Vastarael faced the ocean for a few seconds after saying that his answer was choice. Luminescent still stood beside him, silent for the moment, but Vastarael could feel the pressure of his presence.
"You know, my favorite kind of authors were the Grimms brothers."
Luminescent blinked. That was not what he had expected. Vastarael actually smiled a little, though there was something distant in it.
"Their stories were so dark that modern people of my Iteration didn't even treat them like children's stories anymore. Which is fair, honestly. They were never really hiding any gory stuff or sexual scenes."
Luminescent said nothing.
"I don't remember much but when I was in an orphanage in my past life, I used to read them to the kids. I was in high school by then. I would sit there and read the Grimms fairytales as horror stories. I treated them like horror stories because they are horror stories. The kids got scared all the time. I exaggerated them on purpose."
"You scared orphaned children?"
"Yes."
"That sounds terrible."
"It was funny. Also, they usually asked for it."
That got the smallest twitch out of Luminescent, but it faded when Vastarael kept going.
"I can't remember all the stories I loved. My memories are hazy but there was one I remember. It's about a bride who found out her husband was part of a cannibalistic gang. At the end, she escaped him. The gang members chopped him to pieces on his wedding day. I always thought it was strange that she survived. Back then, women were treated like an inferior gender in a lot of those stories so I assumed the ending would go the usual way. You know. Badly. But no. She lived."
He looked down at the violin in his hand after that
"Anyway, my plan is simple. In fact, it's so easy it is almost insulting. Since you put the erosion in my body and my body is going to corrode, then it's that you do it properly."
"What do you—"
"But you seem to be forgetting something. I'm an Aeterium. I'm immune to that K-Virus you shot at me. I'm immune to anything affecting the body and soul. like a disease or some race change virus."
Luminescent's stare went colder. He had been so sure the virus would put Vastarael at a crossroads but he had already accounted for it. Worse, he had used it.
"Fortunately, I used it as an excuse for you to come here."
Vastarael smiled, and this time there was no softness in it at all.
"Now the die has been cast, or as they say in Latin… Alea iacta est."
The moment he said it, something immense surged through him. The effect hit so violently that the beach seemed to convulse under the force of it.
Vastarael's entire soul began burning in a blazing sapphire eruption so bright it turned the morning into a second dawn. Light came out from him in all directions. It was do vivid and so pure that even the sun looked dim by comparison. The sand at his feet shimmered. The water glittered. The horizon vanished behind the intensity of that glow.
Luminescent's eyes widened sharply. For the first time since he had appeared, he actually took a step back. The Soul Energy coming off him was becoming unbearable.
The Soul Energy was so dense and so violently concentrated that it was not just filling the realm around them. It was burning through the atmosphere, through space and through everything that tried to exist too close to it. Even an Overlord Rank Krepsuna could not simply step into that kind of energy without consequence.
Luminescent narrowed his eyes against the light and tried to move closer anyway but the instant he did, the energy struck his soul. It was not enough to destroy him, but it was enough to make it clear that Vastarael had already gone too far for anyone to pull him back.
He used Soul Sacrifice and this time, he used his entire soul as the exchange.
"What are you doing?!"
Vastarael did not answer right away. He lifted the violin. No.
The Orchestral Violex, the Primordial Rank Artifact and the First Time Fragment.
The moment it appeared properly in his grip, the entire tone of the world shifted again. The bow sat ready in his other hand and his fingers settled over the strings.
He began to play.
The tune rang across the beach like the opening of a final overture. The melody rose with the shining force of a breaking star. Sapphire light rippled through the air with every stroke of the bow. Each note seemed to peel another layer from the world. The sea began to tremble. The fake morning sky overhead seemed to fracture in the brilliance of his soul.
Luminescent stood frozen for a heartbeat, watching him. Vastarael was doing exactly what Marth had done in the fairytale.
He was sacrificing everything he had.
But unlike Marth, he was not emptying himself into silence. He was turning himself into a weapon.
Vastarael's white hair lifted in the force of it. His body was now wrapped in blazing sapphire radiance so intense that the shape of him was becoming difficult to look at directly. The strings of the Orchestral Violex sang under his fingers and with every note, his presence grew more overwhelming. Luminescent tried again to move closer, but the energy shoved him back.
He hissed through his teeth. The light was burning at his soul now too. Vastarael had become a sun made of sacrifice, and Luminescent could feel it through every layer of his being.
"Vastarael! Stop!"
That was Adelasta's panicked voice. However, Vastarael did not stop. He only played harder.
The entire realm around them seemed to vibrate with it. The beach, the sea, the sky, the wind, even the light itself. Everything was caught in the wake of that song. The sapphire glow poured from him in waves. Each one was so bright and so pure that it made the world look like it was being rewritten in real time.
A Man Who Gave Up Everything.
Luminescent's fists clenched. He finally understood the answer. This was what Vastarael had meant from the beginning. It was a final, deliberate act of ruin and creation at the same time.
Vastarael's playing reached its peak and the entire shoreline was drowned in the sound of the Orchestral Violex. It was beautiful. And there, standing in the center of that impossible light, Vastarael Richinaria sacrificed everything he had.
"Luminescent, unlike the villagers who forgot about Marth once he was gone, my companions won't. It's time to tilt the scales."