Chapter 82: Sultan of Blood and Fire
The bugs crawled up Malik’s legs, hundreds of tiny legs moving in unison.
They swarmed over his torn trousers, past the wound on his thigh where the flesh gaped open, and continued upward across his stomach.
Their antennae tickled his chest through the shredded fabric of his coat while their mandibles clicked together in a rhythmic sound that seemed to echo inside his skull.
Despite his earlier thoughts, Malik couldn’t stop himself from floating somewhere between being awake and asleep.
The blood loss had stolen most of his consciousness, dragging him down into a gray haze where time moved strangely, and thoughts came in fragments.
The returning pain had taken the rest, leaving him numb and distant, aware of the bugs but unable to move, scream, or do anything but lie there in the mud and wait for them to find their way inside.
He didn’t know how many Fear Points he had accumulated.
That was something he hadn’t checked since the battle began.
Still, Malik had more than enough to buy any single-use Soul Glyph. Rumors or not, he was at least certain of that.
The numbers must have been climbing all through the fight, every soldier he cut down adding to the total.
But, of course, he couldn’t check. His mind was too far gone to call up the system interface.
The bugs were approaching his neck, their tiny weight heavy on his skin.
’...Goliath’s Fall.’
Thankfully, before they could begin their meal, he was able to purchase and activate a Soul Glyph, caring not for the cost.
The system chimed somewhere in the back of his skull, though he didn’t see or hear it.
Strength flooded his body in mere moments.
The power settled into his bones first, then his muscles, reinforcing everything it touched.
He didn’t have the strength to enlarge himself; he couldn’t even conceive of the concentration required while lying half-dead in the mud.
Instead, he pushed the power outward, into the barrier between his body and the world.
His skin hardened like stone the very moment the bugs tried to burrow their way inside.
Their legs scrabbled against his flesh, repeatedly searching for entry, only to fail.
They crawled over his face, over his closed eyelids, over his lips, but they couldn’t pierce him.
His protection held.
The Rune activation healed him slightly, not enough to close his wounds or regrow his severed hand, but enough to slow the bleeding.
Most importantly, the fog in his mind cleared just a little, enough for him to think again—just enough for him to call away his Holy Relics back to his system, in case anyone saw him and his sorry state.
Even now, in this pitiful state, he was focused on not being discovered as weak.
’Haaaa...’
Malik opened his eyes.
The bugs covered his face completely.
He could see them through the gaps between their bodies, the way they moved over each other. Even as they crawled over his eyeballs, he didn’t blink.
’I need to get up.’
No matter how strongly he willed it, his body wouldn’t obey.
The healing had been too small, too weak to restore his strength.
He was still a broken thing lying in the mud, surrounded by corpses, covered in insects.
But he could think now, and thinking at least allowed time to pass.
’I am utterly exhausted.’
The bugs kept crawling.
’At the end of my wits.’
They found the wound on his shoulder, the one from the dagger, where the blade had been rammed between his bones.
’...why me?’
His skin was weaker there; Goliath’s Fall protection had thinned around the torn flesh, stretched too thin to cover the gap.
’Many of my people simply reflect the world back on itself...’
A bug pushed its head into the wound, being the first to successfully burrow through the opening.
’Therefore, they are shaped by the world into becoming exceptional.’
Malik felt it moving through his muscles, searching for something soft to bore into.
’But they had an exceptional upbringing.’
Another had found the wound on his thigh.
’Raised by great families and kingdoms.’
It was so very painful.
’They were prepared for their days of unimaginable adversity.’
More bugs were beginning to find their way in as the protection was slowly leaving him.
His appearance, despite the Soul Glyph, remained as the older, weaker version.
The tired eyes that had seen too much and done too much and lost too much.
’But I grew up like just any normal man. The average street kid, no different than a beggar, relying only on myself.’
Before all of this, he had no parents, no siblings, or legacy to inherit.
The man he had transmigrated into—this Sultan, a figure of fear and legend—had been the same. Growing up with no family, likely abandoned by them. No father to care for him, left for reasons unknown.
No one but himself.
There was nothing exceptional about either of them until the world demanded otherwise.
’I would have remained as that man, but I was faced with unfathomable challenges and was forced to rise to the occasion.’
The pain flared even further.
’So that was what I did. Right or wrong, in about two weeks, I made tens of numbing choices, each twisting my mind a little more until, well... this was my result.’
The Sultan of Fire and Blood.
That was what they called him.
What the invaders so feared to face.
The Sultan had sent Malik off into the world and left a string of memories spread among the many parts of his Soul so that he could find his way back to what he was once more.
’Damn that path.’
But he was on it now.
There was no getting off.
The bugs crawled deeper.
Goliath’s Fall was fading.
His life was nearing its end.
The Sultan of Blood and Fire looked out from behind those tired eyes, and there was no separation between them anymore.
’I am him, and he is me.’
Yes, that was already said by the memories of his past selves, but Malik never truly acknowledged it.
In a way, he still saw himself as separate.
That was mainly due to the memories he didn’t have. He thought that the day he obtained all the memories would be the day they’d finally be one.
But no.
They were not two Souls stuck together.
Malik was not a transmigrated man playing dress-up with a dead Sultan’s body.
The boundaries had dissolved somewhere in the chaos of the battle and the insects.
He couldn’t say when it had happened, couldn’t point to a specific moment. But it had happened, there was no doubt about it.
Malik was the Sultan.
The Sultan was him.
Though perhaps such a realization came too late.
His protection was flickering out, and he could no longer feel the ants, his nerves—
"Ah!"
A soft gasp interrupted his agonizing death.
It was both feminine and surprisingly familiar.
The bugs quickly scattered upon her presence, or rather, her Rukh.
They poured off his body in a wave of red shells, disappearing back into the mud.
The feminine figure knelt beside him.
Soft hands touched his face, turning his head towards the sky...
Towards the beautiful woman who was looking down at him with a pale face.
’...Safira.’
Indeed, Malik recognized her.
It was his disciple.
The gentle one who had stayed out of the politics and the betrayals, the one who had been circulating her Rukh in a cave somewhere while the world burned.
Her hands trembled against his cheeks.
"Just how did you survive? Your injuries are too severe."
Her voice was barely a whisper.
"I’ll have to take you with me."
Malik tried to smile at her.
’My... discipl...’
The words didn’t come.
He just closed his eyes and let the darkness take him.
Finally, the Sultan of Blood and Fire could rest.
