NOVGO.NET Chapter 377: Twelve Suns
Chapter 377: Twelve Suns
Too damned long a Path, even if the situation kept being this smooth.
Yet, and of course, it seemed that Malik couldn’t keep doing the same thing for much longer.
The swarm folded, reorganized, and surrounded him again.
They weren’t going to make it easy for him, not at all.
Unfazed, he switched things up as well.
Stabbing his Spine Splitter before him, he heated up his body, forcing it into overdrive.
So much so that it lit on fire, steam leaving his skin once more, further cracking it.
Aether compressed around him, forming something of a white-red cocoon.
The Aether beneath him folded in submission to his speed.
He was a comet.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM.
A comet that broke the sound barrier many tens of times over.
The sonic boom alone tore the surrounding swarm apart, ending them at once.
Those far behind him died from the fire that trailed his figure, lashing at them like whips from Hell.
His cocoon folded inward as he sped up even further, going so fast he could barely process his surroundings.
Still, he could process one thing.
Nothing here could catch him.
Everything that tried died.
They kept trying to swarm him from below, but his heat alone turned them to vapor before they got close.
Malik easily shot past the hundred thousand miles mark.
A whole Layer was crossed in under an hour.
He was that fast.
Never stopping.
Two hundred thousand.
Three hundred thousand.
Four hundred thousand.
Five hundred thousand.
Six hundred thousand.
Seven hundred thousand.
Eight hundred thousand.
Malik was tearing through it all.
And yet, even then…
Even then, it wasn’t enough.
Once he neared nine hundred thousand miles, the swarm thickened like never before.
Insectoids were stacked over each other like an avalanche of flesh, forming thousand-mile-wide walls of bodies, each layer denser than the last.
There was no way around them.
He had to go straight through.
“Hum.”
Readying himself, Malik stiffened up and pierced into them…
He began to slow.
Slightly.
Then more.
Each impact cost him momentum.
Each million-bug-kill cost him Aether.
He was still falling, yes, but the descent was no longer easy.
Malik began to fight.
Really fight.
A hundred thousand miles to go.
He spun in the swarm, Spine Splitter carving endlessly.
His blade caught in chitin, sliced through necks, and carved holes through armored shells.
His feet kept kicking one bug after another into the endless sea, burning a million with each kick.
His free hand punched through skulls and used their spines as javelins, piercing through even more millions.
His mouth roared fire, igniting flame vortexes, clearing spiral paths through their walls.
But, again, he was slowing.
His Aether bled out of him.
Gold turned orange.
Orange turned crimson.
Crimson turned grey.
Grey turned white.
…Malik was turning Hollow.
He was beginning to burn his own life force.
His already cracked soul was cracking further.
His mind was beginning to slip, threatening him with loss of consciousness.
Malik resisted. Even while barely awake, he resisted…
And kept falling.
Kept fighting.
Even as his heat faded.
Even as the bugs got faster.
Even as the world left him behind.
Mile after mile, he murdered them.
Tens.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Millions.
Billions.
Trillions.
Until finally—
“Ah.”
He saw it.
A ripple in Aether.
A veil, invisible, but undeniable.
An exit.
A threshold.
Malik focused.
Pushed his last reserves into his feet.
Into his blade.
Into his fire.
And shot forward like a spear thrown by God Himself.
The last swarm tried to follow.
They reached—
“FALL.”
Then shattered.
None could reach him.
Malik pierced the veil and finally…
Squelch! Squelch! Squelch!
He could take a moment to breathe.
The bugs could not follow through.
He was finally safe.
***
{Outside The Projection}
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…Wow.”
That was the only word anyone could manage at first.
Just that.
A simple wow.
They thought that they couldn’t be surprised by what he did anymore, thought that they understood he’d somehow always win at the end, but, again…
Wow.
This felt like a cycle on repeat.
A cycle that always reached this point.
They’d seen Malik make the word impossible meaningless again and again.
They’d seen him defy logic, defy death, defy Layer after Layer…
But this?
This was different.
It was something else.
No wonder no one ever came back from the Eighth.
No wonder the first seeker never dared to drop.
Now they knew why.
Only Mithqals as strong as Malik, cohorts of them, platoons, whole expeditions could hope to reach the bottom of this place.
And Malik, their Sultan, did it alone.
Alone with only his Spine Splitter to rely on.
A million-mile fall.
A swarm of insects that looked like nightmares.
Trillions and trillions of them.
And Malik fell through them all.
He pierced through ALL. OF. THEM.
Through death itself, with fire in his hands and a sword that roared.
Many in the hall had to sit down once more, joining Azeem on the ground.
Their legs couldn’t hold them anymore.
Of course, it was not from fear but from sheer magnitude.
How should they even comprehend a man surviving something like that?
You don’t.
You just watch.
That was what they learned.
It was too enormous an achievement.
And then… there were the villagers.
The ones with the cages.
The brains.
The skin.
Seekers, just like him—just like many of the ones watching.
That was what struck the audience hardest after his impossibility.
Because yes, they weren’t monsters.
They were Magi like them, only failed and trapped, holding the line for centuries with their own skin, flesh, blood, and minds, trying to hold back something Malik didn’t even stop to name.
In the end, he had to sacrifice them.
Had to.
No one blamed him for it.
In a way, it was mercy.
Those seekers were long gone.
In fact, most of the hall respected it.
Malik made the hard choice without hesitation.
The kind only someone bound for Hell could make.
He needed to… otherwise their world would have ended with the Fall of their Former Sultan.
And that was the terrifying part.
They were so close to death.
To absolute annihilation, and yet…
None of them knew.
They lived thanks to him, all of them.
This was his journey in saving them.
He had crossed the Eighth.
But still, he was far from done.
Hell was still below.
Far, far below.
***
{Inside The Projection}
Malik felt weightlessness.
Pausing his fire, he…
He floated.
Alone.
Somewhere deeper.
Somewhere the bugs feared.
Somewhere that even terror would not follow.
The Ninth Layer.
Malik didn’t care for that.
Now he had more important things to worry about.
Himself.
He was barely alive, and he urgently needed Aether.
And so, he did what he did best: cultivation.
Though he was in an awkward posture, he didn’t let that stop him and took all that he could.
Thankfully, or rather, quite obviously, the Aether down here was so incredibly dense.
It didn’t take him too long to refill his reserves and fix himself up.
Malik wasn’t as good as new, but close enough.
’Close enough’ had to be enough; he wasn’t stopping here.
By the time he was done, he landed on… bone?
Bone.
He had landed on bone.
Was it a city of bone?
No.
Malik stepped to the nearest edge and looked down.
“…Oh.”
A monument.
A monument made of bone.
He stood atop a ten-million-tall monument, sculpted entirely from bone.
This monument was so damned tall, it was bigger than twelve Suns stacked atop each other.
Twelve of them.
’Hm.’
Just what was Malik getting himself into?
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