Chapter 440
With the seizure of just one of them, balance would be restored.
The cosmic disturbance would subside, and the universe would be freed from the threat of destruction caused by the clash of two eternal energies within a fragile body.
Yet Adrien, when they finally met and the offer was presented to him, refused with every fiber of his being.
He would not relinquish the fire elemental that had become a part of him.
He would not surrender the power he had obtained by gambling with his life.
He would not allow anyone— not even a cosmic entity born solely for this purpose— to take what he considered his own.
Within that refusal, within the stubbornness that only grew stronger with time, their conflict continued without end.
Meanwhile Adrien's health and sanity slowly began to fade, like a light running out of oil inside an old lantern.
"Power that grows too great can erase itself."
The first battle erupted fiercely across a vast desert stretching to the edge of the horizon.
Grains of sand scattered through the air like millions of fireflies dancing inside a spiral of deathly wind.
Adrien Valtheris, with his half-robotic body now filled with the flow of five cosmic elementals and the Authority of Perception Alteration, stood firm against Alaric Syah, who was experiencing for the first time just how terrifying the power was that he sought to claim.
Flashes of white and black cosmic energy alternated across the sky above them, forming an artificial aurora both beautiful and horrifying.
It was as though the universe itself were witnessing the clash of two beings whose destinies had been intertwined since before either of them was born.
At the most critical moment, when Alaric nearly succeeded in closing the distance to unleash his final attack, Adrien raised his right hand— half encased in metal— and created a portal.
It was not an ordinary portal, but a limited one, barely large enough to swallow a single body.
Inside it swirled a strange vortex like the sleeping eye of a storm.
Anyone who entered it would be carried to a realm that did not exist within any map of the universe.
Alaric Syah had no time to evade.
No time to flee.
No time to resist.
He was pulled into the portal and vanished from Adrien's sight in an instant, cast into a bizarre realm he could never leave until he attempted to understand the meaning of that realm's existence.
Until he learned that sometimes the exit does not lie in the same place as the entrance.
The second wager took place dozens of weeks later.
By then Adrien had managed to forget their first battle.
He had lived in ignorance within a new world, surrounded by new companions who accepted him as he was.
He fell in love, went on adventures, and sacrificed everything to protect those he cared for.
Alaric Syah eventually escaped the strange realm after grasping the lesson that had long been hidden in plain sight.
He returned to the world with a determination stronger than ever before— the determination to fulfill the mission that had been the very reason for his birth.
Their second encounter was no less fierce than the first.
In fact, it was far more devastating.
Adrien now possessed the complete set of five cosmic elementals along with the Authority of Perception Alteration fused within him.
Meanwhile Alaric had mastered the art of perfectly alternating between the two cosmic energies within his body.
The sky split open.
The earth trembled.
Oceans evaporated.
Mountains collapsed into ruin as silent witnesses to the clash of two giants who rained down power capable of annihilating civilizations.
Yet once again Adrien emerged victorious.
But that victory came at a price he had never anticipated.
With all the power he possessed— with five cosmic elementals and the Authority of Perception Alteration working in perfect harmony— Adrien altered the course of destiny itself.
He erased his own traces from the new world he had been living in.
He erased every memory his friends had of him.
He erased every mark he had ever left behind.
Every smile he had shared.
Every laughter he had created together with them.
As an addition, he also erased Alaric Syah's traces from the records of history.
He ensured that his enemy's name would never be written in any book.
Never spoken in any legend.
Never remembered by anyone across the vast universe.
Yet the universe never remains silent when changes are imposed upon it.
It always finds a way to resist.
To rebel.
To restore balance through methods both cruel and unpredictable.
Right after the second battle ended— right after Adrien finished erasing both himself and Alaric from the records of history— something horrifying began to happen.
Those historical records, which had long served as the foundation of reality itself, the thread connecting past, present, and future, suddenly became chaotic.
Twisted.
Knotted.
A monstrous thing hungry for flesh and blood.
It began hunting Adrien and Alaric.
It tried to kill them both as punishment for daring to alter what should never have been changed.
It sought to devour them into a void beyond time.
To erase their existence from reality in a way far crueler than merely being forgotten by friends or removed from historical texts.
And within that most unexpected situation— when they should have been killing one another, when their conflict should have continued until one finally fell— Adrien and Alaric were instead forced to cooperate.
Forced to forget their differences for a moment.
Forced to join hands against a common enemy.
An enemy born from Adrien's own actions.
That third battle was not won by either of them alone.
It was not won by Adrien, the stronger one.
Nor by Alaric, the more rightful one.
It was won by the cooperation of two sworn enemies who, for the first time, realized that fate is sometimes more complicated than black and white.
Deeper than right and wrong.
And far more terrifying than merely losing or winning.
"Alaric nearly lost his sanity."
The third battle had ended.
The impact of the historical records attempting to kill them had finally been overcome.
But the price that had to be paid was far from small.
Alaric Syah, in a desperate attempt to save both himself and his enemy— who was also his teacher— tried something he had never attempted before.
He attempted to merge the white and black cosmic elementals that had always been strictly separated within his body by a natural barrier, a defining trait of his birth as a balancing cosmic entity.
That attempt nearly tore away his sanity.
Nearly shattered his soul.
Nearly caused him to lose himself inside the vortex of two cosmic energies that despised each other yet were forced to unite.
Meanwhile on the other side, Adrien Valtheris managed to discover a far more elegant solution.
He succeeded in restoring the health and sanity that had long been eroded by cosmic disturbances.
Even more astonishingly, he found a way to combine the white and black cosmic elementals within his body without losing his identity.
Without being torn away from the roots of history that had long served as the anchor of his existence within the universe.
The realization that his life might not last much longer began creeping into Alaric Syah's heart like an unavoidable morning mist.
To be continued…