Chapter 37: Destroying Perses
The anti-life thrashed and roared and began to spread around him.
"Hurry and withdraw immediately! This is simply not something anyone can accomplish!" Athena yelled out over the chaos. Her composed exterior had given way to panic for the first time in her immortal life.
But Adam did not move. He stood still as his body was approached by the negative energy. Only after a while did he respond, and his voice was surprisingly calm.
"Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you this. . .
But Athena, do you know that I am from a mortal race that has not yet been created, and a time in the far future?"
Athena: "...?"
Adam continued. "My race— Humanity— had barely existed for millenia and we’d already driven countless other species to extinction.
And by the time we were widespread over the earth we’d completely destroyed the natural order and irreversibly damaged the world.
And then we committed atrocities against eachother, decimated ourselves, brought war, death and destruction to very corner of the realm. . .and without fail we did it across centuries.
I . . .am the culmination of all that, born as an instrument of war, a weapon forged out of hatred, and one solely designed to bring ruin to others.
Destruction is in my blood and death is my legacy.
How could a mere a Titan with mental problems ever compare to me?
How could . . . the evil in his soul ever equate to mine?"
And as if on cue, all the negative energy seemed to rush into Adam’s body vigorously.
Wave after wave surged into every one of his cells, and at the center of the anti-life, Perses finally seemed to notice that something was wrong and began shifting uncertainly within the reddish black cloud.
Meanwhile, Adam’s soul had suddenly erupted with pain equivalent to the stabbing of a thousand needles.
[AAAAAAAAAARGGHHHH]
’What’s happening? It should not .. .be this bad.’ Adam thought just as the horrendous pain intensified immensely, instantly destroying his ability to think.
His screams began louder and more disturbing. Adam had definitely suffered more pain that most humans could in a million lives. Being impaled, dismembered or tortured would not provoke the slightest reaction out of him.
However this pain was greater than what should have been possible. In comparable to anything he had ever suffered before. And what was even more terrifying, just when he though this torture could not become any crueler, it intensified by several times.
’Why does it hurt so much?’
"It seems you’ve miscalculated my lord" Lena answered.
"You’ve proven too viable a host, my lord. While only a minute fraction touched Perses, the entirety of the Anti-life is rushing into you.
. . . .and it’s tearing you apart . . ."
The anti-life was a force on the scale of the universe. And right now it was rushing into Adam’s cells at a ratio of a trillion to one. There simply wasn’t enough of him to accommodate all that power.
The situation was dire, but he wouldn’t be Adam if he lost hope here. In his desperation his eyes drifted to the churning gray cyclone in the center of the cloud.
This was the place where creation and destruction intermingled. Two opposites somehow unionized.
If the impossible lived there, then perhaps . . .
Adam ignited the fires of his will as his struggles became more intense. The pain magnified exponentially when it sensed his resistance. Instantly his screams became the most horror inducing sound in the world. Pure agony expanded out of throat in terrifyingly visible waves.
Athena watched while her soul stirred, surprised by the painful feeling in her heart.
[AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRGGH]
Another gut wrenching scream tumbled out of Adam’s lips. His cries became more and more pitiable in the face of the ever increasing pain. But he was no longer on his knees, instead he took slow steps towards the grey pillar in the center of the churning dark cloud.
His will nearly broke several times, but he crept closer and closer until the grey cyclone was right in front of him. Then with a final defiant roar he leapt into the churning gray matter.
The anti-life made one final gambit to shatter his mind, but at the same time his resistance exploded with unmatched ferocity, and the pain attacking his soul also increased exponentially.
But bathed in the mysterious ethereal energy of the grey pillar Adam found his resolve.
Through gritted teeth and with a trembling voice Adam finally spoke for the first time in long while.
"I have suffered enough tortures to make ten thousand ghouls repent. Tortures no one is this era is capable of imagining. Even that could not collapse my mind and body. How could I lose....to a mere anti-life!"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH"
Adam let out a primal scream that shook the entirety of Tartarus. The aura of determination and persistence around him was almost tangible, and for a moment even the cyclone of negative energy around him seemed to bow in grudging respect.
"Impossible." Whispered Athena.
"BOOOM"
With a powerful implosion. Adam’s dissambling particles pulled together as the primal energy of extinction was condensed and compressed within his body a billion times over, fusing irreversibly with every atom that comprised his person.
It was not only the energy of extinction either, even Hyperion’s power and the divinity of darkness hed inherited from Nyx seemed to now fully take root within his body and merge completely with him, becoming one with everything he was.
His skin, hair, and pupils now glowed with darkness.
And when he opened his eyes, the world around him felt so much smaller now. . .so much more fragile than before. With a wave of his palm he felt like could destroy the entire earth.
The power was intoxicating . . .
"What have you done?" A fearful cry entered his ears, only then did he remember that he wasn’t alone.
Athena vividly felt the crushing pressure Adam now radiated, she felt involuntary shivers coursing through her body.
The amount of power she sensed in him . . .was enough to level all three realms!
But rather than his power, what she was truly afraid of was what the anti-life had done to his mind.
As Athena stared at Adam, unsure whether or not to be afraid, the last bits of the reddish balck cloud collapsed inwardly as the the entirety of the antilife had come to reside within Adam, leaving the a battered figure stumbling behind
"hm?" Adam made a curious sound as his eyes trailed onto Perses’s body.
So he’d survived.
The Titan was now alone and destitute, the red glow of the anti-life’s power was faded from him entirely. But the destruction it had wrought on his body was still very much there. Now, he could barely even stand.
Both of Adam’s eyes contained terrifying bloodlust as they quietly regarded the once terrifying Titan god.
"This is impossible! You’ve actually completely fused with the energy of extinction?!" Perses cried out in shock.
He had initially thought his own senses were lying to him when he felt his own bond with the Anti-life gradually slipping away. There was actually someone who was slowly wrestling the dark force away from him!
"Yes, I did. Now the power to destroy all now lies at my disposal!" Adam calmly said in an a serene tone. He slowly, step by step, moved closer to the Titan god.
"No! I am the only one fit to be one with exitinction! I do not accept this!" Perses roared in fury as a golden spear materialized in his palm and he threw it at Adam.
However, when the spear came to be within a meters of Adam, it halted mid-air and crumbled into nothing.
Adam, still walking calmly, said, "Anti-life only used you. You were never its master. Never fit to be anything but a temporary, broken vessel."
"How dare you?!" Perses’s voice was overcome by madness.
"I know because I am Anti-life now! You were always just a pathetic toy." Adam coldly mocked.
"I have not surrendered! The Anti-life that I have been chasing after my whole life cannot possibly be stolen by you! You shall die!" Perses frantically charged at Adam like an enraged bull.
This is impossible! How can this be?! I will not lose to you!" Perses roared hysterically as he lunged foward.
"It is futile." Adam said as he closed his eyes and shook his head slowly.
And right as Perses neared him, his eyes snapped open.
Crimson light spilled from them in blinding waves, and his pupils had completely vanished.The air around his gaze distorted violently, and everything he looked at began to shimmer and warp from unbearable heat alone.
Two powerful beams of burning scarlet energy poured out of Adam’s eyes. Everything in the beams’ path ceased to exist instantly and Perses was evaporated into nothingness before he could even let out a scream.
And just like that, the legendary Titan met his his end.
The ironic thing was that this power was one Perses had unwittingly given Adam when he carved open pathways through his vision.
After overcoming his curse Adam’s body had permanently evolved the ability to release the energies in his body through his eyes.
