Micky’s father paused for a while. He helped his son flip over, as it was time for him to draw the tattoos on the other side of his body.

Meanwhile, Percy took the chance to ponder over the man’s words. Being somewhat experienced in cosmic affairs by now, he had a pretty good idea where the story was headed. But that didn’t make it any less interesting.

‘This Dying Hero… He’s the one who invented elixirs on Huehue, isn’t he? Or at least the one who truly breathed life into the idea.’

It was fascinating, because Percy guessed a similar story had to be buried in the past of every lesser and greater spring in the universe. In almost every case, it should be a bunch of powerless people struggling to protect their loved ones from the beasts, until some crazy bastard took some risks and ruined their body, looking for a way to advance.

There was no question, something similar must’ve happened on Remior, long before better known figures like Iapetus or Kronos emerged.

‘And this goes beyond just the elixirs…’

He couldn’t help but think back to the cyan powder he had discovered by accident on the world with the floating cats. Remior was far more developed than that place – pretty much every single lesser spring was – but it was the uneducated natives of that planet who had discovered such a revolutionary secret first. Clearly, there was no better motivator than sheer desperation to drive people into doing all sorts of reckless things.

In any case, Micky’s father soon continued both the story and the process of drawing the tattoos on his son’s chest, after having his wife hold the boy up.

“Failing to see any results after a decade, the Hero started to doubt himself. Not that he had any intention of giving up his quest, but he at least realized he might have to find a way to accelerate the process, otherwise he might not live long enough for his labour to bear fruit.”

“Harvesting various ingredients from other beasts and plants around the village, he methodically tried mixing them with the gimbhal hearts, one by one, slowly but steadily exploring what effect they might have on the cleansing process. Unfortunately, most of his experiments were complete failures. The only thing he managed was to waste many of his stored hearts, the other ingredients having a neutral effect at best, or a negative one at worse on the effectiveness of the organs.”

“If that wasn’t enough, the Hero was the object of the villagers’ scorn and disdain by then. His foolish experiments and the cowardice he displayed on the battlefield hadn’t gone unnoticed, and he no longer had any friends to speak out for him either. He was ostracized and treated like a parasite who didn’t even pull his own weight.”

“But he didn’t care. He had already subjected himself to unimaginable pain. If he had to endure the cold glances of the villagers too, it was a small price to pay.”

“Many more years passed before his experiments yielded some results. Decades even. Eventually, he noticed that the colourful leaves from a rare bush had a positive effect on the gimbhal hearts. Mixing the two ingredients together wasted most of their quantity, but the final product didn’t react as violently with his own mana, allowing him to absorb slightly more of it each time.”

“Over the next few years, the Hero fine-tuned the process, learning to preserve more of the ingredients as he boiled them together. He was able to consume the heart pieces more often, and to increase the amount he ate each time. Of course, his methods were still quite harmful to his body. It didn’t take long for him to pay a steep price for his recklessness.”

“Technically, the Hero wasn’t that old yet. He was only in his sixties, which isn’t much for a mage. Even at Orange, one can live for centuries. But the Hero was forced to retire from fighting entirely, since he wasn’t in any condition to keep going. Some permanent cracks had formed on his core, and even his bones and muscles had degraded to various extents from all the toxic ingredients he'd consumed.”

Support the creativity of authors by visiting NovelBin for this novel and more.

“At that point, he had no choice but to beg the younger warriors to give him some scraps so that he wouldn’t starve, and some hearts whenever they happened to slay more gimbhals. Most of them looked at him with disgust, but a few of the more kind-hearted ones still helped him out – purely out of pity. The village had all sorts of issues to deal with, but a scarcity of food luckly wasn’t among them. Besides, they didn’t have any other use for the gimbhal hearts anyway.”

“Looking at the poor state of his own body, and the harsh treatment of the villagers, the Hero was forced to reflect upon his actions. Had the elder been right all along? Had he stubbornly fed himself poison all these years, destroying his life for nothing?!”

