Chapter 850: What Does It Truly Mean To Be Human? (Patreon)

Somehow, the floating man hadn’t noticed us appearing behind him yet. Instead, his attention was fully focused on the castle below while he stretched his fingers out towards the nine rings of the grey walls.

“You will be mine,” he whispered, a small smirk spreading across his face. “All mine.”

With that, he clenched his fist, yet nothing happened.

The massive golden palm that I had expected to manifest and crush everything below it didn’t appear as it was meant to. The castle was still there. The banners on its towers were still flapping in the wind without a care in the world. And down in the streets, some of the inhabitants of the city had noticed the floating figure high in the sky, a few were even running towards the gate to ring the alarm.

The smirk faded, and a frown took its place. The man looked down at his fist and brought it closer to his face to inspect it. Finding nothing wrong with it, he clenched it again, this time hard enough that the veins on his forearm bulged, but there was nothing, not even a speck of Golden Sun energy.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t let you do that.”

The man’s head snapped around, his body following, and when his eyes landed on Tomas, they narrowed into slits.

“How…,” he began, looking the boy up and down, analysing everything from the wheat-coloured hair to the bare feet. “Where did you come from? I didn’t sense you.”

Instead of answering, Tomas just floated there.

“Impossible,” the man whispered, taking a step back. “You’re standing right in front of me, but I still can’t sense you. I can’t sense anything. How? I am Rank 9. I am the pinnacle. There’s nothing in this world that is beyond my ability to sense. What…what are you?”

The one who thought himself a god was so disturbed by Tomas’s presence that he didn’t spare a glance in my direction. I didn’t blame him. After all, I was just a soul with no real power. To a Rank 9, I was insignificant. I was fine with that. In fact, I preferred it because it let me sit back and enjoy the show.

However, when I took a closer look at Tomas, I couldn’t help but feel worried. Sure, from the front he looked calm and in total control. But from the more than half a year that we had spent together, I could tell from the way he didn’t blink and the way his body was tensed that something was wrong.

Wait…was he in pain?

“Master, this is the price of being the spirit of the Golden Sun,” Azure piped up. “He no longer has the freedom he once had. The world’s will is now his will. If he tries to act on his own accord, the world will push back, and that’s the backlash you’re seeing.”

“You’re saying that the world is punishing him for stopping someone from crushing a castle?”

“It doesn't care about castles, Master. It only cares about itself.”

I didn’t like it, but I understood it.

No world would hand someone complete control over its power and let them do whatever they wanted with it. That wasn’t how things worked, certainly not in a cultivation world. Accepting the power from the world entailed accepting the responsibility that came with it, which meant that Tomas had to be impartial. The boy’s job was to fight against extraterrestrial invaders and world-ending threats.

As for this man, it seemed all he wanted to do was to rule the Two Suns World. Even though that would mean millions of people would suffer under him, that was a problem for mortals and cultivators, not for the world. It didn’t make much of a difference to it. One of its own inhabitants gaining power and using it to rule over the others was simply something that happened. The strong ruled the weak. That was the law of cultivation worlds.

But unlike the crystal, we couldn’t leave someone like this alone to do what they wanted. Yet if Tomas wanted to stop him, what was the price that he would need to pay? And more importantly, would he be capable of paying it?

“You’re asking me what I am?” Tomas called out, a smile appearing on his face. “That’s funny because I was going to ask you the same thing. Aren’t you just a corpse that refused to stay buried?”

That must have hit a nerve because the man’s face went still and his breath caught.

“I saw everything,” Tomas continued, tilting his head. “For over a thousand years, you rotted away in the dirt under a yew tree in Merameere, and there wasn't even a headstone on your grave. Do you know why? Because nobody cared enough to carve one.”

“Watch your tongue, boy—”

“You claim that Alden and the others should have listened to you,” Tomas cut him off. “But I know the truth of what happened. You weren’t brave enough to stand with them. You hid in a hole like a coward, waiting for someone else to deal with the problem. And only when everyone more powerful than you died, did you crawl out to pick up the pieces.”

Hearing these words come out of a boy that I had shared a body for the better part of a year, my eyebrows raised in shock because I had never heard him speak to anyone like this. Wasn’t this the boy who apologised to his aunt about pears? The one who panicked when he found that he would be alone when I left? And wasn’t he the one who said “I’m just a miller’s son” when he felt overwhelmed?

“The world doesn't even remember your name,” Tomas finished quietly. “Everyone remembers Alden and the thirteen. As for you, you’re not anything worth mentioning.”

That was when it clicked. Tomas’s words confirmed that he couldn’t act without paying a price, and whatever that price was, it was clearly too expensive to be paid. So instead, the boy had found a loophole, and that was self-defence. The world would have no issue with its spirit defending itself. After all, an attack on the spirit of the Golden Sun was an attack on the Golden Sun, and that was an attack on the world. That wasn’t something the world would accept, especially not after having just been attacked by otherworldly entities.

