Chapter 125 – Affection

The pain hit Cassius like a blow straight to the frailest part of his entire body. He gasped, his body stooping forward like a tree half broken and about to fall, his head buried into his chest as he tried his absolute best to not let any sound of pain escape through his mouth.

It was quite useless.

But nevertheless, Cassius managed to muffle his screams into endless growls and grunts that reverberated inside his chest and spread outward through the room.

Sweat began to pour down his face, and he felt his heart — which just minutes ago had been beating so hard, so loud, so excitedly that it felt liable to explode from overwork — now slowing down considerably, as if a time-stop spell had been cast upon it.

It slowed still, until his heart was doing only one beat every fifteen seconds. Just one. And each time before that heartbeat graced him, Cassius felt like he was about to draw his last breath in this world.

His eyes were nearly bulging out in pain, red veins slithering across the whites of his irises.

Despite the harrowing agony, his internal system had already grown accustomed to the dragging, drawling heartbeat thanks to the Tier Five poison that had been inside him for a while now; giving him the power and ability to survive those terrible moments, albeit with pain far greater than before.

He felt a slow, biting coldness spreading through his whole body like water seeping through a riverbank. A coldness that meant only one thing: his internal system was shutting down, plunging his body into a state befitting the dead.

Added to that freezing cold that locked him completely in place, Cassius would have sworn that a whole building was being pressed down on his chest.

He could no longer breathe.

His chest felt so heavy that he heard the illusion of his own ribs cracking and constricting upon themselves, thinning the air entering his lungs down to almost nothing.

Yet his mouth was wide open — trying, even begging, for air to enter his lungs and let his life continue — while his eyes teared up. He was dying. Dying by asphyxiation while his body turned frigid.

’...Q-Queen...’

Cassius barely managed to whisper inside his fragmented mind, a mind now cloaked in complete darkness, starved of the oxygen necessary to function.

Slowly he began to close his eyes, unable to keep them open any longer, and his body fell face first onto the bed, twitching, jerking, pulsing like a fish ripped from its natural habitat for the sick pleasure of some observer.

Faster than he could process, Cassius’s mind was thoroughly swallowed by a profound darkness, his consciousness leaving him.

Yet he was not dead. His body was still twitching, and his heart was still beating...just barely, just slowly.

Above his head, the Snake Loop’s progress began to accelerate, slowly coming to full completion, about to grant Cassius the adaptation to a Tier Five poison, and through that adaptation, thanks to the Salt of Crimson Starlight, the ability to inject that same poison into the bodies of others.

The whole process was witnessed by Ananke, who stood silent and rigid, doing her best not to call out to him in pain and fear, her body subtly trembling.

She would have been shamed and laughed at if any other god had witnessed her current state.

But Ananke couldn’t truly care less about what anyone thought of her. Anyone but Cassius.

However, the Goddess had come to understand that she needed — absolutely needed — to develop better control over her own feelings concerning her Blessed.

Sometimes, her impulsive reactions, born of worry and fear and insecurity, would only disturb her Blessed further. Especially in serious situations.

So at that moment, as Cassius ingested the Salt, she had tried to simply observe. It was something she was extremely proficient at, given her own nature.

But the Queen of Fate had to admit...

’...I can’t — and I know this because I’ve tried — watch you without doing or at least saying something.’ She whispered, remembering when Cassius had called out to her through his mind-numbing pain.

A pain he knew, deep down, would not kill him. Even so, like any other human, he simply couldn’t help but reach for the presence of his goddess in that moment, for a sliver of comfort and relief.

She hadn’t answered. And it hurt her more than she had expected.

That alone proved to her that she could not simply be a witness to Cassius the way many gods were to their Blessed.

She wanted — needed — to be beside him. To support him. To walk with him. And to tell him, with all the confidence in the world, every time he needed to hear it, that it would be okay.

And indeed...

[It will always be okay, Cassius.] She whispered, reaching her hand through her Gate as if trying to caress his hair.

She couldn’t.

But as the Goddess of Fate and Secrecy dropped those words into the very consciousness of Cassius using a fragment of her GeumGeum...

BADUM!

...the Snake Loop finally closed.

