"You still have people you can still nurture," said Li. He spoke in small part for Mason's sake, wanting to give the young man perhaps some idea that his idolized god of light embodied the part in some way, but he mostly spoke for his own curiosity.

He wanted to know to what extent Helius could impact his people if he could even at all.

​​

Helius glanced at Li. "You speak of the mortal travelling with you, do you not? The naïve one."

"Oh, you have been keeping that close of a tab on me?" said Li.

"It is his presence that allowed me to manifest my divine light upon the Midpath," said Helius. "My might is great enough that it does not require a dedicated priest to manifest, merely a believer, no matter how small they are."

"That is quite impressive," said Li. Even Li right now, with his inadequate mastery over his divine powers, could not easily just manifest himself at a channel with anyone. His channel, his totem, required a sufficiently strong enough priest to call Li directly, and right now, Ivo, the head priest, was the only one capable of it.

"You should not be impressed. It has done nothing for me. It has not made me any less of a failure. And you will soon surpass it, I surmise." Helius looked at his pale palm, at the wasted skin stretching taught over bone. "You have the world dancing in your palm. You can walk it and change it. I cannot."

"But you can," said Li, remembering Asala's small history lesson.

There was that one Lightborn, as they were known, the last one called Hadrien the Conqueror who was apparently so terrible a man in his misuse of Helius's divine armor that he was destroyed by Helius himself.

"What of Hadrien Lightborn? Did you not intervene to strike him down?" said Li.

Helius smiled painfully. "Oh. Him. Yes. I destroyed him. I could only do so because the armor he wore still provided a direct channel to me, if that is what you are curious about."

"I see," said Li. Helius was surprisingly perceptive, seeing into Li's desire to probe out the degree of influence the sun god could emit even in Valhul.

"I embody the sun that shines upon this world," said Helius. "In a way, half the world at light provides a gate for me to channel through."

"You can affect the world essentially anytime you want? Then how can you call yourself imprisoned?"

Helius put his index finger and thumb apart, leaving only a tiny space. "Only the slightest amount. A good miracle here and there. An illness cured. A priest empowered. You see what I mean?"

"But even that, you can do, and yet, you choose not to," said Li. His voice held no judgement to it, only a neutral curiosity.

Helius, sensing the lack of judgement, continued. "I cared. Once. You may not understand it now, as you are, with the human still within you, but it is hard.

So very hard. To care about the mortals. To care about anything, really.

I propped up their mighty kingdoms. I gave them their capitol shrouded in my own divine light. I loved them. Sired heirs with them. Fought demons for them.

Then I come to Valhul, and I see. I watch. I wait. The years pass.

Years. So many years. Centuries. A millennium.

Their kingdoms rise and fall and split apart into so many pieces.

They war. They squabble. They kill each other. Those with my divine blood lead and fight and kill them. They in turn fight and kill my heirs.

Darkness comes with the demons. They unite. Darkness falls. They split apart again.

This happens again.

Then again.

Nothing changes, regardless of whatever small miracle I grant them.

It is all the same, in the end. No matter what I do, I fail. Why try?"

"Your name is being tarnished now," said Li. "In the name of the light, your light, there are those that wipe out entire peoples and twist history, bending the minds of people into something believing a reality that does not exist.

What about this? Your legacy used for something you did not envision?"

"Did I not?" Helius gave a little half shrug. "It is all the same. Nothing changes. They raise a tyrant, languish under it. They learn for some time. Then they find another tyrant.

I wish to say that some part of me does not relish saying this, but I cannot: I do not care for them much, nor what they do with my name, for if my name shall fall into oblivion, the whole world turned against it, then it is for the best.

Such is the fate of a name drenched in nothing but failure."

"You do not care for them? Yet you entrusted them with the Sunspear, your greatest weapon," said Li.

"Someone worthy among them," corrected Helius. "I still do not wish to see this world burn. And though I may not care of the mortal humans as a whole, but in the hearts of an individual few, I know there is great beauty. There is drive. Determination. Nobility.

In such spades that this withered heart of mine can never again match. Thus, I sent the Sunspear out to someone far worthier, far better than I. Whoever that may be, I grant my blessing."

Helius held up his hand, and Li's eyes widened as the ashen hand flickered, growing ever so slightly translucent.

"All my blessing," said Helius.

"You…are dying," said Li, surprised to a degree he had not been for quite a while.

Helius nodded with a nonchalant acceptance, an acceptance he had likely understood and known for seven centuries. "For the better. I will join my brother when the time is right."

"Are you not a function of the world? As you said, the sun that shines upon it?" Li wracked his brain for significance about the three great gods and Helius.

The three great gods each governed one of the primary stat attributes as well as primary classes. Without them, there would be wide spanning and likely heavily damaging effects to the magic of this world.

But Helius quite literally governed over a primary function of life itself. Noctus, his brother, would have governed the moon and death, and because the deity, even corrupted was still asleep, both those functions still remained stable as they were before his eternal sleep.

One of the reasons why Li did not want to wake Noctus was that he feared by doing so, these functions of undeath and moonlight would cease to work as they did now.

Though of course, with the systematic wipeout of undead via artillery and firearms from the north and purging through heroes in Soleil, there was inherently less risk. Still, there was no telling what could happen.

"Life and light itself are yours. Will you take countless lives with you to your suicide?" said Li, judgement leeching into his voice for the first time.

"Of course not," said Helius. "I may not care of what the mortals do to themselves or to me, but even now, I could not bear ever causing their ends with my very own hands. Already, I have come close by sacrificing my brother.

The Sunspear is the key. It holds all my power. My divinity and authority. And the centuries of time I have spent fashioning it to be the ultimate weapon against the Chthonia.

As for me, I will be content to use up the final dregs of my divine power against my brother to put him to sleep. To, in the end, lay in eternal rest with him."

Li nodded, growing quiet at the mention of the Chthonia.

In the Elden World game, the Chthonia was the title spanning the vast new game+ campaign, and it began with a corrupted Noctus signaling eldritch entities across the vast, uncaring breadth of space to come attack the world.

Li had seen through Lira's memories and known that the Elder Dragon Val was preparing for an eternal darkness far greater than the demons. He had suspected this was the Chthonia, but he had put his hopes against it, for the Chthonia was something an entire server of players fought against.

But now there was confirmation, and the only player on this world to stand against it was Li.