Chapter 524
Fwooosh!!
"So..." Aldraya murmured inwardly, his inner voice sounding like someone trying to fit a key into a lock long rusted shut.
"Does this mean... that these three Gods floating before me, the left hand, the right hand, and the youngest one's personal assistant whose face never remains the same, are they also bearers of an Administrator's seed, just like me? Are they..."
But before the question had fully taken shape in his mind, before the word "they" had even settled in the space between consciousness and unconsciousness, the three floating Gods moved.
Not like living beings moving muscles, bones, and joints, but like puppets whose strings were being pulled by impatient hands. The left hand opened its eyes, and the light shining from its pupils was unlike anything Aldraya had ever seen in the eyes of any God. It resembled code, numbers that could never be translated into human language, instructions written by someone who believed beauty served no purpose.
"Sa: Throne," the left hand declared, and a colossal pillar erupted from the ground directly beneath Aldraya's feet.
It was not made of stone, marble, or metal, but of decisions, logic, and the absolute conclusion that Aldraya had to stand in that exact place, at that exact point, at that exact second, with no argument capable of overturning that judgment.
Aldraya managed to leap, only a few centimeters, yet enough to avoid being impaled by the pillar from below.
But before he could even catch his breath, the shorter right hand opened its eyes as well. Its meaningless smile widened into something resembling joy, an empty joy born from carrying out orders without ever questioning whether those orders were right or wrong.
"Sa: Segmentation," the right hand uttered, and Aldraya's body, suspended in midair, was suddenly divided.
Not into two.
Not into three.
But into twelve.
Each stood in a different position.
Each possessed a different orientation.
Each carried only a fragment of his consciousness, torn apart like paper ripped without following its crease.
The original Aldraya, or at least the Aldraya who believed himself to be the original, felt the other eleven versions of himself begin screaming, not with voices, but through sensations, through pain he did not experience directly yet still felt through a connection he could not sever.
"And I..." said the youngest one's personal assistant, whose face had now become Aldraya's own, a perfect copy with the same silvery white hair, the same unblinking eyes, and the same icy expression, yet with something different hidden behind its pupils, something older, hungrier, and infinitely more impatient.
"Sa: Iteration."
Attack after attack came in relentless succession, not like rain falling from the sky in a predictable rhythm, but like a waterfall whose source had been severed so that its entire volume crashed down within the same second. There was no pause, no chance to breathe, no opportunity for Aldraya to think, to pray, or to regret entering the Land of the Gods without sufficient preparation.
The left hand invoked "Sa: Throne" again.
And again.
And again.
Soon the ground surrounding Aldraya was filled with pillars of irrefutable judgment, forcing him to run, leap, roll, and crawl, movements he had never imagined he would perform as the former Highest Angel who once stood beside Quil-Hasa watching universes come into existence and fade away.
The right hand slashed with "Sa: Segmentation" whenever an opening appeared, splitting Aldraya into ever smaller and more numerous fragments, each increasingly difficult to control, until by the seventh strike he no longer knew which version was truly himself and which was merely a severed fragment of consciousness forced to endure pain that should never have belonged to him.
Meanwhile, the youngest one's personal assistant, whose face changed with every attack, from Aldraya to Theo, from Theo to the youngest one, from the youngest one to an elderly blind woman Aldraya had once seen in a universe that had long since vanished, repeated "Sa: Iteration" like a mantra, causing every wound Aldraya managed to heal to reopen, every step he successfully advanced to be forced backward again, and every second he stole to breathe to be ripped from his lungs once more.
"There's no doubt anymore," Aldraya concluded inwardly as blows crashed into his abdomen, chest, thighs, and every place he had thought incapable of feeling pain any longer. His inner voice carried no panic, only a cold resignation, the kind born from realizing that what stood before him was neither the power of gods, demons, nor angels, but Sa, the exclusive Authority that allowed an Administrator to manipulate both the contents and the code of the game world of Flo Viva Mythology, as though this entire reality were nothing more than a Word document editable by anyone possessing the password, as though the blood pouring from his wounds were merely lines of text that could be deleted, duplicated, or recolored blue whenever someone grew bored of red.
"And the three of them, the left hand, the right hand, and the youngest one's personal assistant, all possess this Sa within themselves, just like I do, just like the youngest one does, just like the fourteen Disturbers Theo saved," Aldraya continued inwardly.
For the first time since the battle had begun, he experienced something he had never expected.
Doubt.
Not doubt about his ability to survive, but doubt over whether this world he had been fighting to protect was truly worth saving if every corner of it was inhabited by beings capable of rewriting reality however they pleased.
Haaah!!
The youngest one paused for a moment, not because he was tired, but because he wished to savor the sight before him, a sight more satisfying to him than the united laughter of the Gods in the grand hall, more satisfying than the image of Erietta Bathee burning upside down, more satisfying than every birthday cake as hard as stone that he had never eaten because no one had ever wished him a happy birthday.
"You know, Inspiration Behind the Scenes," the youngest one said as he leaned forward. His faint smile widened, revealing rows of teeth that were too white, too perfectly aligned, too flawless to belong to a creature that had ever experienced pain.
"I've fought thousands of beings over thousands of years. Heroes, gods, demons, angels, even a few Disturbers who believed they were special. But never, never have I seen someone endure my blows without trying to strike back. Not because you can't, but because... what? Are you simply too lazy? Too confident? Or have you already been dead inside since the very moment you stepped into the Land of the Gods?"
He laughed.
No longer with the low, restrained laughter from before, but with a laugh that burst from his throat, cracking around its edges like someone who had suppressed something for far too long, and now that he had finally let it out, could no longer stop.
"Look at yourself now! The left side of your head is split open. I can see something pulsing in there. Is that your brain? Or perhaps it's merely the remnants of hope you've never bothered to use? Your left eye has been peeled loose, hanging from your cheek like a leaf that forgot to fall from a tree long dead. Your body... ah, your body is my finest masterpiece today. I've turned your muscles into bones, and your bones into muscles. You can feel it, can't you? Every time you breathe, those ribs of yours, now made of flesh, expand and contract all wrong, like someone trying to play a flute whose holes have all been completely sealed."
To be continued...