Chương 55: Chapter 52: Lasting Decision

Managing to cast two spells of elements he didn't have proficiency with was met with the adequate rewards. Both Void and Light had progressed in their assimilation by 5%, and even though he hadn't been trying with the latter Alignment, Light now sat at more than a quarter of the total progress. However, the same could be said about Void as it lingered only a single percentage point behind.

Nolotl's head started to get a bit dizzy as his words continued to come out of his mouth, all the previous practice now weighing down on him even when Healing Word was actively working counteracting his exhaustion. Overjoyed by his success, the diviner knew when to stop and put an end to his performance. It certainly wasn't a superb one, but he still bowed down with a singer's reverence. The ethereal instruments played one last note before becoming silent but the motes lingered behind.

This time around, however, there had been both Void and Light motes with his dual spell. The latter ones had focused on his hand at had been the wounded target, but they had been present. With a single song, he had been able to invoke two elements that he didn't have that much affinity with. His ears that had only met instrumental music until now were now caressed by a slow applause. Roxina's visage said it all, no matter what slight had happened before, she was still glad to see the diviner's success.

"Thank you, thank you," Nolotl responded like a true performer, a smile forming in his face. He truly had hated wounding Roxina like that, so that applause was one of the best gifts he could have asked for. A true reconciliation. Perhaps it wasn't a perfect one and wounds would linger but… No, they won't linger. Nolotl softly bit his lower lip. I… hated all of this. But I would prefer if these bitter emotions still lingered and didn't remain as forgotten memories. This loop business is… soul-crushing.

All that shared emotions, no matter if it had been negative or not, gone with the wind.

"Well, color me impressed," Roxina said, unbeknownst to the dilemma inside the Interlooper's mind.

"Not only you've managed to cast a spell that you have absolutely no proficiencies or affinity with in less than a month, but you have then gone and stacked another one on top of that!"

"That last one is only possible because you suggested it and accommodated the psalms for me to do it," Nolotl responded with grateful deference.

"Nothing much really," the photomancer slapped him on the back.

"But having said that, classes are officially over now, so better start paying for the hylomorphism."

"Sure, how much is it?" The gnosiamancer reached for the coins in his satchel.

"Three draconium pieces." Nolotl frowned at those words. The air barrier, the hylomorphism for Second Mind, and the cognitive siphons he had used on the second loop all together had only been two pieces. And most of that was to compensate for the gold that the materials required.

"The numbers aren't lining up," he remarked.

"Hazard costs and compensation for the time lost preparing molds for those mines," she answered unapologetically. A stray thought passed through his mind about her faking the whole ordeal just to inflate the price. No, I don't think she has that type of malice in her heart. A more logical part of his mind argued. … Or at least I hope she doesn't.

However it might be, Nolotl really didn't want to talk about the subject ever again so he just paid as the Tezlan gold that Chichihualxo-chitl gifted him whenever he sent the letter was welcome in Origin. Not only was it purer and more potent, but it was virgin most of the time, unlike the used gold of the old world. Most Tezlan or Cahtuli rituals didn't use gold, after all, but rather crystals or gemstones. The moment he placed the coins on her open palm, Roxina started glowing.

Her Caretaker of Creation starter Boon transformed that income into experience and she hit the max level in photomancy, unlocking yet again her capstone Boon. That brought a massive, pearly smile to Roxina's visage, one that warmed Nolotl's heart and made him forget about everything that had transpired these last weeks.

"Ah, if Light only allowed me to stay always at this level," Roxina opened and closed her hand, delighting on the power of a new level. Though it was rather common knowledge that photomancers didn't get as much of a high when they leveled up if they had reached that level priorly.

"Glad being of service," Nolotl nodded with a smile. Yes, these last weeks have been a bit awful as both of them failed to communicate properly, but now all of that was over and resolved. Only the total celestial alignment awaited. As always. Now, three weeks was a lot of time. To learn a first-tier spell you had no affinity and proficiency for? Not much, really. To build several mines to bobby-trap an established location? That was a considerable amount of time.

Nolotl was truly banking in his growing enchanting skills and the quantity of the mines to resolve this ambush. But his paranoia wouldn't allow him to stay still with only doing that. Having successfully learnt Ode to Silence —even if he still needed a lot of practice—meant that now his concentration slot was free. One would think that he could and should only prepare his spot for the coming stellar arrangement the very same day of the event, but that was a fallacy.

