Chapter 364 - Love Me to Bits and Pieces (2)

Metal sparks flew in the air as blades clashed against each other. I took several swipes at Cielle, who had taken over Eryn’s body, but the blows were blocked by Radiant Light. Her guard was tight, knowing exactly where my next move was. After all, she was familiar with the Architect and all of his incarnations; their movements were ingrained in my instincts.

Furthermore, Cielle had taken full advantage of Eryn’s inherent fighting abilities and memories of me to calibrate for the present. It was her every intent to keep me here for a while.

In fact, it seemed like she was having fun not holding back. Her swings slashed into me occasionally, drawing fresh blood but never going too deep. She was teasing me, playfully. Goading me into delivering a big swing. But I continued to keep my cool, not letting such scratches deter me from my focus.

Our dangerous dance continued for a while. During this time, I bided, watching her every move for some opening.

Every so often, she would purposefully let her guard down, brandishing a vital point for me to aim for. I, of course, pulled back, not letting myself be drawn into the ‘fatal’ welcome.

“What’s wrong? Can’t bear to kill someone dear to you? The Architect was once like you, soft and naïve. But then, he realized that goals couldn’t be met without sacrifices. That any given time, we would have to steel ourselves to get the outcome that is desired.”

I pulled back and lowered my knives. In response to that, Cielle sent some soldiers charging towards me, in which I dodged and booted them away.

“You know, if I’m going to be here for the long haul, then the feel of blood on me is going to get annoying real fast. And you know I hate bothersome things. It has nothing to do with being soft and naïve.”

“Oh, really?” Cielle smirked.

She relaxed her stance and stuck her sword in the ground, seeming to have given up on the fight. But then, she unbuckled the armor around her arms, and then, the chest plate that she was wearing. Watching as she tossed them aside, my eyes swam in anticipation as to what she was going to do next.

“That’s no fun if you aren’t going to fight. Or perhaps, I’m making it too hard on you? Would you prefer the direct approach?”

She parted her shirt and exposed her chest, goading me to strike her right in the heart, as if killing her would bring Eryn back. I shot her a dirty look, obvious to what she was trying to make me do. But I wouldn’t give her the pleasure.

“I’m going to sound like some dumb villain, but killing someone that wants to be killed isn’t any fun.”

“Then, I’ll kill you if you don’t kill me,” Cielle said, picking up the sword again.

“Well, I don’t want that either. Even if I can regenerate super fast, getting killed hurts a lot. I’d rather avoid that if I could.”

Cielle lunged forward again with a thrust. I quick swipe of the knife sent the blade away from me, as she continued charging past. With the turn of a heel, she sent a roundhouse kick with her left foot. My first instinct was to catch her ankle in mid swing and push upwards, sending her off balance.

However, being flexible was Eryn’s forte. Cielle used that fact to harness the momentum into a full flip, bringing her sword up in a vertical arc as she landed back on her feet. I had just enough time to see and back away from it.

“Fighting on and on and on, with no real result. Pretty soon, you will find that none of it matters when the results are the same. Stuck in a continuous cycle, unchanging. Measured only by the moments when you find temporary relief before it resets.”

Cielle smirked at me bitterly, and all at once, I felt a flood of emotions from her.

Loneliness, hopelessness, a sense of nothingness – I could feel a dark pit of despair coming from her existence, just like how I felt Eryn’s worries some time ago. Perhaps, it was because she was in Eryn’s body, in a core linked with mine, but the existence that was Cielle started to creep into my mind.

I saw a woman, being given a single task, one that spanned a long, long history.

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“Can I leave it to you to manage them all?”

The Architect gave Cielle a pleading look, like he often did when asking for a simple request. She was always by his side, tending to his needs. That was what she committed to. That was her given role. That was the only thing she lived for.

The others had gone into hibernation already. They were now gods resting upon a plane of existence different than the world, intangible and transcendent. They had abandoned their physical forms to embark on a journey that would take numerous lifetimes to achieve. And now, the Architect was the latest one to join them.

Once his body perished, things would run automatically. The gods would rule the world by proxy, clones given special powers as ‘Apostles’ that would go around and absorb Leguardia’s energy before bringing it back to them. All while the gods themselves went dormant.

All but one.

Cielle watched as the Architect climbed into his vessel. With a nod from him, she walked over to a machine and turned it on. In moments, the vessel was filled with a toxin that brought death swiftly. Another button push later, the gas ignited, incinerating the body until there was nothing left.

Cielle looked up, past the ceiling and into the endless sky beyond. He was up there now, his soul drifting over the world until he was needed again. After the vessel was confirmed to be empty, save of cinders, she proceeded to the next machine, activating it as well.

It took some time for the process to finish, weeks to a few months depending on the specifications. But by the end of it, Cielle came back. She watched as a person was spit out, unconscious. He had the same features as the Architect, but a full three decades younger. His youthfulness made Cielle falter for a moment before she picked him up, carrying his naked body over to an examination table.

Several tests later shown no abnormalities. It was a copy of the Architect as a child. Finding no further need to delay, she summoned a couple into the lab. They looked every bit like a normal husband and wife that you would find anywhere. It was purposefully arranged to be so.

