Immortal Paladin

535 Great Beast

The memories churned around me like a storm devouring itself. One moment I stood within the fractured remains of Wendell’s childhood home on Earth, hearing rain batter the rooftop while his mother prayed beside a flickering candle, and the next I found myself in the suffocating jungles of Vietnam where artillery fire tore apart the night sky in bursts of orange flame. The transitions happened violently, as though the memories themselves were alive and trying to reject my intrusion. Faces blurred together. Screams overlapped. Entire decades collapsed into seconds before reforming again. Yet through all of it, one thing remained constant.

The mysterious figure watched everything in silence.

He stood outside the memories while simultaneously existing inside them, untouched by time, unaffected by emotion, observing the life of Wendell as casually as someone flipping through pages in a book they had already finished reading countless times before. His form remained indistinct beneath the shifting darkness surrounding him, but his eyes never changed. They carried the detached calm of something ancient enough to regard civilizations the same way mortals regarded passing weather.

I stared at him while Wendell’s younger self stumbled through mud and corpses somewhere behind us.

“So you created Legacy World Online,” I asked slowly. “Not the Yellow Emperor?”

The figure smiled faintly.

“Indeed, I did. Though calling it my creation alone would be inaccurate. It was more of a group project than anything else.” He glanced sideways as another memory unfolded nearby, revealing Wendell dragging a wounded soldier across blood-soaked ground while gunfire erupted overhead. “The Yellow Emperor was one of the collaborators. As one of the mythologized progenitors of humanity, he possesses a rather irritating level of ingenuity. He understands how to manipulate forces against one another better than almost anyone. Supreme Heart’s quite similar in that regard.”

His expression deepened slightly with amusement.

“Ah… I see now. So this meeting was engineered by him as well. He wished to test my mettle while isolating himself from my influence. Clever.”

I watched Wendell scream at medics to save a dying boy whose stomach had already been torn open beyond repair. The desperation in his voice struck harder than the battlefield itself. Even knowing they were merely memories, I could still feel the terror and helplessness crushing him from within.

This power was honestly starting to annoy me.

Being able to understand people like this, always left me with unpleasant feelings.

“Are you disappointed?” the mysterious existence suddenly asked. “You sought the Supreme Death hoping for a grand dialogue, but instead you found me and a corpse pretending it’s still alive.”

My eyes narrowed.

“Why are you doing this?” I demanded. “Why bring him here? Why bring any of us here? You plucked people from Earth and threw them into this universe like pieces on a board. I need to hear the answer directly from you.” My voice hardened. “Are we your toys?”

The figure sighed softly, almost tired.

“I think you misunderstand something fundamental.” He raised a hand, and the memories around us slowed. “The epithet ‘Game Master’ is merely one face among countless others. Epithets can be inherited, stolen, bestowed, or abandoned. The Yellow Emperor wore the title once himself. No one truly remembers where it originated from. I claimed it because it was useful. Convenient. A fitting authority for one who arranges the board.”

The air around him distorted subtly.

“You see, epithets are manifestations of destiny itself. They are powers born from collective belief. If enough minds acknowledge an existence as something absolute, reality eventually bends to accommodate that perception.”

He gestured toward the memories.

“The Heavenly Demon became feared because the world believed him invincible. The Divine Physician became miraculous because humanity desired salvation badly enough to create it. You…” His gaze settled on me. “Did you truly believe your rise as the Holy Emperor was solely the product of effort? That the title of Immortal Paladin belonged to you alone?”

His voice remained calm, but every word carried unbearable weight.

“We are all slaves to destiny, Da Wei. Every one of us dances according to its tune whether we acknowledge it or not.”

A chill crawled down my spine.

“The Supreme Death’s about to fulfill his destiny,” said the Game Master. “And no, you are not toys. Because toys break, and a Supreme Being overcomes.”

The words lingered in my mind like poison.

