Pablo would have been vaporized in the making of the war staff. In his critical state, Pablo saw lines of force pulling the sun-hot rod together. He cut them to break free and cut a way out. Not only that, his vision was now tangled with lines of force he had never seen before.
The four mythical beasts witnessing Pablo simultaneously from afar bowed before him. "Paying respects to sage Pablo."
Pablo's skin glowed faintly. His body felt lighter than air yet he felt the presence of lives around him stronger than ever. "By chance and fate, I am richly rewarded!" Nil danced around in the reflection of the devil sword out of exhilaration.
Now Pablo could truly feel the extent of power the eschaton had built, feeding on Tianqi's inner energy cultivated from the 7 other eschatons she had defeated. He flew higher into the sky and cut the atmosphere apart, sucking the eschaton up into space. "Your level's too much for us to fight on the mother earth." As Pablo spoke, he saw the eschaton swing the war staff to get a foothold. He soared down to cut those impacts away but one got past him and carved a long crushing streak that could be seen from space. Pablo couldn't stand any more destruction. He cut through space over and over, creating a cluster of voids that pulled the eschaton from every direction.
This should have stalled even a star within it for a while. The eschaton was caged inside. Mindless smashing and attacking had no effect. Until it found a weaker void spot at the top and finally unleashed its full power. The blast radiated out as far as the horizon.
After the explosion faded, the eschaton was faced with the flat of the blade held in both of Pablo's hands. He struck the eschaton with a blunt hit back down into the earth. As the eschaton and Pablo fell together and entered the deepest deserted vale, the magic runes carved on every inch of the cliffs around the place all lit up. The activated cliffs formed a closure, turning the place into a sealed cave with no opening. There, the guardians of the mother earth were already standing by in their positions. The azure dragon in the east, the vermillion bird in the south, the white tiger in the west and the black tortoise in the north.
"What is this frail feeling. What did you do to me?" The only reason the eschaton couldn't break free was the draining ability gained from the devil's pact Pablo had made with Nil. "Something that cost me about 2 thousand years of my lifespan." Pablo said with a smile. Before the eschaton could recover, Pablo kept draining the destructive force out of it. Even with only enough power to destroy half a planet seeping into him, the pain was so excruciating that his transcended sage body nearly passed out right away.
"Ughh!!"
Pablo was about to fall to his knee, but a hand pulled him up. "I should have added a few more regimens to your endurance training." That amount of force taken away was more than enough for Tianqi to regain her consciousness.
The first thing she sensed was the overall damage to the life force of the mother earth. With a sympathy crushing her heart, Tianqi squinted against the feeling before casting the highest form of binding magic to restrain herself. The endless magic circles of every color interlocked and tightened as pure magic chains constricted her along with every inner energy gate. "End me." She looked at Pablo. Pablo would have liked to joke about buying her about 200 more years, but he couldn't even think straight with a part of the eschaton's power inside him.
Pablo gritted his teeth, trying to cut Tianqi. Though he knew he couldn't do it. Tianqi urged him to hurry so Pablo finally gave in. He signalled his four other masters and they all nodded. Pablo pointed the devil sword at Tianqi and cast a devil's sealing magic. Tianqi was shocked. "What are you doing?!! Stop that right away!" She knew what Pablo was going to do. She struggled to break free, but the binding magic she had cast on herself was so strong she couldn't do anything. "Guardians of the East!!" "Guardians of the West!!!" Tianqi called out for the azure dragon and the white tiger, but they were looking at her with compassionate eyes. "The North!..., even you too? The southern guardian?" Every mythical beast and Pablo absorbed the power of the eschatons from Tianqi all at once.
The incoming force that could have wiped the mother earth out of existence 7 times coursed through every nook and cranny of them. Even the guardians who feared no death couldn't stand the agony for long. Pablo lost consciousness and was awakened by the pain again and again until he couldn't count how much time had passed. But then he started to notice his skin turning dull and his hair turning white. He didn't know how much of his lifespan was being consumed but the incoming power seemed to have no end.
All four guardians were roaring and writhing in pain, their eyes turning red, on the verge of going berserk as well. "Stop it! Pablo! I said stop!!" Tianqi kept pleading with Pablo to quit the blasphemous act that would corrupt the four guardians of the mother earth.
