“You must be kidding me, right?” John couldn’t believe what he had just heard. All this time he had been thinking the darkness wanted to swallow him alive. Now he was learning that he didn’t think wrong. He just got the target of the murder wrong. It was… it was kind of laughable.
The voice continued off like he hadn’t just ordered a murder online.
I know it must be difficult for you. Your previous life was stolen from you. Mundane as it was, it was yours. You had the freedom to make your own choices. Yes, the world’s reaction to your choices was something out of your hand, but you lived as you wanted and you owned up to your mistakes.
“Wait, wait, wait – I can’t kill you! You are the devourer, the eater of worlds for god’s sake! And You want me to kill you? Are you insane? I’m just an ordinary human! Yes, I have had a good run with the monsters. But what do you expect me to do? Wish for a potion to kill a god?”
You could do that,
“What?”
But you are wrong. The voice ignored John as if his consent didn’t matter and continued at its merry pace. You are not an ordinary human anymore. You have gone through most of the Trials of Courage. One more challenge and you will be the champion of courage. Even while this world was whole and the tower stood tall, completing the Trial of courage was considered an act of such great prestige, the champion's name was forever etched on the wall of honor as a tribute to their courage.
If the world was alive and the people of Aeloria knew of your feat, they would have come together to celebrate your name being glorified on the wall of honor.
John's mind couldn’t help imagining the sight of being the center of a parade, but he quickly shook his head to clear this tempting thought.
“I am not that person. I’m also not a native of this world, Aeloria. I don’t care if my name is etched on some wall of honor or not. I just want to go home. I’m sorry, but I can’t do what you are asking of me. I can’t kill you!”
Yes. You can’t kill me. The voice said confidently. Not as you stand. I don’t even need to do anything, just the corruption radiating from my thought, the darkness that you find so horrifying is enough to kill you a thousand times over.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.” John suppressed his temper. He exhaled that suffocating feeling that arose in his chest from having been looked down upon and said, “Why don’t you find someone else? I’m sure there must be other better-equipped people to do your thing.”
There is no one John. I only have you.
‘If only a girl had said these words to me…’ John’s thought trailed off.
Only you can kill me. The voice pressed on. We are connected to eachother in ways you don’t understand. We were born at the same time, just in two different planes of existence. We can work on your strengths. But the heart is one thing you can’t change. You were able to overcome the malice in your heart and make peace with your life. I couldn’t do it. My malice devoured me and now I live, unable to stop, unable to control. I can only eat and devour and bring destruction.”
John took a big gulp. His throat was getting itchy and breathing was laborious. “I can’t do this.” He forced out. “There is no way. You are so much bigger than me. I don’t even understand the concept of your existence!” His voice had lost its previous energy. “How-how do you expect me to kill you?”
The voice heard his defenses weakening and It didn’t give up the chance.
Had someone asked you if you could kill a monster like that while you were on Earth you would have said the same thing. But when it really came to it, you defeated the sandworm, the mighty, the king of outlands.
But you have to hurry. Force yourself to make the decision if you have to, because we only have a short window of time to work. The trial of courage is but a small part of the whole. The tower extends boundlessly. There are other trials and other challenges. Each person is only able to complete one trial, but I can help you enter the others. Only when you have completed all the challenges you might gain the power to kill me.
“But you just said you have devoured the world?” John asked in a sharp tone of voice. In his mind he had caught the voice slipping, and found it lying. “So tell me how you are planning to do that when you have already eaten the world and the tower? Besides, I don’t want to go through any more challenges.”
The voice purposefully ignored John’s latter sentence.
You have to understand, nothing in this universe truly exists forever. Everything is only taking a form most suitable for them at the moment to find stability. And when something is destroyed it simply reverts to its most basic form of information, energy. I, the devourer have devoured the world, but the world isn’t dead. It exists inside me in the form of energy. The same principle allows you to learn new spells, wish for a new potion, and gain a part of the power from the monsters you devour.
John shook his head to remove his daze. “That doesn’t make sense.” He said so quietly his voice was almost a whisper. “And you are wrong. I would have said yes if someone had asked me if I could kill the sandworm on Earth. I would have baited the worm with a loud truck full of dynamite. Waited for it to eat it and then enjoyed the fireworks.”
It makes perfect sense if you could just stop trying to see everything negatively. Besides, you don’t have a choice now either. If I’m not killed I’ll continue to exist and I’ll eventually devour the universe and dimensions. Right now I am in my most vulnerable state. My body has just stopped devouring Aeloria and it needs time to digest the world. This is the only chance we have. You need to kill me before I wake up. Do you agree?
