"Eruil readied herself, unable to rely on any form of sense. Her power ran wild, forcing everything around her to refuse to change permanently.
Come daybreak, she was gone. I couldn't understand how the darkness was able to shift, or what had happened to that specific destroyer, but to me this was true victory. Not only had she shown that powers were way more of an equaliser when pushed to the absolute limits, but she showed the struggle was not futile.
It was quite unfortunate, but that destroyer had taken her body with it, not just the soul, leaving a hallow grotesque figure in the fields. She had actually survived until day, but she had done something else fundamentally new.
The patch of ground she made didn't move, the air was stagnant, the grass did not sway in the wind, throwing a stone in would instantly make it stop mid air. I once even put a rabbit inside, it did not age. I couldn't take it out because even partially entering was too much.
Within the dome around where she last walked the earth, nothing was allowed to change. In fact, the whole piece eventually floated out of the earth because the earth had to rotate around the sun. Nothing in that ground ever moved again.
Impressive though this was, what she had achieved in the aftermath was even greater. She brought something that went on to be known as the 'Great Prologue.' Every bit of darkness, and every last destroyer, up and vanished.
For the first time since the darkness arrived, which was just a few short decades before I was born, they had left. We all knew it would be back, but we didn't think much about it. It remained true that Eruil, one person, had fought with so much grit that the destroyers all left and regrouped.
In my investigation of her death, I realised, it was all Vanarus's doing. He must've known he didn't have it in him to do anything too estrange to her, even as a monster. He also knew that for his power, the greater the action performed, the greater the consequence he could impart. Vanarus had made the consequence for his eventual death the removal of her special skill, [Trust]. And without it, she was once again blinded by the darkness.
I had learned many things from their squeamish. The first being that, regardless of the strength, not everyone was suited to fight the darkness, and I had to find a way to separate these people. Eruil was way weaker the last time she entered the darkness, and Vanarus was almost four times stronger during his first entry, and it still drove him to madness.
The second thing I learned had to do with madness. I figured that it was what eventually turned people into monsters. The third thing I learned was that the destroyers aren't as mindless as they seem, they operated under a system, that is how they communicated for each other to leave this planet for the time being so fast.
This showed all of us, that one day, this rest bit could be made permanent, the day we finally defeat the darkness. She ushered a change that changed the passive state of the other humans, who all knocked at my gates the next morning.
All this earned her the title; Eruil, the legendary hero of change.
In the wake of their deaths, I became humanity's most powerful, not counting the fact I wasn't even human. She gave us time, we just didn't know how much. I had to teach and prepare everyone on my own. Eventually this got overwhelming. Then I remembered that being a memory I could split myself.
I first split into ten. Each were as empty as full-grown babies. I spent a decade teaching them things, eventually allowing each to grow into their own person, and begin helping me with the tasks.
I had chosen not to reveal Vanarus's part in Eruil's death, he had written the protocols of the knights, accounting for thirty percent of the whole fight against the darkness. I would have thought the squires that survived his rampage would be furious, but it was their idea to leave him as a celebrated figure, his name vanishing in the sands of history.
Me however, I became the head of everything they left behind. I led every coalition, every lesson, and every growth. Growing in power level made one age slower, but immediately after splitting into ten, I became physically younger.
I was still not sure how my memory power worked, but I had hoped I could fuse back when done, but nothing of the sorts happened. Instead, I kept making more and more, the more help I thought I needed. My face became so common place, I got my own title. It came from the current role I played, the fact I was the eldest, and that I started all of it.
"That is Lerva, mother, the patron of all of humanity."
They began saying this as my uncanny replicas passed by. To keep track of my clones, I started calling all of us collectively Laurel and gave all of them their names.
People began to get anxious and barrage me with questions, as another decade passed without the darkness. If I have it right, you achieved something similar in Eleria?"
"I achieved nothing, actually."
'Modest? I didn't think you would be.'
"But you know of all the panic it could bring."
The Knight remembered the questioning it had gotten from the paladin legion.
"Rather troublesome."
"So, I had grown reclusive. All of the Laurels are me and not me at the same time. The more of them I made, the thinner their constitutions became, until they became ghost like. All of them eventually did, but they newer ones had it worse.
I figured much later on that for a memory to remain; it must contain memories that needn't be forgot. For example, I had the memories of Eruil and Vanarus, other than my own, as well as the memories of all the other heroes and legends to come. So, I had to find memories to ground the other Laurels before they faded.
I assigned each Laurel a person to capture memories from, with their permission. That is why every Laurel here, is a keeper of over billions of billions of memories. In fact, our apparent age is a gauge of how much memories we have contained within us.
With their help, I eventually got used to running humanity. In all this peace, a few people started learning power. The world began to work in unison again, as when the darkness first appeared. We moved many towns together, but not too large that evacuation became a problem.
Almost a thousand years passed in this peace. One day, as I left my research office for the first time in years, I met a boy, brought to me by Laurel Ginsi over there."
