Chapter 503: new mission
"Five hundred years..." he murmured in a low voice, which seemed to lose itself beneath the vast vault of the trees before fading into the rustling of the foliage.
He rose slowly, his limbs numb. He stretched, feeling his joints emit faint cracks, then he began to examine the surroundings with meticulous attention. The landscape before him no longer resembled the wild, untamed forest he had known. The Kingdom of Yggdrasil had undergone a colossal transformation, as if the elves had taken advantage of his absence to build a civilization worthy of the greatest myths.
Wherever his gaze fell, he saw structures of living wood and crystal rising toward the canopy with a new architectural harmony. Suspended walkways connected dwellings perched in the highest branches. Fountains of light flowed along the centuries-old trunks, fed by a magic that Konstantine did not recognize.
Even more impressive was the order that seemed to reign in this place. Vibrant banners fluttered in the wind above the public squares, bearing the emblems of four distinct clans.
Konstantine immediately understood that the elves had structured themselves into a complex society, divided into castes or specializations, but unified under the aegis of the World Tree. This evolution surprised him, for in the past, the elves had lived in small scattered communities, with no real political cohesion.
He moved cautiously toward a path paved with lunar stones, whose polished surface reflected the ambient light like a silver mirror. His footsteps echoed on the path with a regularity that seemed strangely dissonant in this place of silence and serenity. He soon crossed paths with a group of elves on patrol, their light armor glinting under the rays of the setting sun. Their features were remarkably fine, their pointed ears ending in delicate tips, and they radiated an aura of calm.
None of them stopped at the sight of him. None cast him a look of recognition or even simple curiosity. They passed before him as if he were part of the landscape.
"Excuse me..." he called out, intercepting a guard whose armor bore the seal of a clan he did not recognize. "I am looking for information about a man named Diavolo Star Giovanna."
The elf stopped, furrowing his pale brows. He scrutinized the stranger with a curiosity laced with contempt, typical of his kind.
"Diavolo?" repeated the elf in a monotone. "That name does not exist in our archives, stranger. If you are looking for a lost human, you should return to the southern plains. No one knows such an individual here."
"Yet he lived here... a long time ago..." insisted Konstantine, feeling an icy void open in his chest.
"If that man ever existed, he must have been dead for centuries, or else he never left a deep enough mark for anyone to speak of him..." retorted the guard before resuming his march without looking back.
Konstantine stood still, the silence of the forest closing in on him like a shroud. This realization left him empty... He was nothing more than a forgotten legend, a ghost wandering through a world that had kept turning without him.
No one remembers... Everything I built, all my research... erased by time. he thought.
It was in this oppressive silence that an even darker thought surfaced. He realized that the 13th Constellation, the Antichrist, had only been using him... Since their encounter, the entity had given him nothing but tasks to accomplish without ever pausing. Killing Leo, monitoring the mortal world, and now he wanted to train a successor...
He treats me like an extension of his own will... I have gained nothing favorable from this pact, except life and the promise of saving Pandora. But at what cost?
At this reflection, he made a decision: to no longer serve the Constellations... He remembered the indescribable pain he had felt during the possession by the Antichrist. He had never felt anything so atrocious.
"I will no longer be the instrument of the Constellations..." he murmured, lifting his eyes to the sky where the stars were beginning to appear.
He understood that he had to become powerful enough to never again suffer such an invasion. To begin with, he would remain in seclusion in order to refine his Mystic Arts to reach a level allowing him to fight the Constellations alone... His power frequency was impressive for a human, but pitiful against the thrones of the zodiac.
He turned toward the dark mountains that bordered the elven domain. These jagged peaks had nothing welcoming about them, and for good reason: the mana there was unstable, and monstrous creatures swarmed. Yet this was precisely what made this place an ideal refuge. No one would dare follow him there, and he himself would find the perfect conditions to disappear.
He paused for a moment, scanning the horizon, hands on his hips. The wind carried an odor of sulfur and damp earth.
"I will have to push myself to my limit," he murmured under his breath, "if I ever want to be master of my own decisions."
He set off again, leaving behind without a backward glance the elven cities and the protective shadow of Yggdrasil. With each step, the weight of the keys of Solomon and Saint Peter resonated at the back of his mind. They were no longer a burden imposed by the Antichrist, but a burden he had chosen to carry for himself.
As he skirted a torrent of black rock, a cold smile stretched his lips, thinking of the cruelest way to exact his revenge.
He continued on his way until he reached the entrance of an isolated cave, so deep and so twisting that no elven map referenced it. He plunged into it without hesitation, definitively abandoning the world of the living and its intrigues. After setting up a few rudimentary protections at the entrance, he sat in a meditation posture, hands clasped, and traced the first Mudra of a series that, he knew, would span entire decades.
He closed his eyes, and awareness of the outside world gradually faded away. Whether the elven kingdom collapsed upon itself, whether the clans tore each other apart in internal wars, whether the Antichrist himself came knocking at the door, he could not have cared less. Only one obsession now consumed him: absolute power, the kind that allows one to break the chains forged by the gods.
The years passed in silent flow, marked only by the seasons that managed to filter through to his cave. Konstantine emerged from his trance only at regular intervals to feed on pure mana, which he drew directly from the telluric veins of the mountain. Each time he reopened his eyes, he tested his new techniques on the creatures of the Abyss that ventured too close to his sanctuary. He faced them unarmed, using only the raw force of his mind and the suppleness of the Mudras he tirelessly perfected.