Published at 20th of January 2023 3:20 pm

Chapter 354: Madness

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Valgus stood in the middle of the primevals.

As an extension of himself, the creatures flowed around him. I tore one of the last of those creatures from him with a singularity before he roared out at me. With the swing of his arm, he smashed a hill of bones apart.

The opalescent shards misted out like powdered glass.

I darted out of that glistening cloud before Valgus leaped from it. The sparkling cloud traced behind him before wrapping his hand around my helmet. He lifted me up and slammed me into the bones below. Peering down, his hair flowed like a flame.

He spread four of his arms while bellowing over the chaotic hellscape,

“We meet again, blighted one.”

Valgus squeezed his hand, aiming to crush my skull. I liquified in his grasp, materializing above him. With my hand raised, I hit him across the back of his skull, but my hand and arm snapped on impact. Valgus turned and swiped his arm, and he moved through me once more. The asura grinned with tusked teeth,

“There it is once more – a form that is liquid.”

He tightened his fist, and the impact of his fingers radiated out with a sonic boom. The shockwave erupted, splattering my molten body in all directions. I condensed back above him before slamming telekinetic blows into his sides. The rebounding force from my attacks broke my arms and crushed my fists.

I frowned while Valgus grinned. With his arms spread wide, the asura sounded out, “I am invincible. You will know this after today.”

He clapped his hands together, another wave of kinetic energy splintering out. It rivaled my orbital bombardments, the physical forces beyond reckoning. I stayed in position, using another dimensional eruption aimed at his head. A cacophony of sounds and an explosion of energy rippled out, and our surroundings disintegrated.

But Valgus remained unharmed, even the flowing hair across his head. He laughed before roaring, “Awe-inspiring. Truly.”

I grimaced, “You’re not the first immortal I’ve fought, and I beat the last one until he lost the will to fight.”

I grabbed at his skull, my fingers wrapping around his entire head. I condensed a singularity in my palm, but no mana bent where I willed it to do so.

Valgus grabbed my arm, “You will find that the universe has ceased before I will choose not to take a fight laid bare to me…And as for your petty attempts at harm…Well-” He crushed my armor and bones in his hand, “To magic, I am untouchable. To the physical, I am unbreakable.”

He laughed, “And to you, I am finality incarnate.”

I opened my pocket dimension, splattering molten dimensional fabric over him. He spread his arms outwards, the glowing mass splashing out with a heated sizzle in all directions. At the same time, I swiped my dimensional shield over his head. Valgus dodged backward, but my pocket dimension caught him at his shoulder.

It sliced through his invincible body with ease like a katana through bamboo. Organs and blood exposed themselves to the air while Valgus’s eyes widened. He blinked in surprise, “What kind of magic is that?”

I dashed towards him, swiping my shield again. With his three remaining arms on his good side, Valgus reached out. He bolstered his palms with mana, and he caught the edge of my pocket dimension. He reached in and pulled his captured arms out before kicking through me.

I disintegrated while he put his limbs back in place. Rolling the shoulder of the cleaved arm, he scoffed, “Impressive effort, but ultimately pointless.”

I rematerialized above him before frowning. So far, Valgus lacked any weaknesses outside of dimensional capture. I pressed that advantage, attempting to restrain him with the rainbow bones while swiping my shield over him.

Any time I approached, he wiped my body clean from existence. He crashed through walls of rainbow bone as if they didn’t exist. Even when I closed the gap, he caught my shield and grabbed inside it. At one point, he nearly pulled a dying ruler from its confines.

At that point, I quit using that weapon, and my minds raced for another solution. Valgus gave me no time to consider my options, the asura darting toward me once more. His fist tore me apart with ease, and I was helpless. But so was he, and I couldn’t be killed by something like punches or kicks anymore.

He splintered me into nothing several times over before I laughed at him. For all of Valgus’s tenacity, he lacked flexibility. He continued his destructive attacks, keeping them simplistic and brutal. After a while, it felt like I was battling against some overgrown child, but given the body of a god.

And I took full advantage of that fact.

I assaulted the psionic shackles on him, finding the defense absolute. Well, at first. In time, cracks in them began to show, though the minute cracks were so small I questioned if they were even there in the first place. I kept launching timed mental attacks while trying out different approaches to the physical side of the conflict.

