Chapter 1463 A Clear Head The Dark One roared with surprise and pain, and this pain was not just of his flesh, but the soul as well. His nature had worked against him, no matter the danger that these people may have posed against him, they were still mortal beings and it was almost impossible for him to take such a pitiful creature with any degree of seriousness, an ant with a larger flaming mandible was still an ant, even if he was to stand still and let the ants attack, it would be difficult for it to threaten his life, and how much damage could be done to his body when he was healing faster than any damage these ants were supposed to make? Everything was perfect, everything made sense, then how could it begin to go wrong? How could anything touch him!? He was not just being arrogant, the Dark One had directed the shape of power on this continent for hundreds of thousands of years, he had controlled what could be understood by the mortals, and strangled any sort of genius who was able to rise to his level by obscuring the path to godhood, butchered any mortal who were still talented to bridge that gap by themselves despite his efforts to make that road all but impossible to walk, and he had ensured that he was the only one who could ever become a god. This was something that he had to do many times, over and over again, and it nearly drove him insane, but it kept him at the top of creation after the seemingly endless years that passed. The only problem he was experiencing was that he could not become a god, no matter how much he tried, something was missing, as the millennia went by, he saw his lifespan fading, and the fear of failure grew greater, like a cloud surrounding his every waking moment. As an Earth god, his lifespan depended on the size of his soul and the depths of his talents, and even among Earth gods, the Dark One was ancient, older than any Earth god had every right to be. This was not the first civilization he had ended, and it was not the hundredths. After a while, the voices of the maggots grew too loud, irritating, and killing them all, as slowly as possible, and as painfully as possible was the only way he could find relief after nearly half a million years living amongst these lesser things that could think and speak. As much as he took care of them, raising them from the dirt that he placed them upon, he still hated them, with every breath in his body, he hated them. However, a moment ago, after gleefully slaughtering all the maggots in this continent that he had been raising for almost six hundred thousand years, the opportunity that he had waited for so long arrived. Reaching the threshold of godhood was a dream that he had chased for such a long time, and when it arrived, he did not care if he had exhausted every single iota of power in his body by killing everyone on the continent as inefficiently as possible, he had instantly taken the chance and despite the pain and how unlikely it was for him to survive, he was still succeeding, he was three simple steps from becoming a god, and the massive wounds that just tore through his flesh had weakened him far greater than he had ever thought possible. "How dare the maggots.... For the first time in a life that had stretched for tens of millions of years, this was so much time that none of these maggots could ever imagine it, he felt pain, and the cold hand of death... for the first time. The Dark One felt fear, and that distasteful emotion from the actions of these fucking maggots that he had raised from the dirt again and again and again and again... given them a home, culture, a life of importance and meaning and what was his reward? At the most important moments of his life, they dared to stand against him. "AAARRRHHHHH!!!!!!!" A scream straight out from the deepest pits of the Abyss erupted from the body of the Dark One, and using his right hand for the first time, he blocked the beam of flames piercing through his body and slowly turned around as he calmly spoke, even as his right hand crumbled into ash, "I will kill you all, slowly, and there is nothing I shall enjoy more in this age," then he vanished. Wyra turned to the side as she screamed towards Valgus knowing the obvious target that the Dark One was going for, but even if she knew what was to come, her reaction speed was far too slow to catch up to what was to come, and Valgus also understood that his life was about to end, his eyes slowly widening but he did not give up on pushing out flames out of his hands, instead he began to turn that flame inward to transform himself into a giant bomb. However, he knew it was going to be too late, even without any drop of Aether inside the body of the Dark One, his body contained so much power forged from the millions of years he had been alive, and that power was terrible to imagine once unleashed. A flash appeared in front of Valgus, and a massive impact slammed against his body, causing pain that felt to Valgus that felt as if his entire body had been crushed, however, this did not make him panic, because if he could feel pain all over his body, that meant he was not dead, and all that mattered was that he could still feel Aether flowing through his veins, so he could fight! Valgus forced his eyes open through the pain, and he saw a massive bleeding hand of the Dark One an inch away from his face, his long black nails nearly touching his eyeball. His eyes traced the skinless arm to a face with eyes that were so filled with rage that Valgus felt his soul turn to ice as the realization that he was before an evil so ancient that his mind shuddered to contemplate how something so old could have any right to exist. "Don't just stand there, blast the head of that bastard, I don't know how long I can hold him!" Osi the Ranger screamed, his voice filled with pain, and Valgus realized the reason he was not dead, Osi had been able to trap the Dark One. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚 Among all of them here, he was the only one who had been able to keep a clear head, perhaps because he understood that the best use of his powers would be to trap and distract while leaving the heavy hitting for Valgus and Wyra. As it turned out, this was the right move, because even as his body was being torn at the seams as he held back a force of nature, two bolts of lightning slammed into the eyes of the Dark One exploding with so much force that the ripples of the explosion nearly tore Osi apart, but he still held on, he could feel his flesh turn to ash and his bones being ground to bits, and he laughed, because he was holding despite the odds and there was something else. At the far end of this dastardly space, he could hear the voice of Firen, which should almost be impossible due to how grievously he was injured, but he could hear it, saying, "Witness us, Unseen Light, we do not kneel." And the Unseen Light, it responded.