I already knew this pattern too well. Every major battle of my life unfolded the same way. I would fight through impossible odds, defeat what seemed to be the ultimate enemy, only for another monster to emerge from behind the curtain afterward. A final final enemy. Something worse. Something waiting patiently for me to exhaust myself first before revealing its existence.

This damned universe genuinely hated me.

The Game Master continued speaking while the memories shifted again, revealing Wendell sitting alone beneath pouring rain beside a pile of body bags.

“Every Supreme Being summoned into this existence was brought here for a purpose,” he explained. “The Supreme Fallen was summoned because the Yellow Emperor required a force capable of opposing the Six Supremes. Your friend Ru Qiu will eventually fulfill that role.”

The moment he mentioned Ru Qiu, I felt my chest tighten slightly.

“And you?” he asked. “Have you figured out why you were summoned?”

I remained silent.

“You already know the answer instinctively,” he said. “You simply refuse to acknowledge it fully. You are not here merely to wage war against the Six Supremes or confront the Origin. Your role transcends that.”

The unease inside me deepened further.

“How about Wendell?” I asked immediately. “You said the Supreme Death is about to fulfill his destiny. What does that mean?”

The Game Master’s smile returned.

“How about you witness it personally?”

The memories surged forward before I could respond.

The world twisted violently around me. My perspective collapsed inward as though an invisible hand had seized my consciousness and hurled it back into the stream of Wendell’s life. The jungles of Vietnam consumed everything again. Humid air filled my lungs. Gunfire roared in the distance. I could feel Wendell’s exhaustion, his despair, his fractured state of mind threatening to shatter beneath the endless horrors surrounding him.

For a brief moment, the sheer emotional weight nearly drowned me alongside him.

But I steadied myself immediately.

Transcendent Heart activated silently within my soul, anchoring my consciousness against the flood of despair trying to consume me. My breathing stabilized. My thoughts sharpened.

I became Wendell again, and I held to him strongly.

The sensation struck with horrifying familiarity. My consciousness folded inward before plunging through endless darkness while freezing winds howled around me. I was falling from the heavens exactly the same way Ru Qiu and I once had when we were first dragged into this cursed existence. I remembered Ru Qiu obtaining his system interface upon arrival, gaining that absurdly unfair guidance that shaped his rise. I remembered receiving the max-leveled Paladin class the instant I entered this universe, as though destiny had already prepared a path for me before my feet even touched the ground.

But Wendell…?

Wendell received death.

Not metaphorically.

Not symbolically.

Death itself.

The mountain rushed upward beneath me. Jagged ridges tore through clouds like blades waiting to gut the sky. Then impact came.

My body exploded against the stone.

Bones shattered instantly. Flesh ruptured. Blood painted the cliffsides while organs scattered across frozen rock. Agony swallowed everything before darkness mercifully followed afterward.

Then I revived.

The memories dragged me forward relentlessly. I stopped resisting and allowed them to guide me completely. I experienced every death alongside him. Every scream. Every moment of despair clawing through his soul. Wendell stumbled through this alien world like a man abandoned by heaven itself. He learned the language slowly through humiliation and suffering, repeating words wrong while strangers mocked him for speaking like a broken child. He met companions. Lost them. Trusted people. Buried them. Entire years passed in misery while this reality crushed every fragile hope he still possessed.

Yet the cruelest part was that none of it surprised him anymore.

Earth had already taught him suffering long before he arrived here.

War.

Loss.

Trauma.

Faith stretched to its limit.

But cruelty remained cruelty regardless of where it existed. Pain did not become lighter simply because someone had endured it before. The burden only accumulated until it hollowed out whatever remained inside a person.

And throughout all of it, one thought continued moving Wendell forward.

Home.

It was not revenge, glory, or power.

Home.

He wanted salvation through death because death meant returning to his family. Returning to Earth. Returning to the people he loved before this nightmare stole him away. Every resurrection deepened his despair because every resurrection proved he was still trapped here.

The more he died, the stronger he became.

What a horrifying curse.