I found no weaknesses for Valgus. Unlike Lehesion, his body absorbed the brunt of my onslaughts with sublime ease. He carried no waning fatigue, and he never changed his approach. Time and time again, I splattered like a dropped egg. Over and Over, Valgus continued this simplistic assault.

During the entire blitz, he never once checked on his forces. So far, he cared nothing for them, giving me hope while sending a nervous chill racing up my spine. The aftermatch of Valgus’s strikes destroyed mountains and splintered the clouds. He could kill and destroy the cities I laid out behind me at any point.

He hadn’t because I was a more tempting target, but I had no idea how long that would last. Even worse, if Valgus survived this lottery and found Earth after this was over, he could kill every person alive. A burst of anger exploded in my chest as I remembered Schema announcing my home planet’s name.

This was why that bothered me – it attracted unwanted attention. I raced for ideas about putting Valgus down, and Althea kept popping up in my head. One of my minds explored that idea. Althea was the best answer because she didn’t play by standard rules. She ignored defenses entirely, no matter what they were, and that was because of the influence of Etorhma.

Peering at Valgus, he was no different. However, instead of being given the ultimate sword, Valgus was given a supreme shield. Taking my time, I inspected the properties of the shield. I sensed the mana, the gravitation, heat, and other physical properties surrounding Valgus, but every sense gave me a different set of rules for him than everywhere else.

If I guessed right, someone changed the rules of the physical world for Valgus. The only thing capable of that would’ve been the cipher, and the only ones capable of using the cipher to that level were the Old Ones. Well, maybe Schema, but I hadn’t seen anything like this so far from the AI.

So until I cracked the code of how this was done, I couldn’t kill or even hurt this guy. But Valgus Uuriyah’s death wasn’t my only goal. Taking a calculated risk, I rematerialized closer to my city. Valgus darted towards me, splattering my body like a bubble of water encapsulated in ice. This time, I incarnated at the edge of my city’s battle, leaning close to Valgus’s allies. As I expected, Valgus darted in once more, and he erupted an explosive attack of titanic proportions.

The aftermath left his own side reeling.

He killed a converted ruler and disintegrated the bodies of several primevals. Some enemy rulers peered up at Valgus with fear, and a few tried shouting at him. I erupted several singularities near the asura, and the booming bursts stopped their protests from reaching his ears.

It was just as I had hoped. Valgus shot towards me, emboldened by bloodlust and riding my kinetic implosion’s shockwave. Before he reached me, I stood still and slowed time. Several minds went to work on different tasks of the battle, and we prepared to use Valgus against his allies.

One mind kept an awareness of where we were relative to enemy rulers and my golems. Another psyche thought up angles of Valgus’s attacks that would hurt his own but leave my side unscathed. Several other minds helped me position myself while the rest kept inching down Valgus’s psionic restraints.

Valgus reached me, and his fist arrived with the devastation of a nuclear bomb. Blow after blow rained down like the hammer of a god. Death after death, Valgus culled his own and left me with minimal losses. He laughed. He cackled. He raged and roared, wanting for nothing more than the battle to continue.

A kind of insanity overtook him, his mind lost to the sensation of battle. He cared little for his allies. No, he outright didn’t care for them at all. He gave no concern for their lives, and he whittled his own forces down with the glee of a blood-crazed butcher. After an hour of baiting him, a dark voice rippled in my ear,

“We have turned the tide of this war. I may join you know.”

My armor smiled at Valgus, the grin jagged. I thought back to Shalahora,

“Good. Let’s tear those psionic defenses into splinters and his mind next.”

Shalahora jumped into the fray, using his own powers to help contain Valgus. The shadowed Sovereign wielded illusions constructed out of dampened light, and they left Valgus confused and full of wrath. The asura laid out that wrath at the abyssal sights Shalahora forced on him. Valgus couldn’t strip the illusions from his eyes no matter his efforts.

The invincible warrior culled his own kind, becoming our greatest weapon. As our numbers dwarfed theirs, the enemy rulers began losing their spirit for battle. They fought with far less fervor, becoming fearful in mind and soft of heart. Two lost control of their hollowed primevals, and the monsters feasted on them.

Another ruler, a battle-hungry berserker, saw the sight with wide eyes. The ashen war markings hid the wrinkles across his orange skin as terror spread over his face. He took a step back before turning around. As he ran, Valgus stopped fighting. The clashing forces of war passed over the asura’s body before he took a deep breath. Valgus spoke like a soft wind, but his voice covered the entirety of the battlefield,

“Is that fear I smell?”