Cassius’s body vibrated wildly as his heart began to beat faster than it ever had, pumping air back in, moving his blood through his body, driving away the coldness that had been creeping through his bones and internal systems, returning full life to him.

Colour began to return to his face.

And now that the Adaptation had begun to fully integrate, Cassius’s blood started to glow faintly, crimson starlight hiding within it.

...

Inside the bathroom, meanwhile, Isolde Amaris was completely unaware of what was happening on the other side of the wall.

She was lying peacefully inside the bathtub filled with pink water that emitted a deeply pleasing scent, relaxing her body in a way that made her moan softly in pleasure.

Playing with the water with her feet and hands, Isolde’s mind drifted toward everything she had witnessed inside Cassius’s memories.

His life as Noah. The game — [Chosen Ones] — where her own sister was a Main Heroine destined for greatness alongside Emrys Stormblessed, the Chosen One among Chosen Ones.

And where she, Isolde Amaris, was destined to be a Villainess — like most others — killed in the end by Emrys and Anesthesia, all because she had wished for revenge.

A revenge she deserved. A revenge she had earned after everything she had been through.

But no.

The World had wanted it another way. A way that benefited only her sister. Just like always.

Isolde clicked her tongue in frustration and simmering anger, yet somehow, after all of this, her thoughts about her sister and Emrys had begun to shift.

The overwhelming hatred was no longer there. As if her mind had been touched by something greater, something far beyond simple spite and hatred toward beings who would be nothing if they had not been Chosen Ones.

Yet that feeling did nothing to wash away her desire to make them pay. And pay they would.

Isolde had also witnessed, with great embarrassment and a guilty mind, how her original plan of killing Cassius had succeeded in the game, officially triggering the beginning of the end of the Desdemona. A family of extraordinary monsters who, despite all their power, could not stand against the evolved Chosen Ones.

Those were not the only things she had seen. She had also managed to glimpse certain secrets of the game — knowledge that, even though most of it had been rendered obsolete by Cassius’s meddling in the fate of the whole kingdom, could still be used greatly to increase both their powers.

’It’s confusing.’ Isolde admitted, halting her dizzying thoughts, closing her eyes and drawing a slow breath. ’This world was a game inside the original world of my husband. And my husband came into this world after dying there, reincarnated as Cassius. And what was the name of that world again... Earth?’

For some reason, Isolde found that word oddly familiar to both her mind and her heart. She must have heard it somewhere.

But where, and from whom?

She rarely spoke with her family or anyone else. Was it from someone inside the Fangs?

Constantine? Or Caesar? She had only met that man once or twice, but she couldn’t eliminate him from consideration.

’Or maybe it was Khan?’

Confusing. Very confusing. But after finding nothing within her thoughts, Isolde simply gave up on trying to find the answer.

’It doesn’t matter.’ She smiled, looking at the pink water, her mind now conjuring the memories of Noah smiling and laughing foolishly while making posters of her for his room, trash-talking anyone in the game forums who dared insult her, gritting his teeth in sorrow and fury when she was killed by Emrys, even though she had been the cause of the Desdemona’s destruction.

All those memories made her smile grow wider and wider and wider. A smile so wide it felt like her face might crack from it.

She was relieved. And happy.

Now more than ever she understood the kind of love Cassius held for her. A love she would return in kind and go beyond.

As for Sunu Gaal being a game world...

’Does it change anything?’ She chuckled, and slowly stood from the bathtub, pink water trailing her stunning body in a mesmerising sight. ’I am Isolde Amaris, named Olympias by the Patron of Assassins of the Fangs, and the wife of Cassius Desdemona.’

That was her identity. And nothing would make her believe she was nothing but a character inside a game.

She was not.

And in that, she had absolute belief, one made even stronger by the love and consideration of Cassius, who had not seen her as a simple character.

If he had, he would never have revealed all of this to her.

He saw her as his wife.

And his wife she would be, until the very Epilogue.

As those thoughts settled inside her mind, Isolde dried her body with a towel, dressed in a fresh set of clothes, and stepped out of the bathroom, already missing her husband.

’I think...’

She smiled wryly.

’...I love him a lot more than before.’

And it was still growing with every passing second.

—End of Chapter 125—