Chapter 183: Nowhere To Run.
"There’s no place left to run for me, huh?" A mouthful of blood escaped Chad’s mouth when he tried to speak. His voice was barely audible over the raging storm, and he could feel his strength slipping away with every passing second.
The paw above him seemed impossibly heavy, its immense weight pressing down on his body until even drawing breath became a struggle. His arms trembled violently, and his legs threatened to give out beneath him, yet he continued holding on, refusing to let the creature advance another inch.
The pressure was like an ordinary human trying to hold up the weight of a car. Even if their body were somehow able to keep itself from breaking apart, the pressure would still be beyond them and would eventually crush them. Chad was experiencing that same hopeless struggle, except the weight he was resisting belonged to a god. His ability had always given him an advantage over his opponents, but even that advantage couldn’t change the reality of what he was facing. There was only so much his body could endure, and he could feel himself approaching that limit.
Seris shot up and reached out with her hand, desperately trying to support Chad, but she could barely reach the paw hanging above them. There was nothing she could do against something so enormous, and she knew it. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to stand aside and watch him struggle alone.
Warm tears began flowing from her eyes, but each drop froze before reaching the ground, leaving her face wet and cold as she looked up at him. She had already watched her sister die because Chad had run away, and now, just when she had finally started to accept him, he was preparing to die in front of her.
"Chad. You have to let go. We have to run."
Chad’s expression fell. In truth, he did want to run. He was terrified, and he had no desire to die beneath the paw of a god. He knew better than anyone how hopeless their situation was, and if there had been another way to get them both out alive, he would have taken it without hesitation. But there wasn’t. If he let go, Seris would die, and he couldn’t allow that to happen. She had to be the one to run this time. She had to be the one to survive, even if he couldn’t do the same.
"Everyone meets their end, Seris. This is just mine..."
He craned his neck down until her hazy black pupils met his. She was adorable even while crying, though he’d never said it aloud. Looking at her now, he realized just how much she’d come to mean to him.
He had never intended to become her big brother. Perhaps he’d started protecting her out of guilt, hoping that doing something for her might somehow make up for abandoning her sister and leaving her to die.
But as time passed, he got to know Seris herself. He saw the kindness she showed others, the strength she possessed despite everything she’d suffered, and the way she continued to care even when she had every reason not to. Somewhere along the way, his guilt had stopped being the only reason he stayed by her side. He had come to feel proud of being her big brother, perhaps more than anything else.
"Chin up. You’re stronger than you let on. I would know. I’m your big brother, after all."
Seris froze for barely a moment before nodding strongly, trying to hold herself together despite the tears running down her face. "Yes, you’re my big brother, so I need you to stay alive. I need you to stay with me. I still need you to protect me, please let go."
Finally hearing Seris acknowledge him, Chad felt a strange sense of relief wash over him. For so long, he had been unknowingly seeking acknowledgement from others. Ever since he abandoned her sister and left her to die, he had carried the weight of that failure, constantly trying to prove that he could be someone worth relying on.
During missions, he went out of his way to protect others, pushed himself harder than necessary, and tried to make himself useful whenever he could. Perhaps he believed that if he saved enough people, someone might finally look at him and see something beyond the coward who had run away.
But he had been wrong about what he needed. No matter how many people he protected, he couldn’t undo what had happened, and no amount of praise could erase his past. He had spent so long searching for acknowledgement that he hadn’t realized whose acknowledgement he truly wanted. Now, hearing Seris call him her big brother, he finally felt as though he could put some of that burden down.
She knew what he had done, understood the kind of person he had been, and yet she was still willing to acknowledge him.
Chad’s eyes reflected the peace he felt. Even with the god’s paw crushing him, even with death drawing closer by the second, he no longer felt the same desperate need to prove himself. Seris had acknowledged him, and that was enough.
He watched as she tried to move away, knowing full well that she had finally understood what he was about to do.
Without hesitation, he grabbed her arm and mustered all the strength he had left. He couldn’t keep the weight of the Storm Blizzard God suspended with a single arm, not when his entire body was already failing him. His ability might have given him slightly more power than his opponent, but it couldn’t make him limitless, and it certainly couldn’t protect him from the force of a god’s enormous body.
The bones in his arm cracked and began to break apart beneath the pressure. Pain tore through him as the Storm Blizzard God’s paw came crashing down, the immense weight finally overwhelming what little strength he had left. Chad remained beneath it.
His body didn’t stand a chance. The god’s paw already occupied more space than a multi-storey building, and when it collided with the ground, the impact crushed everything beneath it. Chad’s small, battered form was flattened under the divine monstrosity’s overwhelming weight, his final act leaving Seris with the chance to survive.