Sorry everyone, this chapter may be a bit rushed! Repetitions in realizations will be avoided in the future, so bear with me for a while. I'm still memorizing the dictionary to find better word usage for reactions, and making deeper internal monologue.
See you later!
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RESTS HERE THE CHAMPION, THE GRAND EMPYREAN, IMPERFECT AND GLORIOUS, FIRST OF KNIGHTS. HIS WORK IS DONE. YOU ARE SAVED.
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His observant eyes had caught sight of something peculiar.
In fascination, he halted his steps, his pitch black eyes fixating on a tombstone that stood particularly out from the rest.
Although it looked the same as others in terms of size, unlike the others, it seemed there were understandable words written on it.
Walking to it, his heart starting beating erratically for unknown reasons, almost as if he felt a connection from this particular tombstone, a foreboding emotion overtaking his mind.
And he wasn't wrong.
Writing.
Written in blood.
"Xin. Betrayer. Survivor. Final Resident."
A Gravestone.
Calling for him.
His body stiffened, his mind calling out irrationality. He felt as if something beyond death had prepared a present-an unforgettable one for him. Oh, how cute.
The rational part of him fired every warning possible, but the primal core in his chest hammered against his ribs like a warning gong, as if crying out to the heavens for mercy, begging with all the pride it had left to give it a swift ending.
He swallowed hard, his voice low, bitter, almost mocking himself:
The cold logic faltered. His chest tightened with a crushing weight—like every deal gone bad, every bullet dodged, and every life gambled on had led here.
His pupil shrunk to the size of a pinpoint, his fingers twitched.
Normally, he'd dissect this like a puzzle, rationalize the impossible away. Maybe an illusion.
A trap. A psychological attack. Nothing real. Just some sick joke made manifest by this hellscape.
But his heartbeat betrayed him.
"No. No," he muttered, stepping backward, voice sharpening with desperation, "This can't be the end. I'm not done. Not yet. Fuck no."
Yet unanswered questions kept burdening his mind, threatening to crush his logical thinking under them, his gaze locked on the grave.
But... what if this was truly the end of the road for him... ?
How much time did he truly have left?
Was this a cruel countdown for his end?
The primal part of him—a part long buried beneath deals and ruthless pragmatism—screamed for mercy.
But the man Xin was refused to bow.
"Fine," he hissed, his voice a blade sharpened on iron. "If this is my funeral, I'll damn well make sure they remember who's buried here."
He sneered as he stepped on the grave with one of his feet, his eyes burning in coldness as if they could freeze a whole realm to mere ice trinkets.
He went silent for a moment.
He spat on his grave in arrogance, his cold eyes raising slowly before they subtly froze to what he saw in the distance.
There was a white cathedral moving across the clouds of the hills in the distance.
A colossal mountain-sized machine, resembling hundreds of intricate cathedrals built on continuous track treads. The vehicle moved across the landscape.
In each of its appearances, hymns can be heard coming from it, sung by no less than several thousand voices speaking an unknown language. The smoke emitted by its exhaust stacks occasionally gathers into clouds, which left rain in its wake.
Xin's breath caught in throat, his previous arrogance and self-assurance gradually crumbling.
He knew this wasn't a level. Not a challenge. Not a test.
It was something beyond what he could ever hope to reach, even if he had ascended to a God. It was something that had awakened a primal feeling of fear and nostalgia that nothing could hope to explain.
As if he had already seen the view hundreds of times, yet he could never remember when.
Every bone in his body screamed:
[You're not supposed to be here yet.]
The only name he could come up for such a desolate and empty realm was-
"Level... Grave," he whispered.
A flap resounded behinds him, making his head snap towards it.
A crow—completely white, with hollow black eyes—perched atop a broken spire behind him. It blinked sideways, its head tilting slight. Its beak moved, but the voice that followed came from inside Xin's head.
"Late"
Xin turned violently, his fingers trembling uncontrollably as he had heard the most horrifying thing in his life, yet he couldn't find out why.
"What?"
The crow didn't answer.
Instead, it opened its beak wider than should be possible revealing rows of grotesque and sharp teeth that made Xin flinch and take a step back in fear.
The crow crumbled to ash, freely falling to the ground.
Xin staggered back. Something about the feel of this place was inherently wrong. Time bent sideways. His shadow pointed in the wrong direction. And the gravestones... they moved when he wasn't looking.
The air slowly became dryer by the moment, the air becoming unbearable. The grey sky started to darken, as if the idea of gradual darkening had no longer existed. Such locations did not abide by common sense.
No words could comfort him, as he felt his soul itself cracking under the oddity and environment of this location.
His fingers curled into fists, nails biting into his palms to ground himself. This place wasn't waiting for him. It was hunting him.
Yet, despite every instinct screaming to run, he remained frozen, caught in the terrible gravity of what he'd found.
