Chapter 92

Chapter 92
## Chapter 92

### Variable (2)

Gooo—!

Deep within the desolate wastes of the southern Ion Continent, the hidden sanctuary of the Oath of Heaven’s Defiance was alive with the final stages of a grand invocation.

“—, ———!”

Positioned at the epicenter of a massive, intricate magic circle, an elderly practitioner repeatedly chanted his incantations.

His gaze burned with pure unbridled mania, completely consumed by the execution of this supreme sorcery, entirely deaf to the booming tremors rattling the subterranean chamber.

Bizarre, drawn symbols covering the stone walls, the ceiling, and every available surface pulsed with a deep, obsidian radiance, gradually swallowing the chamber in absolute dusk.

‘Everything is proceeding flawlessly. The external points seem to be holding without issue.’

A burly man, tracking the progression from a safe vantage point, nodded with dark contentment.

Three decades of meticulous planning had been orchestrated by the elderly sorcerer currently guiding the ritual.

While active operations in the southern territories had only spanned the last ten years, the overarching blueprint itself had demanded a staggering thirty years of groundwork.

‘Though from what I understand, his designs began long before that.’

The muscular observer did not possess the exact timeline, as it predated his own induction into the Oath of Heaven’s Defiance, but the sheer scale of the endeavor spoke of a lifetime’s obsession.

The spell arrays they had covertly woven across the face of the land, exhausting the organization’s entire network over decades, were undoubtedly triggering simultaneously at this very moment.

Their collective resonance would provide an immense surge of power to the primary ritual anchoring the grand design here.

‘The moment of our ultimate vindication is finally at hand.’

They had operated under the tightest veil of secrecy, yet preparing multiple sacrificial networks on the scale of entire settlements had proven exceptionally precarious.

There were numerous instances where wandering powerhouses or vigilant agents of the Church had stumbled upon their operations, and just as many moments where suspicious locals had alerted authorities.

Whenever exposure threatened them, the organization ruthlessly severed its connections, framing the disasters as the isolated machinations of a rogue dark mystic.

Through a mountain of failures and discarded pawns, they had successfully masked their true objective.

‘Had it been feasible, anchoring the ritual within the heart of the mainland would have been ideal, but the Church maintains too suffocating a grip over those regions.’

Consequently, they had selected this barren frontier wedged between the central and southern territories.

An unmapped wilderness completely devoid of valuable resources, it provided the ultimate sanctuary to manifest their grand design.

Gooo—

An immeasurable period of time slipped away as the invocation pressed forward.

Suddenly, a brilliant column of pitch-black radiance erupted toward the heavens from the writhing shadow pool at the center of the array.

The dark beam tore through the cavern ceiling and soared into the stratosphere.

It loomed so immense that even from leagues away, it appeared as though an ink-black scar had torn the sky in two.

“Ugh, cough—!”

The elder directing the flow of magic violently spat a torrent of dark blood.

Necrotic fluid began to seep continuously from his seven facial orifices, and his limbs shuddered with violent tremors.

Yet, completely indifferent to his collapsing physical vessel, he desperately forced the ritual toward completion, draining the final embers of his fading life force.

The connection had not yet reached its intended depth.

‘To think that even after sacrificing so much, the grand magic remains incomplete… ’

Throughout his long existence, he had never encountered an individual whose magical aptitude rivaled his own.

Lauded as a once-in-a-generation prodigy in his youth, he had been a prime candidate for the esteemed rank of Archmage at an unprecedented age…

And yet, thirty years of absolute devotion had failed to yield a perfect manifestation.

The gateway to the ‘abyss’, the cosmic tear anchoring the lowest depths of reality.

‘The predecessor from a millennium ago commands even greater reverence now… ’

He had scoured the length of the world to locate regions where the fabric separating their reality from the abyss was frayed, systematically annihilating nearby settlements to harvest the necessary energy.

Furthermore, he—a man who claimed the title of the continent’s premier spellcaster—was personally anchoring the channel, yet the result remained flawed.

‘No matter… I anticipated this limitation from the inception. All remains within acceptable parameters.’

His ultimate ambition was never to fully manifest ‘that’ entity from the depths to claim the mantle of a second Immortal King.

An incomplete breach would suffice.

The elder clamped his hand tightly around the locket dangling against his chest.

Without a shred of reluctance, he surrendered his own soul and his fundamental existence to serve as the final catalyst.

“Gah—!”

