Akumu watched silently as the Hofuku closed in on his heart. Everything seemed to move in slow motion, the blade approaching his body, the angered growl of Shin, the droplets of water that dripped from the ceiling. Everything had turned surreal, and the Allfather couldn’t really understand.

In his mind, Akumu had done everything right. He’d applied the theories that Spirit Immortal Dream crafted. He’d spent hundreds of years meticulously planning his Grand Scheme. There were contingency plans for his contingency plans. Akumu spent so much of his time deliberating possible scenarios in which he could ascend to the Immortal Realm.

Should Akumu fail to ascend the normal way, he would use the aether crystals that were gathered up by the Black Masks. To bolster his chances of fighting against the three superpowers, Akumu gathered Primordial Beasts and Tier 9 Spirit Beasts. He planted spies in every nation, slowly sinking his claws into every corner of the globe. When the time finally came to put his plans into action, Akumu had succeeded in everything he sought to accomplish.

Akumu split the continent to create chaos. He made high-ranking cultivators from each superpower into turncoats. He reached for the Heavens with the technologies that Spirit Immortal Dream had left behind… Everything was picture perfect in his mind…

So why did the Heavens reject him? Why did he have to see everything fail when he was just one step away from attaining his most cherished dream?

Akumu didn’t know.

The only thing that remained in his mind were the thoughts that led him to this final moment. The stories were true… When one faced death directly in the face, their lives would flash before their eyes. At this moment, Akumu was watching everything that had led to this very moment.

The day that he was thrown onto the streets as a vagrant, Akumu felt that all hope was lost. His entire world had been searching through trash bins for scraps while begging on the streets for some loose change to barely get by.

The day Akumu saw the young beauty parade down the streets, attaining the title of the world’s greatest genius. Dream was a flower that Akumu could have never hoped to interact with, let alone touch. So… The image of Dream reaching out her pristine hands to pull up his filthy body… That resonated in Akumu’s mind for the rest of time.

The day that Akumu and Dream shared their dreams for the future. Dream had opened up about the true nature of her abilities and explained why she was able to attain the title of the world’s greatest genius. It was also the day where Dream told Akumu about her desire to find a way to enter the Immortal Realm without becoming a Spirit Immortal. Akumu remembered her bewitching fragrance and innocent smile as if it were a picture stored right before his eyes.

The day where Akumu was sent off on an expedition to the Uncharted Wilderness to investigate the theory behind Heaven’s Gate. That gorgeous smile of Dream’s as she sent him off, knowing that he would come back victorious…

And more painfully… The day where he returned back to the Land of Dreams, only to find out that the woman he loved the most, had massacred her entire nation and ascended into the Immortal Realm without telling him.

Rather than feeling betrayed, Akumu knew that something was amiss. He knew that Dream wasn’t the type to leave the mortal plane without saying goodbye or that she would abandon him on the planet. Hence, Akumu plotted his own ascension into the Immortal Realm, using the vast wealth of knowledge that was bestowed upon him.

That journey to eternal life and brought Akumu down the road of a merciless killer, who would do everything in his power to achieve his dream.

As Akumu ventured down the path towards Immortality, any modicum of virtuousness had been eroded away. Unlike Shin, he was willing to do anything be it moral or immoral.

Killing children? Akumu would do that. Destroying countries? Akumu did that. Feeding humans to satisfy his Spirit Beasts’ hunger? Akumu allowed that in a heartbeat. Making filthy vagrants into mindless killing machines to fuel his weak army? Akumu did the deed himself.

In Akumu’s path to the Immortal Realm, he’d committed countless atrocities. He made billions of enemies and had become the world’s… nay, history’s greatest villain. The amount of human life lost… The broken economy of the world… There wasn’t a single entity in history that could match Akumu's evil.

And that was how… Akumu walked down the evil path to become the world’s most hated being… the Allfather.

However, the Allfather didn’t care about the nefarious deeds he did. He didn’t care about the titles, the names, setting records, whether history would remember him... All he wanted… was to stand side-by-side with his most cherished lover.

Alas, at the very end. The Heavens wouldn’t hear his pleas.

The Hofuku entered through the Allfather’s flabby skin and easily pierced through his feeble ribcage. There weren’t any defences that the Allfather could bolster up anymore. All he could do is feel the cold blade slowly make its way through his flesh and pierce right into his heart. The Hofuku had returned back to its original owner… though not in the way he expected it to.

‘So this is death… How unbelievably cold.’

Akumu closed his eyes, embracing the darkness that was encroaching on his very being. He had seen this darkness many times in the eyes of his victims before they passed on. The Allfather never anticipated that he would be on the other side of this darkness. He’d always believed in achieving eternal life and reuniting with Dream.

‘It’s funny how everything comes back full circle.’

Akumu had an amusing thought as his consciousness was starting to sink into the never-ending abyss. Life was a cycle, a cycle that couldn’t be broken apart through human intervention. No matter how hard one tried to break the wheel, they would once again become part of its flow. He killed others, now others killed him. Perhaps… His ending had always been to die at another’s hands.

‘Ah, Dream… I won’t be able to fulfil my promise to you. I won’t be able to meet you in the Immortal Realm… after all.’

A single tear broke free from Akumu’s dried, prune-like skin while his mouth bled with all the fluids left in his body. Akumu’s lifeless body had no mana or strength left and could only lay still as the Hofuku remained firmly lodged within his body.

Darkness that the Akumu once thought was his ally was now taking over his entire mind. His body had died, and his consciousness was next in line. Akumu’s five senses were cut off as everything turned dark. He couldn’t hear Shin anymore. He couldn’t smell the pungent aroma of the Tree of Darkness. He couldn’t touch the bark that held his body up. He couldn’t taste the cold air of his chambers and finally… All vision that Akumu once had… was ripped from his consciousness.

Everything was black, and there was nothing to save the world’s most hated man from perishing into the abyss.

‘I wonder… if you still… remember me, Dream… I wonder… if we could still… meet again...’

In the end, Akumu could only make a silent wish. No one could hear that wish, and no one could grant it. But Akumu still hoped. He hoped and hoped and hoped and hoped…

Alas… It was a dream that would never come to pass.