Chapter 179: Sorrow’s Edge

The platinum screen expanded before Ishiki’s eyes, text materializing line by line in the dim candlelight.

Vestiges – [Aether Blade (Legendary)], [Hard Nub (Common)], [Berserker’s Effigy (Rare)], [Eye of Ruin (Epic)], [Wind’s Embrace (Epic)], [Sorrow’s Edge (Epic)]

Ishiki’s eyes narrowed as he focused on the new entry—the sixth vestige. The one he’d obtained after freeing the High Priest from his eternal torment.

’Sorrow’s Edge.’

He selected it with a mental command, and a new window materialized, overshadowing the other smaller windows.

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Vestige – Sorrow’s Edge

Type – Weapon

Rank – Epic

Adaptability – III

Description – [In a far away Kingdom ruled by a mad king… there lived a boy born with a curse woven into his very bones.

He could not die.

The king announced him as the evil Demon Lord’s Spawn. They beat him until his ribs cracked and skin split apart. But the wounds closed by the next morning.

Desperate… they drowned him in the river, buried him alive and threw him from cliffs. Still he endured and drew breath.

The boy didn’t wish for immortality, he didn’t want an undying flesh… all he wanted was release from his agony and the mercy of death.

For years he prayed to gods who wouldn’t listen. Even to gods who were corrupted… for death that wouldn’t come. His voice grew hoarse from begging as he asked for conclusion.

Please, he whispered to the empty sky every night. Please let me die.

The answer was always silence.

One night, he fled into the wilderness where no one could find him and torture him. Where no one could remind him that he was a monster wearing a boy’s face.

He wandered for days. Then weeks without a destination. He ate and drank nothing. His body withered to skin stretched over bone, but still his heart beat and death denied him.

Then he stumbled upon a battlefield.

A hero had slain a demon there—some ancient horror whose corpse lay rotting in the sun, golden blood pooling beneath it. The boy, driven mad by hunger that couldn’t kill him and thirst that wouldn’t end, crawled to the corpse.

And drank the demon’s blood. It burned as it seared his throat, boiled in his stomach.

The boy thought the end has finally come… but even the blood failed to kill the cursed flesh.

The blood transformed him. His stomach became a void that could never be filled. His hunger, already unbearable, became infinite. He devoured everything he could reach—animals, plants and humans even. His mouth became fangs. His hands turned to claws.

The boy disappeared beneath the monster. And still, he could not die.

The demon’s blood had made him more immortal. His stomach consumed all it touched, reducing matter to nothing.

He prayed again. Begged again. But even the words came out as screams.

Hunters came and fell. Heroes tried to lay him to rest.

Holy men with blessed weapons came to purify the evil. They cut him down again and again, but every time he rose back up.

Until one day the Demon Lord heard him.

The Demon Lord burned the monster that had consumed the innocent boy.

It stood in those flames and finally felt himself coming undone. He did not scream or flee.

He spread his arms wide and welcomed oblivion.

The fire consumed him completely. His flesh, bones, his cursed immortality and infinite hunger—all of it erased until not even ash remained.

Only the memory of suffering crystallized into form.

This jian is forged from that being who burned to mercy. This is the weapon of a boy who was brought to peace by the Evil.]

Abilities – Flame of Oblivion, Hunger of the Chained, Eternal Vigil

Flame of Oblivion – [The purple flames that writhe along the blade erase whatever they touch. Everything it graces ceases to exist completely, leaving no ash, no residue or even trace. Matter, energy, and even certain ethereal constructs are unmade. The flames can be suppressed or released at the wielder’s will. Anything consumed by these flames cannot be resurrected, reconstructed, or restored by any means.]

Insatiable Hunger – [The twin tassels possess an insatiable hunger born from a void that could never be filled. When the jian strikes a living target, the tassels drain its vital essence—blood, spiritual energy, or life force itself to sustain the wielder. The more desperate the wielder’s condition, the more voracious the hunger becomes. What the tassels consume partially restores the wielder’s wounds and stamina, though the sensation is neither pleasant nor clean.]

Eternal Vigil – [The blade remembers years of suffering that stretched into eternity, of a mind that begged for sleep but found only wakefulness, for rest but knew only pain. While wielding this blade, the user gains supernatural perception of their surroundings within a thirty-meter radius, detecting movement, hostility, and spatial distortions. This awareness cannot be disabled and persists even in complete darkness or under conditions that would normally blind other senses. However, prolonged use inflicts serious mental damage.]

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Ishiki stared at the description for a long moment unable to look away.

’A boy who couldn’t die. Who was tortured, burned, drowned and buried alive—and still lived. Who prayed every night for death and received nothing.’

He finally drank demon blood in desperation and became something even worse than what he had already been.

“Immortality without power is a curse,” Ishiki whispered. “What a brutal punishment.”

Then he thought about the High priest… he too was bound by golden chains that provided him unwanted immortality.

The symmetry was almost poetic.

His eyes moved to the abilities, reading each one with growing understanding. He read the first ability named – Flame of Oblivion. He read the last not twice, a little pleased with it.

“Cannot be resurrected,” he repeated slowly. “By any means.”

He then read the second ability and he was even more pleased and dreaded at the same time.

“The more desperate my condition, the more they take,” Ishiki muttered. “So if I’m dying, they’ll drain my enemies dry to keep me alive.”

He thought of the Berserker’s Effigy—the armor grew stronger as he bled. Combined with Hunger of the Chained…

“I could turn a prolonged fight into an advantage,” he realized. “The longer it goes, the more I bleed, the stronger my armor becomes and the more life I drain back. It’s a feedback loop.”

Then he read the third ability and he realized that it was more like a curse than an ability.

The boy in the story had wanted to sleep, rest and escape his curse. But his awareness had never stopped. The vigilance had been eternal, and it had driven him mad.

A weapon with incredible power. But one that would slowly erode his peace, his ability to rest and his moments of quiet.

“Nothing’s free,” he said to the empty room. “Every vestige comes with a price.”

Not wanting to wait any longer… Ishiki was abut to summon the Vestige when he had an Idea. Something that he had been looking forward to doing for a long time.

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