Nothing stopped him from doing some prior preparations. Climbing Mount Empyrean was a daunting and tiring task, especially for his current exhausted self after those couple of weeks of self-loathing. But Simulacrums didn't tire. Nolotl performed his most bizarre adventure up to date as he climbed the Mount Empyrean with his own mind.

A Simulacrum was a feeble cognitive construct and any damage could easily wipe it out, but prior tests had shown that the divination could withstand winds with relative ease, no matter if they were as strong as those of the mount's summit. So with a backpack and a dream, Nolotl's Simulacrum climbed the mountain where the academy was located.

He carried the backpack with telekinesis, which consumed a lot of his mana as it was heavy and the journey was long, but a Simulacrum could rest anywhere and didn't need to eat or drink, so Nolotl could just leave it stranded for hours on end as he regenerated his mana back in the comfort of the Information Tower. The backpack contained some basic ritual supplies, some mines, mining equipment, and most importantly, the Simulacrum's hylomorphism.

Whilst he couldn't resummon the divination at a distance as its physical component was no longer placed at the cognitive lighthouse that was the Information Tower, Nolotl had his reasons to have the enchanted wooden tablet up at Mount Empyrean. After a handful of days of slow climbing limited by his mana, the Simulacrum reached the usual ritual spot and didn't dally on prospecting the place. Nolotl needed the place to be both immaculate and infallible.

Not only couldn't the ambushers detect the counter-ambush, but neither could they survive it or he would die. With the ritual supplies, he set up several counter-divinations so the traps couldn't be spotted at a distance. They were crude and basic, but the diviner banked most of his fate on the fact that the legion of warriors wouldn't expect a counterattack of such scale.

Whilst Nolotl wasn't sure if the Cahtuli ambusher would follow the script of the first loop to the letter, a doubt that was more than valid as there wouldn't be an Enala present with him this time around, he still used his Perfect Recollection to recall the spots of warrior and trap those locations. Counter and anti-divinations. Mana-siphon mines. Computation-siphon mines. Vitality-siphon mines. What the terian intended to do was nothing short of a war crime, and he didn't want it any less because of it.

Such was a powerful and indiscriminate attack that would also hurt him, but he tried to set up as many spellcircles on the terrain and the mines the Simulacrum had at hand so they didn't target him. Unfortunately for the ones he was producing with his real body, he really didn't have the time to be as selective. The real Nolotl was always occupied and it was only the Simulacrum that could afford to 'waste' time.

The original blueprints that he gave Roxina featured the fuses he had developed after reading Goldsmithing Stars, but with these ones, he removed that feature. The mines lived up to the their name before as they also had a concussive factor, but now they were glorified resource siphons. Resource siphons with very limited storing capacity. The day of the gathering of empyreans came, and unlike the last time that it was somewhat eventful, this time around was closer to the original script with only two changes.

First and the most obvious, it was Paizon's arrival. He arrived before Clonazepam this time around, which lowered the aggression that Nina directed towards him, but that was it. As for the last change, it was a soft and wry smile from Roxina's part directed at Nolotl.

Those kinds of outburst couldn't be easily forgotten even if they were resolved, but most importantly, Nolotl had it clear in his mind that the photomancer constantly remembered it because she knew something would happen two days from now at the day of the alignment. It was hard to know for sure without Lesser Read Thoughts, but Roxina had showed that she viewed murder badly, no matter if it was self-defense. Whether it was a cultural thing from Tamor or a personal viewpoint, he couldn't tell.

Though he was willing to side with her as there wouldn't be much margin for self-defense this time around. The gathering finished as usual with Enantyum vanishing the instant it was done and no one stopped Nolotl on this coil as the only Empyrean with whom he had interacted with would prefer to leave him alone for a while. The Empyrean of Information spent his last two days on this loop reading and readying the Confluence of the Four Dimensions.

Perhaps he had the adequate Alignment, an event of cosmological proportions to aid him, a solid hylomorphism that would take most of the brunt of the ritual, but still, it was a fourth-tier he had learned of its existence barely eight weeks ago. That couldn't be understated nor underestimated. Though he still studied about other Alignment-boosting rituals. Even after all this time, he hadn't decided if he should try to reset his progress by dropping below 75% Alignment with Information.

