monsters…

She had waited.

And I was finally here.