Zenith Online: Rebirth of the Strongest Player

The other Fiends — mainly Cardinal Weiss, who had sensed some lack of movement behind him — stared at Kieran in surprise.

Cardinal Weiss approached, looking grim, but was delighted when he noticed a change in Kieran's sinister gaze. Beneath the clarity was a subdued and ever-present madness. It spoke to near instantaneous activation of power.

"You continue to grow at an astonishing rate. Are you okay?"

Kieran examined himself first, noting the changes that occurred.

Though suffused with thoughts of carnage and other madness only the insane would think to commit, Kieran's mind was remarkably clear — the most powerful it had ever been.

He continued defying a Fiend's natural progression, maintaining his self-awareness, but that was only possible because of two factors. 

There was the Testament of a Fiend's Defiance that absorbed, refined, and imprisoned the free radical resentments, thereby saving Kieran from drowning in their morbid corruption. And then there was the Furthered Scales of Balances that exhausted every last drop of accumulated mystic essence to carry out its duty. 

A few remaining vestiges of embedded mystic essence were consumed to repair the damage to the construct. Kieran had all but overworked the construct, almost provoking its demise. 

After confirming that aside from the darkening of the greater part of his Realm — which limited Kieran to a modest area of activity inside this place — there was no extensive or worrisome harm down, Kieran returned his psyche to the real world.

Kieran nodded impassively to Cardinal Weiss' question. 

The Cardinal, not wanting to delve deeper into what had occurred, spared the covered Heartsbane a grim, lingering look before returning to guiding the Fiends on their journey.

After giving it some thought, Kieran moved to the back of the pack. He had noticed something quite peculiar after the Wailing Sierra stopped targetting him. The wails had gone entirely mute.

Kieran wasn't sure if this phenomenon affected the other Fiends, but he could no longer hear them. He thought he would find solace in the detachment from those dissonant, harrowing voices… but it was the total opposite. 

The silence was maddening. 

Unbeknownst to the young Fiend, he had grown fond of the madness he had resisted for years in this place. It was proof of his resilience and of his accomplishment. But he felt he could attain more, so their disappearance left Kieran wanting.

Kieran somehow believed the disappearance of those wails was more foreboding than their presence. What dismal fate could the vanquishing of those wails signify?

Kieran examined the other Fiends for any change in how they viewed their surroundings. After a few minutes, he realized what they experienced was likely similar to the first time he visited this place. 

The Fiends appeared overwhelmed and overstimulated, moving forward with forceful steps that also seemed tentative.

The confidence of their falling feet came from the Risen Fiend guiding them.

Learning of all this proved that only Kieran could no longer feel the lingering resentments or hear the anguished wails. It was as if the Wailing Sierra feared it'd succumb to him.

Though faint and elusive, Kieran felt something strange when consuming the resentments that seeped from the Screaming Night and diverged from the towering mountain. He reckoned he was becoming one with the Wailing Sierra and stealing from it. 

That sensation was no unknown occurrence. It was Significance, which Kieran thought to be strange.

'Something inanimate like a mountain can amass Significance?'

The thought put into perspective his lack of understanding of this abstruse concept. It could come from an infinite number of sources, though it existed in a finite amount. 

An amount that remained unfathomably large.

These idle thoughts occupied Kieran's attention, making the journey seem shorter than it truly was. It didn't take long for the contingent of Fiends led by Cardinal Weiss and doubly secured by Kieran to reach the Tattered Bridge, where they crossed in an intrepid procession.

The instability of the rickety bridge didn't seem daunting to him this time. On the contrary, Kieran had a few thoughts in passing, all of which related to the Screaming Night below.

If he were the one to descend into the place, would he ever return? And if he went deep enough, would he arrive in the Place of Bane? A strange craving for adventure welled inside Kieran, growing deeper and extending firm roots in his mind.

Reason kept him from jumping over the edge, though.

'Is this what the Flame meant by its comment?'

Though the Flame used slippery wording, the critical takeaway — attraction, gravitation, and pull — did not escape Kieran's notice. Those voices in his mind switched between those traits frequently, adopting stances that subtly influenced his urges.

But he could resist it.

For now.

Kieran couldn't foresee how spirited the ominous voices could become.

The Wailing Sierra didn't remain quiet for long. The shrill cries of the anguished erupted on the mountaintop, but Kieran was prepared. His hand fell on his blade instantly, rending a Bloodwight apart with a beautiful arc.

Despite the incursion of the Bloodwights, the Fiends kept on. 

Their march was unstoppable. 

With Cardinal Weiss carving a path opened by death in the front, Kieran dealt with the creatures that attacked from the rear. 

His sword was deadly and sought to end lives with insatiable carnage. His sword would lead to death, and the blood of the resentful would flow. With that flow of blood came power.

His sword was not his only method of destruction, though. Kieran opened his palm and unleashed a devastating blast. The berserk energies left a smooth groove in the mountaintop, and the corpses of the Bloodwights unfortunate enough to be caught in the blast radius were nowhere to be seen.

Shortly after, his crimson blade swept out in a fatal arc. The Blood Shard of an approaching Bloodwight was first severed by the precise attack and then obliterated by the mighty force that followed. The blood he wielded was embedded with the desire to destroy and spread its fury.

With his mind so clear and focused, every one of Kieran's attacks claimed the life of an approaching Bloodwight. His thirst for blood could not be denied. 

But the Bloodwights seemed particularly mindless and driven by instinct alone. They exuded a familiar hunger, and the Fiends traversing their turf were juicy delicacies.

The other Fiends didn't idle, of course. The incursion triggered their battlelust, leading to their ruthless attacks raining down upon the desolate mountaintop. 

However, Kieran remembered the assimilation ability of the Bloodwights. It was where part of his inspiration came from. That ability was the reason the Fiends moved swifter than before.

In the distance, situated between the Wailing Sierra's two grandest mountains that sat almost parallel to one another, Kieran saw something he couldn't perceive the last time he had come here. 

The image was incredibly vague, obscured by the noxious smog covering the structure, but Kieran recognized it as the outline of a grand edifice. Now that he stood at the edge of the second mountain, Kieran realized the Wailing Sierra was stranger than he believed.

He initially thought the entire Sierra needed to be traveled, but that seemed incorrect. After the third mountain, the rest of the chain veered to the left and spanned deeper into the Land of Ruin instead of toward Enira.

Eventually, Kieran was met with a gut feeling.

The end began here.