Unsealing Emptiness

Luthien’s head hung loosely as he stared at the blood-stained ground.

Even as a Rank-9 Mage, accepting death wasn’t an easy matter. After all, no one wanted to die.

“...”

After a few moments, he seemed to have muttered something, but it was too low for Ozul to understand.

“Stop mumbling to yourself,” he said, running out of patience.

Luthien slowly looked up with a despaired look on his face and said in a low voice, “I... will answer any question. So end it quickly and painlessly...”

.....

What some people feared more than death was the pain before they finally left this world. Some might agree to death, but only someone sick in the head would ask for pain.

Also, since he was the Emperor of Silverbird Kingdom, he would very much prefer death that would let him keep his dignity.

“Alright,” Ozul nodded his head and continued, “Do you know where the Church of Light has kept my arm?”

Luthien did not look shocked nor was he emotionally stable to care how he already knew that his arm was with the Church of Light. He slowly shook his head and spoke ever so softly, “...I am not aware of it. I had just given the arm to Lammert.”

Ozul nodded his head in understanding and followed up with another question, “Why did you give it to the Church? Explain in detail. After all, you live as long as your explanation lasts.”

Behind him, the old man chuckled to himself hearing his words, ‘This kid is truly heartless! Gahaha!’

Luthien stared at him for a while. His eyes showed that he was struggling from inside. After he had already accepted that he was about to die, doing such a thing was cruel!

Just as he was about to explain, Ozul stopped him, “Actually, no. Let us find a quieter place.”

Although their spot was already calm and quiet, Rufus with his subordinates and the Empress with a few more people in the shadows were all watching them. After a few moments, there might even be a commotion of people all running in here to check on what was happening.

So it was better that he explained everything somewhere else.

Luthien nodded his head in understanding. He didn’t wish to die in front of all the people who looked up to him either.

He calmly nodded his head before looking in the direction of his wife above the Palace with blank eyes.

Ozul took him to a remote area and the old man followed right behind them, but to a pleasant surprise of Ozul, he kept a considerable distance from them.

Meanwhile, the Empress began to shout Luthien’s name, but a few people emerged from the shadows and held her in place. They didn’t let her run to her death.

On the other hand, Rufus had felt the pressure from a much closer distance and he was a little too shaken to do anything about the situation.

. . .

Surrounded by nothing but the trees, Ozul stared at Luthien, motioning him to start his explanation.

He always wanted to know what they had done with his limbs. Previously, he had killed Edwin without getting any real information at all.

Luthien took a deep breath and started explaining from the very start,

“I first got to know about the three ‘limbs of the devil’ from Edwin. He had recently killed his brother Edward back then, and I was naturally not happy. He was aware that I would probably not like his little scheme, so he one day appeared out of nowhere with the ‘limbs of the devil’ and explained to me that he had found them with his brother and didn’t know how his brother came into possession of them.”

Ozul nodded his head. He knew this much that it was either Edward, his ‘father’ or Edwin, his ‘uncle’ who had given his limbs to the Emperor.

“I and my wife immediately took an interest in those limbs after noticing those weird symbols crawl on the skin like a snake... But even after I told the best physicians in the palace to look at those symbols, they couldn’t find anything. And they couldn’t even touch the arm to examine it closely because whoever did so, instantly crumbled to death.”

Luthien’s voice expressed no emotions as he narrated everything in detail.

“Not knowing what to do, I secretly sent one of the arms to the Church of Light. They were allies, and I knew that Lammert had better physicians and since they all had Light Element, they were more likely to find out what was wrong with those limbs.”

He took a small pause and continued, “Only a few years passed, and the result came in... in the form of that healing liquid. They weren’t able to understand the origins or anything about the arm, but we now knew one thing; these limbs were invaluable.”

Ozul’s gaze got colder at his words, but he did not notice that slight change. He continued to speak with his words gaining life with each sentence,

“It turned out that despite the fact that the physicians could not do anything to the arm, they noticed that one end of it continued to emit a whiff of black smoke. The physicians started by storing that smoke and experiment on that instead. Only after continuous trial and error of mixing up tens of herbs had they accidentally created that healing liquid.”

Hearing his words eased a little weight off of Ozul’s mind. At least they didn’t do anything directly to his arm.

However, his ease was short-lived as Luthien spoke his next words,

“Now that we knew that even the continuous smoke emitting from the limbs contained such magical properties, the limbs themselves should have much more than that. Lammert demanded that I hand over the other hand and the leg as well, but I did not plan to do that. In fact, I wanted him to return the hand I had given him. It caused a little friction between us, but he started doing even more extensive experiments.”

Taking another pause, he spoke,

“I was not able to hold onto the leg any longer, but I had learned the value of the limbs by then. Since the physicians under me were not as capable, I had no choice but to interrupt my father’s seclusion to ask for his help in this matter.”

“What did he find out?” Ozul asked. He had felt something odd with Luthien’s father.

Not only his unusual reddened eyes but also how he had mentioned that he would become a Rank-10 Mage after killing him.

“Even when the smoke would disappear just a moment after it was emitted, my father was able to absorb just a tiny bit of it before it dissipated. The first time he did it, he fell unconscious and writhed in pain for hours. However, after he came to his senses, the result was truly astonishing. He felt himself getting closer to breaking through Rank-9.”

‘Hm? So he was only a Rank-9 before... That means it was my arm that got him to cross that bottleneck,’ Ozul thought inside his mind as he noticed the old man in the distance with no change in his facial expressions.

The old man pretended not to be surprised, but Ozul could easily read his emotions and knew that he was shocked. But he also couldn’t feel any malicious thoughts from the old man.

Luthien resumed his story, “He recently even broke through but sadly could not reach Rank-10. Though he did realize that as long as he continued to absorb those particles, reaching Rank-10 was not a problem. But then-”

“Alright. I know what happened then,” Ozul interrupted him as he had learned enough.

Luthien’s heart started to beat faster as he realized that he would not be able to delay his death any longer. He did not even understand his own reasons for why he was trying to buy more time.

He couldn’t be blamed for this because of his situation.

“A-are you going to kill me now?” Luthien’s body again started to shake involuntarily. Talking for so long had given him false hope that Ozul might change his mind, but the fear of death had again taken over his body.

Listening to his words, Ozul didn’t respond for a while as he was lost in his own thoughts. Only a few moments later, he focused his attention back on him and replied, “I will.”

Luthien’s eyes instantly dulled as his eyes remained stuck on the ground. He tried to think of ways to get out of this mess, Ozul’s invisible aura was still locked onto him.

‘At least it would be painless...’ Luthien thought as it was the only silver lining in this. He could have tried to lie to Ozul, but he didn’t take a chance in fear that the latter might find out and torture him before death.

For an Emperor who led such a giant kingdom, Luthien was quite afraid of pain.

Ozul slowly took a few steps back and the Ball of Purity came out of his body.

Luthien waited for Ozul to swiftly cut off his head, but the latter actually turned the Ball of Purity into several floating blades!

It alarmed Luthien as he realized what could several blades mean, but before he could even run for his life,

“Urgh!!”

His feet and hands were sliced off and he couldn’t even see the blades move towards him!

Following that, Ozul started to cut his body into small parts with a delay of a few seconds each time!

Terrifying screams of Luthien pealed out in the forest before Ozul finally decided to end his suffering by splitting his remaining body in half.