Myths Reawakened

Wayne looked at the edge of Obed’s world and remembered what Filomina had said. Yes, the unscientific world was all lies. He would not fall for it!

The large eyeball in his chest turned off the filter, and he saw a completely different view: no sun and moon or mountains and rivers, and the starry sky and vegetation were false, too. The world of darkness was lifeless, empty save for the rolling mist that projected the falsehood.

The Book of Greed yearned for the mist, which he kept under control. No rush. Obed thought he was invisible, but Wayne knew he was getting close.

Wayne looked around with confusion and found Mona and Filomina at the edge of the world. The two women were fighting nothing with everything they had, and they were losing.

“You warned me about the illusion, but bought it yourself. Can’t blame me for fooling you so thoroughly.”

Wayne disparaged Filomina, failing to consider the reason he was able to see through the illusions. A legendary mage’s vitality field was vivid, and without the Book of Greed or the large chest eye, of course Filomina would fall for it. If one could ignore the illusion just because they walked into it convinced that it wasn’t real, why would legendary mages risk their lives to level up?

“A perfect body and the appearance of an ancient god. Perhaps you are the truth of life,” Obed marveled, sparing no compliments.

He knew Wayne couldn’t hear him. In this world, he was God, able to manipulate Wayne’s senses and consciousness. Wayne could only see or hear something with his permission.

Or so he thought.

“I’ll have your body.”

Obed reached out for Wayne, no longer interested in Kristen. A divine descendant with divine blood? She was nothing compared to an original bloodline that was evolving into an ancient god; anything related to an ancient god was incredible in value.

Swoosh!

White light flashed into Obed’s obsessive gaze, the Death energy it contained shocking him out of his daydream. He pulled back the split second before the white knightly sword slashed his neck.

Blood splattered. The arm he had raised reflexively to block the attack fell to the ground.

White light flooded toward him with Death energy. He had no time to be shocked before a series of glinting slashes forced him to back away. He had to shield himself with the longbow he had transformed his staff into to get a clear look at what was going on.

And what he saw stunned him. “Shadow Nightmare?!”

“Yes, Shadow Nightmare.”

Wayne controlled one of the tentacles on his back to curl around Obed’s missing arm, rendering it into rotten flesh with Death. The broken bones disintegrated section by section, leaving only a pile of ash.

A white maw opened on Wayne’s face. “You seem to know a lot about me, but have you never considered that I could be the Death Knight?”

Obed’s expression darkened. His voice suddenly rose an octave. “You’ve earned the recognition of the Goddess of Death? Is it because of the original bloodline, too?”

“Now you get it. Good for you!”

Wayne swung his longsword with wide, powerful motions to suppress Obed, unleashing surging Death energy. While Obed was still disoriented, he took the initiative to gain the upper hand.

His form was bizarre to say the least. Rather than putting on the Death Knight disguise, he maintained the form he took when merging with the Book of Greed, wielding Shadow Nightmare without turning into a skeleton.

He was a large eyeball with tentacles that clutched onto a magical girl while swinging a sword at an elf. Quite the picture he painted.

With fierce swordsmanship, he attacked Obed from melee range like he was fighting a dragon, giving the elf archer no chance to put distance between them.

Waves of mist converged toward them, which Obed shaped into different manifestations with his thoughts: a meteor fell from the sky, the changing moon triggered a devastating tide, sunlight transformed into a roaring lion, and a natural forest with vibrant life divided heaven and earth.

In the false world, Wayne moved like a flash of light and bisected the meteor in half. Death energy put out the resulting fire, clearing the red sky. Grey shards of the meteor fell to the ground, piercing through the land with tremendous power and leaving giant craters over ten kilometers wide. The shockwaves rippled out and shattered the mountain ranges in the area.

Pulled by the moon, the incredible tide rose and obscured the sky. Wayne thrust his sword into the ground and roared, shaking the land and creating a bottomless abyss to swallow the flood.

His sword flickered once more, and the crisscrossing slashes cut the lion of fire into pieces. Then the Death Knight’s arrival decayed the ocean-like forest dividing heaven and earth, returning everything to the land as soil.