Valgus closed his eyes, Shalahora’s illusions no longer cluttering his view. The asura bolted towards the retreating warrior, and he landed beside him before picking up his ally by the throat. Valgus tilted his head at the berserker and smiled. Hostility oozed off Uuriyah’s frame as his eyes opened to narrowed slits.

He murmured, “Are you…Trying to escape the battle?”

The ruler grabbed Valgus’s arm, trying to cut at his skin. The orange-skinned berserker’s nails broke, and he roared out, “This isn’t battle. This is a massacre.”

Valgus tilted his head in the other direction while speaking like a chiding mother, “But I thought you relished in a massacre? What makes this so different?”

The berserker frothed out his words in anger, “We’re the ones being massacred, you idiot.”

Well, that did tend to make all the difference.

A genuine smile traced up Valgus’s lips, “And? It’s still blood. It’s still an outcome. It’s still a consequence.”

I gawked at the scene, a shiver running up my spine. The berserker growled, “We fight for glory, but there is no glory in a meaningless death.”

The skull squished in Valgus’s clasping palm.

“Nonsense.”

The blood splattered over the asura, and he spread his hands, closing them and sighing with relief, “Ah…Do you feel that? His death was only a meager piece of this battle’s crescendo. It beats with the music of mayhem and the cacophony of killing.” Valgus frowned, “Yet, the glory of his passing could’ve been the beat of a drum instead of the whimper of wilted courage.”

He roared out, “I told all of you. We came to battle for glory. That glory is not in our gain – it arrives at the conclusion of our conflicts. Baldowah speaks of finality and our ethereal existence. He believes that our lack of permanence is what makes us so compelling, and that is why he watches from afar. If that lack of perpetuity is what sets us apart, then why should we avoid death at all?”

My jaw slackened. Valgus was totally and utterly insane.

Valgus smiled, his eyes wide, “March towards it, and bring forth its call to all that you can. We will usher in the finality of life, its presence a cycle of destruction. That lies at the center of our call – life. All fight to bring forth its creation. Only a few battle for its end.”

Valgus cackled, “And that is why we stand here. We are on death’s side, and death stands with consequence and conclusion as his brothers. Hold those brothers in your arms-“

Several rulers saw right through the meaning of his speech, and they sprinted away. I couldn’t blame them. Valgus ripped out several shards of rainbow bone from the ground and lobbed the spears at the escaping rulers. They exploded into bloody vapor as the spears made contact like large bullets.

Valgus gasped in dismay and genuine shock, “You’ve joined me. You may choose to die by my hand or at our enemies. That, or choose to fight for the chance to live. Regardless of your choice, two threads of fate will match together now, and only one will remain thereafter. That is totality brought forth from concept to reality.”

I turned towards Shalahora, who met my gaze. We spoke no words and made no gestures, yet somehow we understood precisely what the other thought – Valgus was a total lunatic. It left me baffled. I mean, I always assumed people exaggerated rumors about people. If someone said, ‘This guy’s a battle-crazed barbarian,’ then I believed he had a penchant for battle.

However, if anything, this guy’s rumors fell shockingly short of what Valgus was actually like. He didn’t want to win. He just wanted rampant death and chaos to please the whims of Baldowah. It was a petty, small existence for such a grand and powerful person, but the more I learned about avatars, the more they followed that pattern.

They were tools for a hollowed god.

It left me sad and resolved. My helmet pulled back while I rubbed my temples, “Shalahora…I can’t kill him physically. Can you warp him away or restrain him?”

“He exists without physical limitations. Baldowah has blessed him with some kind of…Immunity to harm and eternal power. We are blessed that he battles with a brain the size of a walnut.”

I smiled, “Now, wait just a minute. What did walnuts ever do to you?”

Shalahora cackled before my face sharpened. I frowned at Valgus,

“What’s the plan?”

Shalahora simmered, “We will strip that psionic protectant bare and lay his soul under siege.”

“Then let’s get to it.”

Valgus found another ruler trying to escape, so he slaughtered the member. By then, his side was demoralized to the point they were nothing more than headless chickens. My golems and primevals gored and gouged them apart while their lines collapsed. After all, a reckless charge had merit, but a disorderly retreat was destined for failure.

And so, they were slaughtered. Valgus continued battling with a grin on his face, and in time, my golems joined the fray. Primevals of mine also arrived in mass, and we coordinated our assaults to get the most out of our efforts. I lobbed out my strong magic, Shalahora sent out shadowed slices, and the rest distracted the asura.