Now that he knew a fraction of the pain Tianqi had been enduring, he was jealous. But he also respected Tianqi and the one who had made her gather this much patient resolve to hold on for so long. "He must have been someone great. Maybe I should thank him for making you wait long enough for us to have met." Pablo felt his physical body reaching its limit. "Ten thousands? Hundreds of thousands? I don't know how many years of my life this has cost. But I've had just a decade with you while you've been thinking about someone else for 3 millennia. That's cheating. How can I have a chance when I've only had this much time?"
"Quit your nonsense! You're going to die! Cut it out right now!!" Tianqi knew it was pointless to draw out the destructive power no one could hold. The end of the world was fated to come. It was undeniable.
"Cutting you down, the next cycle is going to come anyway. I didn't think hard enough about whether Pleast kingdom would still exist in the next 400 years. But I also can't stand watching you live in this pain any longer. You deserve a love that rewards your dedication. If the omnia alone can't give you that, I'm going to beg the devil to do it for you." Pablo was frail but determined. As he sang an unintelligible song, Nil chimed in.
With most of the destructive force drawn out into Pablo and the four guardians, they were lulled to an eternal slumber, burying all that destructive power along with them. Tianqi was appalled. "Pablo, you fool..." Tears started to fall from her deep ocean-blue eyes. "This much of a feat, what did it cost you?... What did you give?" She might not have seen him as a man. But as her first disciple, the love she gave him was nowhere near lacking. The joy and the people he brought, the sense of purpose he gave her to distract from the pain she had endured alone all along. His stories from a distant homeland. The feeling of being cared for, the tender gestures they shared through hard times. The banter they had, the laughter they exchanged — it had already exceeded the point of romance. Family.
"Please take care of yourself, master." Pablo bowed to his master one last time with his old and weakened body. Suddenly, the hand of the devil stretched out of the devil sword and gripped him tightly, slowly dragging him into a shadowy gate that opened from the blade. Tianqi finally broke free of her binding magic, putting every ounce of her strength into pulling Pablo back. But she couldn't interfere with the dimension of the devil.
Nil couldn't stop clapping and bouncing her legs on her throne. Her newest toy was about to arrive. A rare one with a hero's blessing still on him, and her first ever. Tianqi could see that not only his physical body but also his soul was vanishing. Pablo had sold them both to serve Nil until the end of time. So that the cycle of hero and eschaton would be frozen forever. Tianqi couldn't accept such an unfair trade. "You were once a merchant too. Why did you let yourself take such a loss? Aren't you ashamed of it?" Tianqi started rambling and kept trying everything. Any spell she knew, any technique she had practiced up until today — nothing she tried could stop her from watching Pablo disappear before her eyes. As if to comfort her, Pablo asked her a question. "Master, do you know what would hurt me the most?"
"Losing your kingdom?"
"That's right. Now, can you guess what would make me the happiest I've ever been?"
"I... I..."
"Time's up. It's seeing your dream come tru—"
Pablo did not know if Tianqi heard all of it, but he was now fully consumed by the devil sword, and even the devil sword consumed itself and disappeared from the mother earth. Even though Pablo had failed to win Tianqi's heart till the very end, he had finally learned how to love someone in that way.
Years passed. The mother earth healed herself. So did people's civilizations.
Nicol had fallen in love with the beauty of Pleast kingdom. With every coin left over from their journey, Nicol opened a magic academy in the city not far from the house of Gaius. The people here were kind and carefree. Combined with her wealth and her standing as a mage, she was loved and welcomed. She could eat as many sweets as she wanted without anyone nagging that she would get a toothache. She could bathe twice a day without being drenched in sweat from the road. But surrounded by this land of chivalrous spirit and streets full of lively markets, she started to miss Pablo. At times like this she would find herself in the town square, looking up at a copper statue of a former paladin who had been branded a criminal and later became a legendary hero of the Pleast kingdom.
There, Nicol saw a hooded woman whining in frustration as she crossed out the word criminal on the statue's description plate. "He was never a criminal! This hero only borrowed the devil sword to defeat the eschaton and destroy the sword at the same time!" Her words were clear enough, but the cadence carried something faintly unfamiliar.
But it was not long before a lightning bolt struck right in front of that woman. "You! Don't make a mess of this statue, or I'll give you a nightmare tonight!" Nicol looked up towards the source of that voice and found a levitating, translucently glowing lady with her hands on her hips. Then the lady went still after her lightning tore the woman's hood down. Nicol followed her gaze only to see a stunning woman's bright red hair swaying in the air.