Cielle took a long look at the child as she passed him off to the couple, who had been assigned to care for him, until he was needed out in the world. Just like planned. Just like the others.

The boy, named Claude, would be raised under the infinite possibilities of the world, before being called upon someday to perform his ability as an ‘Apostle’. By letting them experience life and branching off naturally, it would prevent stagnation of potential. A myriad of new experiences was necessary, even for a god, to grow stronger. Especially when it was a god derived from man.

Cielle continued to monitor the situation as the boy grew taller and entered school. As he lived out a normal teenage life that was filled with nothing but trivialities and overblown drama. All she could do was stare at a screen from time to time, making sure that nothing went awry.

And when it came time for him to be summoned, she watched his story play out – like a tale from a novel or a show. A person with untapped potential grew exponentially when suddenly inserted into an unfamiliar situation. And more than anyone, ‘Claude’ had a knack for that.

He quickly gained the skills necessary to survive. He outmaneuvered his opponents with schemes that seemed to come from nowhere. And by the end of his journey, he was a mere shadow of his former self, forged through a wealth of experiences and bursting with mana that was claimed from his tribulations.

And at that time, Cielle took action.

The halls were dyed with thick splashes of crimson. Heavy breathing echoed in her ears as her vision swam. In the distance, people ran away quickly, screaming “the Hero is dead!” and “the Devil has come to enact revenge!”

Cielle looked at herself, reflected upon a polished shield that laid on the ground. After a gruesome battle with the ‘Hero’, she couldn’t blame them for fearing her presence.

Her jaw hung, broken from its socket; that happened when she caught a blade to the face. Blood marred her face so badly that one couldn’t even tell that one of her eyes had been pierced through from a strike. There was barely any hair on her head after it caught fire from magic attacks from the hero’s companions.

She could barely even stand, hunching over like the undead, entrails hanging loosely from her side. It had taken so much to take down the hero, Claude. But she had unlimited lives to do so. Fortunately, she didn’t need to let one expire, but it had left her as a heaping mess, too gruesome to look at.

At some point, the pain stopped, and she couldn’t feel a thing. Not anymore. Even the dull pounding against her hand of Claude’s pulse stopped registering, only for her to realize that he no longer drew breath.

Blood filled her throat, unable to laugh at the outcome. She merely clutched ‘Claude’ against her, ignoring the clamor of something quickly arriving.

All she could do was tilt her head to the side. She saw a rider upon a horse, swinging a giant axe that cleaved her body right in half as he passed by. The rider stopped and leapt off his horse, circling back to check that the evildoer was dead.

All of a sudden, his body went slack before his head popped up. He looked around the room for a moment, as if readjusted his eyes. And then, he went on his way.

That was the first time Cielle used her power. But that was only the beginning of her role.

Cielle was a special case among the gods. Her soul didn’t rest when she perished. It merely ‘wandered’, and if she desired, it would inhabit another person. That was the result of her Essence of Life. She was a being that couldn’t die in conventional ways.

Instead, her soul floated around the world of Leguardia, looking for a host to occupy next. It wasn’t necessary to find one immediately. There was no point in walking the surface if Claude wasn’t around. Sometimes, her existence simply floated in the solitude of emptiness, watching as the world slowly ticked by. The words of the Architect echoed in her mind occasionally.

“With proper focus, nearly anything is possible with my powers, and that makes me wary of my own Apostles. Cielle, can I leave it to you to manage them all? Can you cut them down before they become too strong? Since you will always be around, I will entrust my incarnations to your own discretion.”

Those words were like a cage of loyalty.

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I stared at the goddess that inhabited Eryn’s body, who showed no remorse for her mission to kill copies of the one she loved. It was no secret that Cielle harbored a heavy attachment for the Architect, but because of the Essence of Life’s curse, she was entrusted to keep the Apostles under check.

Occasionally, she needed to pull the plug, to inhabit those around the Apostles and assassinate them. But over time, it became nothing more than trimming weeds that had overgrown. When the very concept of life and death eroded from the eternal existence that she endured, I started to understand why she would think that ‘nothing mattered anyway’.

My eyes were glued to hers, even as her attacks came at me. I blocked those that I could, while her blade cut into me at times. However, both of us possessed the Essence of Life, my portion from Sistina and hers from the Architect.

The pain from the blows would heal quickly. The trauma that I felt from Cielle, however… it was deep like an abyss.

I leapt back from her assault and slashed at the ground, creating an obstacle of crumbling earth to put distance between us. Quickly, I called up a portal to my Item Box. And reaching in with my right hand, I pulled out Radiant Light, the one that Eryn had left behind on that battlefield where we had all perished once.

With it, I felt the determination of a girl who had chosen her destiny, despite its ups and downs. I brandished it forward, letting the gleam of the sun radiate off it.

“Eryn chose her destiny! I chose mine as well! So why don’t you choose yours, Cielle?! If you don’t, then what meaning do you have in your existence?!”

With it, I knew I could cut through the darkness within Cielle, just like when I separated her from Eryn’s core. It was because I knew her story, her role given by the Architect. With that in mind, I could end the unfortunate existence that she had been plagued with.