Kapitel 21: Chapter 20
This is last of the rapid release chapters. The following chapters will be posted once every Monday, Wednesday and Friday 6 AM Singapore time. Advance Chapters will be available in my patreon on basic tier to those that want to read early. But for now, there will be no advance chapter.
Anyway, enjoy.
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To say Adam was furious, was an understatement of the millennia.
He already knew something did not feel particularly good with his idea to storm the castle and exterminate the creatures Caster created and Caster himself. His intuition already tells something bad is bound to happen yet he ignores it and brings Alina along.
He ignores all these signs and brought her along simply because he too used to bring her along. Thinking perhaps she could be fine. Yet, that confidence of his caused her to fall into the enemy's hand.
Adam was lucky his opponent wish to toy with him instead of forcing Alina to commit suicide immediately.
He turns to look at her resting figure leaning on Sif's body while Sif looks sad while staring at Alina with her downcasted eyes. He sighed and ran his hand across his face as he calmed his mind.
"Perhaps this peaceful environment had dull my mind." Adam mutters.
While there are many benefits of being a powerful Psyker, his inability to hide his emotions to be expressed physically onto the world isn't. Because Psychic power is manifestations of a Psyker's mind, soul and will. The psychic energy they emit is also influenced by their state of mind. Because of his still burning anger in his mind, he unconsciously projects a psychic field around him that conveys that emotion.
To those he acknowledged as his allies, he can shield them consciously from the field but to others. They will feel an invisible pressure around him weighing down on them, making them feel breathing difficulties, heavy body, fear, etc.
That's why the forest had been dead silent from the moment he entered it and his psychic field span great distance although he consciously tried to shrink it.
With Sif on the watch, Adam can peacefully meditate. He must calm his mind before he goes and hunts down the one that used the illusion on him because while Francesca is the one that manipulated Alina, the one that tricked his senses with illusion was another person that fled when he extinguished Francesca's soul.
A while later, Adam woke up from his meditation with his mind now calm and his flame of anger smothered.
When he is awake, Sif also lifts her head to look at Adam before nudging at Alina who is still unfortunately unconscious.
"It's alright, girl. She is fine. She is just resting." Adam comforted Sif while rubbing her head.
"Now, bring her back to the Chaldean. I cannot bring either of you with me. Just keep her safe until I return, alright?" Adam stood up and carried Alina before securing her on Sif's back.
Sif then barked at Adam and rubbed her head on his back when he was about to tear open a Warp Rift.
"Of course, Sif. I will return as fast as possible and give you the promised belly rub." Adam replied before tearing open a Warp Rift and turning to Sif. "Now go."
Sif looked at Adam with her eyes for a moment before she barked and jumped into the Warp Rift.
After Sif had left, Adam turned to face a direction where he sensed the presence he had locked on to. Then he marches on his warpath to destroy those who dare to make themselves his enemy. He will not stop nor will he rest with endless time and an immortality in his hand, until he annihilated their miserable existence for countless had fallen before his blade for the same mistake.
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With the Chaldean, they were surprised when Sif suddenly returned with an unconscious Alina. They immediately imagined the worst had happened to Adam. But Sif stopped them from mobilizing immediately to storm the Dark Jeanne's fortress.
Sif tried to convey something to them but unfortunately, they could only make guesses since none can actually understand what she is trying to say. That is until Mash came to the rescue. She could understand to some extent what Sif is trying to convey.
"She said Adam senpai is alright and we don't need to help." Mash translated for the group.
"Perhaps it is related to the sudden surge of energy Chaldea sensed a while ago." Romani said and explained that Da Vinci had tried to create a sensor to sense the Warp or Psychic energy that Adam uses.
"Did he actually go ahead and attack the fortress alone?" Cu looked impressed but also frowned while turning Sif for clarification.
Sif didn't answer.
But when Archer asked if it's related to the Demonic Ritual. Sif nodded.
But then Hassan made himself appear.
"Actually, I was observing in the distance when Lord Mage and Miss Alina attacked the fortress." He dropped the bomb casually which caused everyone to focus on him, encouraging him to talk about the details.
"I didn't see much but an explosion went off as I saw Lord Mage strangled a girl, not a Servant, to death before he escaped the castle before the Dragon Witch and her Servants could catch him. Miss Alina was unconscious already when it happened and he then escaped on Sif before he hid and meditated in the forest." Hassan said the rest of the story is Sif's return with Alina on her back.
"So, he actually attacked the castle with just two people. Without the support of Servants too…" Romani is speechless at the recklessness of Adam but then again, they basically escaped scratch free except for Alina who is fine and only unconscious.
