Chapter 2: Terror of Fate, Hope of Mortality

At that declaration, the inhuman pressure rose by several fold and the same fear once more gripped their hearts, threatening to crush it.

However, they would not relent; standing up, gritting their teeth, hardening their resolve and readying their weapons.

Despite overwhelming odds, they pressed on.

Knowing their opponent was a God, they fought.

But more than it all, they did so as one.

No matter how outmatched the battle seemed.

Yet, little by little the gap between the two sides was narrowing; the Hero and his compannions had not survived all this way for nothing and were beginning to find mental strength to escape the pressure Nameless was crushing them with.

However, it was brittle at best.

As this stalemate went on, The Nameless could feel the strain from fighting at full strength on his body, knowing keeping this up may cost him more than expected he came up with an idea on how to end this now.

The Nameless began to question their reasons for pushing themselves this far, to defy him; a God who knew the future of mankind.

Their common reason being that they didn't believe the vision of the future The Nameless prophesised; that it was not set in stone, that he was wrong for giving up on the mortal world.

Hearing this, what they learned next was the most devastating hit they could have taken.

The Nameless revealed something that no one in existence had known until this moment; he hadn't seen the future, he was FROM the future.

He had time travelled to change history, only to see the future refuse to change.

It was a critical blow to their motivation, but then he made it a fatal one.

This wasn't the first attempt.

The Nameless had travelled through time again and again, in attempts to change the future.

6 times.

Due to the restriction of the power that enabled it, he could only return to the period in history where he first travelled to, meaning every time he had to retry changing things it had to be literally done from square one and spend hundreds of years to see if it had worked.

After the 3rd attempt he had learned to notice and recognise the signs earlier and earlier that changing history was going to fail.

So accordingly he had returned back to square one earlier and earlier...

"After all this tireless strife, constant, endless suffering to change the future... i don't even remember why i bothered to try and save you anymore."

Now, it was his 7th attempt.

"If humanity refuses to follow a benevolent God, instead desiring to follow the path of ruin towards their endgame no matter what; then, i will become the Malevolent Devil who will bring you the suffering and end you so seem to desire with my own hands, rather than wait for the inevitable."

The revelation from The Nameless had left the hero and his compannions will and determination to fight on its knees; all this time they had fought believing The Nameless to be wrong, for him to be mistaken in abandoning humanity...

Yet now, knowing that he was someone from the future and that he had done this over and over, hundreds upon hundereds of years of nothing but struggling against a fated future.

They... had no response, for what could they possibly say to someone who has lived as long as The Nameless had?

None of them could...

All but for one.

The hero had been as shocked as them, just as shaken from what his former friend had said. Yet, when the shock passed and he processed those very words further, he was reminded of why he was here;

To protect what he had found in the mortal world, that small, tiny and frail thing that his clansmen, even his friend had lost, what the Brave Soul had shown him that made living through all the strife, all the suffering worth it.

And, to let his friend hear his answer.

Finding his strength to stand once more, to firm his will and determination to take up arms against his former friend one last time; to stop him from doing what could never be undone.

The hero, surprising even The Nameless charged at him with everything he had left.

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