The Stonehearted Knight
Chapter 336: His sole purpose

Chapter 336: His sole purpose

"I got it from you, mother."

The girl possessed with a fragment of his mother’s soul froze as soon as the words fell out of his mouth. She overcame the shock rather quickly as the next second Hex buckled and fell to his knees, pressed by an invisible weight.

"Mother? Is that so?"

She had crossed the distance between them without Hex noticing, and stared in his black eyes as she whispered, although it sounded more like a hiss.

"Yes," Hex spat, finding it very difficult to maintain his rationality and will to speak. Uttering even that one word tore his lips and hurt his jaws. The air pressure even put tears in his windpipe. But he didn’t wish to lose to her like the last time they encountered. He was stronger. He should be stronger. But to his dismay, against a Sin Stage Being it didn’t matter whether you were a Knight or a Refined Knight.

’Wait. If this is truly the fragment she left behind before escaping Wrixia then she shouldn’t have reached the Sin stage yet.’

Although she would still be a lot stronger than him, the gap was smaller. Plus, she was only a fragment.

Hex’s heartbeat increased as his heart pushed more energy and Ice elements into his brain, using the cold to pull him out of his near-sedated state. At the same time, the rings on the back of his hand lit up, one after the other.

Time Freeze

Blink Step

Frost Dragon – Tailwhip

He used every ability in one go. He pried himself free from the pressure and appeared behind her. The frost coalesced and a spike shot at her. Hex didn’t show any mercy to Cyantha. The girl’s body wouldn’t be able to take it. He knew it. But he couldn’t afford to be lenient. Not when facing someone like the Witch.

He sympathized with her and even felt torn about dealing with her, having read part of her diary, but in battle, thanks to his heart, he could forget everything and just focus on dealing with his opponent.

But before the spike could hit her, it burst into tiny shards that evaporated.

"You are strong. Good control over your abilities and techniques. And have immense willpower."

He heard her say, each word felt like spoken directly into his mind but it wasn’t the mind communication he experienced with Sin and Saints. He saw her mouth move as she spoke.

"I guess I succeeded after leaving Wrixia?"

Her question affirmed the suspicion Hex held about her. She was but a fragment of a soul left behind. She had no information about the things that transpired to her true self after she had left Wrixia.

"You mean Project Godking?" Hex asked, deliberately uttering the name of the project. He hoped it would help to make her at ease with him and as such help him see her true intention.

At the same time, Hex couldn’t help but once again feel like his Fateless state caused the most unexpected situations. A fragment slumbering for who knew for how long, possessed the girl about to be sacrificed just the one time he had happened to be around?

Normally, this would be seen as Fate but what or who was pulling the strings in his case? Even Heaven couldn’t control him, so who or what caused all these so-called coincidences?

"So, you know the name of the project." As expected, his mother focussed at that one point. "I didn’t think we would succeed if I might be honest. But it came at a cost, didn’t it?"

The twinkle in her eyes as she walked in circles, digesting the information she gained, showed how excited she was at knowing her project succeeded. At the same time, she gave him looks that felt uncomfortable. The looks were strange. As if...she cared for him.

’She, this fragment of hers, is meeting me for the first time. She can’t have maternal emotions towards me, right? She didn’t even know how to create me at this point in her journey.’

"What do you mean?" He diverted his mind and heart by focusing on something else. His goal was information. It would do him better to extract as much out of her as he could.

"I mean, if I did succeed and never returned to claim this piece of fragment, it could only mean I either suffered an untreatable injury or even perished. Creating a life without Fate was something not even the Godking himself ever attempted."

She didn’t look disturbed by the possibility of having died. But it did disturb Hex. More than he expected it to do. All her attention seemed to be on having succeeded with her project, in having created him. Had she been broken to such a point that life didn’t hold any meaning for her?

"Why did you create me really?"

Hex heard quite a few reasons behind his creation. It boiled down to him being an accident, whether the Methods used produced an anomaly or his other mother granted him life, whereas his actual purpose was to serve as a vessel for the Divine Lord.

His mother stopped walking in circles and murmuring all kinds of things he couldn’t follow. She looked at him with conflicted gaze as she bit her lips, clearly deliberating how and what to tell him. Hex didn’t ask suggestive questions. It would influence her replies, which he didn’t want to happen.

"You have heard about the Wills, I assume. And perhaps how the Godking has fallen trying to gain eternity?"

Hex nodded.

"What you perhaps don’t know is that the world is dying. The Wills are corroding the very essence and energy of this world, killing it with time. Heaven, with all her authority, isn’t capable of saving it as we head toward the doom of the world. She is subjected to so many rules and restrictions, she can’t even grant a Blessing without an offering in exchange."

While talking, she stood close to Hex and put her hand on his shoulders, eying him with care and a gaze filled with emotions.

"The purpose of your creation was to create a being who could purge all the Wills of the world, and create a ruler over Fate and Heaven, with less stringent rules, so creatures, both human and other types, could prosper and evolve beyond what they were created for. Basically, as the name suggests, to become the next Godking."