Chapter 385: Avarice-4
Ren felt his blood run cold.
His heart was about to jump out of his mouth as the candescent star lowered itself, leaving the embrace of the sky—falling like a death omen over the mortal realm.
The effulgent orb took away his breath... not only figuratively but literally too. The searing heat had become unbearable. He shut his eyes tightly as the radiance of the star enveloped everything.
Drowning the world in pale ambience, Ren was right under it. Below him was the abyssal maw of a heinous sandworm in its ascent. Lost in bloodthirst, it had become mindless, losing any shred of sanity. For it, all that mattered was to get to its prey.
Was the same true for Ren? Was he in acquiescence to his fate as much as the vermin beneath him? Had he not done enough... or had he? What was the point if the world itself rejected him openly, throwing him into the jaws of death one after another?
It was exhausting. Ren had grown tired of it all—he just wanted to throw his weapons down and simply... disappear, vanish.
’Is that what you really want?’
Blaze’s words resounded in his mind clearly, calm as if whatever was happening around them had no effect on him. Why would it? He was an ancient being who must have survived his fair share of horrors. But Ren...
’I don’t...’
He wanted to let go, but something felt wrong—as if it was not his decision to make but someone else’s. As though he was being manipulated, coaxed into submission. It was hard to form coherent thoughts, harder still to keep them intact, and each passing moment made it worse as the star drew closer.
’You got any plan?’
Ren gritted his teeth as Blaze took another sharp turn, avoiding the grinding maw, since it was impossible to advance upwards.
’I do—and you do too,’
Blaze answered, seemingly unperturbed by the situation, as if none of it weighed on his mind. Was it just because he was mentally stronger?
’Or because you’re a different being completely?’
Blaze was not human like Ren, so putting him on the same pedestal was a fool’s work. He was once a mighty dragon, reduced now to a mole of his former glory—but still something else entirely. A dragon unlike any of his kind, part elemental, with the vessel of a shadow creature.
Blaze was unique.
And so was Ren.
It clicked. After that, everything happened too fast for Ren to fully comprehend.
Pulling out the Convergence Amulet, he pushed his mana into the cold metal pendant given to him by Alver. He had tried many things, but one option remained untested.
Embraced by shadows and darkness, he fell aimlessly. But before he reached the end... he unfurled his wings. They were no longer the mighty crimson feathers he once knew, but oddly vague, with no distinct shape to them.
Still, they were wings.
He aviated himself. His senses warped, unsure if he was still plummeting into the void or if his flight had begun. But soon, things shifted—the ink receded, greyish tones painting the emptiness while solid black masses outlined the shapes of his surroundings.
Above him, a colossal oculus hung. Under its scrutiny, Ren felt... relieved. The pressure finally let go of its hold over his mind, and slowly, his thoughts came together again.
But he pushed them aside. They didn’t command his attention. All of it was taken instead by the radiant, ambiguous silhouette descending from the heavens above... if one could even call the oculus a heaven.
The Void was devoid of light, yet even here its radiance was untouched.
It was right above Ren—where the star should have been.
It was as if an angel had descended, its beauty so ethereal that words could never do it justice.
’These stars... are beings?’
Ren’s gaze drifted between two extremes—the radiant being above and the abysmal figure below.
The sandworm, once grotesque with its bloody flesh and writhing mass of eyes, now looked stripped bare in this place. Here in the Void it had no color, no shade, no depth. Just an empty husk, a pale sketch of its horror, like someone had carved its outline but forgotten to fill it in. Lifeless yet still writhing.
The angel, on the other hand, was everything opposite.
A silhouette that commanded awe, almost too divine to look at.
For a moment Ren’s breath caught in his throat.
But awe only lasts so long.
Ren blinked, forcing himself to look again. That’s when he noticed it.
He wasn’t the only one moving.
The Void was supposed to slow everything—time itself dragged like tar here. He knew it because the sandworm beneath him had been stuck mid-lunge, its mouth agape, yet frozen in that state of hunger. The fractured fragments of reality floated like broken glass around him, unmoving.
But the angel...
It kept moving.
Slow, yes. But steady. Noticeable. Its descent did not falter with the stillness of this world, as if the laws here did not apply to it.
Ren’s stomach twisted. Expressionless, its face was hidden—no features, no smile, no frown. Just blinding light, as if it didn’t even need an identity to terrify him.
’Why... is it still coming down?’
Ren grit his teeth, forcing his wings to carry him. He glided through the fragmented world, each stroke dragging him farther from that descent. The shards of greyed reality passed around him like ruins of a shattered mirror, sharp and endless.
And still, the angel fell.
He wasn’t sure whether it was descending towards him or just descending—but either way, he didn’t want to be under it when it arrived.
... Ren had a plan.
Gliding through the void, he glanced back the otherwordly about to clash and Blaze’s still figure disappear from the void completely - he had used Umbra Mana.
Once Ren created enough gap between him and the falling angel, Now right above the Sandworm... He did something that he knew he could and was now eligible for a while, a skill that required a mage atleast of rank seven star and on top of it a lot of practice.
Ren did not have luxury of time here and his actual body was still in it’s original place, somewhere near the impact area and if he did not it quick then... he’ll be obliterated completely or not.
’What happens if I die with my conscious absent from my body?’
Then Ren performed Spatial Arts... atleast a half-assed attempt.