I watched him stand atop a burning star after countless centuries had already passed. His body had become monstrous by then, able to survive environments that should erase existence itself. Solar flames engulfed him while entire continents of fire exploded beneath his feet.

Wendell laughed weakly.

“I’m tired,” he whispered.

The words nearly broke me.

“So damn tired…”

Then he threw himself deeper into the sun thoroughly and eliberately.

He unleashed every ounce of power he possessed while ripping apart his own defenses, forcing the stellar inferno to consume him completely. Flesh melted away. Bones dissolved. His consciousness disintegrated beneath temperatures capable of annihilating civilizations.

And then he revived again.

Not even the sun could kill him.

The memories accelerated afterward.

I witnessed Wendell hurl himself into a black hole large enough to swallow entire galaxies. Reality bent apart around its event horizon while stars twisted into spirals of oblivion. Even then, he did not hesitate. He descended willingly into the cosmic abyss, surrendering himself to absolute destruction.

Failure.

He resurrected from the ether once more.

Then came the underworld.

I saw him descend beyond the realms of living existence into domains where reapers governed death itself. Endless rivers of souls stretched across darkness while monstrous officials watched him with unease bordering terror. Wendell begged them to end him. Pleaded with them.

But none dared.

Because to truly touch the Supreme Death meant invoking the concept of his death itself.

And that was forbidden.

Even the rulers of death feared the consequences.

They would die, they said.

So Wendell continued wandering.

He explored the Greater Universe endlessly in search of something capable of granting him oblivion. Ancient monsters. Primordial entities. Supreme Beings. Cosmic catastrophes. Nothing worked. Not one existence among them could kill him permanently.

My own existence began recoiling violently as I continued immersing myself deeper into the memories.

Divine Qi drained from me at an alarming rate.

I finally understood why.

The Supreme Death had died too many times.

The accumulated weight of those deaths transcended normal comprehension. Experiencing them secondhand caused parts of my existence to destabilize. My vision flickered repeatedly while cracks spread across my spiritual body. I could barely perceive the other Supreme Beings clearly anymore within these memories because my consciousness was too busy trying not to collapse.

Still, I endured.

I forced more Divine Qi into myself while embracing my Supremacy Trait fully.

The memories shifted again.

The war against the Supreme Void unfolded before me.

The scale dwarfed everything I had ever witnessed.

Entire realities collapsed during the battle. Lost Gods screamed while dimensions ruptured apart beneath attacks powerful enough to rewrite universal laws. The Six Supremes fought together against the endless darkness of the Supreme Void while Wendell died over and over throughout the conflict.

Each death shook me harder.

By the hundredth death, pieces of my own soul started dying alongside the memories.

By the thousandth, I nearly lost consciousness.

But Wendell continued resurrecting every single time.

Even after the Supreme Void finally fell?

Even after the Lost Gods were exterminated or exiled?

Even after victory arrived?

The Six Supremes stood triumphant amidst the corpse of a dying cosmos while the remnants of battle formed an enormous black hole nearby, a wound in existence itself created from forces beyond comprehension.

And what did the Supreme Death do after saving reality?

He walked toward the abyss created from there fight.

The others noticed immediately.

I saw one of the Six Supremes trying to stop him, but Wendell merely smiled weakly before stepping forward into the abyss. The black hole devoured light, matter, laws, and concepts themselves. Nothing should have survived within it.

Wendell looked at it like a starving man staring at salvation.

Then he spoke softly.

“I kept my faith all this time,” he said. “I endured every nightmare because I thought God would eventually let me come home.”

His voice trembled.

“But why won’t He let me die?”

The despair inside those words eclipsed every scream I had heard throughout his memories.

Wendell stared into the abyss while tears burned away before they could even leave his face.

“My wife’s probably gone by now. My children too.” He laughed weakly, though it sounded more like something breaking apart. “Maybe even their graves disappeared centuries ago while I kept surviving here like some kind of mistake.”

