Chapter 1869: The Act of Consumption With the boy gone, Rowan looked around him, and the conviction in his eyes grew. Without any hesitation, he sat back in his chair, a part of his mind unconsciously altering the chair to become a comfortable wooden throne filled with glyphs that denoted the name of his mother and his children. It would take a while for this glyph to be completed, and a part of Rowan’s mind was eager to use this task as a distraction. The throne fit his body like a glove, and holding out one hand in a beckoning gesture, the bones in the cave began flying towards him. As if a hurricane had erupted inside the cave, the bones that filled its floor rose up with a roar and poured towards him in their thousands, and as they reached the space surrounding his throne, multiple cracks appeared around him that vaguely resembled an open mouth. Rowan gasped as ten thousand lives entered his soul, all of them were filled with pain and madness, the nature of their death was the most unnatural in existence, killed by Primordials, these lives could never have peace, even in death, and they poured into Rowan’s body and soul like a storm. He had expected this, and he did not fight them; he opened himself up to be shattered by their rage and pain. When all of that was exhausted, as Rowan absorbed everything, they could finally see a light at the end of the tunnel, and that light was a promise of safety. All life in one form or another believes in a higher power that they wish to be benevolent, and it did not take them long for reality to disabuse them of that notion when they saw the great suffering and inequality that plagues existence. There was no benevolent deity, no savior to heal their wounds at the end of their lives, and when they looked up into the void, there was no mystery to be found, only death and madness. But in this light inside of Rowan was a promise they had all forgotten, one of peace and selfless love. They rushed into the light, and they became one with it. This process was complicated and brought great pain and trauma to Rowan, who not only had to absorb the weight of the pain of all the lives pouring into his body, but after this was done, he would accept them into his light, and a new mark would appear on his skin. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎 An hour had passed, and Rowan had absorbed nearly ten million lives. With a roar of pain, he stopped. His body was shaking on his wooden throne, and if not for the warm wood holding his body in place, he would have collapsed to the ground. The cracks in space around him that were a passage to his body had begun to bleed, surrounding Rowan in a waterfall of red blood. This blood was his own, as the cost of absorbing all of these lives was killing him. Rowan should not bleed, but if he did, what should emerge from his body should have been essence so concentrated that it would resemble liquid gold, shining like the stuff of stars. However, if the vitality in his body had been greatly diminished, his immortality would be forcefully degraded to that of a mortal. At some point in the past, the boy had returned, and he was watching Rowan closely. Rowan opened his eyes and looked at the boy, and then he noticed something: the boy now had a mouth. Before now, the boy’s facial features had been blank, and only a darkness filled with specks of light like stars had taken the place of his face, and now that he had a mouth, his appearance had become a bit... wrong. His mouth was small, almost like that of a girl, and his lips were black, and as he watched, a tongue flicked out quickly from between his lips, and Rowan saw that the tongue was also black. Rowan heard the boy’s stomach rumble, and without saying a word, he groaned and stood up, his back hunched, and walked slowly towards another part of the cave. His hair had previously been black, but now it was gray, and wrinkles had begun to form on his face. In an hour, Rowan had lost a ridiculous amount of lifespan. The cold cave that he barely noticed made goosebumps cover his flesh, and he shivered. What he was doing was madness, but inside the core of his being was a small white flame, so tiny it could barely be seen, and Rowan felt a bit of awe when he looked at that flame. Waving his hands, he conjured ingredients for the boy’s feast out of nowhere, and he began to cook for the boy. Despite the broken state of his body, all of his actions were still perfect, and he ensured that the quality of the meals did not fall; instead, it was getting better. As he cooked, Rowan continued to refine his two cultivation techniques, which enhanced both his flesh and his spirit. He had stopped himself from reaching the peak of these two techniques, stopping at the eleventh stage out of the nineteen stages that the ultimate techniques had. Knowing that he could not hold back if he were going to survive, Rowan began pushing towards the twelfth stage of the two techniques. Even at the eleventh stage, the nameless techniques gave him the power of an Old One; however, this was because he understood them to perfection. Any other person cultivating these techniques would only be at the fourth-dimensional level. Reaching the twelfth stage would still keep Rowan at the level of Old Ones, but his power would multiply to nearly ten times his previous peak. If he were going to make any meaningful changes in this place, then these nameless techniques would be his greatest ally. He finished preparing the meals, and the boy did not wait to be invited; he began to eat. Previously, he had poured the entire food directly into his face, and the void swallowed everything, but now that he had a mouth, the boy could now eat in a refined manner... but he did not. Eating both the plates and the food they contained, the mouth of the boy opened wide like a snake, and he munched on everything in sight, and even when his mouth began to tear at the side, he did not wait to swallow his food before stuffing more of it into his mouth. Rowan watched the boy for a while before turning and walking towards his throne, where he sat down as he rapidly evolved the nameless techniques to a higher level with his eyes closed. The sound of the gluttonous feeding ended, and Rowan opened his eyes to see the boy settled in midair with his arms patting his flat stomach. With the amount of food he had laid out, the boy should have eaten for hours, even days, if he proceeded normally, but it took the boy less than thirty minutes to complete his meals. Now that he was watching out for it, he could see the void on the face of the boy beginning to shrink. It would seem that before long, this boy would soon have a face. Rowan did not know why that notion did not sit right with him. Before long, the boy vanished, and Rowan closed his eyes again and delved into his nameless technique.