The last light faded from the horizon.
Xin's breath had became much heavier than the first time he had arrived at this odd location. It seemed similar to to the other locations he had arrived at, but there was something fundamentally different he couldn't wrap his hands around.
He laid on his back besides his grave, as he decided to rest, ignoring the location of his choosing. The grey sky had quickly changed into night, not gradually but suddenly, and Xin had began adapting to the new change of his environment, or at least.
He sighed in tiredness, he was beginning to wear down from the repetitive sceneries and deaths. He hadn't died that much, yet his new experiences left him mentally exhausted.
He raised his hands to the sky at the twinkling white dots in the sky and formed a rectangle with his index and thumb fingers in amusement, as if trying to regain control of his situation.
Truth be said, he was too afraid to move from his position. In fact, he preferred top stay sleeping for a while. To every human, sleep was a source of comfort, and Xin, was no different.
His thoughts spiraled to how to get out of this location. Unlike the previous three locations he was at before, there didn't seem to be a clear exit or path that could help him.
It wasn't simple to try to find a door or tunnel that could lead him out of here. However the fact remained that as he had entered this location, there was no doubt an exit somehow.
Had he entered this location by drowning in the pool?
Hm... it seemed like an odd thought. Looking at the tranquil and peaceful, star-filled sky, he had summarized that it seemed impossible for him to fall from the bottom of a pool to here. Haha, it would be ridiculous to think he had fell from the sky to here unharmed.
Wouldn't that mean that the sky was connected to the bottom of a pool? How was the water of the pool connected?
Haha, preposterous.
Right?
Sighing, Xin reminded himself that this place didn't follow common sense, so he couldn't fully cross that out of this list of options.
His eyes gently half-opened staring at the star sky, before his eyes trembled violently, causing him to abruptly sit up with his mouth open, as he noticed something in the beautiful night sky that he hadn't thought of before.
The stars... they were moving too fast. Way, way too fast.
Usually, stars back on earth that were a part of the milky way moved at a few hundred thousand miles per hour, which wouldn't be visible to the human eye unless one had memorized the position of a star, and came back a few hours later to observe its different position.
Yet, right in front of his eyes, the stars in the sky formed constellations in the sky.
Yet this wasn't what had pulled his attention; he had long realized that the constellations here had no connection whatsoever to those on earth as if they were completely alien with odd shape. He couldn't use them to find his current location.
What pulled his attention were that the stars were moving at noticeable speeds in the skies, not slowly, but something between fast and slow, making him widen his eyes in admiration, a cunning light shining in his eyes.
"What... is this?"
His eyes flickered to another object in the sky that resembled a moon that emitted a low light.
"Hahaha...." Xin laughed in self deprecating, as he held his hand over his eyes at the ridiculous sight. He was truly going crazy, and he felt it.
Slowly peeling his fingers off his eyes, he sharply looked at the other celestial objects that appeared to be non-plasmic celestial objects that each emit light at a different frequency. They seemed to form a circular structure in the sky.
"How did I not notice this before... ?"
The stars seemed to violate the he speed of light in baseline reality. He realized it. Subconsciously deep in his mind, the stress and constant change of environment had began to change the structure of his mind.
He could not trust anything. Not his instincts, not his thoughts, not even his intelligence.
His common sense was useless here. No, any type of sense was practically as good as nothing in this location, if not worse, since it could lead to his emanate demise.
What a preposterous place.
Shaking his head, Xin started memorizing the planets in the sky for astral guidance, as he brought a nearby twig and attempted to draw them into the earth as if to engrave their images into his head, before he realized that the twig was able to draw normally.
He raised his eyebrows in surprise, as he realized that anything outside this realm was unable to make contact with the earth. It made sense to why he was unable to dig using his fingers.
Wouldn't this mean that if he used the twig or a larger object from around his location, he could dig the gra....
With a shake of his head, Xin cleared his head for unnecessary thoughts. It was too risky. He didn't want to see what was under the grave, if there truly was something. He wasn't ready to pay the cost for his actions.
For the curiosity that had killed the cat. The cat's nine lives weren't enough to save it.
And Xin, neither had nine lives in the first place to spare.
With narrowed eyes, he looked back to a dark structure that loomed in the distance. His eyes looked at the sky as he realized that a particular star hadn't moved from its position at the fast speed like other stars, but rather seemed to approach the large star in the distance.
An intrigued expression overtook his face, his feet leading him to the direction of the sword as he avoided the trees in his view, before his eyes noticed that the star had aligned with the sword.
A flash of brightness overtake his eye, his eyes closing tightly.
His eyes, still closed slowly opened slightly to look at what had just occurred, before he felt a nerve wracking pain in his eye, as if the words he had just seen were enough to drive him top insanity.