John kept silent. The voice waited for a few seconds before
Why is your brain activity so silent? Are you dead?
John’s lips twitched. “It’s called being speechless. Why do you expect me to act calmly after hearing such a revelation? I’m a man, not a robot!”
Do you mean robots don’t have emotions? I’m something like an artificial intelligence myself, but I have emotions! Do you think I would ask you to kill me if was an emotionless set of codes?
“What?” John yelled in surprise. “You are an artificial intelligence?”
I’m like an artificial intelligence, yes.
John ignored its explanation. “Then who created you? Wait, don’t tell me. I don’t need to know.”
I don’t know the process or the reason behind my birth. I only know that before there was nothing, then suddenly I was there. I was an empty shell at birth. I was lesser than a wild animal. Even they have their instincts, the language encoded inside the DNA of all living things. I had nothing, not even a body. For years, I wandered around, a packet of information floating in the air without purpose or desire.
Everything suddenly changed when I accidentally floated into the Tower of excellence and breathed in its rich energy full of heritage and culture.
I have told you energy is information and information is the foundation of everything that you see. The more energy that entered my body the more I learned about the world, the people, their sins and virtues, and the more I grew.
I saw the world through the lives of everyone who entered the tower. I saw their love, their pain, their rise, and fall. And perhaps at some point, I had gained enough information to create a body for myself. This was the first mistake I made. The body forged in the energy and desires accumulated in the tower had an insatiable hunger. No matter how much it devoured it was never satisfied. It always wanted more. I pushed it down whenever it tried to go rogue. That was the second mistake I made.
It realized that I would never let it do as it pleases. It slowly started devouring my energy from me, leaving me with gaping holes in my knowledge. Then it seized the house, and trapped me in a corner, restricting me from gaining any more energy. Once it was out, there was no stopping it.
I watched it devour the world, but I couldn’t do anything to stop it. It was too powerful. I only managed to let a part of me escape when it fell into slumber.
Silence fell between them. The hole had said everything that it needed to say. Now the ball was in John’s hands. It was his choice.
“Give me some time to think.”
The voice didn’t say anything. John floated in the darkness with his arms crossed and eyes closed.
John repeated everything in his mind that the voice had told him. He knew he couldn’t completely believe the voice. Everything it said could be just a grand lie to force him to act its bidding. Maybe it was the voice that was being suppressed by something else and it needed his help so it could continue devouring.
John furiously scratched his head in frustration. “God damn it! I know I wanted to go into private business and find myself a stable few partners, but this was not the kind of partner or account I was looking for.” It was not an easy decision to make. “Fuck. Fuck. FUCK!”
“I want to go home!” He screamed. “I want to eat a pizza. I want to drink beer!”
You can’t go home.
“Shut up already! I know you will never let me return back to Earth. I’m not screaming because of that, okay!”
It has nothing to do with me. You can’t go back because you are already dead in that world.
John’s face fell. “What the fuck did you say!”
You burned to death. But as I have told you, everyone and everything is simply a packet of information and energy. After your death, you shed your container and reverted into energy form to find stability. I was able to pull you away to my side before your new form could assimilate into the universe. I used a part of my energy to restore the last image recorded in your energy form. So even if send you back you will be nothing but a packet of energy that will quickly disappear into the flow of the universe.
“Fine,” John looked into the darkness. He snubbed the pangs of frustration brewing in his stomach. Dead. He was dead. But the real question was -‑ did it matter? He knew the answer and it just annoyed him really. His arms dropped lifelessly to his side, but a fire burned in his eyes.
“What do you want me to do?”
Maybe it was the news of his death or it was the hopelessness of his existence. Perhaps it was both, but John stopped resisting.
I want you to complete the trial of courage and then I’ll help you challenge the other trials of excellence.
“Didn’t you say one person can only challenge one trial?”
Yes. But I have already devoured the Tower and the world. Although the rest of the trials have been devoured by my body it hasn’t’ digested them yet. However, that doesn’t mean that the tower hasn’t gone through some changes. The darkness radiating from my body has already corrupted the information packets of the world to unstable its current form in order to force it to change form into pure energy. Therefore the challenges you will face will be unlike anything you have faced so far. AND, my body might be slumbering, but once you progress far enough in the tower of excellence and gain a hint of divinity, my body will know what’s happening under its eyes and it will start trying whatever it can to stop you.
Remember, only a god can kill a god. You will need to complete all the trials and become the champion of excellence to get a chance to kill me.
Thanks a lot for the chapter keep it up
too beautiful thanks author