There were too many unknowns so he was still pondering and simmering in his indecision. The one saving grace was that he doubted his indecision could prove to be lethal as all of his other Alignments were so pathetically low that the simplest of Alignment-boosting rituals were bound to give him a whole percentage point thanks to the total celestial alignment. That was what had led him to this, after all. Just peering into Beta's failed ninth-tier spell had brought him a 1% Alignment with Void.

However it might be, Nolotl took off into Mount Empyrean the morning of the day of the total celestial alignment. He was loaded with more resources than ever before, which weighed him down as his backpack was on the verge of exploding. And yet, exhaustion was hard to come by. Perhaps the song that came out of his lips was a rather depressing and dull one, but his ethereal music refused to make him as exhausted as nature should dictate.

Silence, instruments, and motes of devouring and radiating existence accompanied him. Still, he sang on a low tone as he was the only listener and he didn't want to become aphonic before the ritual. Ode to Silence wasn't that useful to him now—though it allowed him to hear his own thoughts as it also silenced the howling winds of the mount—but there was an advantage to using the modified psalm for Healing Word. A song only ended when the singer stopped, after all.

Nolotl dared to call this creation Ode to Healing Silence, even if the classification meant nothing as there wasn't really an intrinsic connection between the two spells and this was just a casual soft synergy. Though the akyromancy's nature as a sonomancy reduced the mana cost of the restoration spell, which meant that, technically speaking, Ode to Healing Silence was a more mana-efficient spell than the plain Healing Word.

But it had the clear restriction of needing concentration and the song didn't instantly start healing like the usual psalms, instead needing to first catch some rhythm and the resulting effect was a lingering one. But it was quite useful for long and tiring marches. After all, what was exhaustion but muscular damage? Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

Even though he was constantly singing, half naked at temperatures way below zero, and he had around thirty kilograms of equipment on his bag, Nolotl had managed to ascend the four remaining kilometers of Mount Empyrean in four and a half hours. A new record. Between his lesser rate of exhaustion and a tried and true route with Dijkstra's Routing, Nolotl was getting rather competent at mountaineering.

Just imagine if my physique was conserved between loops, he joked to himself in the compromised sanctity of his mind. Once he finally set the heavy backpack down, the diviner finally let the song die. Perhaps it was due to his long performance, but the motes of elemental power lingered longer than usual.

"One hour and twenty-three minutes for the start of the partial celestial alignment," he cracked his neck.

"Time to get started."

"I don't suppose we can't talk this out," Nolotl used the same starting line as the first loop when the legion of soldiers approached him.

"No," Yaxkin scornfully denied.

"The stars have spoken, and if you survive this day, our country will come to an end."

"I understand that," the diviner calmly moved his spear around as he stood inside of the air barrier.

"But couldn't we resolve this with a duel? You know, our own private floral war?" He suggested. Unlike the first time around, he didn't have a companion and he was already in his true terian form, but those changes didn't seem to arouse any notable changes in the gathering of ambushers. Surprisingly, that comment was met with scorn as Yaxkin planted his macuahuitl head on the ground.

"Such was my proposal, but the risks were considered to high to allow it. For that I must apologize." Not quite Tezlan in nature, the Cahtuli still led a knee to the ground in an apologetic bow.

"Hmm, I must say I'm glad that my would-be-murderers are polite," Nolotl responded with a smile loaded with hate as his mind perfectly recalled how these savages had turned his body into a pile of gore.

"Any last words?" The towering warrior stood up and raised his macuahuitl as the rest of his entourage readied for combat.

"Oh, yes," Nolotl Xocoyotzin smiled, his reaction not one would expect of a dead man as he boasted his iridescent wings.

"You've been played." And the twiceborn disappeared from existence. The entourage of warriors looked between in confusion as their target vanished without a trace, but before they even had the chance to vocalize their surprise, an oppressive silence befell upon them.

"Pray together in a time of need, if not all together we will bleed~" The voice of the true Nolotl sang melodiously over all the ambushers from a salient. Several spotted him but they had no way to communicate that with their allies, so they relied on poking and pointing out with their fingers. But that was only the deal with the pure biomancers as the neuromancers in their ranks tried to establish mental communications. Emphasis on tried.

