Chapter 364: You Are Worthy, Seraph of the Damned

Chapter 364: Chapter 364: You Are Worthy, Seraph of the Damned

Chapter 364 – You Are Worthy, Seraph of the Damned

The Fire State itself shook under the Primal Queen’s mad, ecstatic shout. All through it, the spirits wondered just what was going on today.

But the Primal Queen’s excitement only made the fires burning Cassius more terrifying, melting him faster than before.

However, the creation process had already begun. Cassius and the white snake were working together to bring the idea of the Concept of Sun into full reality.

That was where most people failed.

Ideas were always easy to find. They were everywhere. The real difficulty was making one real.

In the course of that process, Cassius hit his first hurdle. How could he make a sun that burned and nourished at the same time? And how, amid those two attributes, could he also make it illuminating?

It wasn’t easy at all. On top of that, his current state wasn’t exactly ideal for prolonged thinking.

By then, Cassius had lost his right eye, and both legs up to the knee. And the fire kept spreading further across his body.

His Innate was adapting, but he noticed the Snake Loop would always regress whenever his progress got high enough.

That was when he understood.

Just as he was adapting to the fires, the Primal Queen — seemingly aware of his power — was making sure the fires’ intensity kept climbing every time he neared full Adaptation.

It was agonizing, and Cassius fully grasped the cruelty of the Primal Queen of Fire.

Yet none of it discouraged him. Even though he couldn’t fully adapt, his comprehension of the very concept of ’fire’ was growing exponentially, faster than ever before.

And that understanding let him draw on the fires around him to heal himself, faster and faster.

While he healed, the creation continued.

After devouring everything Cassius told it to use, the Innate and Cassius began rearranging it all.

He took the skill Bloodflame, from his 333rd ancestor, Amate Desdemona.

The core of that skill had been forged from the cores of hundreds of red dragons. Those red dragons’ fire had been extremely destructive — which was why Amate was known as the Worldburner.

Cassius dismantled the skill slowly and steadily, screaming as the agony of the act, combined with the burning fire, cracked his mind even further.

The Innate hissed encouragement into his mind, urging him to keep going. If he failed, everything would be for nothing.

The white snake could do nothing without Cassius.

Dismantling Bloodflame took six hours; six hours of the worst pain he’d ever known.

He didn’t even know how he’d managed it. But he did.

It was after those six hours that he could use {Legend} once more. He used it immediately, his progress climbing.

After extracting the very core of Bloodflame — a seed shaped like an eastern red dragon — the Innate knew it wasn’t enough on its own.

So the white snake pulled the fire-enhancing, heat- and ash-producing aspect of his dragon eye and folded it into the core of Bloodflame.

The core grew wildly destructive, even volatile, so much so that it was tearing Cassius apart from the inside, in real time.

The Last Born then folded in the aspect of his Spirit Eyes that let him manipulate spirit fires. Once that was done, he used his new, adaptation-earned understanding of fire to draw countless surrounding fires into the core.

He pulled in healing fire for restoration, cold fire for silent destruction, and lightning-laced fire, though for this one, he used the golden lightning he’d taken from Emrys to enhance the fire before absorbing it.

There were also fires tied to emotion and desire, and he used the Eyes of Adonis to enhance and integrate those into himself too.

The core grew bigger and bigger, its power turning monstrous. Cassius’s chest was caving open under the volatile force.

It still wasn’t stable.

’A-Argh!’

The pain was overwhelming. {Legend} deactivated once more.

’More, Master! Just a bit more!’ the white snake urged its master again, and Cassius gritted his nonexistent teeth — all of them melted away, part of his face gone entirely — and pushed on.

A full day passed in that agony.

By the end of it, Cassius had gathered every type of fire inside himself, the last of them Blood Fire.

This was fire mixed with a portion of his own True Bloodline. He used it to coat the whole core.

Then came another hurdle.

Now Cassius needed to make all these different powers coexist the way a real Core of Sun would.

For that, he leaned on the same principle he’d learned while training to fuse fire and blood. Simple in theory, but now applied to a far bigger, more complex situation.