So, Tomas was betting everything on the pride of a cultivator to make the first move.

I had to admit that was a good bet because the pride of a cultivator was something that didn’t fit any logical framework.

You would expect someone that had lived for thousands of years, if not more, and had reached a power level that others could only dream of attaining, that they would retreat and gather information before making a move against a being that had stopped their attack without lifting a finger.

But from the look of anger on the man’s face, logic had gone out of the window. What he wanted was blood. And he would do whatever was in his power to get it. The city bells rang in alarm as a golden light emerged from his body that was so bright that it parted the surrounding clouds.

“You dare speak to me like this,” he hissed. “No matter how much you try to hide it, you’re nothing but a peasant compared to me. I had reached the pinnacle of cultivation when your ancestors were digging roots out of the mud with their fingers, boy.” His hand came up, and the gold light gathered into his palm. “I was going to let this city kneel as a message to those in power. But you? I have something else in mind for you.”

With that, the man thrust his palm forward, shooting a beam of pure Golden Sun energy across the sky.

I had to admit that the attack did his Rank 9 justice. It was so thick that it would be enough to cover the horizon had it not been compressed into a beam. If that thing had hit the capital, all nine rings of walls would have melted away, even if they had a Rank 8 to protect them.

But it didn’t matter how much power he had, as long as he utilised the power of one of Golden Sun, he was no threat to Tomas. The boy didn’t even need to act. All he did was stand there in the air with his arms at his sides and let the beam hit him square in the chest.

Instead of punching a hole through his chest, it entered like water sinking into soil, and for a second, Tomas glowed so brightly that even I had to look away.

The man's eyes went wide.

“Wh—”

Before he could complete the word, the golden light that made up his cultivation was forced out of him.

It poured out of his mouth, out of his eyes, and out of his fingertips and made its way to Tomas. The man clawed at his own chest, trying to hold it inside, but you couldn't hold on to something that had never truly belonged to you.

When the last thread left him, his floating body dropped, returning to its original form.

What remained was something that was closer to a skeleton than a human. The cheeks had sunken, the spine had curled, the muscles had melted away, leaving behind a bag of bones. And that proud black mane was nowhere to be seen, all that was left were strands of white, thin hair that looked like they would disintegrate in a gust of air.

“I'm sorry,” Tomas whispered, catching the body mid-fall. “But I…I had to do this.”

The old man's milky eyes stared up at him, and his grey lips moved, but whatever he tried to say never came out. His chest rose once, then twice, and then it didn't rise again. I floated down beside them, and for a while, we didn’t speak.

Below us, the city bells were still ringing, and the guards were looking up while shaking their heads, this was beyond their pay grade. My gaze turned to Tomas, and seeing the expression on his face made my chest ache.

“It doesn't get easier,” I said quietly, knowing what he was going through. “I thought it would, after the first few times, but it never did, and that’s a good thing. When it does get easy, that's when you know you're not human anymore.”

“I’m not human…not anymore.”

The despondent look in his eyes told me everything that I needed to know about him.

Sure, technically, he wasn’t human anymore.

Tomas was the spirit of a sun, and he had just absorbed the power of a Rank 9 as easily as breathing, but his eyes were red at the edges, and his bottom lip was trembling. He clearly felt the weight of what he had done. That meant something.

“You’re more human than a lot of people that I’ve met, cultivator or mortal,” I whispered. “Most would throw the body into the city without a second thought, but you went out of your way to not only catch it but apologise to someone who wanted to kill you and enslave everyone you love.” I looked him in his gold and purple eyes. “Cling to that. Whatever happens in the future, whatever the world asks of you, don’t let go of it. If you do, you will no longer be Tomas of Porvale. You will only be the spirit of a sun.”

He was quiet for a long moment, then he nodded.

“Thank you,” he said. “For everything. If you hadn’t come, there wouldn’t be a world left. There wouldn’t be a Porvale, or a Ma and Da, or anything.”

I smiled, but even I could tell it came out sad because this was it: this was the final goodbye.

A/N

Sorry guys, my ADHD tricked me once again. It makes it really difficult to estimate how long things take. I thought we would be able to finish the Two Suns World today, but I guess that will now be in Monday's chapter.

See you on Monday, have a good weekend.

As for me, I'll be resting and trying to recover from this fever that came out of nowhere. The good thing about having ADHD is that when I hyperfocus, my mind forgets that my body is ill, which is how I was able to write this chapter.

For those of you with Autism or ADHD (I have AuDHD which is a mix of them), comment below your experiences and any tips you've learned to help you deal with it. I don't want to take any medication, not a big fan of that stuff. Any advice will be greatly appreciated, thanks!

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