Chapter 26 : The Curse of Imperfect Immortality

Rowan stood in the garden, surrounded by lush grass and flowers in full bloom, silently digesting his teacher’s words. A gentle breeze stirred the leaves, carrying the faint fragrance of blossoms through the air. It was a peaceful, almost idyllic scene - one that felt absurdly out of place given the subject of their conversation.

For a while, he remained silent, his expression growing increasingly complicated as he considered what the Golden Clock had just told him.

Unfortunately, Serafina seemed to have little interest in giving him time to process it all.

“As long as you help me refine the remaining pieces of the Abyss Lord, it shouldn’t be particularly difficult. After all, that thing has no mind of its own.”

Rowan slowly turned to look at her. His gaze sharpened, and a flicker of irritation crept into his eyes.

“I knew it. You were the one who put that bastard back together, you old hag.”

He raked a hand through his unruly black hair before planting it on his waist, staring at her with a look of displeasure.

“Then why, exactly, should I help you deal with it? You’re the one who brought it here in the first place.”

Serafina met his gaze. Despite her appearance as a little girl, there was something almost helpless in her expression. When she finally spoke, her voice carried the weary resignation of someone who had already exhausted every other option.

“Because this is where you’re going to kill it anyway, whether I tell you about it or not.”

She paused, then sighed.

“Believe me, I’ve tried to deal with it myself. But the thing simply refuses to die, and the corruption won’t disappear, either. It’s as though it has acquired some property that prevents its complete destruction.”

Her expression grew solemn.

“You’re the only one I have left to ask for help.”

Rowan stared at her for a moment, seemingly unimpressed by her appeal to sympathy.

Serafina, however, continued before he could interrupt.

“After some time, the Abyss Lord will devour the fourth part, regain its blood, and move one step closer to completion. All you need to do is refine it and give it to me.”

She regarded him expectantly, as though she had just proposed something perfectly reasonable.

Rowan's expression twitched.

“...That's all?”

He looked at her for a long moment before letting out a humorless laugh.

“You want me to refine the remains of an immortal abomination that refuses to die, is spreading corruption, and is steadily piecing itself back together?”

He pointed at her.

“And you say that as though you're asking me to fetch a loaf of bread!”

Near the Crimson Fortress

Maxwell faced Immortal Blood, and there was very little suspense left in their confrontation. By this point, the creature had suffered one setback after another since the moment the Abyss Lord had released its first strike. That initial blow had nearly killed it, leaving it severely injured and diminished. Before it could recover, it had been forced to confront Maxwell, who was still in excellent condition, only to suffer further injuries at his hands. When it finally managed to escape and attempted to heal itself, Alexander had delivered another devastating blow - the final straw that had left the creature crippled and at Maxwell’s mercy.

Still, in the interest of fairness, Immortal Blood deserved some sympathy. It was a powerful being. It was simply terribly unlucky, or perhaps unfortunate enough to have crossed paths with an old witch disguised as a little girl with purple hair.

Just imagine its predicament.

You spend an unknown amount of time trapped in a dark room, deprived of any opportunity to act, only to emerge and immediately receive a slap from a massive man with muscular arms and a palm nearly as large as your head. The blow is so forceful that you see stars dancing before your eyes. Before you can even begin to recover, another man of comparable size appears and proceeds to strike your other cheek, completing the humiliation. Then, as though fate has decided that two grown men are not quite enough to ruin your day, a little child comes along and kicks you in the groin.

And if that still isn't sufficient to convince you that the world has taken a personal interest in your suffering, the first man returns to kick you while you're down. He continues until you're practically on the verge of death, at which point you discover that, for some inexplicable reason, you simply cannot die. Instead, you're left clinging to a single hit point, condemned to endure the entire ordeal all over again.

That was more or less Immortal Blood's situation now.

Why? Why? Why won't this thing die?

Maxwell clenched his fist, and the space before him twisted violently under his control. The area surrounding Immortal Blood collapsed inward, forming a distorted sphere that resembled a mass of water compressed under unimaginable pressure, except that the force crushing the creature came not from water, but from gravity and the relentless manipulation of space itself.

Caught at the center, Immortal Blood struggled desperately against the force attempting to crush it. Its blood-red mass writhed as mana tore through its body, dismantling its structure and destroying whatever form it managed to maintain. The pressure continued to increase, leaving the creature with less and less room to move as Maxwell tightened his grip on the surrounding space.

