Arcane: The Gods Want Me to Pick a Route

Chapter 278: Want an Opponent or Not?

"Joy, unceasing and forever~~~!"

"Remember my name, god. I am Nilah, the godslayer who will kill you!"

The words she shouted sounded almost like a prayer. Then the sword-light that stretched across the sky and raised that vast curtain of water came crashing down toward where Lissandra stood. The slash Nilah unleashed was even more pronounced than Logan’s, brighter, more dazzling, sweeping toward Lissandra like a tassel of flowing light.

Boom!

Huge chunks of ice broke away from the iceberg that had risen out of nowhere. A trace of displeasure flashed through Lissandra’s eyes. At last, she had some understanding of what Illaoi meant when she said even Nagakabouros was wary of Nilah.

This girl named Nilah really was insane.

What gods started fighting each other for absolutely no reason like this? Even when they did come to blows on sight, it still was not like Nilah, going all out from the first second, taking no precautions, thinking of nothing except killing her opponent.

At this moment, Nilah was clearly attacking with the intent to kill Lissandra, and that naturally stirred anger in the witch’s heart. Fury rose within her, and she decided she was going to teach this deranged self-proclaimed godslayer a lesson.

Everything had rules. If you refused to play by them, then she had no reason to keep any with you, either.

"Freeze."

The two words slipped softly from her lips. Lissandra pointed at the charging Nilah, and on that pale, immaculate face of hers, her pale pupils turned bright icy blue in an instant. Her fingers curled slightly, as though snatching something out of the air.

Crack—

Logan heard the sound clearly.

It was the shattering sound of space itself being frozen until it fractured, the wail of time seeming to stall and freeze along with it.

The moment he saw Lissandra getting serious with Nilah, Logan’s first instinct was to stop her out loud. But just as he was about to speak, he suddenly caught himself.

Stop her?

Wait, why should he stop her?

Nilah obviously was not in any state to listen to reason right now. Wasn’t it obvious from the way her eyes were shining, that smile spread across her face as she attacked Lissandra? So instead of trying to mediate, it would be much more practical to let Lissandra beat some sense into Nilah first. Once Nilah cooled down, then Logan could negotiate with her properly.

As for himself...

He could just find a place to wait for the two of them to finish.

With that thought in mind, Logan simply watched as Lissandra used her domain power and dragged Nilah into another world of space entirely.

And what was called a domain was very much like the island Logan now stood on. This island lay in the Guardian’s Sea, and for nearly twenty miles around it, this was the only island in sight.

Outside, it was cloudy. Though it was winter, when Illaoi had brought Logan here, it had not been snowing at all. But on this island, huge flakes of snow were falling in thick sheets.

That was the power of a domain.

It drew upon the laws of Runeterra, yet did not depend on them. Instead, through the user’s own power, it could freely alter the environment and conditions within the domain itself.

And that was why demigods with godhood were so terrifying. They could deploy domains and create battlefields suited to their own strengths, letting them accomplish twice as much with half the effort in combat.

Finding himself a place to sit, Logan took the heavy sword from his back and set it in front of him, then reached out and patted Aatrox.

Within his mind, Aatrox, who had been asleep while absorbing Logan’s power to cleanse the Void corruption from himself, awakened. The first words out of his mouth were—

"Who are we killing?"

"No one. I just brought you out to chat." Logan immediately found it funny that Aatrox’s first question was who they were about to kill.

Looking at the eye on the hilt, Logan asked him, "The Void’s corruption on you should have eased up a lot by now, so why are you still like this? Or was this actually what you were like even back when you were still one of the Ascended?"

The moment he heard that Logan had not pulled him out for a fight, Aatrox’s tone immediately turned hostile. After a snort, he said, "Ridiculous. Back when I was one of the Ascended..."

Aatrox suddenly fell silent. He stared at Logan, and after a long pause, he enunciated slowly, "Noble. Elegant. Cold."

"None of those words have even the slightest connection to the you right now," Logan said.

The moment Aatrox heard that, he visibly grew irritated and roared impatiently, "I already told you, that was the old me. Glory was a blessing, but it was also a chain. Back then, I possessed incomparable glory. Sunlight shone upon me, all living things crowned me, and it taught me what I should do and what I should not do. But look at what I am now. I have fallen, I am trapped in corr— hm?"

Aatrox suddenly let out a quiet sound of surprise. The huge red eye on his hilt narrowed slightly. He looked calm on the surface, but inside he was already shaken.

