Second death

Derek's mind went blank, then flickered back to life, not with sight or sound, but with pure awareness, a ripple in the void, a subtle disturbance on a still pond.

Then it saw, not with eyes, but with an inward gaze, piercing and infinite. It beheld itself, a lattice of memory and pain, darkness, sin, and lust, in its most primal form. He was part of it, yet not enslaved by it, he was a herald of lust, but not a victim.

That external part of him, forged from primal lust, was slowly being absorbed, becoming one with his essence.

The soul, tethered and formless, hovered in a silence too profound for language, not merely an absence of sound, but a realm where the very concept of sound was forbidden. At least, it was forbidden, until a harrowing force shattered that seemingly omnipotent law.

"There you are."

A smooth, heavenly voice sliced through the silence, followed by an inescapable golden arm that snaked through the void, tugged at Derek's soul, and gripped it tightly. With a final, agonizing pull, the arm all but dragged Derek out from the limbo dimension.

Derek opened his eyes to a beaming smile. A familiar, handsome man, with golden hair cascading down his head, partially obscuring his ear, stood before him, golden arms folded.

He gazed down with an amused smile and spoke,

"Nice one, Hunter. You really saved me a whole lot of stress this time."

His gaze shifted, locking onto Derek, "And you," he continued, his tone laced with astonishment. "I wonder how you are even still… you. Even when the soul of a Banal overlord lured you in, intending to possess you and use your body to fight me. But you escaped, taking my adversary with you, and returned whole, all while plunging both realms into chaos in search of you. What's more, you kickstarted the revolution way earlier than we planned."

"Aren't you an overachiever?"

"Not even I have garnered such attention in a while."

Auror stroked his chin thoughtfully, falling into an introspective silence while Derek struggled to process his words, only to emerge with even more questions than answers.

Auror shook his head, snapping out of his reverie. "This still shouldn't be possible unless…"

He bent down, grabbing Derek, still sprawled on the ground, by the shoulder. His grip was vice like, dragging him upright. Auror placed his other hand on Derek's head, his grasp was indeed inescapable.

Derek quickly took in his surroundings. It was the landscape from his dream.

Well, perhaps it hadn't been just a dream after all. But it was vastly different now. It seemed the battle hadn't ended when he left. All those wraiths… or damned souls, as Hunter called them… had been wiped out, despite their seemingly endless numbers. The ground, as far as the eye could see, was stained black with viscera. Derek gagged at the sight and the stench. He hadn't been able to smell the last time he was there, and he was painfully missing that debilitating advantage.

His stomach lurched in disgust.

What's more, the landscape was pockmarked with craters, as if constantly bombarded by explosions. The carcasses of colossal monsters dotted the scene, casting long, empty shadows. The remains of the gigantic skeleton still littered the landscape, and the giant pests seemed to have crawled out from its abyssal eyes.

And the architect of that devastation was currently right in front of him, clean and pristine as if he was a stranger in that desolate landscape.

What's worse, he was clutching Derek's head, his touch light but firm, just a little squeeze to his head will likely cause his skull burst like a soap bubble.

The feeling of helplessness he felt was only rivaled by the harrowing judgment of that skeleton, but even that skeleton had fallen to the hands of this golden man, in a single strike no less.

Auror finally released him, but continued to stare at Derek in wonder.

"Are you gonna kill me now?" Derek asked, his voice trembling.

Auror fell silent, musing for a moment before finally replying, "No."

Derek heaved a sigh of relief.

But Auror wasn't finished. "Don't get me wrong, the plan was to kill you. But I'm actually reconsidering it for two reasons. The first being that your soul has almost digested Ichl's soul."

"Which means killing you now is all but useless," Auror said, his voice laced with contempt.

"I'd only have your soul, which is just a measly convert, hardly useful for our cause. The second, and far more important reason, is that you're a rare lucid soul, which is precisely why you were even able to digest the soul of an overlord in the first place."

He paused, his gaze still leveled at Derek.

"But don't you go thinking you're off the hook yet. I can still kill you right now and retrieve what's left of Ichl's soul from within yours. Or, I can gorge you with some stray soul cores lying around and have you awaken… and then kill you."

Derek's expression was grim

It didn't sit well with him, being lectured about the finer points of his own demise. But death, at this point, felt less like a shocking possibility and more like an occupational hazard. Besides, he had a lot of questions that needed answering, impending doom be damned!.

"Uhh, sorry, but I really don't understand what you mean by 'lucid,' 'convert,' 'overlord,' and… well, pretty much anything else you just said."

Auror audibly facepalmed, muttering something under his breath that sounded like gibberish only he could decipher.

"Well then," he said, sighing heavily. "There are two primary ways to classify the scale of powers in the Otherworld." His voice shifted, adopting the tone of a lecturer addressing a particularly dense student.

Derek, momentarily setting aside his fear of the man in gold, sat up straighter. It was time to learn something new.