The accumulated ‘karma’ and advanced ‘level’ of a master sorcerer, one who had bypassed mastery and stood upon the precipice of transcendence, were instantly incinerated as fuel, vanishing into nothingness.

Even with that supreme offering, the portal failed to swing fully open; he merely succeeded in violently warping space to tear open a fracture.

Nevertheless, his true objective was realized.

“Heh… Kyahahaha—!”

A fractured laugh tore from his throat, completely unbothered by the dissolution of his spiritual essence.

His consciousness was entirely ruled by a cocktail of malice and insanity.

His cognitive faculties began to blur, and the core principles that had anchored his identity vanished one by one.

At long last, ‘that’ which had slumbered within the bedrock of the abyss began its ascent through the pillar of dark light.

Fizzle—

The vast majority of the entity was utterly shredded as it squeezed through the narrow, unstable rift, leaving a lone, pristine remnant to emerge.

This surviving shard shot violently free from the column of dark energy…

Stab—!

And plunged straight through the elder’s breast.

Clang!

The impact snapped the chain of the locket around his neck, sending it clattering across the stone floor, but the old man offered no movement.

He had become nothing more than a hollow husk.

The ‘Seed of Madness’, now rooted within the deceased sorcerer’s heart, immediately plunged into a state of deep torpor, a consequence of the flawed summoning process.

It was an unavoidable outcome, given that over ninety percent of its cosmic potency had been stripped away during its violent escape from the abyss.

The sheer volume of chaotic energy that fractured during the transit billowed up the sky-piercing dark pillar, scattering across the winds of the mainland.

In this manner, the second abyss was torn open.

And the plague of ‘madness’ claimed its foothold upon the land.

—

‘Those zealots from the Oath of Heaven’s Defiance actually breached the abyss. I underestimated the depth of their insanity.’

He was well aware of their subversive activities within the underbelly of the world, but the capability to tear open the abyss was beyond his calculations.

They required a thorough reassessment.

To orchestrate a cataclysm of this magnitude, they couldn’t be dismissed as a mere cabal of outlaws; they undoubtedly possessed patrons within the highest echelons of power.

‘Regardless, that is a secondary concern.’

He had an immediate obligation to fulfill.

Now that the boundary had been breached, remaining passive was no longer an option.

[An invocation of this magnitude. The global mana current is experiencing severe disruption… Must I intervene personally?]

He had been on the verge of launching Operation ‘Home Theater’ in earnest, but this development was a wild card that shattered all prior projections.

He needed to devise a method to neutralize their interference.

As Hans silently gathered his focus, tracing the localized epicenter of the magical displacement and preparing his deployment,

Squirm—

An internal reaction rippled through his being.

-I will not permit them to survive this! Not a single soul upon this land shall escape my wrath!

‘What is this? This sensation?’

-Annihilation to all living things! Vengeance! Let this world be painted in the hues of mortality!

A sudden, violent consciousness erupted from the center of Hans’s being.

A chaotic surge of thoughts flooding out from the ‘Immortal King’s Heart’, which now beat as his own.

The invasive entity expanded exponentially, attempting to hijack his mental faculties.

-Merge your essence with mine… Wait, what is this?

[You presume to dictate terms to me, a mere echo of a bygone era?]

-… Ah…

The raging consciousness anchoring his chest faltered instantly under Hans’s icy reprimand.

Yet the hesitation lasted only a fleeting moment.

-… Ha, hahahahaha—! You! It’s you! You have severed the shackles of ‘death’! Your individuality remains entirely intact! Ah, so that is the reason you have yet to dissolve into our collective mass! Hahahahahaha!

The presence let out a maniacal laugh that reverberated painfully through his mind.

-I… we! Remain hopelessly enslaved by ‘death’! Ah—! Dissolution, oh sweet dissolution! We beg of you, grant us absolute cessation! Ending—!… Yes, drown this entire domain in demise! Hahaha!

‘He is utterly unhinged.’

Then again, had the individual possessed any semblance of sanity, he would never have integrated the Immortal King’s Heart in the first place.

Furthermore, surviving centuries saturated by the lethal energies of the abyss made this psychic degradation completely logical.

‘Whether this is a genuine soul fragment or merely a residual cognitive imprint remains unclear.’

But the distinction was trivial.

The pressing issue was that this internal parasite was actively impeding his movements when his schedule was already incredibly tight.

‘The entity will likely settle back into dormancy once the rift is sealed, but allowing him to remain unchecked is a liability.’

