Chapter 947 - Lonely tower

"To become a Ruler? Me?" Lily asks.

Both of us and mini Kindness are sitting opposite each other near the window in the airships. This one is akin to a huge wagon tied to a balloon, powered by multiple propellers running on mana batteries.

It is a kindred transportation vehicle, and this group of them agreed to take us to a location that was always considered one of the epicenters of the apocalypse that ruined their world. We are just a small group, twenty of us overall on this airship, to avoid bringing the attention of any kaiju that still moves across this world. This time I do not mind, as I do not hurry that much.

"Yes," I answer Lily. "Consider it just a silly conversation. A what-if, sort of thing."

"A Ruler," Lily repeats and rests her face against the window, looking at the never-ending green flatlands outside and the old cities and villages overtaken by greenery.

"You know that I was never too ambitious, and I still see no reason in having any title like that," she says, and before I can interrupt her, she gives a slight smile. "Yes, yes, I know what you want to say. But Lily, if you have such a power, you can influence things, maybe even greatly."

Catching her gaze, waiting for an answer on that, I nod a single time.

She playfully shoves my leg with hers and returns to looking outside. "You might see me as too kind, but it's a selfish kindness. I have thought about it a lot, you know. I can't help but want to heal people or further help them, but only if I know them, if it's happening within my reach, or if it is connected to me or a place I often visit. It sometimes makes me wonder if I don't do it all just for myself."

I kick her back playfully, and I too press my face against the glass to look out. It carries the vibrations of the flying vehicle through my head to my body.

"And you? Would you want to become a Ruler, Nat?"

"I probably wouldn't mind if it fit with my goals at the time. And I won't lie that I am curious. I am curious about the rewards, the access they have to the system, and all that good stuff."

"The Ruler of Pride?"

"Why not?"

"Even your master Lissandra didn't beat him at the peak of her power, and isn't he stronger now?"

"What does that have to do with me? Obviously, I'm not a humanoid cockroach."

"So you think you could beat her, him, and everyone else? I thought you were currently dying, yet you think you can do it all in a few years?"

"Death is merely a stepping stone to greater power."

"How cool. How mysterious. But, Nat, I don't want you to die."

"It might surprise you, but we share the same opinion on that."

She stops resting against the glass and moves closer to the edge of her seat so she can reach over and grab my hands.

Looking into my eyes, she speaks. Her voice is firmer, yet still hesitant, but at the same time far gentler. And I am entirely unable to take my eyes off hers.

"I think there is something I can do. I can help you. It is what I discovered in Kindness's clone, from Biscuit. I spent all my shards and went into debt to gain knowledge from the Handlers. I even spoke to my Handler and had him send me on a Beyond quest that led me to the powerful Healing Houses."

Her grip on my hands strengthens, and in her big eyes, I see my reflection.

Even I can't deny it anymore. I do seem slimmer, my scars are far more noticeable, and day by day they either expand, or new ones are created. But how much does it matter at all, as long as my capabilities continue to grow? I just need a bit over one year longer to defeat Adrian, who is surely at the level of Absolute by now.

After all my boasting and outward confidence, I should at least be able to do that much. I need to push myself that hard to face him.

"And what did you get in exchange for all that, Lily?" I ask her. I don't even try to explain to her that she shouldn't do that. I have long since learned that she is far too stubborn when she wants to be.

"I can heal you, and I can fix your body. It won't be easy, and I will need you to let me work on it a bit longer, but I am confident that you wouldn't lose anything. It would hurt. You would get nausea and vomit, and get headaches. Your blood would thin down, and there would be some degradation to your body along with other side effects. All just temporarily, you would keep all you have, I swear."

"You shouldn't have done that."

"I did what I wanted," she says with further urgency, as if sensing an opportunity. "I will be there with you the entire time. I don't care about my rewards."

"I do care about your rewards, Lily, at least a little bit." I give her a slight smile.