It wasn’t enough.

He continued pressuring our entire army without any signs of struggle. No sweat. No fear. No racing eyes or heaving breaths. Valgus wiped dozens of primevals apart with each swing of his arm or kick of his leg. He tore through the rainbow bone with ease, and he decimated the shield of my city with a single swipe. If anything, he showed fewer and fewer limitations as we fought.

Outside of his psionic barriers, that is.

Shalahora and I joined forces with my golems and his shades. We pressed down with the might of many, whittling those protectants down. We tore through one splintered eldritch soul after the next, peeling the multi-layered defense back one layer at a time. We even found the shattered souls of the Kalat; the entire race turned into a piece of Valgus’s psionic securities.

Grotesque as it was, we dismantled those trapped within. When I found a large enough hole in the psionic bulwark, I glimpsed at Valgus’s psyche underneath. An eerie feeling washed over me like diving into an ocean of red. Valgus was an embodiment of war, and his mind carved itself until nothing but battle remained. That, and some strange, warped presence that seeded in the back of his mind.

I probed towards it, finding some kind of dormant titan. It hibernated without any inkling of stirring. It satisfied itself with the actions of its host, and that kept it slumbering soundly. I grimaced at the feeling before thinking back to Shalahora,

“Something’s off about this.”

Shalahora’s body dispersed as Valgus wrought him apart. The shadowed Sovereign menaced, “This will not be the first mind I’ve slaughtered. They all carry an oddity or two, most of them fabricated for their defense. This is no different.”

I shook my head, pulling myself back from Valgus’s mind. I tugged at Shalahora’s telepathic tether while thinking, “We need to stop until we know whatever that thing is in the back of his head.”

Shalahora shoved my mind aside, and the shadow radiated confidence, “There has never been a mind that has equaled my own. No individual. No construct. No entity. I will pull this beast apart from the inside out, and your fear will not stop me.”

My eyes narrowed, “Tell me then. Were you Mesmera’s equal?”

Shalahora’s mental battle ceased. He seethed, “What did you just say to me?”

Before Shalahora’s anger manifested, a curious entity arrived in an instant. Its aura conquered the entirety of the battlefield, muting sound, heat, and even light. Shalahora simmered, “Why would you send that abomination an invitation?”

Mesmera suppressed the roar of battle and turned it into a whisper. It murmured, and the low sound radiated through us,

“Ah, you remembered me, little one.”

Shalahora trembled before his shifting form shrunk. His eyes closed, and he molded into a shadow nearby. Mesmera spoke out to me, “You are still here. You’ve called me with cause, no doubt-“

I condensed my dimensional space while standing still. The thing bounced off of me, unable to slide into the depths of my mind. I let my thoughts hone in on Valgus, who still battled beside the city. He smashed a primeval apart before laughing at the eerie presence.

The asura howled out, “You feel of Baldowah but weaker.”

I had to give Valgus some credit. He had balls.

Valgus kept howling, “Little Old One, what brings you to our domain? Were you whispered of? Or are you observing us to witness time’s passing as well? To feel the intensity. To relish in finality as Baldowah does.”

Mesmera spoke with a deep chill, “What has been done to you is disgusting. You’re a shadow of what you were, aren’t you? You…Are shattered, and what is left is simply sad.”

A flash of confusion spread over Valgus’s face before a smirk replaced it. The asura smashed his fists together, “You use words to weaken me, for you are little else. Come. Tell me your name, and we will battle.”

It replied, “Others speak for me and of me. You and I shall speak no longer. Goodbye, shattered one.” Mesmera turned its intent toward me, “And we will see how long that little trick of yours works, little one. I learn from our every encounter, and I will change. Remember that.”

As Mesmera left the battlefield, my mind raced at the possibilities of the conversation. Connecting to Shalahora, the shadow shouted at me, “Why would you summon forth that thing-“

“I needed you to stop prying at those psionic restraints, and I didn’t have time to think of other things to say.”

Shalahora’s anger dampened before he murmured, “Psionic restraints? They are defenses.”

I shook my head, “I don’t think so. They aren’t meant to protect Valgus’s mind from someone’s attack. They stop his mind from becoming unsettled.”

I gazed at the asura, “He’s not a warrior.”

Shalahora’s eyes widened as well, and the shadow whispered,

“He’s a prison.”

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