Episode 234
A young girl stood there, her eyes wrapped in black bandages. But the presence within her was far from that of a child. She was the sister of the Immortal Artisan and the mother of Saxon.
“Lady Persephone.”
“You’ve come all the way here, haven’t you?”
“I have no desire to engage in pointless conflict with you. Step aside.”
Persephone let out a quiet laugh at those words.
“Why did you spare my son?”
“I did not come here to annihilate the shadows. I came to prove my worth as the ruler you should serve. I have no intention of showing mercy, but neither do I wish to commit acts of cruelty.”
“What do you intend to do with the throne of the Shadow Empire once you claim it?”
“I will do what must be done.”
Persephone did not respond.
─ Step aside, my dear sister.
At that moment, a voice echoed.
“Brother.”
Persephone hesitated for a moment, but her reluctance was brief.
“Go.”
After a moment of silence, Persephone spoke.
“As you said, the right to rule belongs only to those who are worthy.”
Persephone stepped aside, and Dale continued forward.
To challenge the Immortal Artisan, Frederick, the progenitor of his bloodline and another shadow lord.
A young boy stood there. As he unraveled the black bandages from his eyes, a void of darkness was revealed.
“I’ve been waiting for you, the youngest child of Saxon.”
“Let me meet our progenitor once more.”
The boy, the Immortal Artisan Frederick, smiled.
He remembered the bitter defeat from before. It was hardly a battle at all. But much had changed since then.
“Come, my beloved daughter.”
At the Immortal Artisan’s words, the tendrils constricting Dale’s heart writhed.
“You must accept it now. As a parent, you must let go of a child leaving your grasp.”
“You were the one who offered her as a living sacrifice. You killed your own child, and now you speak of shame.”
To write his grimoire, the Immortal Artisan sacrificed his young daughter, coincidentally named Lize.
“I killed her?”
Frederick replied coldly to Dale’s scoff.
“I did not kill her.”
“Then what is the ‘Book of the Black Goat’?”
“My daughter, Lize, was with me in my heart for an eternity. They, and now you, have taken that from me.”
The Immortal Artisan murmured coldly, his voice laced with icy hatred. Dale responded, incredulous.
“Just because Shub wears your daughter’s shell doesn’t make her your daughter. Shub is Shub.”
“Yes, that is the truth. And accepting the truth is also the duty of a shadow lord.”
Frederick spoke.
“So forgive me, Lize. There is no longer a place for you in my heart.”
”…….”
The meaning of those words was not hard to grasp. The ‘Book of the Black Goat,’ written by sacrificing his daughter, should have been a part of the Immortal Artisan’s heart. But he realized she would never return to him.
Thus, as a sorcerer, there was only one thing left to do.
“The ‘Bubble of End.’”
The Immortal Artisan spoke, and a sound like bubbling began to rise.
Bubbles, shining like colorful pearls, floated up around them. Each bubble contained a different scene.
The ground beneath the Immortal Artisan’s feet began to writhe.
It was a land made of living tendrils, endlessly spewing bubbles.
Dale saw the landscapes within the bubbles.
They were scenes he knew well.
Landscapes of a world destroyed and turned to ruins, a world of nothingness, and the endless cold and winter.
The end of countless worlds was reflected in the bubbling spheres.
“I have pursued the truth for an eternity. I have seen countless fools who believe the meaning of life is the truth. But ah, truth rarely considers us humans.”
“Is this the truth you seek?”
“Behold, this cruel truth.”
The Immortal Artisan laughed.
“Our world is like bubbles on the canvas of time and space, endlessly rising and vanishing.”
”…….”
“In the past, I bestowed upon myself the name of the Immortal, but even my existence is nothing more than the struggle of a mayfly in the endless flow of time.”
The Immortal Artisan laughed.
“This futility is the truth we seek.”
His empty eyes gleamed with a strange joy.
“As the apostle of truth and the lord of reality, it is my duty to cover the empire of fire and light with this shadow.”
“Unfortunately, I have little interest in truth.”
Dale replied calmly.
“Nor in the duties of a shadow lord.”
At the same time, the armor of shadows enveloped his body, and the eyes of truth watched him. But now he understood.
Even truth is not a singular form.
What is an undeniable truth to the Immortal Artisan may not be so to Dale’s father. The reverse is also true.
