Lancelot was simply insane. His very being gave that word reason to exist. His delusions knew no bounds, demanding that life itself was good enough to entertain him, even threatening death not to bore him.

And yet, Dominic had been the one to lose that exchange. His sanity, his mindset rooted in reality, had been powerless to stop that ideal.

If Lancelot could repeat that feat against the Heavens, his claim would be insane no more. It would become a factual truth.

Liam hissed under his breath, his bloodshot eyes glued to the scene. He didn’t know why. He didn’t even ponder that, but he couldn’t stop watching the fight, as if something beyond the insane claim was speaking to him.

A tinge of confusion spread on Liam’s face. A subconscious part of him realized that he should understand the speech. It resonated with his very being, but that wasn’t available to him anymore.

Still, the confusion only intensified, expanding the realization. Liam felt that something was missing. He knew that to be the case, and the sensation was too odd not to dive into it to look for its source.

The oddness deepened until a radical transformation unfolded. Liam opened his eyes, becoming Liam again, only to find nothing but blackness around him.

The blackness didn’t feel like a liquid. It flowed, but it was both air and slime. It wasn’t suffocating or heavy, either. Liam could breathe there, but his sense of self wavered whenever that strange substance entered his nostrils.

Instincts kicked in. Liam had never been much of a swimmer. His upbringing had never given him many bodies of water, but the process felt easy in that environment. He rose toward what he believed was the surface until his face finally peeked into a new scenery.

Liam resurfaced, only to see more darkness. It wasn’t quite as pitch-black as the liquid he was floating among, but the air, the horizon, and even the non-existent ceiling lacked any form of light.

It was as if all that existed in that world was an empty sky and the black sea, with the latter rising continuously.

Nevertheless, as empty as the dark sky was, it wasn’t silent. Screams and voices that Liam recognized resounded everywhere. Hisses as deep as the foundation of the world cried in the background, making his very insides shake.

There were other, fainter sounds, which made sense to Liam. They were urges he owned and produced, blending with the cacophony that had taken over the sky.

As strange as that experience was, Liam realized where he was, both subconsciously and with the help of previous experiences. He had gone through similar events when awakening his dantian and binding the Black Bow. That simply was Liam’s mind in all its terrible state.

There was no control to exert. Liam was just a tiny dot in that boundless, seething sea. He was inconsequential to its ominous magnificence, too small a being even to compare.

And for a moment, Liam considered just diving back in. He had chosen to drown in that blackness because it was power, and it was boundless, ever-rising. The sea would eventually overtake the dark sky, achieving more than something as tiny as Liam could ever dream of attaining.

Liam was fine with losing everything as long as his revenge succeeded, even if he had to pay the ultimate price. Due to how impossible his mission was, he couldn’t help but find the trade reasonable.

But there was heat, something stirring inside Liam that delayed his immersion long enough to start a reasoning that delayed it even further.

Liam’s life had gotten complicated. The simplicity of Krosstoen’s mountain had been no more for over a year now. It had expanded in ways that the monkey-boy would have never been able to conceive.

Moreover, the more Liam experienced, the more his perspective broadened, the better he understood himself. He had matured a lot, even too much, too quickly, and one surprising trait had stood out.

Liam was greedy. He wanted so much. A mere taste of what life could offer had turned him into an addict, and that went beyond material possessions.

Horace, Melissa, Joel, and Grace were all missions of their own, all quests Liam wanted to succeed at. His revenge might have expanded, but so did the things he desired, becoming new, uncompromisable goals in a life that could barely hold a fraction of a single one of them.

But feasibility wasn’t a variable for Liam. His Master had taught him better than that, but a piece was missing, one that Lancelot’s insane claim had hinted at, one that even Grace had pointed out.

Liam was blind to his own value.

Liam wasn’t exactly humble. Life in Krosstoen’s mountain simply never had room for that kind of personal development.

Even after the possibility for that development arrived, Liam’s ignorance and lofty goals had held him back. He hadn’t known enough to understand whether he was good or not, and he couldn’t help but consider himself an ant compared to what he had to achieve.

Yet, the ignorance was no more, and everything was exactly where Liam needed it to be, from his Master’s teachings, Grace’s scoldings, to Lancelot’s inspirational speech.

Actually, there was a fourth factor, coming directly from Liam’s opponent.

’Who do I think I am?!’ Liam thought, angry. ’Do you have any idea what I had to do to get here?!’

Liam’s time in the cultivation world was short, but he had already overcome many terrible odds. His talent had played a part, but it was nothing more than a weapon he had learned to wield through blood, sweat, and tears.

Liam had abused himself to the point of breaking down mentally and physically multiple times over. He had tortured himself for each of his achievements, and someone had dared to belittle them.

Horace Rauret had lit up Liam’s drive, his desire to live life his way, to enforce his will onto the world. Liam didn’t feel unworthy of it anymore, but he could finally experience the other side of that teaching.

It wasn’t just about not feeling bad. It wasn’t just about things being fair. Pride bloomed inside Liam for the first time in his life, and with that came anger toward those who insulted it, as well as an insane but healthy dose of arrogance.

’And I should still have to give myself up after all that?’ Liam raged. ’Screw it!’

Liam glared at the endless blackness all around him. The rising, seething sea was too big to conceive. It probably had no bottom or limit, but it was power, and drowning in it wasn’t the only way of seizing it.

As if driven to a frenzy, Liam immersed his face in those not-waters, only to fill his mouth and resurface, gulping down.

Something assaulted Liam’s sense of self, but it remained unwavering now. It didn’t budge even after he took another mouthful, and then a third. He saw the path toward getting everything he wanted without losing anything, so he would pursue it, even if he had to drink that black sea dry.

But the sea changed before Liam could dive for the fourth mouthful. Its surface and depths churned and solidified, transforming into scales attached to a body too big to fathom.

Coils over coils of a gargantuan serpentine body replaced the sea, and something equally immense rose from it. A triangular head that could obscure the sky reached into the darkness before descending toward Liam, stopping several hundred meters above him, its flickering forked tongue almost closing that distance.

That was the biggest representation of the Ancestral Snake Liam had ever witnessed, but even that couldn’t stop him, not now.

The first time, Liam had been in a pathetic state, squashed down by the auditory hallucination. The sky still had those screams now, but Liam only looked up fearlessly, uncaring of the legendary monster glancing back, even disregarding it soon enough.

The sea might have transformed, but it was still what Liam needed, so he turned to bite down at the scales upon which he was lying.

Liam’s teeth hurt, or whatever passed for teeth in that mental scene. The scales didn’t budge, but he only bit down harder. If that were to be a battle of what broke first, Liam would see it to its end.

But the Snake didn’t care about that direct challenge, some amusement even resounding in the human hiss that followed. "My son, what is it that you want?"

Liam stopped munching at the scales and looked up, knowing the answer for once in his life. "I want it all!"

The reply didn’t only apply to the blackness. It went far beyond it, including all of Liam’s goals, life, and the world as a whole. He wanted to seize everything he desired without giving up anything.

"Better," The Snake hissed. "Take it all, my son. All was yours to swallow the moment you inherited my Hatred."

The gargantuan Snake suddenly evaporated into tides of black smoke. The scales on which Liam was lying vanished, but he didn’t fall. The storm of blackness raged and kept him afloat, invading his figure to fuse with it.