Chapter 302: Hagen’s Demise

Her aura calmed and she waved her hand dismissively. The anger vanished from her face, replaced by a cool, detached boredom.

“I’m not about to die with a man who has nothing to lose. You’re simply looking for a way to go out spectacularly instead of living with your failure again…” she scoffed and turned, calling out her floating disc artifact soul mass and stepping onto it.

“Till we see again, Elias,” she waved as she rose and floated into the distance.

As she did, the sounds of Elias shouting curses and promises of her death if they ever crossed paths again cut through the air.

But she didn’t react. And soon, she was but a speck in the distance, and Elias was left alone once again, his aura declining as that final burn dissipated with nowhere to vent.

“…why didn’t you kill me…” he croaked out his last words on his knees, before falling face-first to the ground, unconscious.

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Meanwhile… Some minutes earlier… Far away, past the prehistoric forest and the Stagnant Sea… On the Island of the Anaelle, something like a hearing was in session…

“Finn?” Madoc called hesitantly.

The young man was speaking just seconds ago, but he suddenly tilted his head in the direction of the Stagnant Sea and closed his eyes as if he could hear or sense something no one else could.

At first, Madoc and Osmund shared glances. They thought he was having a moment of reflection or something. But he held that position for nearly ten minutes and he hadn’t moved a muscle since then. His breathing was so shallow it was almost imperceptible, his focus clearly elsewhere.

Madoc cleared his throat again, about to call out to Finn for the umpteenth time, when Finn suddenly sighed and opened his eyes, excitement clearly written in them.

“In the end, you figured it out…” he muttered under his breath. “I wonder just how long it has been for you…” a wistful look crossed his eyes before he shook his head and turned his attention to the matter at hand.

Madoc and Osmund glanced at each other again, considering whether or not to ask Finn what that was about, but they decided against it in the end.

This was no time for such questions. The matter at hand was a serious one, and the mood was somber.

Both of them turned and faced the subject of the hearing — a large, wizened-looking Anaelle. His white fur-like hair was lackluster in color and unkempt, almost like a sick animal. His eyes were sullen, yet crazed-looking at the same time.

The Anaelle was on his knees, surrounded by Finn, Madoc, and Osmund, who stood, looking down at him with varying expressions — Madoc looked regretful, Osmund looked pained, and Finn looked entirely indifferent.

The four individuals were in a clearing… or rather, what used to be a patch of the forest on Madoc’s side of the island.

Right now it simply looked like a giant had gone on a rampage for miles in a radius around them… if that giant had a deep-set vendetta against the trees and the land itself. Deep gashes, slashes and even just deleted sections littered the surroundings for miles.

And looking at the current situation, one could guess what had happened here.

“This is your last chance, Hagen,” Finn said without a trace of any particular emotion in his voice. He was simply placid, as if speaking about something inconsequential. He stood with his arms crossed, his gaze fixed on the old Anaelle’s bowed head.

“I have no grudge with you in particular. But if you are hell bent on killing me for whatever reason, then I have no choice but to end you now,” he said. “I have a lot of things to do, and I don’t want to deal with a crazy Anaelle coming after me every single time…”

“So? What will it be?” Finn asked. And this time, everyone knew it was the last time he was asking.

Osmund clenched his jaw and stared straight at Hagen, the third space fragment bearer on their island. His eyes begged the old Anaelle to concede and stop with his nonsense. For whatever reason, from the onset he had been hell bent on making sure Finn died.

From the moment they had all seen that glimpse of the core fragment bearer’s view of Finn back in that temple in Aethelos, Hagen had developed a deep set hatred for Finn. The vision had triggered something in the depths of his soul, a primal rejection that he couldn’t explain.

Perhaps it had to do with the prophecy Madoc had spoken: of a Pioneer coming to change things dramatically — though that alone seemed a very unlikely reason on its own — or maybe, and more probably, it was simply a result of the aspects of the original fragment bearer that he got through his own fragment.

It was a fact that he, Osmund, and Hagen had developed personalities influenced by their fragment. Perhaps the original fragment bearer had known Finn’s original fragment bearer, and they had some history Hagen’s fragment was reacting to.

But Osmund didn’t really care for the reason all too much. Despite their conflicts, he still did not wish for Hagen to die needlessly. The three of them — Osmund, Madoc, and Hagen — had been on this island together for years, keeping each other in check in their various territories. He could accept Hagen dying to either him or Madoc in a conflict… but this?

“Accept his condition, Hagen!” Madoc snapped after Hagen still did not respond. He stepped forward, his voice cracking with the strain of the situation.

Finn watched as Madoc prepared to launch into another attempt to convince Hagen that he was not their enemy… so long as they also did not attack him.

But before he could begin, Finn took a step forward and spoke:

“It’s no use. His fragment is more in control than he is.”

“Please wait, Finn. I can still—”

Will…

Soul…

Phasma…

Finn began his soul purge chant anyway, stepping closer to Hagen, who began to shiver and writhe, roaring as Finn’s purge edict latched onto his soul.

Finn was literally purging him of his fragment like as if he were nothing but a chaotic soul mass.

Hagen shook and screamed. The feeling of his soul, intertwined with the fragment, was as though a hot iron had been plunged deep into him and was searing the fragment apart from him, but because of how tightly they were bound, his soul was also being purged in the process. A black mist began to leak from Hagen’s ears and mouth, the visible manifestation of his dissolving essence.

But Finn simply continued, knowing fully well what was happening. In fact, it was because he knew that he bothered to chant his soul purge edict with as many words as he was doing. At his current level, even with the limitations of this world that didn’t allow divine power, he reckoned he could still purge practically any soul mass with a single word edict.

But this was a Transcendent Fragment. He was not going to pull his punches.

Rapidly, he chanted the rest of the purge edict, focusing his intention into the purge with a firm, decisive look on his face while Madoc and Osmund watched with torn expressions. They stood like statues, unable to intervene and unwilling to look away.

Order…

Bind…

Rend Asunder…

He paused. Hagen’s screams had reached a crescendo. His cries were guttural and raw. The unique cry of a man whose soul was dying, literally burning before his body died.

The aura of the fragment in him had turned chaotic, wildly releasing turbulent spatial chaos that Finn’s “Bind” chant in the edict kept to a local area around Hagen’s soul. Tiny cracks appeared in the air around the Anaelle, but they couldn’t spread past the invisible boundary Finn had established.

Everything he raged and writhed with didn’t even shift a hair on any of the onlookers’s faces.

With a final, calm breath, Finn spoke the last edict:

Purge!

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