That night Pablo leapt through the sky like a series of comets. After a long journey, he stopped by the balcony of king Althem's bedchamber in Pleast. "I've fallen in love with someone."
"Is this how you greet your king?" Althem got up from his bed with excitement. His best friend was back after a decade with no news to be heard, now sitting on the window of his room. They talked about what had happened during each other's absence. Pablo told him about how he was chosen as a hero by Ranyu, his companion Nicol, the end of Bovorn's terror, finding his love and walking the path of a sage, everything. Althem praised the knights Pablo had trained and how flourishing their Pleast kingdom had become. "Gaius missed you, but they thrive well. Their trade routes have expanded wide to the south and east to an extent that I've spent more time welcoming foreign guests than seeing my own children." He looked tired, but happy, believing his hard work would help his people live more comfortably. Seeing his smile, Pablo was resolved. He would protect without fail. All it took was a single late night talk to fill the gap of their decade of absence.
This time, Althem bid farewell to Pablo properly. "May the light of prosperous Pleast bless you with victory." Pablo bowed to his king and disappeared into the sky in one leap.
In the colossal misty hills where the guardian of the west resided, Pablo knelt before a mythical beast with a size bigger than the hill itself. "Master white tiger, please lend me your strength." The white tiger looked at Pablo silently before letting out a long sigh. The wind from its sigh was so intense it whirled into twin hurricanes. But Pablo at the pre-sage stage did not move a millimeter. Feeling pride in his endurance, the white tiger pawed at Pablo. "Good. We shall hurry while Tianqi can still be reasoned with. I still want to converse with her once more." It grabbed and threw Pablo onto its back, then soared through the wind with clouds supporting every step it landed mid-air.
The terrain around Pablo changed faster than he could blink. In no time they had reached the hottest volcano vent of the south. Pablo jumped from the white tiger's back as it clashed with the vermillion bird in greeting. The vermillion bird spread its wings as if stretching. "Answer me, Pablo. Who's the love of your life?!" Its feathers all ignited, shining bright as the sun. Pablo inhaled for a moment before shouting, "TIANQIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" at the top of his lungs. The heat of his burning passion could even warm the vermillion bird before him. "That's hot enough for someone who loved Tianqi far later than me. Let's go, my disciple." It summoned a pillar of lava to push Pablo up onto its neck.
Flying with 2 mythical beasts, the sky was illuminated like daytime wherever they passed. Even the sunken grand palace at the bottom of the blackest ocean of the north was lit up like a giant underwater lantern. The black tortoise rose from its throne. "With birth...," a serpent wrapped around it answered, "...comes death."
Hiss.
The tortoise crawled forth towards Pablo, who knelt before the white tiger and the vermillion bird. "What exists...," the serpent coiled around Pablo,
hiss,
"...shall suffer." Then the black tortoise and the serpent exuded a dark aura that blacked out the palace. "Life..." "...is a flow of cause and effect." As Pablo finished the riddle, the pitch black atmosphere faded.
The serpent wrapped around him and placed him onto the black tortoise's shell. "Good answer."
Hiss.
"Next, show me if you truly understood it." The black tortoise crawled past the 2 other mythical beasts and out of the palace. It started to spin. Faster, faster and faster, faster and faster. The giant currents coiled up and shook the entire ocean before three streaks of water launched each of the mythical beasts straight up over the golden heavenly clouds of the east.
There, the azure dragon was waiting for Pablo's arrival. Pablo leapt off the black tortoise's shell, flying up even higher. The azure dragon soared up alongside him. They both pushed themselves higher and higher until they reached the space among the stars. The azure dragon then slapped its tail to fling Pablo onto its mountainous frame. Without a word uttered, the dragon acknowledged its strength disciple by having him ride on its back.
Upon reaching the thousand cloud-crowned mountains, hundreds of them had been crushed down to nothing. Tianqi could no longer hold back her destructive force. Pablo dropped off at the mountain foot while all the guardians of the mother earth advanced to where Tianqi was.
There, Pablo found Nicol hugging her knees, crying. "Why? We've been through everything together, we're all companions. You're a good man. Tianqi is not an evil monster either. Why does it have to be either her or the rest of us?" Nicol's eyes were reddened and swollen. Yet the tears never stopped flooding, as if crying was the only thing she had left to do. These days she had been pleading with Ranyu. A coin lover like her begging to trade her blessing of a lifetime of wealth for just a little more time for Tianqi, over and over again. Woefully, her offer couldn't even afford Tianqi another hour. The repeated rejections from Ranyu had also made Nicol raise her voice against her beloved omnia. She was desperate. Ranyu was so guilt-ridden she had not descended into her since.
Pablo knelt down and hugged Nicol from behind. "Nicol, you've always led me to the place I needed to be. This time, please trust me, for I'll bring the best outcome for us like I always have." With his comforting words, and the Gaius family emblem placed in her palm, Nicol could sense something terrible was certain to happen. But within Pablo's embrace in that moment, she still felt that whatever was going to happen after this, everything would be fine. With that, the brief exhaustion caught up with her and Nicol let out a faint goodbye as she fell unconscious.
