[Haki]
[Trait: Immortality]
Strength: 5.9
Speed: 3.1
Agility: 9.8
Defense: 11.7
Spirit: 7.2
"Continue."
***
The three years were like a blur in his mind compared to the coming years. Drowning had become all too familiar to him now. Too familiar, even.
He did it all day, and now it had become an instinctual constant, like breathing.
'It's becoming easy' He thought. 'I've been trying not to access pockets of my memory to get insights, but now that I think of it again, that's just unnecessary.'
He remembered a fact. His previous reason for keeping his memories 'locked away' was because his current mortal vessel didn't have the necessary mental faculties to handle it.
So, he decided to change the target.
'I will slowly, and with control, bombard this infantile brain with so much information from my past life/lives that its mental expansion will be inevitable.'
He swam gracefully to the bottom of the water and sat cross-legged, ensuring his spine was ramrod straight while doing so.
His hands, they interlocked each other, with his thumbs above pressing against each other, and his other fingers below, tightly interlocked. Then he brought it close to his lower belly.
He didn't know why he decided to stay in this posture, but for whatever reason, it felt right. From then on, he felt prepared for his 'not so little' experiment.
*BUZZ*
Releasing the memories was but a thought away. It wasn't as hard as he thought it would be, all he needed to do was try to remember something, so he let one fragment of his memory rise.
Then it happened.
The water around him vanished and a vast sky replaced it…
* * *
A man sat cross‑legged on a jagged peak, so high, clouds flowed below him like slow white rivers.
This mountain was called, Gulgoroth.
The man seated atop it had his tattered robe snapped in a wind that was nonexistent and his hair floated wildly about. His eyes glowed with a faint lightening blue. He took a slow and controlled breath and stared upward.
He was going to die.
And this time, there would be no mistakes. He would do it properly.
He remembered reading somewhere between funerals and forbidden sections, about a way to die…correctly.
It had stated something along the lines of;
Let 'Tribulation Lightning' kill you while you bind your own soul through alchemy.
Do it {{right}} and you {{reincarnate with everything}}
The words used for "right" and "reincarnate with everything" were strange, he didn't know the language used there, but still, strangely, he understood it.
Nobody had ever done it, as the records in the book had stated, so he decided in his heart; 'That means it's my job…'
He had a name here. Sevven. Sevven of the Severed Realms.
Throughout history, his name had made countless old beasts snort and young cultivators whisper his tales in envy. His name had also been banned in three empires and carved into the side of a moon as a wanted poster.
Up here, on Gulgoroth, he let that name sit in him one last time.
'The book mentions alchemy…' Then he thought of a certain someone, and the memory shifted…
* * *
*CLINK* *CLANK*
The scene slammed sideways into a workshop where vials glowed, books floated and a certain jar tried to turn into a mimic and got yelled at.
Runes crawled across the floor and ceiling like 'glow in the dark' centipedes.
"Meow" There was also a cat that slowly blinked…sideways.
At the center of the chaos stood Varka, the Alchemical Binder, his hair was a frizzed halo of static and poor life choices, looking like a mad scientist. His goggles had a little crack and his hands were currently elbow‑deep in something that dripped of mysterious energy.
SHIIING—
He didn't even look up when Sevven appeared in a circle of, terrifying looking, screaming goat‑skull runes.
There was no ceremony between them. "I need to die," Sevven said.
"The Lab rules made it clear, 'no self‑destructing within a thirty‑meter radius of anything I care about'" Varka replied automatically. Then as if realizing, he paused, glanced over, and squinted. "…oh. It's you."
THUD
Sevven dropped a bag on the table. It contained something called, Spirit Stones and they didn't really have a definite color, just the effect of countless shining galaxies swirling within them. It also contained uncomfortable looking grimoires, one of them read "How to !@#$%^&*()"
The words were only decipherable to someone with the right capabilities, whatever they were…
"I'm going to challenge Tribulation Lightning head‑on," Sevven said, calmly. "And I need you to keep me together when the heavens try to… delete me."
"…"
Varka stared.
"Let me get this clear, you want me to bind your soul, in the middle of heavenly judgment," he looked at him, as if a fool.
"You do realize, it's like trying to nail water to fire while someone punches you with god's hand."
"Small 'g'," Sevven corrected.
"Yeah…" Varka replied a bit awkwardly, turning back to his business.
"So? Can you do it? You're the best alchemist I know in all of the Severed Realms"
"Yeah, yeah, whatever" Varka waved him off like an annoying fly…
If an outside observer were to experience this brief conversation between Sevven and Varka, they would see only at the surface level.
Sevven ceased to exist in that spatial enclosure, and at that moment, a sweat drop came sliding down Varka's head for whatever reason…
His expression turned grave, 'I better get to work,' he thought...
Days passed and Varka finally lifted a tiny crystal vial. Inside it danced a silver liquid, pulsing with a slow and steady glow.
"This is it," he said. "An…" he shook his head. "THE Elixir of Proper Death."
"Make sure to drink it five seconds before the bolt hits. It will catch your soul as the heavens tear you apart and as a result, bind it into one unfragmented core. If I did it right, you won't come back as six ghosts and a worm." Varka said, adding an inside joke at the end.
It seemed he was talking to no one, after all, just a few days ago he had been performing alchemy and finished literally seconds ago, and now, he started talking to the air, like a mad man.
But his reply came soon in the form of a hand reaching out from empty space, grabbing the crystal vial and retreating back where it had come from.
Somewhere in the deeper layers of space, Sevven smiled the way only a man who thought all this sounded reasonable could smile, holding a crystal vial in his hands…
"Perfect," he said, while moving with incredible speed, to Gulgoroth.
He had gotten to Gulgoroth in less than the time it would have taken a mortal to blink. He sat cross-legged and changed his countenance to one of absolute graveness.
He remained like that for what may have seemed years to insignificant mortals. It seemed he was preparing himself for the moment of truth.
It came.
On this day, the sky was wrong, as clouds didn't gather, but rather, they stayed focused in one area;
Above him.
*CRACKLE* *BUZZ*
Lightning that would have seemed normal to anyone else coiled around the clouds.
'It's here,' he said. The tribulation had come.
He stood up slowly from his position with his head raised towards the sky in defiance, and his spine straight as an arrow. With one hand, he brought out the vial Varka had given him, violently uncorked it with his teeth and poured it all over his body.
BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
His body glowed with faint silver luminescence as the elixir spread through it while alchemical sigils threaded under his skin.
He raised his other hand towards the sky, then raised one finger. The middle finger.
"Come on then," he said with his eyes glowing brightly and an ear splitting grin plastered across his face "LETS DIE PROPERLY!"
CRACKLE BOOM!
The first bolt descended and there was a buzzing sound afterwards.
Everything went white.
* * *