"Well, you can pay me back once we are done with it all." Her mood brightens. "I deserve that, don't you think so? Want to start? We can do it right now. You will only need to let me leave for the Beyond a few times to get more information. They are expensive, but everyone wants to have me indebted, so I can do that easily. Even Raga offered me a deal in the name of the Aurate Consortium."

"Did she?" I look at her hand holding mine and squeeze it back a little, gently caressing her fingers.

Her hand feels small in mine, and though I know the stats she has, her body feels soft and warm. She does not feel like a superhuman capable of tearing metal with these very bare hands.

"Yes, she did. She first wanted to specify that it didn't have anything to do with the Ruler of Kindness, though. But I can negotiate to make these terms better for me. Nat, answer me, can we start?"

"I wonder what Raga asked for? She had to tell you what the contract with them would be about."

"It doesn't matter."

I chuckle at that answer and ask differently, "How long would that contract be?"

"It doesn't matter," she repeats.

"I see." I nod and let go of her hand, but Lily reaches back and grabs it again instead.

"Nathaniel," Lily calls to me, "let me help you."

"Can I ask you something before that?"

"Ask. Ask ahead, as much as you want."

"Do you think that process would take longer than three months?"

Lily stays quiet.

So I ask another question, "More than that? Maybe half a year? Possibly a year? Do you think it would greatly interfere with my training?"

She stays quiet again.

"And did that contract specify having you work for them for... let's say a decade?" I look at her, and after seeing her expression, I add, "A hundred or more years? It would be a waste for something like this."

"I said, I can do it..."

"Yes, I know," I interrupt her. "But well, it is complicated. Just wait for a while longer."

"It will be late then."

"It is complicated," I say, deciding to cut it here. I cannot risk Adrian getting any information out of them, though I have to agree that it is a bit frustrating. It is probably more so for Lily than for me.

As if to prove that, she stands up, her face twisting in desperate anger. "Let me help you," she says in a calm voice still.

"You are helping me plenty as it is."

"I said," she raises her voice, "let. Me. Help. You." Her healing mana rises from her, attempting to reach into my body in a way that would entirely ignore my defenses, like some sort of virus or simply a good thing for me that my natural barrier would ignore.

Her [Disintegration] even flashes, breaking apart a part of my defensive layer, but before she can get further, I use [Jüdrajil], and I take all of her mana.

She stands there frozen in surprise and pushes against me, pressing me into the chair. A little bit of her mana regenerates, and she uses [Sacrifice] to gain more mana by sacrificing one of her organs.

But once again, I take all her mana before she can do anything else.

Holding my collar, she tries to speak, but her voice cracks. "Let me help you."

"Let go of me, Lily." I face her calmly.

Her gaze hardens, and the bits of hesitation that were there slowly disappear as her hold on my collar tightens.

"I can force you," she says.

"Apparently you can't, and I say you wouldn't because you are worried I would hate you."

"Nat, I think that beats dying."

Her words almost make me believe it, that determination, and to be honest, I like it. I much prefer seeing the darker side of someone, to know about it, rather than that constant niceness, and it seems that Lily is pushed to this point.

Of course, I know a little about her knowledge gathering in the Beyond. My guild's intelligence network is quite good, it seems. And Tess spoke to me about it as well.

Yet I didn't try to stop her. Maybe because I believe in letting her make her own choices and face the fallout, or maybe, deep down, it flatters me, as much of an asshole as that makes me. Seeing someone show such honest, genuine care for me... how could I not feel a thing at that?

She leans closer, and her voice hardens further, "I do realize how powerful you are and that it wouldn't be easy for me. But-"

"Lily, why don't you just tell me you want to punch me for not listening? I'd be angry at someone as stubborn as me. Honestly, I'm surprised Group 4 hasn't teamed up to beat the shit out of me yet."

"I am not angry yet, I just don't understand, and you won't tell me. So I will force you. Because reason doesn't work on you."

"And how are you going to do that?"

"Nat, you currently have twenty-nine of my healing marks on you."