The ‘Immortal King’s Heart’ belonged to him now.

He hadn’t paid much attention to its history previously, rationalizing that a pre-owned artifact was perfectly serviceable, but now that the prior owner’s signature was causing a disturbance, it had to be purged.

Hans, examining the internal structure of his chest through the specialized utility of “Immortal Heart,” swiftly isolated the anomaly.

‘There you are.’

A conceptual thought form, lacking any true physical density, was desperately anchoring itself to his cardiac tissue.

The true obstacle, however, lay in devising a mechanism to excise it safely.

‘It lacks a tangible form, nor does it present itself as an independent construct of energy. It mirrors the sea of negative sentiments bound to the organ, existing as a psychological extension of those very traumas… Wait, an emotional extension?’

A sudden revelation struck him.

The “Mind Hub” system he routinely utilized was ill-equipped for an internal psychic purge of this nature.

He required an instrument designed to alter emotional states directly… and his repertoire included an ideal utility.

‘“Persona”.’

An ability initially designated to project his core consciousness into various proxies had, through continuous refinement, evolved to allow the amplification and regulation of precise emotional spectrums.

This was the solution he required.

‘The Immortal King’s Heart has achieved absolute synchronization with Hans. The status of the skill “Immortal Heart” confirms that reality.’

Consequently, shouldn’t the sentiments bound within that vessel be classified as Hans’s own property?

If that held true, he possessed the authority to shave away a foreign psychic imprint that had failed to achieve true synthesis.

Hans, brimming with renewed certainty, projected his intent toward the parasitic mind.

[Cease your incoherent screaming and remain still. I am going to erase your existence permanently.]

-Erase…? Oblivion! The final quietus! Erasure from the tapestry of life! Nonexistence!!

The chaotic presence, which had been thrashing violently, shifted its tone completely upon hearing Hans’s declaration.

The enthusiasm of its response caught him off guard.

-Hahaha—! If you truly possess the power to grant me absolute cessation, I shall bestow a compensation upon you! A piece that rightfully belonged to your inheritance, yet slipped through your grasp!

A flash of curiosity flickered through Hans, but he quickly dismissed the utility of negotiating with a lunatic.

Hans instantly directed the full focus of “Immortal Heart” inward.

The initial view revealed a suffocating mire of malevolent sentiments, heavily weighted toward the concept of expiration.

These were the concentrated residues bound to the original ‘Immortal King’s Heart’, possessing a density so vile and viscous that he intentionally avoided direct contact with them.

‘That corruption is not my target.’

His focus remained locked solely on the rogue consciousness drifting through the organ like a contaminant.

Isolating the entity proved relatively simple, given its recent activation and its fundamentally distinct signature.

As Hans began to methodically dismantle the consciousness using the framework of “Persona,”

-Ah… I am unraveling. Dissolving! The eternal quietus approaches at last!

The entity, which had done nothing but scream for an end, began to cheer in absolute euphoria.

-The compensation! I shall yield the compensation! It shall serve you well as you drape this continent in the shroud of mortality!

The nature of the promised compensation became clear almost immediately.

A segment of the dissolving consciousness fractured, separating into a pure repository of raw data and a discarded shell containing the ego.

The stored data within the entity comprised the promised compensation.

‘Its practical utility remains to be seen, but additional resources are always welcome.’

Without a moment’s hesitation, Hans severed the portion holding the ego and scattered its particles into nonexistence.

-Ah… cessation… how magnificent…

The residual consciousness of the ancient Immortal King shattered before it could conclude its final thought.

With its departure, a profound stillness returned to Hans’s mind.

‘Whew, that provides some much-needed relief. Still, I’ve squandered far too much momentum.’

The psychological duel had demanded a greater expenditure of time than he had anticipated.

‘What manner of compensation did he actually leave behind? Historical data from three centuries ago shouldn’t possess much contemporary value.’

The highest probability pointed toward esoteric magical theories or combat insights…

Yet he required no assistance in those disciplines, already commanding “Wicked Wisdom” and the “Forbidden Knowledge” inherited from the artifact, supplemented by the cosmic principles of the “Path of Magic.”

The moment he casually scanned the transferred data, the sheer nature of the information left him completely stunned.

‘Oh…? This is an authentic windfall.’

The data perfectly aligned with the parasite’s final words regarding ‘something you should have had but couldn’t get’.

‘An exceptionally favorable development.’

It was comprehensive data map detailing the location of the ‘Immortal King’s Legacy’.