The Knight looked around, Ginsi just waved her hand in the air.
"This was the child of one of the people she had been collecting memories for. He was one of those born already having unleashed, part of the newer generation. About fifty people had powers, and his father was one of them. The boy had said something strange, of which his father begged Ginsi to do.
The boy was young, but slow. He had a habit of reading though, so he had learned about the sword. He wanted to try his luck, he grabbed it, and nothing happened, it was the years before it began it's consumptions. He had this sad look in his eyes. I put him out of my thoughts and left.
Three thousand years, one of the strongest knights, Ouran, came to me. He demanded to touch the sword; he was a solid level 145. Ouran did, but nothing happened. He looked at me with this sad look, making me realise it was the same old kid.
Soon enough he learned a power and came back to try again. Sadly, he never got the chance, on the twenty-fifth thousand year, the air became inky clouding the night air once more, smothering the meagre light from the stars.
We had been preparing for this, so everyone took to arms, heading out to their defensive posts. That first night was pandemonium. Of the three thousand knights around the globe, only a hundred of them survived till daylight. And even then, half of them went senile, mad, or just up and quit by plunging their own swords down their throats.
Amongst the survivors was Ouran. He fought over and over, night after night. Him and many of the fifty knights that were, fought the plumage of darkness that had returned. The following week, even more and more of the darkness returned.
Most powers made people immortal within a specific set of qualities, like how mine kept me alive as long as I kept my memorial archives updated. So, these fifty went on to live longer than even their predecessors. Their numbers doubled but stopped after that.
I didn't bother to tell the people, but I had found the ceiling of power. It was at level 250, which is where I was and was unable to progress and further. Half a million years later, A few of the knights caught up to me. In total, thirty of us had reached level 250, including Ouran, yet the scales of battle did not tip.
Ginsi had been charged with recording his memories after his father died. So, she knew when Ouran came and told her that level 250 couldn't be the end, he was serious. But she was unable to help him, her main role was recording their memories and using them to reinforce the battle strategies or synthesise new ones, so she referred him to me, she herself was just at level 210.
Ouran came to me, telling me, if we had indeed reached the pinnacle, would this not mean that our fight should not be so one sided. Instead of arguing it with him, I dragged him along to show him all the work I had done on this matter. Sure, even I could not figure out what was wrong, but I had spend half a million years researching just that.
And unlike with your death, I had no way for having clues. Ouran sat in the room as I did my work, gouging himself on the things I had researched. He would leave, try them out, come back and read, on a feedback loop thousands of years long.
In the morning of a strange night, I was awoken by Ginsi and a few other Laurels screaming at me to wake up. I immediately pounced to my legs as soon as I heard clearly what Ginsi said.
"A new legendary hero has emerged."
I was up and about, frantic, I hadn't even learned of the hero's name. Right as I left the academy doors, burnt by the selfish rays of the sunlight after so many years spent in my hole, I heard the harmonious cheering that echoed and blew past the gates. Deep heavy shadows blocked the skies, a giant as massive as the academy jumped over the gate.
I was trying to figure out why they would compare this hero to Eruil. Sure, multitudes of heroes have appeared between then and now, but this was the first, people had called someone a legendary hero in all that time.
The figure shrunk, and I finally saw him. Ouran stood there, and I almost told him to move out of the way I can't see the hero, before quickly realising it was him. I was in shock, and had so many questions, I hadn't seen him in a thousand years, yet here he was, being likened to one of the greatest hero to ever be.
Ginsi stepped closer, touched my shoulder, sharing with me some of Ouran's summarised memories. As it turns out, Ouran had rescued an entire town, actually he went on to free even more towns, he did all of this alone. Not just that, he was now at level 261. I couldn't believe it.
Ouran explained to me it had been part of my more recent studies into the paths of levelling up and how different they were for everyone that he pieced it together. He realised that most of my studies relied on the next level after 250 being a mere level, but he thought of it as a seal. He was born already having unleashed, but he knew that this feeling he felt when trying to level up sounded similar to what I, Eruil, and Vanarus experienced when we attempted to unleash.
He took all this, including a refreshed look into the fact that, unlike the first seal, this had to be different for everyone, since people had diverged from that simple form, possessing different skills, powers, and even different souls due to manifesting. He attuned the breaking of the second seal to something he had already been doing but had to do better.
For all his life, he always wanted to be like the Knight of legend. The first ever to challenge the darkness years after all of humanity had given up. He had read all the stories and even the milked stories of his feats and accomplishments.
"I always found it inspiring," Ouran said with a soft smile, "that someone as powerless as an unborn baby could face off against what I struggled to do, without even betting an eye."
Ouran realised that he needed to prove his worth and follow his path without any doubts. Alone, unaccompanied, without anyone to cover his back, he entered a town before him that had been besieged and had not retreated in time. Luckily for him, they couldn't hear his quaking heart beneath the resolute thick plating of his armour."