Extra's POV: My Obsessive Villainous Fiancee Is The Game's Final Boss-Chapter 445: Cleansing Flames

Before the Erasure.

If there was one thing Ren knew, it was that the tunnels beneath the Elder’s Building were not meant to be found.

The air was heavy, and every step Ren and Lilith took stirred motes of dust into the air.

They were sure that the number of people who had passed through these halls in the last hundred years could be counted on one hand.

Ren led the way, his eyes fixed ahead and hand outstretched. Behind him, Lilith followed in silence, her knives drawn and Pull resonance ready for anything.

Ren reached into his spatial pouch, drawing a torch from it. He lit the touch, the light of the flames blooming to push the darkness around them away.

Ren kept roaming the maze, searching for anything that would point him in the right direction. It had been more than nine years since he came to this world. The memories of the game have long since faded to a blur.

All he knew was that in the race for the Primordial Flame, he was currently in the lead.

They had been moving for what felt like hours, passing sealed doorways, and corridors that looped impossibly back to where they had started.

Ren had stopped trying to count turns long ago. His instincts told him they were drawing closer to their target.

Finally, the tunnel widened. The air changed. It was no longer stale. Instead, it throbbed. Like something alive and waiting.

Ren slowed, raising a hand for Lilith to stop. "We’re here."

Lilith scanned the walls. "I don’t see anything."

Ren didn’t answer. He stepped forward, his eyes narrowing. The air shimmered faintly ahead of him into a distortion, like heat haze.

"There," he said.

Lilith squinted. "A fold in reality."

Ren nodded once. His hand tightened, and his Push resonance began to hum. "Stand back."

Lilith took two steps back, readying herself.

Ren exhaled slowly, pressed both hands against the invisible wall, and Pushed.

Reality began to bend.

There was no sound, only a deep vibration, as if the world was straining to contain something it had long forgotten.

The shimmer tore open like a wound, light spilling through. The tunnel behind them groaned and cracked, dust raining from the ceiling.

A moment later, the entrance gave way, revealing what lay beyond.

Lilith shielded her eyes. "Ren..."

He stared, wordless.

The world on the other side was on fire.

A boundless expanse of molten gold stretched in every direction, suspended in nothingness.

The air shimmered like the inside of a forge. There was no ground, only radiant heat that somehow didn’t burn. It merely was.

Floating in the center of it all, above a glasslike surface of light, was a single flame.

It was small, no larger than a thumb, but it radiated power that made every instinct in Ren scream to kneel, to look away, to stop existing.

The Primordial Flame.

The first light that had ever burned. The spark from which the world was born.

Lilith whispered, almost reverently, "Ren... we found it."

Ren couldn’t answer. He took a hesitant step forward, then another. The air around the flame shimmered, like a heart beating.

Every pulse seemed to sync with his own heartbeat. Or rather, his heart was beating in sync with it.

He blinked and reached for it.

Somehow, he’d walked across the expanse to the Flame, and hadn’t even noticed.

"Ren!" Lilith began, but he was already too close.

His fingers brushed the edge of the flame.

It leapt into him.

Ren screamed.

The fire tore through him like liquid agony, burning not his flesh, but his soul. It filled every part of him, his veins, his flesh, his mind, until there was nothing else.

Lilith cried out, lunging forward, but the heat repelled her. She stumbled back, shielding her face as the air around Ren warped with unbearable light.

The Primordial Flame dug deep, finding what did not belong within him, and began to burn.

Ren’s body convulsed. The first thing to go was Lilith’s soul threads.

Those glowing blue filaments, the delicate connection that had bound his body and soul together since the day he had died, ignited in a soundless blaze.

Lilith gasped, feeling the severing inside her chest. "Ren!"

Ren’s soul began to unravel. He could feel himself slipping apart, dissolving into dust. But the Flame refused to let him die.

It surged, burning brighter, wrapping his soul in new light. It forced him back into himself, reforging his essence where the threads had been.

The Primordial Flame became the new binding of his being, welding his body and soul together till it held stronger than before.

Then, mercilessly, it moved on.

It reached the roots of his Trees of Power, the foundations of everything he had built, every strength he had gained.

It started with his Push Resonance.

Ren felt the familiar hum of his power, the loop of energy that had always obeyed his will, and then, it screamed.

The Flame devoured it.

The Push resonance burst inside him like glass shattering, its roots withering, burning into ash. His muscles trembled, his body collapsing under its own weight.

He gasped at the pain.

But there was no stopping it.

Next came Tithecraft.

The Flame found the web of dark marks woven into his soul. The stolen strength, the traded power, the bound gifts of others. It burned them all.

Ren felt himself grow weaker, a portion of his strength leaving him. His lungs stuttered, the Tithecraft energy that had always added to his vitality now gone.

The pain didn’t stop.

His Soul Binding was next.

The bracers around his arms cracked. The light inside them flickered, then died, as the Flame turned them to dust.

His teleportation coins, the countless anchors he’d hidden across every place he’d ever been, flared one by one, vanishing from existence.

Ren’s breath hitched as he felt the chain reaction, the destruction of every link, every piece of himself scattered throughout the world.

Then, the Flame turned its attention to his spatial pouch.

The clasp melted instantly. The fabric unraveled, pouring its contents, the weapons, relics, food, and treasures he’d gathered over the years, across the floor. They scattered like offerings before the Flame.

And still, the fire burned deeper.

It reached the roots of his Soul Binding, which still connected him to Yggdrasil.

Ren’s body arched as the Flame invaded that final connection. He saw it in his mind, the roots burning to dust as the connection between them was severed.

And then, silence.

The link was gone.

He had been cut free.

Ren collapsed to one knee, gasping. His body trembled violently.

Lilith’s voice was faint in his ears, panicked and desperate, but he couldn’t make out the words.

The Flame wasn’t done.

It then turned its cleansing fire on his Unfettered Enhancement.