NOVEL NEXT Chapter 235: The Fourth Cycle!
"We humans," Vakh began, a chilling smile spreading across his face, "from the moment of birth, our fates are etched in stone, predetermining how high we can climb in this life."
He paused, letting the pronouncement hang heavy in the scorched air. "Isn't that simply the immutable law of the biological world?"
"A gazelle," he continued, his voice taking on a lecturing tone, "could train until its heart explodes, and it will never outpace a cheetah. A sardine, even if it gorged itself to bursting, could never hope to rival the size of a predator. Survival of the fittest – it's not just a saying, it's the brutal choreography of existence, always and forever culling from the bottom of the pyramid."
He gestured dismissively. "Effort? Effort isn't some noble stairway to ascend the ladder of life. It's merely a crude instrument, insurance that you become the one trampling the weaker underfoot, grinding them into the very dirt!"
"The strong prey on the stronger?" Vakh scoffed, a harsh, grating sound. "Such childish delusion. Strength and weakness are always, inherently, relative. There's no such absurdity as the strong devouring the stronger."
He rose to his full height, towering over the fallen Shu, taking two measured steps back, and then, in a theatrical flourish, spread his arms wide towards the smoke-choked sky. "No, it's simply the pathetic, _futile_ defiance, the desperate death throes of the weak as they break against the unyielding strength of the strong!"
He rose to his full height, towering over the fallen Shu. "No, it's simply the futile defiance of the weak as they break against the unyielding strong!"
"In this world," his voice resonated with manic conviction, "only the strong remain strong! Only those who conquer Rome, who stand atop the mountain of corpses, can boast of their 'effort'!"
"And I," Vakh's laughter erupted, sharp and unrestrained, "I alone, who controls the very essence of life, who can shape it to my whim – only I can truly claim strength!"
"Ha—hahaha—hahaha!!!" Vakh's laugh was loud and out of control, not happy at all, and full of something darker and emptier. He laughed like he'd never learned how to hold back.
A bitter truth settled in Shu's chest like a stone. He had poured everything he had into this fight, gambled his very life force for just a sliver of a chance. But Vakh, with barely a flick of his wrist, could have snuffed out Shu's existence from the start.
It was a fight rigged from the start, a fundamentally, brutally unfair contest.
Just like the animal kingdom. Just like the cold, indifferent machinery of human society.
It was a fight rigged from the beginning. Just like nature. Just like society. Raw effort only mattered in the middle ranks, a way to claw past those less driven. But true power? That belonged to the apex predators, the ones at the top. The weak were always left behind – picked off by the bear, caught by the hunter's arrow.
Only equals could truly clash. Everything else was just a cruel game of cat and mouse, the outcome already written.
In this twisted game of life, Vakh stood untouchable. Supreme. Absolute.
Ethics's words echoed through the ruins of Shu's mind: "Being human... isn't that already the highest class distinction of all?"
Why? Why was that the highest distinction?
Because only humans had the audacity, the self-awareness, to even question such things. And maybe in that questioning itself lay a fragment of hope. Maybe.
Shu watched Vakh's manic laughter, his own consciousness slipping away, eyelids growing heavier by the second. It felt like the final curtain call.
But beneath the crushing weight of defeat, a stubborn ember of rage still flickered, refusing to die.
Just... just...
"Hahahaha—hahaha—haha..."
Something caught Shu's fading attention. A single, crystalline tear traced its way down Vakh's cheek, standing stark against his hollow laughter. Behind those triumphant pronouncements, Shu heard something else—an undercurrent of pure, devastating sorrow.
He focused on that betraying tear, so wrong against the mask of manic glee. And suddenly, a chilling realization began to dawn.
What was Vakh's first reward, the prize he claimed to have fought for so desperately?
Natasha's survival...
The Heliopolis journal had named Natasha as the anchor, the lynchpin holding Vakh's fragile sanity together...
But this Vakh, this being exulting in his power, radiated only emptiness—a void where sanity should have been. His grand philosophical statements, beyond the carefully rehearsed echoes of memory, fixated on a single, suffocating subject:
"I."
The world had shrunk to the confines of his ego. No other consciousness seemed to possess even a flicker of reality in his warped perception. He cared only for his own elevated position, his self-proclaimed dominance.
