Chapter 24 - For Anemus - The Tormentor

When the captain left the cabin, his scent came along with him. The wind was quickly polluted by the stench of death that came from that man's body and the worms that fell from his brain through the slit in his face was an extremely disgusting sight.

Athena threw up all her breakfast and maybe dinner. The stench had filled her nostrils and it was nauseating.

"Shit! Ueeergh!"

Meanwhile, the tremors continued along with the sounds of bones and wood breaking below deck.

"Captain, this human and the one below deck are responsible for this!" The resurrected one said.

The captain looked at Athena who was still vomiting. And then his eye turned to the resurrected one. The fat man licked his lips broken by the wound and brought a lot of worms into his mouth.

"And who are they? How did they manage to do so much damage to my ship. Groooff!" the captain asked.

The ship had split in two and was no longer moving. On both sides there were two large holes and his army of skeletons was nowhere to be seen, except for a few skeletons here and there.

Everything else had been torn apart and thrown away by Lunnia, and there were still others that were being crushed incessantly below deck.

To the captain's question, the resurrected one was silent. He couldn't say they attacked them first and are now being slaughtered.

The captain without having an answer started walking towards the resurrected one. At every step of the man, a cadaverous fart was heard and the stench of the place got worse and worse.

Athena reached into her dimensional bag and pulled out a bottle of perfume she had stolen from Gion and threw it in her face.

The scent of roses and gillyflower eased her sense of smell, but for a little while. It was as if the perfume and the stench battled and the perfume was beaten to death.

"Do something about this stench. Now I know why you had the bones of half-giants and orcs in your crew. They are good-smelling races. You didn't even have to fight, they died with your stench." Athena complained.

"Hmph! A girl barely out of her diapers wouldn't know smell a man of the sea!" The captain said and looked around and saw only sand. "Huh!? Where's the sea?"

"Captain, the demon lord, Vahika, destroyed it hundreds of years ago."

"Enough of this clowning! If I kill you, the stench will be gone!" Athena said without any basis for her logic.

Using the sword that still had a forearm attached to it, Athena leapt to the other side with the intention of decapitating the captain, but was stopped by the resurgent that leapt between them and deflected Athena's sword.

Upon closer inspection, Athena realized that the sword was not a bastard sword, but a long sword, and she wanted it even more.

"I will kill you first and I will keep this sword for myself!" Athena smiled greedily and unleashed seven attacks in that second still in the air.

Resurgent are people who died and came back to life of their own free will after making a deal with true demons in hell.

They returned to the carnal world with all their abilities from when they were alive. All this for a purpose, usually revenge. Upon completing this purpose, their souls would return to hell and never leave.

But no one knew what would happen if a resurgent were killed first.

For the first time in centuries this man was having a battle that was worth it, but that battle ended in those seven blows defended.

Seeing the two there in front of him, the captain saw an opportunity to get rid of Athena and with his sword cut the air where the two were.

However, unlike the resurgent, Athena saw the sword coming to her right and used her sword to defend the attack. Athena flew to the left and across the deck wall and fell to the sand.

The resurrected one, who had his back to the captain, was split in half as his arms were cut off.

"Argh... You are useless now." The captain said, with his one eye on the resurrected one. "No, maybe you're still useful."

***

Anemus followed Gion into a dark hallway and then a dimly lit staircase. The stone walls were cold and damp.

That place looked nothing like the underground of a desert, but the underground of an underwater cave. There were mosses, seaweed and even crustaceans walked through that place.

The stairs continued for almost an hour until reaching a cave that was not dark only because of the large crystal of mana that was in the center of the whole place.

Anemus was speechless. That crystal emanated tens of times more mana than the other crystals on the surface. The mana felt like a waterfall as opposed to how dense it was, and it made Anemus feel suffocated.

Gion calmly entered that torrent of energy and disappeared into the mana curtain for a few seconds until the mana spread all over the place.

Mana was everywhere, making the place even brighter and the air less thin. Anemus admired the designs that energy created every second, it was like someone's memories or dreams.

One time mana would draw great plains with four people and the next, one person alone in a devastated place, but then the design changed completely and there were four people facing a dragon and etc...

"These are her memories and also her nightmares." Gion said in a mournful voice.

He was facing the transparent white crystal. Gion caressed the stone as if touching the face of the most precious and fragile person in the world.