Then he closed his eyes.

“I just want to see my family again.”

Wendell stepped into the darkness, only to resurrect once more.

It was horrifying.

No.

That word was too small for what I experienced.

I relived every suicide attempt the Supreme Death committed across eternity. Every desperate plunge into oblivion. Every hope that this time would finally be the end. At first, I thought his deaths were merely acts of despair from a broken man unable to return home. But as the memories continued, I realized something worse.

The Supreme Death had never stopped thinking.

Even in despair, he searched endlessly for an answer.

And eventually, inspiration struck him.

If death could not kill death… then perhaps life could.

The realization echoed across the memories like blasphemy.

The Supreme Death understood himself better than anyone else. He was death incarnate. Every power he possessed reinforced the continuation of death itself. Destruction nourished him. Oblivion strengthened him. Even anti-existence merely became another extension of his nature. To kill himself permanently required the opposite of death.

Life.

True life.

Creation untouched by entropy.

But where could he obtain such a thing when everything he touched inevitably decayed?

The answer became clear soon afterward.

The Shén.

I watched Wendell begin hunting them across the Greater Universe.

The Shén were privileged beings entrusted with creation itself, entities capable of birthing life from nothingness. They carried divine authorities over genesis, evolution, growth, and possibility. They were living manifestations of creation’s laws.

And the Supreme Death slaughtered them.

Entire worlds burned during his hunt. Civilizations vanished screaming beneath waves of annihilation while Wendell harvested fragments of creation from the corpses of the Shén. At first, I wanted to condemn him for it, but the memories forced me to feel his thoughts alongside his actions.

He hated every moment of it.

But his longing to return home eclipsed morality long ago.

He accepted jobs to destroy galaxies because destruction gave him access to more fragments of life. He tore apart empires and butchered godlike races while collecting every trace of creation he could find, all for one purpose.

To unmake death itself.

And eventually…

He succeeded.

The revelation struck me so hard my soul nearly destabilized.

Everyone believed the Supreme Death failed to die.

They were wrong.

He did die.

The Supreme Death truly killed himself.

I witnessed the moment firsthand.

He stood alone within a silent corner of the Greater Universe while countless fragments of harvested creation revolved around him like stars. Then he turned his power inward completely, combining death and life simultaneously until both concepts collapsed into one another.

The Supreme Death died by his own hands.

But from the corpse he left behind? Something else was born.

Four existences emerged from the remains of the Supreme Death, each carrying a portion of his essence, memories, and authority.

The Four Horsemen.

Conquest.

War.

Famine.

Death.

I watched their birth in stunned silence.

The eldest among them was Death, yet despite being firstborn, he retained the appearance of a young boy. Pale skin. Dark curls. Exhausted eyes far older than his body. I immediately understood why.

He inherited the most precious pieces of the Supreme Death. Childhood. Joy. Faith. The longing for acknowledgement. The fragile humanity the Supreme Death fought desperately to preserve.

The Four Horsemen were not children.

They were organs.

Fragments of the original Supreme Death divided apart to create something capable of escaping destiny itself.

Conquest inherited the mind.

War inherited the spirit.

Famine inherited the heart.

Death inherited the soul.

Then the mysterious existence spoke again from somewhere beyond the memories.

“What a tragedy,” the Game Master lamented quietly. “Famine lost his essence first after becoming infected by the whispers of the Supreme Void. The heart corrupted so easily. How disappointing.”

My thoughts raced violently.

“What about Conquest?” I demanded. “How does he fit into this?”

The memories answered before the Game Master could.

I saw an old woman standing beside an enormous wheel that eclipsed entire realities.

Meng Po.

She held bowls of tea within trembling hands while the Four Horsemen stood before her silently one by one. The tea carried the power of forgetfulness itself. Oblivion for memory. Oblivion for identity.

The Game Master’s voice echoed across the scene.

“Only when there is no self can there be true death.”

Meng Po handed the tea to each Horseman.