Suddenly, the mental power of a dozen people was siphoned into the ground, which induced a powerful nausea upon them. A quick-headed biomancer threw his spear at Nolotl, but he had seemed to infuse the gesture with his tonalli and the warrior certainly didn't expect that the ground would also siphon his vitality. Still, a thrown spear was a dangerous notion, so Nolotl was forced to dodge to the side.

The gesture finally indicated the start of the partial celestial alignment as the world submerged into darkness with the total eclipse that preceded the nine seconds of glory. Perhaps it was a lengthy eclipse that brought forth a powerful darkness, but for these terians and biomancers it was only limited visibility and not total darkness. Which only played on Nolotl's favor as he continued with his song.

It took a handful of seconds, but someone finally cast a real spell instead of meagre cantrips and the fun finally began. Perhaps it wasn't the total alignment just yet, but everyone's power was increased by a solid degree under these auspicious heavens, so of course they overloaded the mines with their power. That single activation wasn't a forewarn of what was to come, but the very wick that lit the chain reaction that followed.

In a ripple of cosmic power, the siphoning mines exploded, no longer able to contain the power of the thirty-seven mages. It was truly a stunning spectacle full of color, though it was a bit underwhelming that the explosions weren't accompanied by their bombastic noises due to Ode to Healing Silence. Nolotl was satisfied that at least they had some accompanying music, even if it was a bit dreary.

Alas, he had the feeling that wouldn't be enough, so he slowly descended on the blown ambushers using his wings as gliders. They didn't do that much of a good job as he was far too heavy to fly and his spear already was hefty, but they mitigated most of the brunt of the fall.

A massive dust cloud lingered in the ritual spot due to the explosive, but Nolotl had no issues whatsoever to guide himself as he boasted both Dijkstra's Routing and his Starguided Blessing, now thrumming at near-maximum power beneath the cosmic mantle. Many ambushers had survived—mostly biomancers—but they were on the ground silently groaning and rolling in pain. Quite the perfect spot and position for an execution.

With all the pain and dust, the biomancers didn't see their death coming as Nolotl stabbed them on the heart. He found little resistance in his executions, the mines had already siphoned a substantial amount of vitality, transforming their source of durability into their execution, and then what they had left over was used to keep them alive. Warriors deprived of their life-fire were as vulnerable as mages without mana.

Nolotl could only feel an arousing excitement as he extinguished the flames of the ambushers with his own hands. If anything, he felt like he was being lenient and merciful compared to the fate that would have awaited him if he hadn't readied all of these traps. And yet, something was wrong. Where's Yaxkin? Nolotl had counted thirty-six deaths, which aligned with the numbers of minds he had felt during the enhanced ambush of the first loop, but the original ambusher was nowhere to be found.

As the dust started to settle and the time for the nine seconds of power rapidly approached, Nolotl stopped singing and instead switched for another spell that required his concentration. It had been a while since he had used Vacuous Filtration, but between the fact that it was first-tier spell and a divination, the Empyrean didn't have difficulties casting it. Immediately, he noticed that something was wrong as there was a vacuous presence nearby, and it wasn't the motes of Void that still lingered from his song.

Yaxkin and the akyromancer are still here, Nolotl strengthened the grip on his tepoztopilli with renewed presence of mind. It makes sense that I don't remember the akyromancer's mind from the first loop as I hadn't learned Vacuous Filtration yet, but this is problematic. Perhaps Yaxkin wasn't as dangerous as an all-out Azithromycin, but Nolotl wasn't exactly fresh. Ramming a spear with enough force to kill a biomancer might seem like a freebie to an outside observer, but it took a lot of stamina and force.

Enough that his song didn't compensate for it. Between the spellcircles that connected the mines, the song, and the cost of the Simulacrum and the illusions of his Quetzal Wings so it didn't look cyan, Nolotl was reaching the bottom of his stamina and mana. Even if I succeed with this counter-ambush, this is far from the optimal solution. Not only had he spent countless manhours building mines that he could have focused on growing himself, but it was still not a guaranteed success. Not yet at least.

The dust and the total eclipse made visibility almost non-existent, but the fact that Nolotl couldn't sense the two remaining ambushers meant that they weren't in the range of his Starguided Blessing. The Blessing was quite literal with him only being aware of his surroundings, and the range was far from enough to even be considered limited omniscience. They aren't going to come out, he realized once the dust had cleared enough to not be much of a nuisance. Change of plans then.

