Chapter 1304: Saint Emperor [2]

"Damien Void, you were an anomaly."

The Saint Emperor skipped countless hundreds of millions of years of his story and entered the current era.

"I first became aware of your existence when the Fifth Primal Sovereign died and watched you from then. Our meeting on Calypto was entirely calculated by me, because I could no longer watch. I wanted to interact with you."

Those words were scarier than he made them out to be. A man who had been watching him for several years, a man who could so perfectly understand the flow of the universe that he set up the entire invasion of Eden as a stage to meet Damien.

That was the man the Saint Emperor was.

"You exceeded all my expectations. When I finally saw you, I could not believe my eyes. You truly held that power I'd been powerlessly chasing for eons. You were someone blessed beyond belief, a man who was destined for greatness."

"I craved your power. I believed that once I plundered what you had, I would become whole and achieve the fate I decided for myself."

"I influenced everything. All of your conflicts from that point forward had a hint of my hand in them. Whether it be the Black Dragon Clan or Immortal Blood Asura, I made sure they would target you and serve as stepping stones for your growth, so that one day, you would become worthy of me."

"Life had become dull. Even influencing the world had become dull. I led countless universes to their destruction and raised countless others up. I allowed the Nox to become a race somewhat worthy of my name and watched as their influence outdid the universe in every way, yet, it was all meaningless before you."

"That day finally came on Al'Katra. After you magnificently utilized the foreign material and caused a scene of myths and legends, I finally couldn't hold back anymore. I killed you that day, so I could finally harvest the seed I'd been ripening for so many decades!"

The Saint Emperor clenched his fist until his palm bled.

"However, I was wrong. For the first time in my life, I was wrong. I did not gain anything from that day. I did not steal anything, and as we see now, I did not even succeed in killing you."

"It was devastating. What was I to do? The fate I set for myself, my position as the main character, it all came crashing down when rumors of your appearance here spread."

"I couldn't recover. I spent the past years on the Ancient Battlefield trying to find the path forward to no avail. And then, you ascended and came to me. You killed the enemies I prepared for you, you killed those I did not expect you to kill, and you grew past what I ever believed possible. Once I understood that your fangs were bared in my direction, I came to a realization."

The Saint Emperor's slitted eyes widened subtly.

"Do you understand what you mean to me, Damien Void? Do you understand how profound of an impact your presence has on my life?"

"You are my everything! After I met you, this boring existence gained light. My days were filled with amusement, and a drive I had never felt before filled my entire being. It was all because of you. You are my reason for living, and finding you was the reason I stayed alive for so long."

"How did I surpass the limitations of my lifespan? Even I do not know! Even I have no idea why I have been able to accomplish everything I have! But it must be you! You, who embodies everything I've ever strived for, you who carries the will of 'that' force, you are my everything! You are my reason for living!"

"Therefore, I have eagerly been awaiting this meeting. I have eagerly been awaiting the moment I could face you in all your glory. All the effort I put in, all the actions I took, you are the proof that they were worth every second!"

"..."

Damien was speechless.

"So..."

He gathered his thoughts as he tried to rationalize what he'd just heard.

"You spent hundreds of millions of years destroying countless quintillions of lives, causing endless suffering, and ruining the universe...just because you were bored?"

"You tried to ruin my life, you killed so many innocent people, including some whom I cared for...just because it was amusing to you?"

"Were you expecting something more? If it helps you rationalize, you can consider it my greed as well."

No, it wasn't greed at all.

That "greed" was just a byproduct.

And yes, Damien did expect something more.

He subconsciously believed the Saint Emperor to be someone with grand ambitions, someone who could not be predicted by the likes of regular people.

He never showed his true intentions, he never showed his true emotions, he never showed his true allegiance, and he never seemed to be set back by anything that happened.

Someone like him was too unbelievably strange for his motivation to be so simple.

But as Damien thought about it, he couldn't deny that it made sense.

His true intentions didn't exist. He was just writing the story that felt most amusing to him. His true emotions were dulled as he drowned in the constant pursuit of entertainment, only appearing at climactic times like this. He held no allegiance. He would aid any and all sides in a conflict to bring it to its greatest potential. And he was never set back by anything. No matter what the outcome was, he enjoyed it.

Because if it was an outcome he didn't expect, didn't that make things even more fun for him?

Boredom.

It was the curse of immortality.

One with a mind that perceived reality like a regular human being could not stand the true expanse of time. That mind would be corroded and ruined, turned into something that had the ability to cope.

The Saint Emperor's answer lay in his entertainment. Because of it, he was able to properly adjust to his immortality, and because of it, he did not waver no matter how much time passed.

All because he was bored, he destroyed an uncountable number of fates and turned the universe into a setting of his imagination.

It could be said that history as everyone knew it was nothing more than a story of the Saint Emperor's creation.

It was horrific. It was almost pathetic. Damien couldn't fathom it at all.

The Saint Emperor threw away reality. He didn't care about his strange origins, he didn't care about his strange power, he didn't care about the "how" or "why" that led to him becoming who he was today.

He only cared for the "story."

For that story, he committed atrocities. For that story, he groomed the Saint King from young and tried to kill him when he became useless. For the story, he killed Damien.

How did a being become like this?

He was so twisted that even he didn't realize it. His insanity never manifested like this, but because of Damien's existence, all of that insanity was concentrated in a single place and finally had the chance to burst.

Damien was his obsession. To be exact, the Void was his obsession, and Damien became the entertainment he could draw from that magisterial entity.

It was genuinely incomprehensible.

But maybe that was because of Damien's youth.

If he experienced eternity, would he be the same?

Would he view all things as nothing more than a game for him to play? Would he view life as something so meaningless that he could toy with it as he pleased?

He didn't know.

He couldn't understand the Saint Emperor no matter how much he tried.

'No, that's wrong.'

He didn't want to accept it.

Because it was so irrational, he didn't want to understand it.

But Damien was not that kind of person.

He felt a stifling emotion in his soul. His chest felt heavy, almost suffocatingly so as he tried to deny it.

But...

'...I understand him.'

No matter how much he tried to refuse it, he understood.

All that irrationality, all that selfishness, all that insanity, he understood it, and though he didn't respect it, he couldn't deny the Saint Emperor's path.

For that man, this was the way he lived. This was the motivation he built after surviving for so long, and this was the meaning of his existence.

He didn't agree with it.

But that wasn't something he could discredit.

Didn't it get him so far? The Saint Emperor was the person he was today because of all those terrible qualities.

And that person...

'...is the same as me.'

They differed in so many ways, but at their cores, they were the same.

They both desired absolute freedom from fate and control, they both wanted to be the controllers of everything, they both wanted to see the end of this long and lonely path, they both internalized their insanity for the sake of survival...

The Saint Emperor was a picture of a potential future, one that Damien absolutely wanted to avoid.

But that was the truth. Acceptance eventually swallowed his denial, and frankly...

He hated it.