“The Supreme Death made a bargain with her. In exchange for the Wheel of Reincarnation, she would erase the identities of the lives birthed from his corpse.”

The memories trembled violently afterward.

“This was the Supreme Death’s destiny,” the Game Master declared. “To birth the Four Horsemen. Harbingers of apocalypse. Heralds meant to prepare the coming of the Great Beast.”

Suddenly, the memories fractured apart.

A face appeared directly before me.

It had no eyes and no mouth.

Only smooth flesh stretched unnaturally across something screaming beneath the skin. The surface bulged repeatedly as though countless people were trapped underneath it, clawing desperately to escape.

Then the Game Master spoke.

“AND YOU ARE NUTRITION.”

The voice ruptured reality itself.

“THE HEAVENLY DEMON IS THE SAME.”

Pressure exploded around me.

“OVERCOME FATE OR BECOME PART OF IT!”

The screaming thing leaned closer.

“IS IT THE GREAT BEAST’S DESTINY THAT WILL DEVOUR YOURS… OR WILL YOU PREVAIL?”

The skin stretched harder.

“SHOW ME!”

The entire memory realm shattered.

“SHOW ME IF YOU CAN BE THE TRUE AVATAR OF THE SOURCE!”

Agony ripped through my consciousness.

I was violently ejected from Divine Possession.

My body slammed against the ground of the Palace of Endings before skidding across broken stone and corpses. I coughed violently while Divine Qi surged chaotically inside me. My soul still reeled from the memories, fragments of countless deaths lingering like poison within my thoughts.

I forced myself upright.

Undead remains surrounded us everywhere.

The battlefield had become a graveyard.

Ru Qiu stood nearby barely holding himself together. Blood covered his clothes while wounds layered his body from head to toe. Even his breathing sounded strained now.

“It took you damn long enough,” he muttered. “Please tell me you found good news.”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

Because there wasn’t any good news.

I noticed Wendell.

Or rather, the boy.

The dark-skinned child with curly hair stood silently nearby, but something about him felt fundamentally wrong now. His presence distorted the surrounding space subtly, like reality itself struggled to tolerate him.

“Wendell,” I called carefully. “Can you hear me?”

Another figure stood behind him. It was Conquest still pretending to be the Supreme Death and the boy’s father. He rested both hands gently on the boy’s shoulders while smiling softly like an older brother comforting family. “Everything’s going to be alright,” Conquest whispered. “You don’t need to be afraid anymore. I’ll protect you. We’ll go home together eventually. I promise.”

The boy remained silent for several seconds.

Then he slowly raised his head.

“I grow tired of your lies.”

The moment he spoke, the number 666 burned onto his forehead.

The Palace of Endings shook violently.

Candlewax-like figures began crawling from the ground in enormous numbers. Their bodies looked half-melted, malformed things with human limbs fused together unnaturally. They clawed upward while shrieking in agony.

Conquest suddenly screamed.

His body began melting alongside them.

The wax creatures grabbed him while weeping molten tears, dragging pieces of him into their mass as he cried out in unbearable pain.

The ground itself started groaning afterward.

The corpses beneath us opened their mouths simultaneously.

“THE GREAT BEAST…”

“PRAISE…”

“HE COMES…”

“WE SHALL BE CONSUMED…”

The walls of the palace churned like living flesh. Faces pressed outward beneath the stone surface desperately, mouths moving silently while fingers stretched against the walls from the inside.

And then I realized something truly terrifying.

I could no longer see the future.

My foresight had vanished completely.

The existence before me had become too heavy.

Too absolute.

Too catastrophic for even possibility itself to continue functioning normally.

“OH, YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!” I shouted.

Ru Qiu immediately looked toward me.

I grabbed him by the arm.

“RUN!” I roared. “RU QIU, RUN NOW!”

The palace screamed around us while reality continued collapsing.

“No matter what happens,” I snarled, dragging him backward, “we cannot let that thing eat us!”