"Ugh, that has been a nuisance. Fortunately, they were so stupid as to think they could catch a diviner with divinations," Nolotl spook to himself aloud with confidence of his victory and slowly made his way back to the upper salient where he had been nesting all this time. Technically speaking, the spot was ever-so-slightly worse than the one he had on the cliff's edge, but that minute difference was negligible. Way within the tolerance of his rituals and fuses.

With his actions, the akyromancer finally started moving. He was covered in Voidform so the gnosiamancer couldn't pinpoint an accurate position, only that they existed. Vacuous Filtration was such a meager spell that it only worked for that and also informing him a bit faster whenever the assassin left its vacuous form. Only a single minute remained for the total celestial alignment, so he had to be fast with the preparations.

Confluence of the Four Dimensions was a powerful enchantment that made used of lots of spell requirements, so everything had to be in place and ready. Once he was sure the akyromancer was looking at him, Nolotl unleashed a blinding cantrip at maximum potency with his Quetzal Wings. Magic was all about using the right spell at the right time, and sometimes a cantrip could be way more useful than a ninth-tier spell. The cantrip unsettled the assassin, but he still remained hidden.

Not that it mattered because Yaxkin had been the target.

"Ugh!" The towering warrior groaned upon being blinded.

"So there you are…" A calm prince said whilst sat in the ritual spot.

"Do you know comprehend how foolish you have been, Yaxkin of Cahtul?" The words unsettled the biomancer, but he recovered quickly.

"This only renewed my faith. If you've managed to stop such a powerful offensive in your lonesome, then the future is grim for us. I can only fear for the world on what will happen if you complete your foul ritual today. For the future of Cahtul, I must kill you, Nolotl Xocoyotzin! Even if it costs my life!" Yaxkin charged at him with the mindlessness of a cornered beast, swinging down his macuahuitl on a calm Nolotl.

Unfortunately for the brute biomancer, the sword-club went right through the gnosiamancer and it turned into mist, the obsidian blades shattering on the ground as they had failed to meet flesh. The Cahtuli warrior's eyes opened wide in surprise, but yet again, he hadn't been Nolotl's target.

Using the valuable seconds of conversation, Nolotl had managed to triangulate the akyromancer's position as he remained static in its nonexistence and the twiceborn stabbed his spears in the air, his quetzal-assisted invisibility clearing with the brutal motion. It was a pathetic optical cloak that it could be easily spotted, but that was only true if you hadn't been exploded recently and there wasn't a total eclipse obscuring the surroundings by a considerable degree.

It was the perfect balance and the utmost minimal denominator of stealth and timing. Now, the akyromancer was using Voidform, which granted a certain degree of intangibility beyond its invisibility, so he should be unharmed even if he should be right there. But Nolotl had a way to deal with that.

"Oh, my holy Light, aid me in this moment of necessity and wane my ails!" The chanting of the psalm made it so Yaxkin noticed his real body, but that didn't matter as his Healing Word affected its target. An interesting interaction took place at that moment. The akyromancer, whilst clearly related to the Void, wasn't a creature purely composed of its inexistent nature; yet that changed with Voidform. Healing Word didn't quite harm creatures antithetical to Light, but that exhaustion effect was all he needed.

Just for a measly fraction of a second, the akyromancer's nihilistic state wavered. It was just a fraction of existence, but that was enough for the assassin to be impaled by a spear that actively drained resources, the lead poisoning him and the obsidian shattering inside his body.

"Arghhhh!" The akyromancer shouted loudly and collapsed on the ground now finding himself with a spear in his chest, unable to return to the Voidform with all the pain he was feeling. But something was odd to Nolotl. Wasn't that scream too loud? The diviner looked around and found Yaxkin in the ritual spot clutching his chest, also down on the ground. Nolotl's gaze rapidly jumped between the two prone men.

"I see, I see!" The Empyrean of Information led a hand to his head and laughed bestially.

"That's why you were so weak, Yaxkin! You aren't a biomancer, you've been an akyromancer all this time!" Nolotl couldn't exactly understand what had led the warrior to this point or how the procedure even occurred, but his eyes and intelligence made quick work of the truth. The 'Yaxkin' he knew was a puppet and the real one was the vacuous assassin that teleported the actual fighters.

