Chapter 521
The youngest briefly halted the pressure crushing the space around them, his eyebrow lifting by half a centimeter, a silent question.
"They're afraid of people who never know when to stop," Theo continued, choking on the blood pooling in his throat.
The space contracted even harder, and the sound of Theo's pelvis cracking echoed through the silence.
Yet his eyes, two dim points within a face that had begun turning blue, remained fixed upon the youngest with a calmness even more terrifying than rage itself.
And the seventh attack, the final one of the promised sequence, arrived in an unexpected form.
The youngest did not move.
He raised neither his hands nor his feet.
He merely stood still and whispered a single word.
"Forget."
And the pain Theo had endured with nothing more than a smile suddenly multiplied.
Theo's body, already ruined from the beginning, fingers fallen away, bones fractured, wounds scattered everywhere, now experienced something far worse than physical agony.
He could no longer remember one-third of the reason he had come to this place.
The blood refused to stop flowing.
Not because his wounds were too deep, but because it seeped from places that should never have bled.
From the gaps where his fingers no longer existed.
From a left hand where only two faithful fingers still remained attached.
From cracks across his skin that gaped open like mouths that had never closed since the moment they first opened.
Theo rubbed his left palm with his right.
The motion was strangely patient, like someone carefully wiping ink from a sheet of paper that must never be torn.
Yet the blood would not come clean.
Instead, it spread.
It seeped into every remaining line across his palm, filling every crease with a shade of crimson too dark to be called blood, yet too bright to be mistaken for an ordinary wound.
"How filthy," Theo muttered inwardly.
His inner voice sounded irritated rather than disgusted.
The irritation of someone who had only just noticed mud splashed across his clothes while still halfway through a very long journey.
"This hand is far too filthy to continue. I can't fight while it's still covered in my own blood. Not because of morality, courage, or any other noble excuse. It's just... sticky. I hate sticky things."
He wiped his hand again.
Harder this time.
Rougher.
Like someone scrubbing clothes against a stone beside a river whose water was never quite clean enough.
And little by little, impossibly slowly, like a miracle that no one ever acknowledged because it happened in complete solitude, his palm gradually returned to normal.
Not healed.
Not restored.
Simply returned to the condition it had been in before he began wiping it.
Bare.
Red.
Still soaked in the same blood.
Yet somehow it felt cleaner.
Lighter.
More prepared.
Like a blade freshly sharpened by hands that had sharpened so many blades the motion itself had become a prayer requiring no words.
And in the middle of his futile effort to clean blood that could never truly be cleaned away, Theo sensed something.
Not with his ears.
Not with his half-closed eyes.
But with his skin.
With his bones.
With the fragments of fingers still attached to his filthy palm.
The presence felt familiar.
Far too familiar.
As familiar as the scent of a home he had not visited for years, yet one that still lingered at the edge of his senses whenever he dreamed of a past he had never truly lived.
It was the fluctuation of the youngest's attack.
Yet it was different.
Different like the same face wearing an expression he had never seen before.
Different like the same song being sung by someone who understood none of its lyrics.
"This... this is Sa," Theo murmured within the deepest corner of his heart.
His inner voice sounded hoarse even though his lips never moved.
"But not the Sa I knew from the Flo Viva Mythology game records. Not the Authority of a god. Not the curse of a high-ranking demon. This... this is the absolute authority of the Administrator itself, as though every atom in the air were screaming a single name, and that name isn't mine."
Deep within Theo's heart, in the innermost place untouched by the youngest's "Forget" because it was too filthy, too cluttered, too crowded with meaningless memories like instant noodle recipes, incorrect song lyrics, and the face of someone he had never met yet always saw in his dreams, a realization slowly began to form.
Not like a sudden revelation.
But like water seeping through the cracks of an aging wall, one drop after another, until the wall could no longer deny that it had become soaked and might soon collapse.
"So that's how it is," Theo murmured to himself.
His inner voice sounded neither surprised nor afraid.
Only exhausted.
Exhausted like a detective finally discovering the last clue after wandering the same place for days without sleep.
"The fourteen Disturbers I saved before all possessed their own Sa. Every single one of them, without exception, was an Administrator on a different scale. Programmers capable of tampering with the source code of reality the way children tear apart toys just to see what's hidden inside. And now this youngest one... he's operating Sa as well. Not merely power. Not merely magic. Not merely the authority of a god that I can destroy with clones and patience. But Sa. The absolute authority that should belong only to those with access to the source code of this game world."
Fwhoosh!!
"Which means," Theo continued inwardly.
His inner voice had changed.
No longer weary.
Now it was sharp.
Sharp like a razor blade fresh from its packaging.
"This youngest one is one of the bearers of an Administrator Seed. And if he possesses one, then it's entirely possible that several other gods in the Land of the Gods possess the same qualification. Seeds planted within their consciousness. Growing slowly like mushrooms in damp places. Waiting for the right moment to bloom into something capable of rewriting reality however they please."
He paused inside his own thoughts.
He took a breath he never truly inhaled because that breath existed only within his mind.
Then he added with a tone almost resembling laughter.
The bitterest.
The driest.
The kind no one's throat ever wished to release.
"And here I am. With only two fingers left. With thirteen percent of my memories gone. With a fractured pelvis and a face turning blue. And I have to fight one of those seed bearers. Alone. Without a sword. Without a plan. Without coffee."
Outside his heart, in the real world, as far as the word "real" still carried any meaning within the chaotic Land of the Gods, the youngest slowly raised both hands.
For the first time since the battle had begun, he did not smile.
His lips remained perfectly straight.
His crimson eyes burned with a light born neither of fire, nor blood, nor rage.
It came from something older than all of them.
From authority.
From entitlement.
From the unwavering certainty that whatever he chose to do could never be stopped by anyone, because he possessed the key to a door no hammer, no prayer, and no false hope could ever break open.
"You know, Theo," the youngest said.
His voice came neither as a whisper that crept into the soul nor as a thunderous roar.
It was simply an ordinary voice.
The most ordinary.
The flattest.
The least remarkable voice ever to leave his lips.
And strangely enough, that was precisely what made it the most terrifying.
"I don't need to defeat you. I only need to... rewrite."
To be continued…