Rogue Villain-Chapter 353: Dust To Dust

Ackster could hold his breath for several hours, and he could go even longer by pushing his body beyond its limits. He hadn’t found the opportunity to see how long he could actually go without breathing. But he wouldn’t be surprised if he could go several days, thanks to his recovery skills keeping his body in a prime state.

But Ackster’s body was already weary from the over usage of Stubborn Well-Being, Diamond Body’s recovery, and Limit Breaker, not to mention the beating it had taken when the golem still used a humanoid body.

The fight had also made Ackster winded. He wanted to breathe. His muscles wanted him to breathe.

But the suffocation wasn’t the only problem of the golem’s treatment.

Ackster couldn’t move. But the golem could.

Compared to the room’s walls, Ackster’s body wasn’t significantly softer. But with clay covering the walls, including the area behind Ackster, he was the weakest spot in the room.

The golem increased the pressure on the clay around Ackster. It was going to crush him and reduce his body to a compressed ball of meat.

Ackster had a feeling it wouldn’t stop there. The golem wouldn’t stop until Ackster was but a grain of dirt. It would get rid of his body by compressing it more than Ackster thought would be possible, considering his bone and muscle density. But that only meant he had room to improve in that department.

Ackster struggled to fight back by tensing all of his muscles and pulling on his tendons to get his limbs to move.

But the weight of an entire room of magical clay blocked his every attempt. His muscles ruptured, his tendons snapped, his bones cracked, and his joints exploded, unable to contain the force any longer.

Ackster felt his vision tremble.

He had found what he was looking for. But he had found too much of it. He could activate Limit Breaker to the same degree as when he caught the bird. But if he didn’t find his way out, Ackster would have just sealed his own fate.

Still, it wasn’t like he had any other options.

Ackster mustered what remained of his sources, all of them, including the miasma-infected Ichor. It might only be good for one thing, but that one thing was to boost the power of Berserk.

’Did I get Berserk so easily due to the Demon Sword?’

A stray thought flashed through Ackster’s heated mind as his body glowed and trembled with power that was more than it could handle. It was the weight of several Ex-rank skills on a body with only SSS-rank physical stats.

But the tremors traveled through the clay, affecting the golem and the room.

Ackster’s senses read the tremors that bounced back like echolocation. There was one area where the tremors didn’t bounce back. Coincidentally enough, that area was about the size of the tunnel he had entered through.

Ackster set his sights on it and steeled his resolve.

Doing what he was about to do would reduce his body to smithereens, and his recovery wouldn’t be able to recover it before he died.

Unfortunately, Ackster could tell that Conditional Immortality wouldn’t activate.

His Ichor and the marble that contained it were unstable. That was the core of his existence. If Conditional Immortality was like what had happened with the demon, Ackster knew he needed an intact core to resurrect.

Without his body and three sources to act as a buffer, the instability of his Ichor due to the miasma would tear the marble apart.

It would be fine as long as something of his body remained or if he could escape the golem’s enclosure and recover.

But if the golem isolated his core, Ackster would have to kiss saving the world goodbye.

Ackster cleared his head of useless thoughts and dialed Limit Breaker the final tick. He didn’t have any eyes to close, but he imagined he closed them. It made it easier to visualize his surroundings as water, after all.

Ackster moved his broken limbs like he was swimming in syrup as he dug and crawled his way through the golem’s cubic body with movements that didn’t seem to fit into the world.

His body and the clay occasionally overlapped before his existence snapped into place and brusquely shoved the clay aside. Ackster wasn’t lucid enough to notice delicate details like that. All he could think of was moving forward.

However, halfway through the golem, Ackster’s body started deteriorating. His fingertips could no longer bear being the focal point of Limit Breaker’s power in Ackster’s fight against the resilient and grainy clay. They turned into dust.

Ackster’s fingers and hands were quick to follow and fade away.

Ackster could only use what remained of his arms to gnaw away at the clay and open a path. When even those were gone, he couldn’t do anything but forcefully push his way through the clay that seemed like an endless wall of sticky syrup that grew thicker by the moment and tried to hold onto him like a clingy lover.

But it wasn’t the clay that grew thicker. Ackster’s impression came from the fact that Limit Breaker’s power waned. His body couldn’t keep up, and Limit Breaker’s power ran out, and it lost a vessel to use it through.

Ackster stumbled and collapsed against the clay that lovingly held him up with a fatal embrace.

Ackster tried to continue walking and push his body forward through sheer willpower and Unstoppable. But there wasn’t much he could do without feet. Or legs, for that matter.

Nothing but Ackster’s torso remained. But even that quickly dissipated.

Ackster didn’t even know how far he had gotten, at least in the room. Regarding his quest to save his life, Ackster had gotten far. He had made it more than halfway. Only a few years remained, and only a few levels of strength to go before it was time, before he was ready.

But it seemed like he had aimed wrong. He should have tried harder to keep his life safe in the present, not just in the future.

’No...’

Ackster’s body turned to dust that faded from existence. It had been worn and exhausted until nothing of it remained.

But Ackster still existed. His core—the core of his existence—still remained. The darkness of his obsession and the miasma was fighting and winning against his grand wish to save the world and his life—to obtain peace.

’This is not...!’

However, Ackster wasn’t the type to give up that easily.

’This is not where I fall!’