Return of the Runebound Professor-Chapter 694: They should have stopped coming.

Garina was more than aware that Noah was no normal human. That possibility had sailed a long time ago. Death’s inability to keep a grip on him would have normally been more than enough to make that obvious. It only became more evident when he’d practically brought Crone to his knees with a few mere moments of a mind link.

But knowing what Noah was not didn’t help Garina figure out what he was. She knew pieces of the whole truth. Fragments of what she needed, just enough to understand just how little she truly knew.

Too much about him didn’t add up. There were too many anomalies. Too many things that simply shouldn’t have been possible. As one grew stronger, the universe made it increasingly apparent that anything was possible.

Limits were artificially imposed as a lack of understanding rather than possibility. With the sufficient motivation and tools, anything could be accomplished. Those who did not understand that rarely made it beyond Rank 6. One could not take steps toward godhood without realizing just how little they truly knew.

But even that knowledge didn’t answer the questions churning through her head. This couldn’t even be described as a coincidence. Noah’s mystery wasn’t a one-off event. She couldn’t brush all the oddness off as the result of some passing incident.

This was more. It had to be. The more time Garina spent with Noah, the more she became absolutely convinced that there was something in motion far, far beyond anything she had ever involved herself in before.

An anomaly like Noah wasn’t something that could just… happen. The fingers of some immensely powerful god — or perhaps multiple — had to be dipped into the pie. They were manipulating something. Preparing something.

Garina didn’t know what. She didn’t know why. She didn’t even suspect that finding out was a wise idea. Information was only power when it could be acted upon. And if her suspicions were correct, if Noah was truly the pawn of some immensely powerful creature and being pruned and raised for… whatever purpose it may have had — there was nothing she could do about it.

Sure, I could kill Noah. I could unleash the full strength of my Runes and shatter his soul so utterly that nothing remained. But if an entity that powerful is invested in Noah… I doubt it’ll let me. I’ll be dead before I finish drawing on my Runes.

Even asking to take a peek directly at Noah’s soul had a decent chance of ending in the same manner. Crone was a fool, and anyone watching them would have known that. He was unlikely to root out any oddities.

But Garina was not so easily deceived. If there was something to find within Noah’s soul, she would find it. And if he posed a threat to this world — if he was here for some purpose other than the one that he had claimed, then she would be forced to act.

Noah might not even know. He could have no idea as to the extent that the events in his life were manipulated. A powerful being could have built him from the ground up as its chosen weapon, for some purpose that I can’t even begin to understand, without ever revealing its presence. Noah could think that he’s just incredibly lucky — or cursed.

That was a very real possibility. But in the end, whether Noah knew or not; whether his intentions were good or ill; Garina had to determine what he was. Even if his purpose was purely benign, she couldn’t continue to teach him if she didn’t know what he was.

Garina wasn’t foolish enough to believe that Decras would step in to protect her if things went poorly. He had always been very hands off with his followers. The only one who had managed to directly communicate with Decras for any extensive period of time was the Prophet, and even he struggled to get anything meaningful from their conversation. Decras wasn’t going to start a feud with another powerful god purely just to protect her.

Garina was on her own. But she wasn’t dead yet. Even as Noah let his power flow into her soul and lift her soul from within its housing, nothing changed. That only sent a chill racing down Garina’s back.

She could really only think of two possibilities as to why she hadn’t been stopped.

Either the god that had shaped Noah was very confident in its powers, to the point where it believed she wouldn’t be able to figure out the faintest piece of information about what it had done…

Or it knew that something within Noah’s would shatter Garina’s mind so thoroughly that she would have no chance of fighting back.

There was no more time to wonder. She was the hound. Finding things out was her job. Protecting this empire was her duty. It was a largely self-imposed role. It was not one that had made her any allies. It was not one that allowed for them. Nobody liked being policed, but nobody could be trusted to act in accordance with the rules if they were not enforced.

This is my purpose.

Garina relaxed. She felt Noah’s magic pull at her soul and try to slip it free of her body. She offered up no resistance. On the contrary. When Noah’s senses extended toward her, Garina opened her soul and let it gaze directly into the very core of who Noah was.

Anything that existed within…

She would find it.

The world spun. It twisted, tendrils of darkness coiling inward to swallow her vision like a twisting kaleidoscope. The shadows rose to consume everything until only they remained. For the briefest of moments, there was simply nothing.

And then she was within Noah’s soul.

An endless expanse of void stretched out in every direction around Garina’s awareness. It was perfectly still. Perfectly silent. Perfectly empty. A complete lack of anything that could have ever been considered existence.

What is this?

A second ticked by. Garina could practically hear it rattle by in the back of her head. She couldn’t feel Noah’s soul anymore. She couldn’t even feel her own. Her awareness of her being felt like it was muted and muffled behind a dozen thick layers of wool.

This couldn’t have been a soul. It was too vast. To empty. To grand, and yet too devoid of anything at all. She would have thought she was simply stuck somewhere in transit between their souls if she didn’t know better.

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But Garina was certain she had entered Noah’s domain. Her consciousness was within his. She’d felt herself pass through the barrier, if only for a brief instant. This had to be his soul… but it was like no soul she had ever seen.

She would have liked to say that she floated there in silent, stunned observation. But Garina couldn’t claim even that. To float would have implied existence. It would have implied some knowledge or understanding as to the place of her own body.

And right now, she didn’t even have that. She wasn’t even sure that she was. This wasn’t even death. It was a state so close to non-existence that it couldn’t even be properly comprehended. It was just…

Nothing.

