MIDNIGHT PRINCE: Empire of Sin

It was hot.

So very hot.

But at the same time, all that registered in Adam's senses… was a certain feeling of gentle warmth. It enveloped his whole body and wrapped him up snugly.

He wondered in his mind if what he was seeing right now was some kind of illusion he had been thrown into or not. Otherwise, he just wasn't able to make sense of what his mother had just invoked right now.

"This is very much real, I assure you that, my son. I simply made sure that you are not considered a target of my realm. If you were, then you would have been instantly incinerated to nothingness. That is the power of this world of fire and ashes…"

Adam looked all around him in utter awe. He could not sense the normal world anymore, even though he had stretched his domain as far as he was able to with all his might. This was unspeakably shocking. It seemed like they had changed realms.

"The place you are now standing on… is my world, or rather it's the expression of my inner heart brought to reality and contained inside of a domain that I have invoked with my powers— The Phantasm Realm. The ultimate realization of the Truth you have comprehended in your life. It is a 100% sure hit technique. Adam… let me make this clear for you, if you face anyone who can bring forth this skill, then simply run or play dead."

Cecilia was not joking right now. She needed to bring this information to him and make it stick into that genius head of his. The phantasm realm was perhaps the greatest expression of the potential for humans to surpass the supernatural. This was also the skill that separated the weak from the truly strong. Before you were able to reach this realm… you would only be equivalent to an ant in the true supernatural community.

In a fight, normally, there was never anything certain. One could win even against someone stronger than them through the use of strategy and trickery. But the advent of the phantasm realm destroyed this stereotype in its entirety.

Once the target was inside the realm domain, the only outcome, if you did not have a realm of yourself to counteract against it, was death. At least, if it was a realm focused on lethality like hers.

"What are the chances of meeting someone with this power?"

"Normally? Extremely low. You already saw the dream world of Asmodeus so you should understand how rare meeting someone who can do something like this should be. But…"

In the end, she couldn't help but laugh, "You should understand, right? The lower the chances of you normally meeting someone like this is… The more I am sure that you will end up meeting one. After all, you are like me. Always at the wrong place at the wrong time."

There was a certain bitterness that was attached to her words. A resignation to the reality that peace had never been a possibility for her in this life.

Adam had a strong fate. In the same way, he was killed during Halloween… even if Adam did nothing and hid somewhere deep in the woods, somehow, someway, something would happen and implicate him in the games of destiny.

"Does this technique have any drawbacks?"

Adam could not understand how such a somehow absolute power could exist without a certain limit attached to it.

"Of course there are. For starters, just invoking this technique consumes a massive amount of energy. Even now, maintaining this place is only possible because I did not imbue my desire to kill and destroy into the realm. Thereby, I was able to diminish the consumption of energy by a lot and only needed to supply enough energy to maintain it."

The way she spoke nonchalantly about the dark desires in her heart made Adam understand that he wasn't the only one with psychological issues in his family.

"The second problem is that this is a fake world that goes against the will of the world. Simply maintaining this barrier is extremely straining not only because of the innate consumption but also because of the rejection of the world itself and this brings me to something I always wanted to say to you…"

She looked all around, her eyes shining with red light. In this place, it was possible for her to observe the boundaries of Adam's most used and useful skill in combat— 'The World.'

"Your skill— The World. I believe it's an incomplete domain. A phantasm realm without any signs of boundaries. That is what makes this skill really, really deadly… far deadlier than you can imagine, my son. You can maintain this domain forever with no problems and you face no rejection from the world itself. The World is somehow able to fuse and is accepted seamlessly in the normal world and you can affect the rules of nature with no consequences whatsoever."

The words that Cecilia spoke right now made him think back to an old discussion he once had with Eve a little after he awakened 'The World.' A talk about the Divine Kingdoms and the territory of the Gods roaming the cosmos.

If he was right, the Phantasm Realm should be something akin to the first step to building the Divine Kingdom and ascension into the realm of gods. As for him, by following the enlightenment of Buddha, he had been able to maintain a partial domain or a fake Phantasm Realm.