Yet even after accumulating so many injuries, Immortal Blood continued to recover.

No matter how thoroughly its body was destroyed, no matter how violently it was torn apart or how completely its physical form was reduced to nothing, it returned again and again, struggling against the force that sought to erase it. Its resilience was no longer something that could be explained by ordinary regeneration. The creature behaved as though death itself were a condition that simply did not apply to it, an existence defined by an almost absolute refusal to disappear.

It was less like a being possessing a special ability and more like a concept given physical form.

At the center of the distorted space, clumps of blood began to separate from one another, stretching into thin, writhing streams that flowed in different directions like currents of boiling water. Immortal Blood was attempting to scatter its mass and escape through whatever gaps it could find, abandoning its present form in favor of survival.

Maxwell, however, had anticipated the possibility.

The pressure of gravity intensified, while the space surrounding the creature twisted even more violently, forcing the scattered streams back toward the center. The ground shuddered beneath the strain. Sections of the earth broke apart, and enormous chunks of rock rose into the air, dragged toward the distorted sphere by the increasing gravitational pull. Before they could reach its center, the rocks crumbled under the crushing pressure, breaking into smaller fragments that were themselves ground into dust.

The spectacle would have been impressive if Maxwell had been in a better mood.

Instead, he felt a vein throb against his forehead as he struggled to maintain control over the battlefield. He had already committed a considerable amount of mana to suppressing Immortal Blood, yet the creature continued to resist with a tenacity that bordered on the absurd. Even if he could keep destroying its body, he still had no guarantee that the next destruction would be the final one.

And that was the real problem.

Maxwell could see that Immortal Blood was being injured. Its resistance was not limitless, and its condition was deteriorating with every exchange. The creature could be weakened, restrained, and torn apart; it was not invulnerable in the conventional sense. But none of those things answered the question that mattered most: how could he make it disappear permanently?

He had fought countless enemies throughout his life, and he had reached the Origin, a realm that most practitioners could scarcely imagine attaining. He was the greatest mage of his generation, the Heaven-Bending Origin Mage, and his command over mana and magic was enough to place him among the most formidable beings in the history of the continent. Yet here he was, pouring his strength into a creature that refused to stay dead, with no clear indication of how long he could keep the pressure up.

“Damn it! Is this thing really immortal?”

He stared into the center of the distorted space, trying to make sense of what he was witnessing. Immortal Blood certainly looked as though it could not die, but that description was not entirely accurate. It suffered injuries, its body could be damaged, and its strength had clearly diminished. The problem was that it never seemed to reach the point where its existence would finally come to an end.

It can be wounded, and it can be weakened, but it never truly disappears. What am I supposed to call that? Incomplete immortality?

The thought lingered for a moment before his mind, exhausted by the absurdity of the situation, produced an entirely unhelpful comparison.

It's like a hamburger with a missing layer of meat. No matter how you look at it, it's never going to be complete.

“Giiieeeeh! GYAAAAAH!”

Immortal Blood shrieked in agony, its voice reverberating through the distorted space as it continued to struggle. Its blood-red mass twisted violently beneath the crushing force, and the hatred in its gaze burned with an intensity that might have been frightening under different circumstances. At present, however, it looked more like a cornered beast that had suffered far too much to retain any dignity.

Maxwell watched it for another moment before a crooked smile spread across his face.

If the creature was determined to survive no matter what he did, then perhaps the most sensible approach was to stop worrying about killing it and concentrate on making its continued existence as unpleasant as possible.

He tightened his fist.

The warped space contracted further, and the pressure increased so sharply that the earth around the sphere groaned under the strain.

“Can't die? Don't worry, you bastard. I'll make you wish you could.”

Immortal Blood's expression froze.

For all the pain it had endured, for all the injuries that had accumulated across its body, and for all the desperate attempts it had made to escape, it had not expected its opponent to respond with such cheerful cruelty.

Maxwell, meanwhile, maintained his smile, although the expression concealed a concern he had no intention of voicing aloud. His mana was not infinite, and neither was his stamina. He could continue suppressing the creature for the moment, but maintaining such an extreme manipulation of space and gravity demanded constant expenditure, and Immortal Blood had already demonstrated that simply destroying its body would not be enough.

The creature was weakening, but it was still there.

And until Maxwell discovered a way to end its existence permanently, he would have to keep it restrained while hoping that his own strength lasted longer than its endless refusal to die.