Ranyu seized this opportunity to possess Nicol's body. She took the devil sword resting beside Nicol's shoe, unwrapped the cloth around it and handed it to Pablo. "To think this would be the last time you entrust this sword to me. I wonder when it would be the first time you thrust that sword into me? Wouldn't you regret it if you didn't win, or were so badly injured you couldn't use it?" Ranyu started to draw her finger from Pablo's muscle-packed chest down to his refined abs. "We still have time for a quick—"
Pablo couldn't hold himself back anymore. His broad hand grabbed Nicol's cheek with Ranyu feeling every bit of him pulling her close. Then Pablo swiftly gave her a barrage of finger flicks, leaving 5 stacked swellings on her forehead. "Don't you want to see her one last time?"
Ranyu rolled on the ground with Pablo's new highscore in forehead flick. She slowly answered after a brief recovery. "I can't. We've known each other for so long it's going to be too complicated to say goodbye. Tianqi would also prefer it this way."
Looking at Pablo in the eyes, she finally let out a distorted frown. A face so twisted that no amount of glow or beauty could hide the depth of sorrow she felt.
Pablo had never thought the almighty omnia could make such an ugly, mournful face. He brought his face closer to Ranyu's once again. It made her heart skip a beat. Then he lightly poked the swollen part of her forehead.
"Ouch! You meanie!" Ranyu had both hands guarding her forehead.
"Mortal pain, resentful wasn't it? Don't you worry. This time, I'll certainly end Tianqi's interminable suffering without fail." Pablo lifted Ranyu up and got them out of the thousand cloud-crowned mountains area in a few leaps. Ranyu bestowed Pablo a light spell seal. The glowing rune characters formed around his severed wrist, growing him a hand-shaped light. "Nicol invented this spell. It was able to store every ounce of my magic that your mother earth allowed through. Good luck."
Pablo nodded. As he turned back, he saw the burning and decay spreading in every direction. Pablo drew the devil sword and leapt towards the center of the damage. "Nil, I need your help."
All the time Pablo had been training under Tianqi, he had only used Nilrend as a normal training sword. They had talked and adventured together like good friends among the party. Nil had been watching Pablo the whole time. Unlike Bovorn, Pablo had never asked for her power in exchange for an adventure to satisfy her curiosity. Nil had almost come to believe that true generosity existed. Until she read Pablo's mind this time. "You're even greedier than Bovorn. But a devil won't form a pact they'd lose on. It's a good deal." Without another word, the devil sword began to emit a sinister aura. The runes on Pablo's wrist were tainted as his magical light prosthetic hand was consumed by darkness and transformed into a cursed shadowy hand. Pablo glanced at Nil's reflection inside the blade.
"What? You know I hate light... Alright, alright, how about we make it a combined gift for you?" Unable to stand Pablo's gaze, Nil readjusted her dark power to resonate with Ranyu's light in the prosthetic hand, forming a chaos purple hand packed with energy.
Pablo practiced swinging his sword with both hands a few times and arrived at the battlefield. The four mythical beasts were surrounding Tianqi. The fire vortex talons of the vermillion bird coordinated with the earth-shaking claws of the white tiger. The million thunder fangs of the azure dragon intertwined with the black tidal waves of the seven seas. All incoming attacks rendered no damage to the sage. "How adorable of you folks, trying to destroy the eschaton itself." Tianqi's eyes turned red. Her movements seemed restrained and limited. Though a mere stomp on the ground caused a sinkhole that transformed the mountainous terrain into a massive lava basin. Pablo joined in with twentyfold slashes.
Sensing the danger, Tianqi's instincts took over and let out a shockwave that pushed everyone away. Pablo raised his devil sword, signalling the four guardians to wait. He then rushed towards Tianqi, who was no longer herself. Her severed pieces now had explosive power seeping from them to pull themselves back together. Without her conscious restraint, she went berserk. Tianqi kept smashing the lava basin beneath her, generating vibrations throughout the entire continent, followed by strangely formed weather and earthquakes that shook the entire globe. Pablo got chills up his spine. At this rate, even the people of Pleast would not be safe from this fight. No one would be.
He had to make haste. Then as he approached Tianqi, something from below floated up at high speed. A blinding white pillar like a lighthouse, burning with heat that exceeded even the sun. It was a gigantic rod forged in the core of the mother earth. Pablo cut it into 2 pieces. Yet the energy was so overpowering it nearly burned him. Pablo kept cutting through the heat around him to survive. But then the burning pillars began closing in together as Tianqi clasped her hands. The rod was compressed down into a war staff in Tianqi's hands. Her body also recovered as the mysterious energy wrapped around her, turning her pitch black. "Quit your futile struggle, disciple of the sage."