Chapter Fifty-Five: The End

"Please! Let me die!"

When he heard these words, Ville even doubted his own hearing. This wretch, this old immortal who had spent his entire life pursuing eternal life, was now begging him for death? What a colossal joke!

Ville snorted coldly, mocking Senriwes with disdain. "If you truly wish to die, why not do it yourself?"

"Do it myself?... If I could, would I have sought you out at all..."

Though Senriwes's voice remained as grating as ever, Ville could detect a faint trace of desolation in his tone.

"From the very beginning, I believed that the key to immortality lay in the brain. I exhausted nearly all my years and finally found a way to preserve the brain from death. As for the body? Hmph, how laughable that I never considered the body would wither with time. I seamlessly merged my body with a mechanical exosuit; all the energy my body required came from energy crystals. My brain did not perish, and my body became one with the machine. Every function and movement was powered by the crystals. I was nearly half-machine, on the threshold of immortality. But after a hundred years, I realized how utterly mistaken my theory was!"

"The body inevitably withers and dies with time. Even if the physical form is perfectly fused with machinery, it's still flesh. After a hundred years, the machine remained untouched, yet my body within that armor had entirely decayed—reduced at last to a pile of useless bones..."

Though the mind endured, the limbs and body were lost; so was a great alchemist trapped in this underground fortress for over a thousand years! For him, perhaps, this was the true punishment.

"You want to die?" Ville asked Senriwes.

"Yes! I want to die!" Senriwes nearly blurted out. For more than a thousand years, he had ceaselessly thought of how to die, how he might end his existence—in other words, he had lived quite enough.

"Hmph, unfortunately, I will not be the one to kill you."

At Senriwes’s words, Ville’s face twisted into a cold sneer. "For your own perverse desires, you committed countless heinous experiments! Your sins cannot be washed clean, not even after a thousand years of imprisonment. Such punishment is but a drop in the ocean! I will not kill you. For you, living is the harshest punishment of all!"

"No!" Senriwes roared at Ville, nearly screaming, "You can't do this to me! Let me die! Let me die! If you let me die, I’ll give you this entire underground fortress. Truly, I will keep my word!"

"Hmph, don’t you find that laughable? This fortress no longer belongs to you. If I wish, I could take it at any moment."

Ville sneered, his tone icy as he spoke to Senriwes.

"Wait! I have more! I have more! As long as you agree, I can give you a two-hundred-year-old Golden Flame Emerald Grass. As a mage, you must know the value of such a plant..."

A two-hundred-year-old Golden Flame Emerald Grass?! At these words, Ville’s heart gave a sudden jolt. He knew well enough the value such a thing possessed. If anyone else had offered this, Ville would have agreed at once. But coming from Senriwes, all he felt was loathing—no temptation, no matter how great, could move him.

"I can also give you a manual of martial techniques designed for mages. You know as well as I do—no matter how mighty a mage, their greatest flaw is always physical training..."

Before Ville could respond, Senriwes threw out yet another enticing offer.

"These things I could find for myself, given time... Senriwes, cease these pointless efforts. Accept your fate!"

"No! I don’t believe it! Everything here is still within my grasp!"

Senriwes shrieked in madness. Suddenly, Ville heard a thunderous crash behind him. The headless mechanical exosuit shot out its hand, seizing Ville in a vice-like grip. Ville had no doubt that, with but a command, Senriwes could crush him to a pulp.

"No, Senriwes. Nothing here is under your control. Since a thousand years ago, you have wielded no power over this place. Now, you are nothing but a pitiful wretch, unable to control even your own actions or your own death!"

Ville felt his bones on the verge of being crushed, but he stifled any cry of pain, gritting his teeth as he continued, "Don’t bother threatening me; such tricks are useless. Kill me—and who will end your sins? This fortress lies three hundred meters below the surface; even if someone fell from above and survived, they’d only become lost and meet their end in the labyrinth's traps. Most importantly, Senriwes, do you have the patience to wait for another person to arrive here, as whole as I am, to end your wickedness? Let me think: from the day you were trapped until now, how long has it been? Ten years? Twenty? Two hundred? Five hundred? Oh, yes—one thousand, three hundred and fifty years, six months, and seven days! What a long, long wait, Senriwes. Do you have the patience for that again?"

"No! Even without you, I can still—look, I can control this exosuit. I can command it to end my life!"

Senriwes was making his final desperate struggle, yet even he failed to notice how his voice was growing fainter—his last vestiges of power slipping into Ville’s hands.

"If you could have, you would have done so a millennium ago. Why wait until now? Senriwes, stop deceiving yourself!"

At that moment, Senriwes felt as if this youth was a demon from the depths of hell. After a long silence, the exosuit that held Ville finally released its grip.

"Let me die... I only wish to die... I know I was wrong... Let me accept death as my punishment..."

In an instant, Senriwes seemed dazed, murmuring the same words over and over.

"Truly, death is nothing to fear. I only wish to die..."

"Let me die. I deserve death. Living only makes me loathsome..."

"I have lived long enough. I want death. My existence now is meaningless. Every day, I face those corpses—my students, my assistants... Did you know, in one of those crystal tubes lies the body of my beloved..."

Senriwes seemed lost in endless memories, slowly recounting his story—his kin, his lovers, his friends, mentors, students, assistants...

Only now did Ville fully realize that this man, famed as the Father of Alchemy, was truly nothing but a pitiful wretch unworthy of pity.

Without a word, Ville turned away, ready to leave.

"Wait, can you tell me your name?" Senriwes suddenly called out.

"Ville Cyathea... What, do you plan to curse me for the rest of your days?" Ville replied coolly.

"No, may I ask you for one favor, Mr. Ville...?"

"Hmm?" Ville raised an eyebrow. "You want me to kill you after all?"

"No, not that... Could I ask you to bury all these corpses? I do not seek atonement. But after a thousand years, I have realized that, at the very least, I cannot leave the dead as test subjects, preserved in crystal tubes..."

"Is it only guilt that drives you?"

"No—it is for the sake of life itself."

Hearing these words, Ville sneered in contempt. He did not believe Senriwes had truly grasped the value of life. Ville even suspected this was another attempt to provoke him. Still, whatever the case, Ville finally walked up to that pitch-black exosuit and asked, "Tell me—how can I help you end this, once and for all?"