"I did investigate a little and it seems Lord Mage's aim was to kill Caster who is performing a demonic ritual to create his eldritch familiars while sacrificing innocent humans." Hassan added before he dematerialized himself again just like before.
The Chaldean is confused why Adam decided to attack the castle specifically aimed at Caster without them.
They do not know the specifics, but just magic familiars hardly warrants such caution. Then again, Adam has great intuition. Perhaps there is a reason why he wished to do this alone and perhaps it's related to the person he killed and Alina's state.
Whatever it is, they will not know until Adam returns. They just hope he will be willing to talk.
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When he finally tracked down the one that used an illusion on him, the boy was surprisingly weak.
It seems that illusion is his only power and rightfully so, considering it was strong enough to warp reality. But it was useless before Adam became he wouldn't give the boy any chance to use it.
Adam chooses to assassinate his target from distance using Psycannon instead of going up front considering his opponent is an illusion user. He cannot trust his vision and could only rely on his Psychic sense to determine his target's location and shoot him down from distance with a pulse of Psychic bolt instead.
There's nothing left of the boy and Adam had determined his death when his soul also had been extinguished as a measure lest he also bore the gift of immortality as the previous girl.
With his objectives done, his mind and heart once again felt empty. His determination to exterminate Daemon and anything demonic is driven by his hate for their kind and hunting down the boy is for revenge. After both had been achieved, he no longer had any drive to fight. Dark Jeanne and her cronies are nothing more but chore for him. Just a job he is paid to do and he simply gets it done.
On his long and slow walk back, he didn't even realize that the sky was pouring on him, too distracted by his own disturbing lack of drive in pursuing his future.
Adam still remembers, although faintly. The wish he once held. The time when his mind is still innocent and yet to experience the horror of the previous universe.
It was a foolish one in his current opinion, to pursue greater achievement, women and riches.
The wish born from his first life where he was nothing in the face of his world and society. Just another human, expendable and without worth. So, he seeks those worth in his next life only to be fooled by a whimsical being and the result is the current him.
A man without ambition, purpose or will.
What drove him to resolve these Singularities isn't because of the promise of the fulfillment of his old abandoned wish. But it was precisely because he had no purpose that he grasped the purpose given to him, in hope his ambition would be lit once more by the spark of a new adventure. However, the reality was not.
His new life here felt the same as the previous. He labor for a purpose not his own, an ambition not his own and for a world not his own.
"What's with the broody though there, Adam?"
Adam paused and turned to the origin of the voice to see a hooded boy, wearing a raincoat and short pants, standing next to him with a familiar amused look.
"To answer your question, I am indeed the same person. As for my appearance, let's just say I have many forms." The boy who introduced himself as the God, answered.
"I see. So, what do you require this time, my owner?" Adam replied sarcastically and in a foul mood that his peace was interrupted.
"Wait. What owner? I am not your owner or anything, you are a free man now, remember? I have given you your freedom after all." The God argued, looking offended by Adam's words.
"Freedom…" Adam mutters before he laughs.
"Freedom? Perhaps both of us do not share the same understanding of the meaning of freedom. If you truly wish to grant me the freedom I wished for, then why are you still insisting on keeping me alive?"
"You should know, right? What I truly wished for?" Adam said with anger seeping into his voice.
"Yet, you insist on keeping me alive. Tying me down with those attachments I had severed and abandoned. For what? To make me dance in your palm in your amusement?"
The God winced at the anger Adam directed at him. Although he said nothing to retort his words, looking a little guilty after being caught red-handed.
"I grew weary of these games. I played it long enough. These boons you gave me were nothing but a curse. My corpse refused to die even if I wished to. It continues to toil for a purpose not mine. My mind refuses to break even when it should have long ago." Adam grips his fist tightly, wishing nothing more but to kill his torturer but he knows his act is a futile one.
"So, tell me. What is it that you have in store for me? Why are you insisting on torturing me like this?" He asked with nothing but a smothered rage as his voice and mask cracked.
A remnant of a once great man, now withered, exhausted and smoldered, an empty husk bereft of purpose to keep living.
The God scratching his head frustratedly before he heaved a big sigh.
"You know. I really just a middle man in this whole thing. It was the other person that is responsible for what happened to you." The God confessed.
"As for what that person wish from you… I can't say for sure. But both he and I really only trying to grant you your wish, you know."
"Your ten thousand years long journey is to grant you your wish for power, apparently people dislike it if you don't earn it." The God said while looking at a certain direction.