He... had actually just thought of his current self as fallen.

Aatrox felt dazed. Before coming into contact with Logan, Aatrox had known he had been changed, but he had never once thought any of it was his own fault. He had believed it was the fault of the Celestials, the world, the emperor, every living being in existence.

The Ascended had fought the Void for all of them, and in the end, what had the world called them? Darkin.

But after thinking it through more carefully, Aatrox suddenly found the true point of the problem.

At the very beginning, had the people of Shurima really been calling them Darkin?

No.

After the war ended, all the Ascended who had fought in the war against the Void were actually revered by the people. That reverence lasted for thousands of years, right up until Shurima’s last emperor, Azir, died suddenly and the empire collapsed. Once that faith disappeared, the Ascended began fighting among themselves, and only then did everything begin to change.

Without faith, and twisted by pain and Void corruption, the Ascended gave up resisting the Void’s temptation. They willingly sank into that hell, became Darkin, and released without restraint all the malice and greed the Void had amplified inside them.

Aatrox himself had disdained involving himself in those matters, but he had still heard enough. His brothers and sisters had begun fighting one another over territory, and calling them regional warlords would not be an exaggeration at all.

Could any warlord possibly be a good person?

Before they became warlords, even the worst Ascended were never that bad. But once they became warlords, there was no way they could still remain good. After all, if you became a warlord and still acted like a good man, then what was even the point of becoming a warlord?

Under those conditions, the people of Shurima were already drowning in hardship because the empire had collapsed. Then, thanks to the private interests of the Ascended, they were dragged onto battlefields as well.

So how could they possibly continue to revere those people?

Thinking that far, Aatrox slowly fell silent.

"Why did you suddenly stop talking?" Logan had no idea what Aatrox was thinking about, so he asked aloud, cutting off his thoughts.

"Logan, I think I may really have done a great many things wrong..."

Aatrox suddenly said it, and there was far less madness in his tone now. His blood-red eye looked at Logan. It was still frightening, but much of the violence inside it had faded.

"Thanks to you, I can no longer hear those voices. But now I find myself even more lost." Aatrox looked at Logan with complete seriousness and said, "I have no body. I can never return to Shurima. You say Azir is still alive, but even if he is, Shurima itself is gone."

"Azir will rebuild Shurima."

Aatrox gave a bitter laugh, his voice heavy. "Rebuild? Did you really think that while I’ve been following you around all this time, I was only sleeping and recovering? Everything you’ve done during this time, everything that has happened in the outside world, I have seen it all."

"You wouldn’t allow Shurima to be fully restored, would you?"

Logan fell silent.

"As long as Azir keeps his empire inside Shurima, I won’t interfere. That much I can promise, because I already have more than enough on my plate," Logan said seriously.

"Even if you don’t interfere, even if you let Azir restore the empire, the people of Shurima themselves would never agree." Aatrox’s voice sank lower. "Just from that little girl following you around, and all the desert folk scattered throughout Zaun, that much is obvious without anyone needing to verify it. The glory of the empire has already completely faded away, just like my own former glory. If Azir tries to restore Shurima, he’ll only become the enemy of Shurima’s people."

"You can talk about ancestors, foundations, stories from thousands of years ago, but human lives last barely a century. A hundred years to you and me is only a flash, but to humans, it is enough time for the seas and fields to change beyond recognition. The empire’s old glory and honor never belonged to them, but the future suffering and tyranny would be theirs to endure. Who would agree to something like that?"

"I didn’t expect you to understand all that." Logan smiled a little, laid Aatrox across his lap, and said softly.

Though what Aatrox said about a hundred years being only a fleeting instant to someone like him, Logan did not agree with that at all.

He had no intention of becoming some ten-thousand-year turtle, and he definitely was not going to grow lazy just because he had more time than others. A hundred years was already a very long time.

Logan would live the same way as his home and his people, seizing the day.

"Heh. You think I’m like you? Sitting in a high position while understanding nothing, handing everything off to others to deal with, then glorifying it by calling it putting the right people in the right places."

"Are you criticizing me right now?" Logan sounded genuinely surprised. Half a year ago, Aatrox had done little besides howl about glory and rant about the past like an idiot.

So how had he suddenly become this normal?

"Don’t you criticize me all the time too? Tossing me into a corner, then standing there with your women pointing at me and making comments, did you forget that?" Aatrox shot back.

"Hey, hey, Aatrox, you’re healing your injuries with my power right now. Or are you saying you want to go back to that muddled state where all you knew was kill, kill, kill?"