"Who is this person?"

Inside the crystal, a person with long crimson hair. A girl who was barely fifteen years old. She wore a white tunic with yellow accents and her eyes were closed as if she were in a deep sleep.

"Her name is Ytria, although the world has forgotten about it. She is the greatest mage that ever lived, the person who came closest to the deity, the creator of dark magic and also creator of what people now call goddesses. She is the person I love the most and the first Tormentor."

Gion's voice echoed off the cave walls, intensifying the lament that Anemus felt coming from the man.

"Right... But that doesn't explain anything. What is a tormentor?"

"Four thousand years ago... No, it was three thousand nine hundred and eighty-four years ago. Back then..."

Gion told the beginning of his journey, how he met his best friends and his beloved, how they managed to become the most famous people on the continent and how they destroyed it in an attempt to stop Ytria.

The four friends traveled through lands that no one had set foot in and ventured together.

"...We shouldn't have gone in search of the forgotten goddess. We should have stopped Ytria..."

In times already forgotten by the world, the gods walked the world like anyone else. Among these gods there was one who wanted the destruction of everything for the purpose of recreating everything from the ashes.

There was a war and this goddess was sealed in the confines of the continent. Millennia later, four adventurers found the seal and opened one of its locks thanks to a key they recreated. It created a gap where the goddess could speak.

"...By that time, Ytria had already created the dark spells that used demonic energy power..."

All four had become saints at an early age.

Lanar, a young human boy, had become the saint archer.

Nimo, a young high-elf, became the saint of magic.

Gion became the saint of life

Ytria, a human girl, became the saint of darkness.

"...At first, it didn't affect our personalities. At first..."

After finding the seal and opening it, the group camped for days in that end of the world. That's because Ytria wanted to hear what the goddess had to say.

"... It was then that everything started to fall apart... The goddess had enjoyed Ytria's curiosity and the time we spent with her and to know that, she gave us gifts that we should never have accepted."

Lanar would never miss a target and his targets would always die with an arrow. Nimo would have the ability to manipulate the world's natural mana as she wished. Gion would live forever as long as Lanar did not kill him. Ytria would become a tormentor.

At first they thought it was just an old class, but then Ytria who was a cheerful and playful girl, started to kill more often and cause destruction for futile reasons.

"...She knew something was changing within her. It was as if demonic power and class merged and created a new personality..."

Fearing what might happen, she came up with the idea to create two copies of it. One to kill her and one to seal and protect her body.

With the help of her friends she created Neu and Eun, but they were weak, failures. But they didn't give up and kept trying. Other failures were born and killed because of their evil tendencies. This was repeated until the birth of Lhia and Faena.

"...But they weren't strong enough to stop her. Faena summoned demons and Lhia created angels and we joined together to seal Ytria..."

"Wait! Lhia and Faena weren't fighting each other?"

"That was after... Sugar?" Gion and Anemus were sitting across from each other at a table and chairs made of stones that Gion had created and drinking tea. "Continuing..."

After sacrificing half a continent, they managed to seal Ytria in eternal magic. But the war did not stop, Lhia and Faena continued to fight. One wanted to rebuild the destroyed continent and the other wanted to destroy the rest.

Lanar, Nimo and Gion were exhausted and following Ytria's wishes of save as many lives as possible, Lhia send the islands to the sky while the three saints sealed the two.

"In short. Tormetors are the emissaries of the true goddess of destruction. If Athena continued to grow stronger as a tormentor, she would follow the same path as Ytria. But this time she would manage to kill and destroy everything. Lanar died and Nimo and me alone it would be impossible stop her. Satisfied?"

Anemus had a worried look. She looked at the crystal with Ytria inside and wondered if she could do it. Just thinking about it made her heart ache and she pushed the thought away like she'd swatted a fly away.

"What about this new class? Reaper? What is this?"

"I don't know. Death is a goddess who doesn't care about anything. But keep an eye on your master. The way she acted with the demon girl isn't common."

***

Athena admired her newest sword as she cleaned it as carefully as you could with a sword, while Lunnia lay by the fire and moaned with every move she made.

"Sorry, I won't use that magic on you ever again." Athena said and Lunnia responded with a moan.

They were camping in the middle of the desert after setting fire to the galleon that burned with great flames in the distance.