Obed became increasingly shocked. The vitality field of a legendary mage failed to do anything to Wayne, and for some reason, Wayne could not only see the truth of the world, but also capture the truth for his own use.

It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t something the Death Knight could do!

“Kekekeke—”

Wayne raised his sword to slice the sun before him, which two of his tentacles then reached out to and tore in half by the cut section. Meeting Obed’s gaze of disbelief, he extended his arms for several meters and flipped Shadow Nightmare around to bring it down.

Obed had roughly shaped muddy water into a prosthetic with his thoughts, replacing his sliced-off arm with a barely usable one. Raising his hands, he blocked the attack with his long bow. The audible collision made his hands numb, and his arms trembled uncontrollably.

The mud prosthetic broke.

Growling, Wayne pulled his body toward his sword-wielding hands by shrinking his several-meter-long arms, as fast as teleportation. His large chest eye gazed at Obed and made tempting whispers, disorienting him and freezing his thoughts for a moment.

Bam!

Wayne whipped his tentacle while kicking Obed in the head and torso, making him cough up blood and sending him flying tens of meters away through several behemoth trees.

The moment Obed picked himself up, he saw two tentacles swinging toward his face. Again, he shaped mud into an arm in the last second and conjured more than ten barriers. He was an archer, and archers should be fighting from a range rather than getting into a melee battle with a knight.

He pulled back and fled, extending his thoughts to quickly teleport away. In the illusory world, he moved a thousand meters in an instant, yet to Wayne’s large eyeball, Obed was right within reach.

Two tentacles transcended space and reached Obed instantly, latching onto his bow-wielding arm and slim neck. The next moment, Wayne jumped through space to reach his target, holding his sword with both hands.

Death energy swirled around the tip of the sword, radiating a white light. Through the layers of barriers, the blade pierced through Obed’s chest and pinned him to a large tree. Death energy surged, injecting him with an endless chill.

The cosmic mage robe Obed was wearing rotted away, and his skin and flesh, along with his internal organs and intestines, melted into grey sludge, revealing his ribcage and spine.

He couldn’t help but cry out in pain. Eyes widened, he condensed his thoughts and slammed Wayne’s head.

Splat!

The white head exploded.

“Kekekeke—”

The head’s white flesh wriggled, mocking Obed for his irrational reaction. Were Wayne in the Death Knight disguise, the attack might have destroyed his head, but now... well, he could live without a head!

Obed seemed to know that, too. With the feigned attack buying him time to collect himself, a glowing cross surfaced on his chest, and a giant sacred lance thrust down, flooding the world with light to its very edge.

The blazing holy light wiped out any impure existence in its way. Where the large eyeball had been in Wayne’s chest, there was now a horrifying gaping wound, and only some white flesh on the sides remained to barely keep the upper and bottom halves of his body together.

However, the white flesh soon wriggled and regenerated anew, and the large chest eye opened once more!

Obed had been through countless fights in his life, facing his fair share of Forgotten Ones whose thoughts had lost order. However, he had never met anything as unkillable as Wayne.

“Ancient god...”

Obed’s eyes blazed with desire. He swore to gain the body no matter what. As he hovered in the air, his amputated arm and hollowed chest recovered anew under the glowing cross’s mending power.

“You possess the power of ancient gods, Wayne, and you have Shadow Nightmare. It’s true that I alone have trouble dealing with you.”

Obed’s eyes glinted. He did have a trump card prepared, befitting his Legendary rank, but it was meant for the Ministry of Magic. It was too wasteful to use it on an unkillable body.

He raised his hands high. A necklace floated up and radiated light to disperse the false world. It was so blindingly bright that even Wayne’s large eye closed instinctively. When he opened his eye again, the world around him was concealed once more. He saw a vast, boundless cosmos behind Obed instead.

The Astral Plane, also known as the Void World and the Greater Universe. Obed had opened the Gate of Truth with the magical necklace as a price.

Laughing, he tossed the dark domain into the Gate of Truth, confronting Wayne inside. He asked with a smile, “How about this? How long can your thoughts hold on?”

The Book of Greed rejoiced about the feast. Wayne, however, wasn’t happy. His large chest eye blinked, seeing not only the cosmos, but also an indescribably massive shadow.

An Astral Beast!