There is no single truth in the world. Even when witnessing the same event, people perceive truth through their own perspectives.
That was the truth.
“I do not agree with your truth.”
Thus, the shadow lord smiled quietly. At the same time, the bubbles began to burst one by one.
The worlds contained within the bubbles collapsed in succession.
The collapsing worlds engulfed the ground beneath Dale and the Immortal Artisan.
“Truth does not consider us, child.”
The Immortal Artisan laughed, unconcerned.
Simultaneously, the bubbles burst, and the apocalypse contained within them began to flood Dale and the Immortal Artisan’s world.
Among them were worlds destroyed by falling meteors, worlds devastated by nuclear weapons, and worlds shattered by unknown weapons that even Dale could not comprehend.
The end of countless planets and worlds, the forms of their destruction.
Those forms were all descending upon the world of the two.
Meteors fell, nukes exploded, and unknown weapons struck.
What the Immortal Artisan Frederick displayed was the very god of destruction, showcasing every form of apocalypse existing on earth.
“Even now, countless stars in this world are being destroyed and disappearing. Just like bubbles rising and vanishing on water.”
And what the Immortal Artisan recorded was the very process of that destruction.
He was, quite literally, a god of divine retribution.
“Isn’t it truly futile and meaningless?”
“Is this the truth you intend to bring to this world?”
The Immortal Artisan Frederick smiled silently. Even in the face of his overwhelming power, Dale swallowed hard.
The power was so immense that even Dale’s extraordinary growth seemed insignificant.
But nothing had changed.
“I will keep my promise to Shub until the end.”
Dale replied calmly.
“No matter what I witness in this world, I will uphold my promise to remain human until the end.”
“How futile.”
“Nothing is futile.”
Dale shook his head.
The shadow lord wrapped himself in the armor of shadows, and the fourteen circles he possessed began to accelerate.
Simultaneously, the Immortal Artisan waved his hand.
The bubbles he had created, the apocalypses contained within the ‘Bubble of End,’ engulfed Dale’s existence.
Nukes detonated, unknown weapons destroyed planets, and plagues of unknown origin brought ruin. Time reversed, and worlds froze in the winter of the apocalypse.
The ‘end’ that no one could resist endlessly swallowed Dale, and his existence was nothing more than a mayfly in the midst of it all.
The bubbles unleashed their apocalypses, and the Immortal Artisan stood there.
With countless bubbles still remaining behind him.
“Not even a trace remains.”
There was nothing left.
The number of apocalypses layered over where Dale should have been was easily in the thousands. It was something no mere mortal could withstand.
It should have been.
“A bubble is still just a bubble.”
”……!”
In the place where there should have been nothing, a voice rang out. The Immortal Artisan’s expression froze.
There are those who destroy and those who create.
Just as the Immortal Artisan had grasped the power of annihilation, what Dale had acquired was no less significant.
His shadow could become anything.
A shadow containing endless potential and possibilities.
“As you said, truth does not consider us.”
The shadow lord stood there.
“And this is the real truth that does not consider you.”
The Immortal Artisan scattered the bubbles containing the apocalypse once more, and as they burst, the destruction within poured out.
But no matter how much the apocalypses within the bubbles flowed out to engulf Dale’s existence, nothing changed.
“The world is not as meaningless and futile as you think.”
”…….”
“Isn’t dismissing this world as meaningless just a way to justify your own defeat and validate yourself?” the Shadow Lord remarked, peering into the truth hidden within the shadows of the Immortal Artisan.
“Accepting that this world isn’t futile would be tantamount to denying your very existence.”
For every world that vanished in destruction, another was born, created anew.
“Let there be light.”
When the god of this world first uttered those words, light emerged from the darkness.
“This world was shaped by darkness.”
Only then did the Shadow Lord begin to understand the darkness he possessed, and the meaning behind the words of the ancient Mother of Shadows.
“And what you consider ‘the end’ isn’t truly an end at all.”
Dale scoffed once more. From the perspective of the universe, the end he had shown was no more significant than a speck of dust disappearing.
“Let me show you what a true end for this world would be.”
Thus spoke the Shadow Lord, bearing the primordial darkness and the chill of the apocalypse, as the herald of both beginning and end.
The true end consumed the world of the two.