Malevolent Warlock: Sin Of Eternity-Chapter 334: Untitled
"Hmm."
The Three Headed Hydra Immortal was not born the way most beings were.
It was a creature that had grown so powerful over the long stretch of its existence that something shifted inside it. Strength accumulating past a certain threshold until it crossed into something that couldn't be explained by rank or cultivation alone. It became sentient. Aware. And from that awareness it constructed something it had never needed before.
A human body.
After that came the three immortal spell technique. Built from its own nature. Shaped from the inside out by a being that had touched both beast and human and decided it wanted to be neither and both at once.
Neither Leon nor Altor truly understood how the technique worked. They had discussed it more than once and arrived at nothing definitive. Guesses. Frameworks. Approximations built on fragments of information pulled from sources that couldn't be verified.
What Altor knew for certain was only this: he had watched the old bastard access this place a long time ago. Had watched and remembered. Without that memory the method of entry would have been completely out of reach.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Leon reached the three waterfalls and stopped.
He floated in place for a moment in the middle of the river, water moving around him in slow eddies, and looked around carefully.
There was no one this far into the pond.
The tourists didn't come this deep. The entry fee bought access to the paths and the viewing platforms, not this. Out here the atmosphere shifted. The sound of the falls was much louder. The mist from the cascades hung close to the surface and made it difficult to see more than a short distance in any direction.
He turned toward the first waterfall.
The place where it rushed down and met the surface of the pond was turbulent. White water churning constantly, pushing outward in waves that rolled across the basin in heavy pulses.
—woosh
He started swimming toward it.
Immediately the resistance pushed back. The waves hit him in succession, each one carrying more force than the last the closer he got, slowing his pace from a strong stroke down to something closer to crawling.
Leon was at the peak of level 4.
There was very little that could meaningfully slow his movements. He knew his own body well enough to account for most resistance without having to think hard about it.
But this was different.
It wasn't only suppressive. There was something wrong underneath the physical push of the current. Something that sat in the water and moved through his skin differently than cold water should.
Traces of poison.
(Faint. But definitely there.)
He could feel it working at the edges. Not painful yet. More like a pressure behind the eyes. A heaviness that didn't belong.
One could not stay under this torrent for a prolonged period.
The lucky thing, the genuinely lucky thing, was that Leon's bloodline traced back to a serpentine clan. Poison had its effects on him. He wasn't immune. But the relationship his body had with toxins was fundamentally different from a baseline human's. Where another person would begin shutting down, his body recognized the intrusion and managed it, slower and slower degradation, buying time that other challengers never had.
He pushed.
The struggle was real and physical and took everything he was willing to spend on it. The water hit him from every angle. The toxins pressed inward. But he kept his arms moving and his body angled forward and eventually, after what felt like far longer than it should have taken, he broke through.
—rush
He emerged onto a rock surface behind the fall and sat down.
"Hm."
The relief that settled through his body was immediate and genuine. He let himself have it for a moment.
In front of him the water fell at an astonishing speed, a wall of white and grey that blocked the outside world completely. Sitting behind it felt like being inside something that had been closed for a very long time.
The entrance to the inheritance ground was at the mouth of the three waterfalls.
The requirement was simple to describe. One needed to push against the toxin-filled waters all the way to the very top before entry would be granted. Simple in concept. The kind of thing that sounded manageable until someone actually tried it.
The toxins became more concentrated the higher one climbed. Not gradually, sharply. Every meter upward brought a meaningfully heavier dose than the last. The historical record of challengers who had attempted this and been found floating face-down in the basin below was long enough that most people had stopped trying.
Only those with the hydra bloodline could pass through this without fighting every second of it.
Of course that didn't mean no human had ever succeeded.
But they had all missed something.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
The repeated failures weren't purely about the toxins.
According to Altor's accounts the true prerequisite was more specific than anyone who relied on public history would know. Three individuals sharing the same blood and essence needed to climb simultaneously. All three reaching the top at the same moment. Only then would the entrance open.
For a member of the hydra clan their three headed beast actualization would fulfill this naturally. One being, three expressions, same blood, same essence.
But Leon had his own idea.
Beside him Levi slithered out from wherever he had been waiting and arrived on the third waterfall. To his right a beast actualization formed slowly, pulling itself together from Leon's energy and taking shape beside him.
He had used his own blood to wake Levi up for this.
That little snake didn't just carry his blood. It carried his essence as well. Same source, same fundamental signature running through both of them.
And so did the actualization.
Three silhouettes. One origin.
(This should work.)
He sat on the rock and waited.
They had come toward the end of the day deliberately. The crowds thinned naturally as the light changed, visitors drifting back toward the gate and the roads out. By the time full dark arrived the grounds would be empty.
Locan should have left already….
When it was truly dark Leon made his move.
...…
Under the cover of night three silhouettes shot upward through the air, moving against the falls, the water cascading down around them and soaking through everything as they pushed forward.
—rush!!
The toxins hit differently on the ascent.
What had been a faint pressure at the base became something with weight and intention the further they climbed. Leon felt it spreading. His skin first. Then deeper, moving through muscle, reaching toward bone. A slow systemic corrosion that his bloodline fought back against steadily but could not stop entirely.
He had decided before starting that he would reach the top in one continuous push.
No stopping. No pulling back to recover. One go.
So he continued.
Time passed in the way that difficult things made time pass, stretching out and folding back on itself with no good reference points. What looked from the outside like a simple matter of swimming against a current had taken four grueling hours by the time the numbness had spread throughout Leon's entire body.
His limbs moved on instruction rather than feeling.
He used the reserved energy sitting deep in his stomach. The last of what he had held back. He burned through it steadily and kept climbing.
And eventually he pushed through.
At the same moment Levi and the beast actualization reached the top alongside him. All three crossing the threshold at once.
They disappeared from sight.
...… 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞
"Hm?"
On the bank of the pond far below, one particular individual paused.
His eyes moved toward the falls.
A small flicker of light. There and then gone. The kind of thing you could convince yourself was a trick of the mist or a reflection off moving water.
He stared at the spot for a moment longer.
Nothing.
No trace. No repeat. The falls continued their constant pour and the surface of the basin moved the way it always moved and there was nothing there to find.
He looked away.
