Neo could hear the laughing voice of the [Angel] when his expression faltered.
At that moment, a maggot managed to reach him and bit his hand.
He cleaved away the damaged part before using his blessing to regenerate the wound.
His breathing was becoming heavy as he kept healing himself.
However, he had no other choice.
To fight the maggots, he needed to be in his best condition.
He tried to use the Essence Breath Spell to refill his empty Divine Energy reservoirs.
It was useless.
The world core, having been corrupted, could not generate mana anymore.
There was no energy present in the air that Neo could absorb.
Days passed as he kept moving northward with no rest.
[The void corrupts you.]
[The void corrupts you.]
[The void corrupts you.]
[The void corrupts you.]
The purple cracks continued to spread on his limbs.
But Neo ignored them.
He had void affinity because he had been infected by the Void since long ago. It probably happened when the Void window wiped out the Hephaestus clan.
Unlike Jack, Neo wouldn’t lose all of his abilities.
However…
‘How long do you think you can last? Your Seed of Existence is about to be destroyed.’
The angel stopped paying attention to him when he didn’t respond.
Days passed.
Neo kept moving forward with a single goal in his mind.
He had to reach the north pole and activate the World Time Spell.
He had to—
His thoughts came to a stop, and his body stopped moving.
Exhausted, he fell into the snow.
His limbs wouldn’t move, and his thoughts were slowly coming to a stop.
Dying to Void would destroy his Seed of Existence.
The Immortal Skill wouldn’t revive him from such death.
‘I… can’t… fall here….’
Neo clawed at the snow and tried to pull his body forward.
He gripped the ground.
He moved forward.
He gripped the ground.
He moved forward.
His body mindlessly repeated the same actions.
Neo’s Willpower was nigh infinite, and he refused to give up.
However, without power to back him up, his Willpower was useless.
Purple cracks fully covered Neo’s skin.
Four days later, his body shattered, and he died.
….
Gap of Dimensions, Between Shadow World and Earth Dimension
Jack appeared in an empty space.
Clarity slowly returned to his hazy eyes.
He turned around, looking from where he had come, hoping to find the door of shadows.
However, it was not there.
He covered his face with both hands.
“Argh… ah… aah…”
A look of despair was present in his eyes as he groaned.
His nails dug into his skin, and he started to pull out his hair without realizing what he was doing.
His mind was in chaos, and it failed to register the physical pain.
The pain of losing everyone was tearing him apart.
A human-sized doll materialized before Jack.
She placed a hand over his hand, and a foreign power entered Jack’s head through her hand.
“Calm down.”
Instantly, clarity returned to Jack’s eyes.
The chaos swirling in his mind subsided.
He looked at the doll in front of him.
“We are J #48, a Gatekeeper of Shadow World,” she introduced herself. “Since you have left the Shadow World, we will be sending you—”
“Send me back to the Shadow World. Please,” Jack pleaded.
“That isn’t possible.”
“I—I’ll do anything that the Shadow Supreme wants from me. Just send me back. I can’t let them all die.”
“We can’t do that.”
Jack didn’t shout or get angry.
After J #48 calmed his emotions, he could think clearly, and he understood that shouting at her would only make the other party reluctant to help him.
“Besides…” J #48 looked at him with a confused gaze. “Why are you so sure everyone will die? For one, Neo Hargraves will definitely survive.”
Jack #48 seemed sure of her words.
“He is an Immortal.”
…
Shadow World
Neo’s body crumbled into dust.
His soul and Core suffered the same fate.
The same thing happened to his Seed of Existence when suddenly something astonishing occurred.
A little less than half of his Seed of Existence still remained.
The corruption from the Void flared again.
His Seed of Existence, which was now ¼ of its original size, shrank again.
However, for some reason, it couldn’t be destroyed completely.
It shrank to 1/8 of the original size of his Seed of Existence.
The same thing kept on repeating.
Instead of being completely erased, a small portion of Neo’s Seed of Existence remained before it got reduced again.
[Eternal]
Currently, the skill was at the peak of Grade 2.
It reduced all types of harmful effects and damages by 40%.
To understand how it was protecting Neo’s Seed of Existence from being destroyed, one had to understand how corruption killed anyone.
As an example, Corruption of Void could be compared to a gun.
If someone was shot at their heart, what would be the cause of their death?
The bullet?
Or the stopping of the heart that pumped blood?
One could say the person died due to the bullet.
But the actual reason, in the given example, was death due to damage to a vital organ necessary for survival.
After all, if the heart could be saved, the person wouldn’t die.
But if the heart stopped, the person would die even if the bullet had stopped.
It was the same for Neo’s current situation.
The bullet was the corruption, and his heart was his Seed of Existence.
The corruption of the Void was too strong for Neo to resist.
It destroyed his Seed of Existence completely.
Or it was supposed to.
The [Corruption of Void] and the [destruction of his Seed of Existence] were two different events.
They were related events, but they were still different.
Eternal reduced the corruption of Void by 40%.
However, the remaining 60% of corruption was strong enough to kill Neo.
In this case, Eternal couldn’t help him.
The remaining 60% of corruption caused his Seed of Existence to be destroyed ‘completely.’
This was another type of attack.
Eternal again reduced the damage by 40%.
Instead of being destroyed completely, only two-thirds of his Seed of Existence was destroyed.
Of course, it didn’t change his current situation.
The corruption continued to attack the remaining portion of Neo’s Seed of Existence.
What Eternal did was delay its destruction.
To explain it with another example, we could think of Neo’s Seed of Existence as the number ‘1.’
Corruption was supposed to reduce his number ‘1’ to number ‘0’ instantly.
However, Eternal resisted the damage, and the number ‘1’ was reduced to only number ‘0.4.’
Again, corruption attacked him, and Eternal protected him again.
The number reduced from 0.4 to 0.16.
Then to 0.064.
Then to 0.0256, and so on….
Eternal turned the instantaneous destruction of Neo’s Seed of Existence into an infinitely long process.
The skill would keep a small portion of his Seed of Existence alive.
It by itself was nothing special.
A portion of the Seed of Existence could not do anything.
However, Neo had another skill that was perfectly synergized with the Eternal skill.
[Immortal]
The skill could revive him as long as his Seed of Existence remained.
[Time Remaining: 11 hours, 59 minutes]
[Time Remaining: 11 hours, 58 minutes]
[Time Remaining: 11 hours, 56 minu….]
[Time Remaining: 11 hours….]
[Time Remaining: 10 ho….]
[Time Remaining: 6 ho….]
[Time Remaining: 4….]
[Time….]
[….]
[Time Remaining: 00 hours, 00 minutes]