And then, far in the distance, a spark of gold shimmered.

Garina’s gaze focused on it at around the same time that she realized that she, in fact, had a gaze. Awareness of her body slammed back like a hammer blow.

And light exploded around her. A pathway carved into existence like the glistening tail of a comet long since passed. It formed beneath her feet, extending out both before and behind her to vanish into the horizons.

A heartbeat thumped in her ears.

Garina found her consciousness higher than she’d thought it to be. The being that she had believed to be her. She actually floated above a pale ghostly form — and it was not her own.

It was Noah. He didn’t look much like the body she’d come to associate with his soul, but there was absolutely no doubt within her mind. The translucent blue being beneath her was Noah. He stood alone on the twisting golden line, watching it vanish into the distance.

What is happening? Where am I?

Then Noah took a step forward.

Garina found herself jerked backward. Her stomach would have shot up into her throat if she still had a body to observe with. Instead, she simply found herself staring down at that very same line.

She could still just barely make out Noah’s form upon the line, but she could now see even more of it — and she still couldn’t even begin to determine where it ended or where it started.

The world jerked back a second time before Garina could adjust to her new vision. Noah shrank once more. The line stretched farther still — and still, she could make out no end. No beginning.

There was just Noah. Noah, and the seemingly endless path he stood upon.

Garina’s inexistent ears rung. The immensity of the golden pathway drove into her consciousness like a physical hammer blow. Calling it vast would have been an understatement so criminal that it carried the penalty of death.

Noah took a step forward. Garina didn’t know how she knew that. She simply did. He was walking, but from where she floated, so far above that Noah’s presence wasn’t even visible upon the glistening path anymore, he may as well not have moved.

He took another step forward.

And then another one.

And another one.

And another one.

Not one of them moved him in any meaningful manner. He may as well have been standing still. There was no end to the line. No limit to its immensity. Even a hundred thousand years of constant sprinting would have the same result as not having moved at all.

And still Noah walked.

Each step pierced into Garina’s consciousness with the weight of building realization.

Her breath caught in invisible lungs. An invisible force wound around her throat. It pulled her downward, trying to yank her back down to stand beside Noah’s ghostly form.

And then, only then, did Garina realize where she was.

No.

There was no god here. No greater creature that had shaped Noah into anything, nor some divine conspiracy or plot.

There was only Noah and the line he stood upon.

But it wasn’t just a line.

It was the Line.

This can’t be possible.

She’d known he’d retained a measure of his memories from the Line. That he’d somehow managed to escape the afterlife with fragments of both Decras and Renewal. But these were no mere fragments of what had been.

Noah’s soul didn’t just have a few passing memories of the Line burned into it. It didn’t remember just a few thousand years, or even a hundred thousand of them.

It remembered all of them.

A mortal consciousness can’t possibly contain this. He should be shattered into pieces. No. Dust. There should be nothing left. Gods process time differently to mortals. That’s how their consciousness doesn’t completely erode. The Line is meant to wear away every single scrap of humanity someone has so that they can be born anew, isn’t it? That’s what the Prophet said.

How does he remember every single step? How is he anything more than a gibbering mess of agonized flesh?

In response, Noah took another step.

The world jerked around Garina. The world shifted and she found herself upon the surface of the Line once more. Noah was gone. It was just Garina and the line — but this time, she knew better.

How long did he walk the Line?

Horror swelled in her thoughts like a rising tide.

She’d delved into the very core of Noah’s soul and had found eternity waiting within it.

Even gods would not have come here. Not even they would have the desire to subject themselves to such torture. And Garina was not a god. Her perception of time was not all that much different than that of a mortal.

She had absolutely no idea how any fragment of his psyche had remained. Noah as a concept should have been gone. Reduced to nothing more than a long faded memory. Under the sheer weight of an entire universe of time… he shouldn’t have existed at all.

And now that very same weight was upon Garina’s shoulders. A cold hand clenched its skeletal fingers around Garina’s heart. The idea of surviving this for even a few thousand years and somehow coming out of it without yearning to have her mind wiped clean by the Waters of Life sounded ludicrous.

Noah wasn’t working with anyone. He hadn’t been created by anyone. There would be no god foolish enough to intentionally bring something like him to life. The type of monster that could look into the abyss for an eternity and emerge from it with any fragment of their mortal mind still intact would not be the manner of creature that obeyed the commands of another.

Noah wasn’t asking me if I was sure I wanted to look into his soul because he was trying to hide something.

He was trying to show me kindness.

Cold realization bound around her like iron chains. Garina’s foot lifted of its own volition as she found her body taking a step forward along the Line. She hadn’t thought of taking the step. It had simply happened. There was no choice in the matter.

It was the only action she could do. The only move her limbs would allow her to take, and one that insisted upon itself — one that would continue to insist upon itself until time itself wore to a thread and snapped.

This wasn’t even the true Line. It was merely a memory of it — but it had seared itself so deeply into Noah’s very existence that it didn’t matter.

Garina could barely believe what she was seeing. The afterlife was a concept. It was a place, not a being. Nobody could harness its vast power. It simply was.

And Noah had it burned into his soul like a fancy tattoo.

He’s a perfect replica. A walking imprint of the immensity of the afterlife itself.

The ramifications of this were almost too terrifying to think about, and she didn’t have the luxury to mull over her thoughts.

I need to get out of here. I delved too deep. Far too deep.

If I stay too long, I might not be able to escape until I’ve actually seen every single corner of Noah’s soul, just like I’d wanted to.

And if that happens…

There won’t be anything of me left.