"That's why you kept yourself to the sidelines all this time, huh? You were controlling a puppet so you couldn't fight!" Nolotl mused to the akyromancer, but he wasn't listening to him, the pain of being impaled far too great.

"Oh well." The twiceborn pressed his foot against the true Yaxkin's head, and the fake one raised his hands to his head even if the real one was only writhing on the ground. Without hesitation and only savage pleasure in his eyes, Nolotl raised his leg his foot a bit, only to plummet it down with all his strength. The moment the akyromancer's cranium exploded, the fake biomancer went limp; the gnosiamancer calmly walked towards the corpse of the towering impostor and rolled the body to the side with his foot.

Even though Nolotl hadn't touch him, the fake Yaxkin's body was veritably dead. A small rivet of blood poured out of his nose to confirm that.

"How curious that the damage isn't shared between the two, but if I kill the original the copy just dies without even being wounded." The same could be said about his Simulacrum but the comparison didn't feel fair. One was a spell whilst what he was seeing with the Cahtuli was something more. Something else.

"A question for later down the line. Once he's alive and maybe once I also have that abjuration spell proficiency." Nolotl fixed the minimal damage Yaxkin had made on the ritual site as he had been wise enough to place the Simulacrum on a spot that wouldn't be too disruptive. Two Simulacrum casts, one Ode to Healing Silence, one Vacuous Filtration, and finally, one Healing Word. Only five casts—technically six—but his mana reserves were already tethering next to inexistence with the amount he had used.

It also didn't help that he had used several illusions to masquerade the Simulacrum and hide himself for this last bout. If it weren't because rituals didn't consume much resources—or more correctly, the total celestial alignment reduced by a lot what they needed—this loop would have been a failure. Though that raised a question.

"Should I even perform the Confluence of the Four Dimensions?" Nolotl told himself as he stood sat in the middle of a massive spellcircle, several quartz, glass, and golden pieces placed around him in specific orbits that were reminiscent of an atomic model.

"The Ehecatl has shown in this loop that it can be problematic, so perhaps it should be better to test it…" You have failed to resist Fear. Something went utterly wrong. His mind was assaulted by a preternatural fear, a primordial terror that didn't paralyze him, but instead made him act mindlessly as he started casting the ritual in a hurry. What if going 75% Alignment doesn't do anything? What if it expels me out of the loop? What if it works but Enantyum finds out? What if…

Many thoughts echoed in his mind as his cultivated paranoia was turned against him, but even then, a thought screamed far louder than the others. Your Sanity is taking a toll. If my whole status gets reverted, what happens with the Ehecatl? They are a cognitive and atemporal being bound to me, so without the Second Mind, what mind will host it? That thought was far more terrifying to him than simply getting expelled from the loop and virtually dying.

For the infinitesimal possibility that the Ehecatl substituted him existed. Before his lucidity came back, Nolotl had already completed the ritual. All the hand gestures, all the words of power, all the resources. Everything was ready, so the moment the first of the nine seconds of glory arrived, a notification was received by his eyes and ears. Confluence of the Four Dimensions has been assimilated. Information Alignment increased by 0. 99858%. Level progressed by 4%.

Confluence of the Four Dimensions now impedes your Information Alignment from going below 4%. For a moment Nolotl doubted why his Information Alignment hadn't increased by the promised 4%, but he realized that value was considering no prior Alignment with it. But as his Information Alignment was so high, there were considerable diminishing returns. And apparently, the curve was getting rather rough now. You are clear of Fear.

That notification was met with a refreshing mental clarity as Nolotl blinked several times, his mind finally his own.

"I will eradicate you, Ehecatl!" Nolotl swore as he peered into the supermassive black hole that was seeping through several planets, stars, and satellites, not caring that the light burned his retinas. You're welcome to try, the cognitive parasite giggled with both his voice and that awful motherly tone. But you cannot say that logic was wrong. The diviner couldn't care about logic, only about this lasting decision as he lost his only real window of opportunity to reset his status. If it had even been possible.

What mattered was that the interloper had managed to afflict him with a status effect. Perhaps it wasn't able to control his mind, but being able to guide it to specific schools of thought was problematic enough. With the vision of perfect order illuminating the skies, Nolotl's time in this coil came to an end, his visage tarnished in an animalistic scowled as he promised himself to extirpate this tumor one day.