"NO! NO! NO! NO! N–!" A human man was screaming in denial as his body withered under the touch of the figure looming over him. He had been so confident and full of the certainty he could never die.
They always believed that.
The impossibly beautiful Fiend was empty. It was just an overgrown fingernail to the creature controlling it.
[Why do I not progress?] It was the mystery the Great One could not solve. People opposing him were fine, expected even. He was not delusional about the price of his ascension. It would be folly to assume they would just allow him to proceed.
Yet, until the Eternal Realm, the cost was always within reach. No matter how monstrous, he at least grasped the scope of it.
He had assumed, since that wretched fox reset his old world, that he was held back by the echoes of himself reborn in those timelines.