'One of the things I lack is a boundary I guess.'

This fake world included a certain mastery of space. Idea after idea swam inside of his head and he honestly wanted to ask Cecilia to let him die once or twice inside her world of fire and ashes…

He tilted his head for a moment, he truly wondered what it would feel like to die due to fire.

"Mom… Let me take a bath in the fire… please…"

What would happen if he was completely incinerated? Until now, all his death had always left him with a relatively intact body, which allowed for a speedy recovery.

But what about being entirely reduced to ashes? Would he truly die? He doubted that. If a fire was enough to bring him true death with the Curse of Cain then this would really be a lousy curse.

Cecilia opened her mouth wide, "Are you crazy?"

"…Perhaps I am… But hey, gotta be crazy to survive right? What is better? Me being burnt to death under your supervision or me being burnt to death while fighting an enemy?"

"How about not being burnt at all, you dimwit!?"

"Even if death by fire isn't on the table like you said… sooner or later I might face some power that can completely crush me in a matter of seconds. To be honest, I have always wanted to test the limits of my immortality. This is as good a time as any."

Cecilia wondered what was crazier…

The fact that her son was asking her to reduce him to ashes or the fact that… His arguments somehow made sense in her ears and she was really thinking about fulfilling his wishes for a moment…

"I…"

She hesitated but… Looking at the firm will shining in his eyes, she knew that she had been beaten by his reasoning. Even if not here, Adam would make sure to test it somewhere outside or worse, like he said, while fighting.

In the past, temporarily killing vampires to capture and study them was a practice quite common in the hunter world and she had no doubt that this could be used on Adam as soon as people started to realize his immortality.

Looking at the struggle evident in her eyes, Adam realized his mistake.

He had become so desensitized about his life and death that he had been able to ask this almost naturally. But for most people, this was in no way normal.

Even for someone as unhinged as Cecilia, asking her to kill her own son was a little too much.

"Mom…"

"Don't…"

She stopped him from speaking further, knowing full well what he was about to say.

"I chose to raise you and now that you have awakened, I chose to accept your supernatural nature. No one forced me into it. This is my own choice and with those choices come my own share of responsibilities. No matter how heavy they may be."

She looked all around, her energy was draining rather fast but she could still pull enough energy out of her that she could use to do a single attack.

"Very well. You asked for it. Generally, I like leaving the intensity intentionally lower in order to torture the heretics I catch but this time I will make sure to make it painless for you and directly incinerate you. I hope you are ready… my son…"

The flames inside of her hellish world roared to life and the crimson color of the world of fire and ashes progressively began to change until it became entirely white. [1]

She could not produce blue flames yet with her current strength but this did not matter to her. In this place, the fire present was obviously not natural fire and did need to follow the natural order for it to reach a higher concentration of temperature and fire.

Cecilia moved her hands and the raging fire covering the world moved along with each of her gestures.

But, just as she finally brought down the barrier that protected Adam from the fire, Adam's eyes opened white when he realized that they had forgotten one thing.

'My clothes and weapons… Fuck…'

Those were his last thoughts as he was engulfed in a sea of flame and reduced to absolutely nothing in but an instant.

———

[1]: It's currently 1:45 am here and I am doing research on Google about what the temperature is necessary to reduce humans to ashes. Man, life is wild sometimes. The temperature of white fire can reach up to 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit (2,000 degrees Celsius).

Anyways I got confused by the research result. In color range. Some say blue flames are hotter than white flames. Some others say White flames are hotter. For blue flames, or flames with a blue base, you can expect the temperature to rise dramatically, hitting roughly 2500°C to 3000°C.

I decided to take this and I like blue exorcist and My Hero Academia so having Blue Flame as the hottest is good.

By the way… Cremating a body takes around 2 hours with a flame of 800-900 degrees Celsius and no, they aren't reduced to ashes. There will still be bones. I take no responsibility for what you do with this knowledge.