And most chilling of all—Shu hadn't sensed even a whisper of empathetic feedback from this version of Vakh. He had felt the dying tremors, the fear and pain, of even the grotesque mutated creatures. But from this self-proclaimed god? Nothing. Absolute zero.
Until now. This single, solitary tear, this unexpected eruption of pure, devastating sorrow, cut through even Shu's burning rage. It struck a chord of something almost like... sympathy. A foreign, unwelcome feeling.
He felt an unexpected tear trace down his own grime-streaked cheek, mirroring Vakh's, as that desolate sorrow echoed in his own heart.
From somewhere deep within, from a wellspring he thought long dry, a surge of defiant strength coursed through him. Impossible, illogical—yet it pulled a ragged, disbelieving laugh from his throat.
Vakh's manic laughter fractured, sputtering to a halt. His sharp gaze turned to Shu, confused by this unexpected sound.
"What... what are you laughing at, creature?"
"At you, of course, Herrscher..." Shu rasped, his voice raw but laced with newfound defiance.
Vakh's brow furrowed, unease flickering across his features. He hadn't noticed the tear. Or perhaps he had simply dismissed it.
Shu fixed his gaze on Vakh's face, his one good arm trembling as he raised it in accusation. "From the moment we first crossed paths, you proclaimed yourself to be Vakh. And Natasha, myself, all the children... we desperately wanted to believe you were the man we knew, the real Vakh..."
"But!!" Shu erupted, the word a guttural roar drawn from the last vestiges of his shattered strength. "Your soul is screaming in denial! Your very being is a lie!!"
He struggled to rise, the grotesque, tumorous mass erupting from his severed arm spasming violently—a monstrous parody of a limb.
Yet the sheer force of his presence, the raw intensity of his accusation, forced even Vakh, the self-proclaimed apex predator, to take an involuntary step back, uncertainty flickering in his purple eyes.
"You're not a victim! You have no right to desecrate Vakh's life story, to twist his pain to justify your monstrous actions!!" Shu roared, his voice cracking with fury.
"You're not Vakh!! You're nothing but a pathetic thief, a hollow usurper! You never climbed to the pinnacle of life, you stole your vantage point! You don't even possess—"
He paused, drawing in a ragged breath, gathering the last dregs of his defiance for one final, devastating blow.
"—The courage, the guts, to face death!!"
"You're a vulture, scavenging carrion from a corpse, a nouveau riche parasite living off Vakh's legacy! You didn't transcend any class, you're just a fleeing, pathetic coward who fired the first, cowardly shot!"
After the furious tirade, Shu slumped back against the ash-choked earth, chest heaving. When he spoke again, each syllable rang with solemn conviction:
"Herrscher... when we both finally fall to dust, when the ashes settle and the judgment is rendered, let's see, then, who truly has the strength to rise again!!"
"Otto!!"
The name erupted from his throat like a thunderclap, a challenge hurled toward the indifferent sky.
Vakh's furious expression twisted into startled surprise. He whirled around, head snapping toward a distant point kilometers away, far beyond the scorched perimeter of Shu's Flamescion attack, his enhanced senses suddenly alert.
There, perched atop a grotesquely tilted skyscraper against the smoke-filled horizon, stood a blond man, unmoving. A massive, futuristic sniper rifle rested in his arms, its barrel trained directly at the battlefield's epicenter.
As the desperate, rage-fueled voice echoed through the silent corridors of his mind, Otto sighed. A weary, wry smile tugged at the corner of his lips. No hesitation—only grim resolve.
"I sincerely hope what you said... actually works..." he muttered, his finger tightening on the trigger.
"Bang————!"
A deafening, earth-shattering blast ripped through the air. Recoil slammed into Otto's shoulder, a searing jolt of pain he barely registered.
A sliver of death forged in desperation erupted from the rifle's barrel, crossing the vast smoke-filled distance in a heartbeat—a messenger of finality.
"That's my test subject!!" Vakh's face contorted into a mask of incandescent fury, all pretense of composure shattering. He roared—a primal bellow of rage and possessiveness—as he raised his hand in a futile attempt to intercept the impossible projectile.
But he was too late. Too slow. His fingertips merely grazed the speeding bullet, a fleeting, inconsequential touch.
In that final fraction of a second, before the cold, merciless metal pierced his forehead, Shu's burning gaze remained locked on Vakh's enraged face. Defiant. Unyielding. His last words rang with the weight of prophecy:
"Herrscher—we will meet again—"