"As for your wish for women and riches… what I gave you at the end is the mean to earn it. Travel this world, the Singularities, the other worlds, universes. You are free to go whenever you wish, conquer whatever women that gain your fancy and obtain the countless treasures waiting for you to encounter." The God explained sincerely, which somehow unbefitting his image which is a known troublemaker and sower of chaos.
After hearing this, Adam was silent at first. He hold his hand on his head before he laughed once more. His voice felt hollow and lost.
So, everything was turn out to be going according to his wish and he simply need to earn it with his own effort. It just that he never realized it. He sould have known that nothing ever given for free. He just that stupid to never realized something that simple. But when he was told like this, Adam couldn't help but find it funny.
He told to himself, why can't they explain everything to him from the start. Why now? Why only tell him the truth when he already given up?
They want him to go chase after women and riches only when he no longer wish to live? When he already given up in living? Long after his will had been crushed by the weight of his duty and eternity carrying that said weight?
It was like telling a dead man with both foot in his grave, waiting to be buried he should look forward and think about his bright future.
"No."
The God was confused by the response given by Adam before a silver fist clad in silvery white lightning went flying for his face.
"I grew tired of these games. I wish for my respite and you shall give it to me." Adam said as he continued.
The Nemesis Force relic sword appeared in his hand and he slashed at the small and frail looking body of the God but before Adam could graze the God's neck, he find himself restrained by a vice grip, unable to move even a muscle.
"You should know that killing me won't solve your problem, Adam. If you could in the first place." The God said with a frown.
"Who know for sure. Maybe after I kill you, I can free myself from my curse." Adam replied coldly while being forced down to the ground by the dark binding on his body.
The God then sighed like he had given up before he snapped his fingers and summoned a gorgeous and powerful Valkyrie. Although Adam can sense her beauty was not natural since it was trying to attack his mind but failed.
"Beat some sense into him." The God said before he vanished through a portal.
"As you wish, my beloved Master." The Valkyrie replied with an eager and flirty look before all that vanished and replaced with cold anger once her Master left.
"You, a filthy vermin who squander upon my Master's benovolence. Prepare yourself because I will make sure you regret ever being born." She scowled icily at Adam.
As for Adam, he is grateful at least to be given time to prepare once his binding was released. He wished to escape against this unknown opponent but he doubt he is allowed to. So, he could only stand his ground and fight.
And so they fought, he fought in disregard of everything. He pour his every might on his attacks. To make his defiance known despite knowing how futile his endeavour was.
For once, Adam felt the joy and thrill of battle. The feeling he once long forgotten. As they clashed their blades, Adam felt his long lost drives, buried under the pile of rust emerged as he fought for his true freedom, his death.
The forest flattened in the wake of their battle. The air trembles in fear and continent shook in fear, their terrible might clashed against one another without end.
Day turn night and night turn day, time passed like a blur. Unnoticeable as both combatant are locked in a game of mind, anticipating their opponents next move with unbreakable focus.
Even as his blades shattered and his armor cracked open, Adam remain unyielding. Everything in his arsenal, he used to his disposal until everything was spent. Even then, he fought with his bare fist and his great psychic might.
He had lost count how many times he dies. He had lose count how many times his head was decapitated, his heart was gouged out.
But no matter how hard he fought, he could never defeat his opponent.
On their final clash, the Valkyrie know not to kill him since he is immortal. Instead, she cut all his limbs and left him laying helplessly on the ground. His body was exhausted and his mind muddled from exhausting his psychic energy. But his will remain unbending, even as he lay down helplessly. He stared at his opponent wishing to bite her if that mean he could continue his fight.
"That's enough, Freya."
The God appeared and the Valkyrie ceased her hostility and eagerly went to her Master's side.
"So, did you changed your mind?" The God asked.
Adam turn to the god and stare at him silently for a moment. Now that his helmet is gone and destroyed, his expression is visible. His eyes no longer look dull and lifeless. In fact, there is now a fire lit inside although still small. But that is enough.
Even without a verbal answer, the God get the answer he needed.
The battle was intended to reinvigorate Adam's will, to remind him there is more joy in the world out there than the bleak universe he fought in before through the joy of battle.
Adam would lie if he felt nothing from the battle. To fight not for duty, but for his desire. To fight against a powerful opponent that can stimulate his will. After all, a dying flame need another flame to reignite itself and who is better than a stronger opponent like the Valkyrie.
"Well, as a gift. I restored your body, all your weapon and your armor. Hope we didn't need to meet again." The God said before opening a portal and left with the Valkyrie while Adam's companions and the Chaldean rushed toward him.
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Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
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Rangliste 
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Stein