To make it manageable, he used his Second Skill, the Crimson Chains, wrapping them around and through the core, binding every fire and power together.

He’d just discovered a new application for his skill, right there in the moment.

He went even further and used his Third Skill, marking the core with a blue lotus. But he realized that wasn’t quite enough either.

What he wanted was to make every power equal in intensity, so the fusion would come more easily.

After a few hours, he formed a white lotus mark that did exactly that.

Once every power matched in intensity, bound together by blood chains forged from his own bloodline and coated in fire tainted by that same bloodline... Cassius and the Innate began fusing it all into one.

By then, two days had passed, and all that remained of Cassius was his torso. Everything else had burned away to nothing.

That he was still alive at all was a wonder.

The Primal Queen had been watching the whole thing with rapt attention from the start. She was astonished he’d survived this long.

’Still, I know exactly what you’re trying to do, little insolent bastard.’ She laughed. ’The sun? Ha, arrogant! It’s not that easy, bastard! You need more than these fires to succeed. You need more!!’

And that was a truth Cassius only grasped when, entering {Legend} for the third time, he finally succeeded in fusing every fire and power into one harmonious core.

By then, only three hours remained of his three-day limit.

Cassius realized something was still missing from his core.

The power itself was extraordinary, so much so that it had cracked his chest wide open. There, right beside his barely-surviving heart, sat the result of all his sacrifice.

A stunning core, glowing with countless lights at once, which made it appear, to an untrained eye, purely white. At its very center, every power collided beautifully: lightning crackling, heat blasting, fire raging, and together, they created something new: Plasma.

Yet it still wasn’t enough.

’I...’ Cassius’s eyes were gone; only the pupil of his left eye remained visible. His mouth had melted, his hair long since burned away.

He no longer looked human. Only a mockery of one.

His mind moved painfully slowly, after three days of unrelenting intensity, of pain and agony on a whole new level.

’N-Not enough,’ he thought, his mind gone dark. ’I need something else. I... need the essence of the sun.’

That was what he was missing. The essence itself.

What Cassius had created could be called the body. He was still missing its soul.

But that was something he had no way of obtaining. It sat beyond anything he could reach on his own. It wasn’t something a human, a mortal, could touch.

’I-I can’t give up!’ Cassius shouted inside his mind, using his Innate to search for anything else — something in him, or around him, to complete it all.

The Last Born kept fighting, resisting the burning at his heart with everything he had, still searching for a way.

He kept at it until only seconds remained. Seconds.

The Primal Queen of Fire rose from her throne, smiling. "Oh, you’re not so bad, after all, Cassius. Truly, you’re not."

Cassius couldn’t hear her, and she didn’t particularly mind. She was waiting patiently for the three days to officially run out so she could act, all while watching him still fighting for a solution.

"At the very least, you’re resilient," she said, praising him for the first time.

When it seemed everything was about to end, with only three seconds left...

{Why not?}

...time stopped instantly.

The Primal Queen could still move, but neither her fires nor time itself could anymore. She lifted her head in surprise, feeling an overwhelming presence settle over her.

Her flaming eyes widened further. "...Eye of the World?"

{Why not? Cassius Desdemona, also known to the world as the Last Born of the Desdemona, Cursed Villain of the World, Lord Seraph of the Damned, and Beloved Adopted Son of Goddesses.}

Cassius’s heart began to pound faster and faster, the beat loud enough to echo through the space around him.

{The creation of your Concept Core of Sun, as a Second Rank being under extreme pressure, is an accomplishment of the highest order.}

{You are worthy, Seraph of the Damned.}

{For such an accomplishment, the Eye of the World rewards you with what you desire.}

Then the sky above the Chamber of Fire split open, and something began descending.

It was nothing more than a multicolored droplet, no bigger than a mustard seed.

That multicolored light reached Cassius, then the Core of Sun, before sinking deep within it.

{Congratulations. You have received a Sun Essence.}

The Core of Sun glowed with a brilliant, beautiful light, and with that, what remained of Cassius Desdemona’s body exploded into thousands of tiny fragments...

...only to reunite together and rebuild Cassius from scratch, this time, with the Core of Sun where his heart should be.

—End of Chapter 364—