“Well, it was certainly possible. But it was too late to back down now. His body was already in tatters. He couldn’t fix it, even if he stopped. He couldn’t bring his friends back from the dead either. Nor could he earn back the respect he had lost. There was only one path forward – to see his mission through to the end. Even if he failed, he would die with his chin up.”

“The Hero was no longer able to collect the coloured leaves he needed. Nobody was willing to fetch them for him either. Out of options, he had to plant a few of the bushes right outside his house, growing his own leaves in the village. That much

he could still manage.”

“Decades continued to pass, the Hero’s body aging and crumbling away. He knew he had to be making faster progress with his core than before, but he still didn’t know if it would be enough. A third of the organ was already damaged beyond repair, to the point that he couldn’t even use his mana. It leaked away whenever he wasn’t actively absorbing it, and he had to constantly endure intense pain.”

“Even if he managed to advance at some point, he knew he would never fight another battle in his life. But it didn’t matter. As long as his core changed colour, it would be enough to prove the others wrong. To show them the path forward. To convince them to research his methods and improve upon them until they were safer to use.”

“Eventually, the Hero couldn’t even walk anymore. He couldn’t tend to his bushes either, nor could he take care of himself. Luckily, a young woman took pity on him. She was the granddaughter of one of his old friends, and she’d long heard the stories about the old fool who stubbornly poisoned himself with beast mana, refusing to listen to reason.”

“She helped him eat and clean up after himself, though she didn’t want to enable him in his madness. It took him months of begging and coaching to convince her to brew the concoction for him. At first, she wasn’t any good at it, nor did she earnestly care to improve. She was only doing this to placate him. Clumsily boiling the gimbhal hearts with the leaves, she prepared the toxic substance for him. It was inefficient compared to his own efforts, but he didn’t complain, happy to use whatever he could get his hands on.”

“The old Hero had already given up in his heart, knowing that the chances of his efforts succeeding were minuscule. This made it extremely difficult for him to press onward. It was quite humiliating to beg a woman he barely knew to help him with a project he didn’t even believe in anymore. But he persisted, mostly out of his unwillingness to throw all his previous efforts in the trash.”

“He’d made it this far. He’d ruined his whole life for this. He just couldn’t find it in his heart to stop. What if he was just a few years from the finish line? Wouldn’t it be a pity to die without even knowing? It wasn’t like he had any other purpose in life anyway, so he might as well see his efforts through to the end. Even if he failed, he could rest easy, knowing he’d given it his all. It shouldn’t be long anyway…”

“More years passed. At some point, the woman stopped indulging him. Her family pushed her to stand her ground. She still took care of the Hero, but she refused to brew the poison for him. She just couldn’t bear to watch him kill himself – certainly not with her help.”

“But the Dying Hero didn’t let that stop him either. It was just another obstacle in his path, no different from all those he had already overcome.”

“Crawling out of his bed, he sifted through the village’s trash, scavenging for any gimbhal hearts he could find. Luckily, the creatures still attacked sporadically – they have always been relatively common on Huehue – so he found some every now and then. His bushes had survived too. Apparently, other people had started to tend to them. They weren’t doing it for him – they just thought the plants looked pretty. Either way, this gave him a steady supply of leaves as well.”

“Storing the ingredients under his bed, he hid them from the woman. Whenever she wasn’t around, he prepared the concoction by himself, drinking it in secret. It was even harder than before, since he couldn’t even stand on his own, and his hands were all shaky.”

“But he didn’t care.”

“His core continued to crumble, until there was less than half of it left. He had to spend several minutes amassing enough mana to cleanse the organ before each session. Every breath hurt as the Hero started to cough blood regularly. His hair fell and his beak cracked. Even his hands continued to lose their strength. Before long, the woman had to amputate one of them, when it started to rot away.”

“But he didn’t stop.”

“He wouldn’t stop, no matter what.”