"Fuck you. Haven’t you been borrowing my power too? Logan, if I get stronger, doesn’t that mean you get stronger too?" Aatrox cursed.

"Watch your damn mouth," Logan said unhappily.

Aatrox: "?"

At the same time, while Logan and Aatrox were bickering outside and their relationship had clearly improved quite a bit, Nilah and Lissandra had already begun their second round.

Ice and snow filled the world. Everywhere the eye could see was nothing but a blank white void.

Nilah took a deep breath, and when she exhaled, the white mist that left her mouth shot forward like an arrow.

She had to admit it, even for her, this weather and this temperature were difficult to endure. Cold, too cold.

So cold that her fingers trembled, her teeth chattered, and pain shot through her spine.

The woman in front of her raised a hand, and in that instant countless thick chains of ice formed out of nothing. With just a small motion of Lissandra’s fingertip, those frozen chains shot out like giant serpents, binding toward Nilah.

The cold had made her body stiff, but Nilah could still respond. She lifted her whip-sword upward, and a water curtain rose before her like a hanging veil. Although most of the moisture froze instantly, the water wall Nilah created contained even more sword energy than water itself.

And because of that, Nilah could hold!

With a sharp twist of her wrist, she lashed sideways with the whip-sword, shattering the water curtain she had just raised. The dispersed sword energy spread outward, changing from an upward defense into a sweeping arc to the left. Then she swung with equal force to the right, and the sword energy spread on both sides, forming a dazzling half-circle that protected her whole body.

"You have power like Ashlesh’s? You can create a world of space out of thin air?"

"Just as I thought, opponents like you are the ones I most need to challenge!"

Blocking Lissandra’s attack, Nilah shouted loudly with a smile on her face.

Her expression was wild with exhilaration, but her eyes were grave.

What a joke. The moment Lissandra dragged her into this world, Nilah already knew she had challenged an opponent who would not be easy to defeat.

Law. Domain. Nilah could do those things too. She had received such powers from Ashlesh as well, but... she could not pull an opponent into her own domain as casually and easily as Lissandra had just done.

And Lissandra’s domain was far too large.

It was much smaller than Ashlesh’s, of course, since Ashlesh ruled an entire prison realm and was the lord of the Seventh Layer, but this frozen world, these mountains soaring into the clouds, these trees and everything else, all of it filled Nilah with deep caution.

But even so...

I still won’t lose!

A hero was someone who pushed forward even in the face of hardship and danger, someone who confronted adversity head-on!

With whip-sword in hand, Nilah ran across the ice, her body springing through the air with nimble grace. Her weapon swept out brilliant ribbons of water-light, and her steps looked almost like a dance. The flowing sword-energy wrapped tightly around her body as she advanced.

Facing the charging Nilah, Lissandra’s bright, gleaming eyes showed a trace of disdain.

She did not know who Ashlesh was, but the powerful beings, terrors, and catastrophes she had faced in her life were far more numerous, and far more horrifying, than this girl could possibly imagine.

Amid a shrill, explosive roar, Lissandra raised both hands high.

"Well, that’s finally over."

Logan picked up Aatrox and looked at the ice-blue door that had suddenly appeared before him.

Of course he was not worried about Lissandra. Nilah really was strong, but Nilah’s background story clearly said that when she went to challenge Volibear, she had nearly been beaten to death. If Morgana had not saved her, she probably would have died and gone right back to Ashlesh.

And Lissandra?

Nine thousand years ago, she could already exchange blows with Volibear at his full strength. He clawed out her eyes, but she still kept her life. As for how strong Lissandra was now, there was no need to even say it.

So Logan rose, ready to greet the witch.

But the one who came out was Nilah.

She was soaked from head to toe. Her hair, which had been wild and prickly before, now clung wetly to her cheeks. She was smiling, the corners of her mouth drawn into a huge grin, but looking at her, Logan could not help feeling that she was actually dejected.

When Nilah saw Logan, she looked up at him once, then quietly stepped to the side.

Only then did Logan notice the ring of ice around her waist. One end of it extended into a chain.

And then Logan saw the person holding that chain walk out.

Lissandra stepped out calmly and looked at Logan. "It’s settled. She can talk properly now."

The moment Logan heard that, he grinned.

Then he looked at Nilah and said, "Nilah, want an opponent?"

"No, no more, no more." Nilah immediately raised both hands and refused with a smile, but her eyes were full of panic.

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