It hurt so much that I stopped experiencing the pain firsthand, and it was as if I was a mere spectator of my own brutal execution.
— Why didn't you just shut the fuck up and be satisfied?!
That was already ridiculously over the top, what was the point in following that guy's life? The poor Shadow King he faced in the last sacred war never stood a chance.
— I had everything here! Everything! Everything!
After I discarded my image, after I donned an armor that would never allow me to take it off, after I betrayed my friends, after I stained my hands with so much blood that not even I would be able to forgive myself, after all of this, I still didn't have enough power to defeat the protagonist of that boring game? After all the suffering I caused others, would I fail to change anything? Would everything go back to the way it was before? Would there be so many more idiotic kids enlisting in the army to leave behind their horrible life on a miserable farm? Would there be so many more Maicons, so many more Conrads, and Owls?
— You ruined everything.
No, I had no right to play the victim. Not after everything I had done. If I had not achieved my goals, accomplished the conquests I had promised to Cruz, Celestino, and Vincente, it was because I had not sacrificed enough.
— And now I'm going to finish you off — Veronico lowered his white blade into my chest, piercing my armor with ease and piercing my heart.
It was hard to remember the words as my brain rapidly deteriorated, but due to the automatic injections designed by the necromancers doing who knows what to me inside my helmet, and due to my Attributes strengthened by all my preparations for that battle, I found myself conscious enough to think of one last sentence:
— I sacrifice. My whole life, minus ten- no, one minute.
And the sea of lava that Veronico had dried with his fists washed over us once more.
We emerged from it with me pulling the Hero's bladed arm out of my chest, while my skin was quickly consumed by flames that burned from the inside out and were even hotter than the sea of lava around us: my naked body had undergone a transformation similar to Veronico's, but I looked more like a charred corpse, with incandescent cracks all over my surface, with horns sprouting from my head, spikes from my spine, and metal parts of ancient technology replacing my eyes and forearms, my equipment and body not only having fused, but having been modified by the forgotten human deities of war.
— Damn you, how many times do I have to ruin your plans?! — Veronico punched me in the face, throwing me hard back into the sea of lava.
But this time, I didn't stay down: I pointed a fist at the Hero, and the metal instrument fixed to my left forearm fired ten thousand times at my target in the air, the bullets produced from tiny fractions of my own skeleton.
The projectiles tore through bony plates from my enemy's chest and limbs, quickly stripping him of his newfound protection and drawing his blood.
— Die at once! — He pointed the bone sword at me and emanated a cutting Skill, but I responded to it with an equally powerful emission, coming from the prosthetics that had replaced my eyes, nullifying the attack.
As soon as my target realized he had no advantage in ranged combat, he descended upon me once more with his weapon fused to his body, brandishing it against me.
And in turn, I responded with Epilogue, then also one with my arm; lightning leapt from one blade to the other and to the ground, and the impact of the two weapons scattered the molten rock around us away and dug a crater beneath our feet.
In a fraction of a second, we exchanged thousands of blows, piercing, cutting and shredding each other's bodies; I lost part of my jaw and my entrails fell out of my shredded abdomen, while my enemy had two thirds of the bony plates that protected him torn away, leaving his muscles completely exposed, and his left arm was removed, sliced into nineteen parts.
— Raargh! — Veronico thrust his sword into my emptied abdomen and lifted me high, pulling us from the depths of the flaming abyss resulting from the activation of my trap and lifting us to the top of the metal tower we had emerged from, where he nailed me.
Shots from the instrument on my left forearm ate away at the front of his skull, exposing the gray matter beneath it, forcing him to retreat, and in the next instant, we engaged in sword blows once more as lightning rained down on us both, evaporating Veronico's blood and causing his brain to exhale clouds of vapor.
More energy coursed through my inflamed veins than I could ever imagine even existed in this world, the raindrops around us seemed to literally stop in time as my enemy and I moved so fast, my ocular implants could see through all solids, and count every grain of sand on a beach weeks' march away, and I knew that every sway of my blade could cleave mountains. The System failed to calculate the result of ancient magic, but I had no doubt that if I were able to quantify that power, my Attributes would be close to the number one thousand.
— Why?!
— ...Because I wasn't finding your game fun at all, Veronico — I replied with what was left of my jaw.
But it came at a price, and even though only a little over twenty seconds had passed since my sacrifice, my body deteriorated more quickly than anticipated, my mortal shell unable to withstand the flood of divine power, and suddenly my right leg snapped and separated from my body, shattering like a lump of coal on the roof of the tower.
And the hesitation that the dismemberment caused me was enough to have my chest pierced a second time, with Veronico carrying me even higher, to the very heart of the alchemical storm, where the air itself was hostile and corroded our skin.
— There is no world more fair than this, I promise you that.
— It's easy for you to say that... — my left leg came loose from my waist and fell into the darkness below, crushed to dust by a lightning bolt.
— You just had to follow the plot, Haicard — Veronico whispered in my ear.
— Nhom! — I bit him between his neck and shoulder.
And instead of chipping away at my skeleton microscopically to produce thousands of bullets for my long-range weapon, I fragmented it whole and all at once.