Rogue Villain-Chapter 373: Impressive Candle

The Core has existed as long as Millmeria. Without the Core, there would be no Millmeria. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to compare the Core to Millmeria’s heart. And it has remained as such from Millmeria’s creation to the present time.

It has remained unchanged through countless eras and ages. When Millmeria was nothing but a splotch of hot dirt floating around in the universe, the Core kept it together. The Core sustained life. It gave Millmeria the spark it needed to kickstart the cycle of existence.

From that point, the Core has accompanied Millmeria through every imaginable change. It was there before the world’s defenses cracked and the Calamitous Cycles began. It was there when the First Calamity struck and the First Hero saved the world.

The Core was present when the Heroes succeeded, and it was present when they failed. The Core stayed in the center of the world, as undaunted as ever, regardless of what happened. Even when the gods and demons of the celestial realm waged war using the mortal realm as a proxy, leaving everything but one man covered in ashes, the Core burned as steadily as ever.

Throughout time, the Core alone has remained the same from beginning to end. It alone carries the unfiltered vestiges of Millmeria’s history, and it alone burns with a flame steadier than the flow of time.

It has to.

Without the Core, there wouldn’t be any mana in the world. Without the Core, all life would cease. Without the Core, the world will end.

As such, there’s no way the Core would destabilize or collapse from Ackster taking a single spark.

But, at the same time, the single sparks represent all of the Core. It isn’t something a being who can remember weakness can do anything against.

The limitless heat and fire of the infinitely condensed mana of Millmeria’s Core aren’t something a god, a Calamity, or a human can conquer.

Not even the Calamity known as a living volcano that sought to devour and burn the world itself had the power to affect the Core.

Things might have been different if that Calamity had received a few eternities to grow stronger.

A useless hypothetical. Such a situation would never come to be.

Even if the living volcano had defeated the Sun God, another Hero or another Calamity would defeat it in turn. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

It was the eternal cycle of Millmeria, unbroken since its inception. Nothing was eternal.

Nothing lasted forever except, of course, the Core.

No matter what happened, as long as Millmeria still existed, the Core would continue burning. Whatever happened to the surface or Millmeria’s crust, the Core would continue burning.

Even if Millmeria’s land and oceans were reduced to rubble and rain in the universe, the Core could continue burning.

Ackster had taken on a task for himself whose difficulty couldn’t be described by words.

If one compared numbers alone, Ackster, something slightly beyond a human who had spent less than ten years growing stronger didn’t stand a sliver of a chance against the Core. He didn’t even deserve to be mentioned in the same paragraph if not for his string of accomplishments in exponential difficulty.

In addition to that, Ackster sported an immeasurable talent and an unprecedented combination of skills. Years didn’t matter to Ackster. He put the passing of time to shame. What others needed time to learn, understand, and master, he did by trying.

He didn’t only have a skill that could have caused trouble for the Core if given an endless amount of time. He had a talent that didn’t need time to flourish.

As if spitting in the face of all beings affected by their own or someone else’s talent wasn’t enough, Ackster had another skill that broke through the upper ceiling of even his seemingly bottomless talent.

But the kind of talent that brought Ackster from the absolute bottom of the world to the peak in less than ten years still wasn’t enough to compete against the Core, at least not on its own. Shrinking time to a fraction of what others might have needed wasn’t enough.

He needed something others couldn’t do, even if they had the time and resources.

Fortunately, Ackster’s foundation was rock solid. And he wasn’t up against the entire Core.

All he and Smelting Furnace were fighting against was less than a fraction of the Core. It represented the endless power of the Core. But it wielded an amount akin to a firefly in the daylight compared to the sun.

As such, Ackster was confident he could refine the flame before it melted his Ichor and ended his existence.

The Ex-rank Limit Breaker concentrated all of its efforts into Smelting Furnace.

The same energy that reduced Ackster’s body to ash due to him being unable to withstand it, even when the energy spread out between his skills, concentrated on Smelting Furnace.

The walls of the metaphysical space inside Ackster’s soul shone as Limit Breaker reinforced them and sealed the heat inside.

Smelting Furnace’s flames danced with anabolic rage as they tried to burn through Ackster’s soul in an attempt to subdue the Core’s flame.

Even the Sun God Token, which had always accepted all heat and fire with ease, was slow and hesitant in the face of the collision between the fires of Smelting Furnace and the Core.

However, the Sun God Token was an item that grew stronger the more heat and fire it absorbed. It was slow. But only at first. It rushed to catch up to the insanity of the Smelting Furnace, lest it fall behind and face the same fate as the other piece of Heavenly Iron hiding in a corner.

Eventually, the power from Limit Breaker forced Smelting Furnace beyond reason. It forced Smelting Furnace to accept that it wouldn’t subdue the Core’s flame.

It was impossible to subdue an existence that had existed as long as Millmeria in the time left. It had to beat the shit out of the core and refine it. There was no peaceful option left for either side.

In the end, the result would be the same. It would just have been easier on Smelting Furnace if the Core flame submitted instead of resisting to the bitter end.

Since Smelting Furnace had the home-field advantage, it would just refine all of the Core flame’s heat into its own flames.

It was that.

Or Ackster died.