"I do realize that. I also always thought that you could try to use them against me somehow. So what now, will you-" I don't get to finish as one of her healing marks inside of me activates, and my muscles twitch and freeze in a fairly painful spasm.

Lily uses it to let go of me so I can't take her mana again. She sacrifices some of her fake organs to restore her mana, and her [Disintegration Mantle] flares around her. It swirls behind her back like wings as she punches me, and my body shoots through the wagon and out of its bottom as I begin to freefall, still unable to move.

Falling through the air, I watch her look down through the hole my body made. As the distance between us widens, she tilts and leaps from the airship, launching with enough force to send the craft rocking wildly away.

As I reinforce my body, she slams into me, the impact driving us down even faster.

Another of her healing marks activates, melting off all my ligaments. Another one erases my nerves, and the next few marks focus on slowing my heartbeats to a crawl while doing something that causes my brain to feel lightheaded and foggy.

Three more healing marks combine, turning into something much greater, and one of my kidneys begins to grow and change. Then it starts beating. A quasi, fake, so lacking yet so incredible copy of a Demon Heart beats a few times, generating void energy that spreads through my body in an attempt to cut off my connection to mana.

We crash against the side of a tilted, broken white tower covered in vines, standing alone in the middle of nowhere, then skid across the ground and roll.

I watch it all with my eyes unblinking as Lily, now separated from me, gets up. Her mantle spreads even wider, forcing itself into the shape of huge wings made of gray, smoke-like mana.

"Get up," she says, walking towards me. "I know this won't stop you." One of her fingers breaks and twists, the bone of it extending and piercing the skin, quickly growing into the shape of a short ax that she then squeezes in her hand.

Still unable to move my body, I am also unable to smile at that. But my mana moves, it concentrates, it circles, and it finds my kidney-turned–void heart. Just half a second is enough for me to continue to raise the concentration and cycling of my mana to the point where it suffocates and tears apart the foreign organ.

My thermal energy rises with great force, escaping through the exhaust nodes on my back and shoulders. My damaged nerves, muscles, and tendons heal as my low pristine passive, supported by my mid pristine one, forces itself through it all.

Lily is up to a run and almost on me when yet another of her healing marks activates.

When I lift my left hand to defend, my right one rises instead, and her punch sends me across the ground. Before I can get up, she is upon me, kicking at me, and when I try to use my left leg to push myself away, my right one moves instead, sending me closer to her and into another punch.

And it keeps changing. I try to move my leg, and my eye twitches. I try to block an attack with my hand, and instead, I twist my head.

Her [Disintegration] continues to flare, eating away chunks of my defensive layer every time, and Lily continues to speed up, as if she is just warming up.

As I fly through the air, my subminds snap into one, and in thought acceleration, all my effort goes over the wrong signals my body is sending.

Moving my left pinkie lifts my head, twitching my right thumb turns my left foot around, and blinking my left eye closes my right fist.

I continue to twitch and to move, observing all the signals even as Lily continues to pummel me. And even as it all resets and changes, I do it all over again, looking for the logic behind it.

There are three different scrambled patterns, each shifting every second and cycling in the exact same sequence: first, second, third, second, third, first, first, second, third, and then all over again.

A temporary submind separates from me, going over all of the calculations, and I think of tilting my head slightly, twisting my waist, and twitching my pointing finger.

My fist opens as my hand snaps forward, catching Lily's incoming punch cleanly in my palm.

She blinks, entirely thrown off, and with a new set of signals, I move closer, reinforcing my body, twisting, and throwing her against the tilted tower nearby.

The impact detonates the ancient building. Webbing cracks tear through the vine-covered white rock with a loud crack, and the leaning structure loses its last bit of balance. Tons of rock and mortar cascade down in an avalanche right over her.

And for a few moments the area turns still and silent.

"You stubborn, stubborn asshole," her voice sounds from the ruins of the tower beyond the dust raised by her fall.

A wave of dull gray mist rolls outward, dissolving the mountain of crushed stone as her wings open wide, and her silhouette rises from where the tower used to be.