“No mind, no words! Only our beautiful brutality!!!!”

All of Lovushka’s dramatic yappings were flooded out by the pounding in Ronin’s head. There was a strong dissociation between what he thought inside versus what his actions were.

He was in a constant tug-of-war with his sanity, forced to focus on many senses all at once. Everything was amplified.

From his sight, his ability to catch up movements….

“Grrrrrrah!” He pushed Lovushka’s knee which went for his gut.

His sense of hearing, sense of smell….

“Ow! How rude to hit a lady~” Lovushka merely grinned as he got punched in the face with the same strength as he did earlier to Ronin.

And most importantly…..

His hunger was the one that was amplified the most. It was so strong.

He just wants to eat. HE JUST WANTS TO EAT!

Everything. He wants to consume it all.

The amber in his mouth was in danger, but he could not place it anywhere else that would not be in dnager of being stolen by Lovushka from him.

And it’s not really the one he wants to eat the most right now.

It was the former god before him, with a loudly beating heart full of Flame, intoxicating him and robbing his senses to focus only on him.

He craves it so much, that heart full of power within him.

He wants to plunge his bare hands into Lovushka’s chest and eat his heart straight from it’s protective cage that he had broken.

The rational side of Ronin was fighting off this disgusting idea, but his beastial side kept on reaching for Lovushka’s chest.

Eventually, he had managed make a large tear on the top of his dress.

“Ah! Now that’s just being indecent now!” Lovushka cackled. “But I do admire boldness the most!”

He went ahead to slash and form three rips on Ronin’s own shirt. Like he had been clawed by large animal.

His sharp nails did not even need to touch his clothes.

The slash kept on spreading and corroding Ronin’s shirt. The maddened Coal man took it completely off, and jumped to break the ground beneath him!

A fault line had grown and in between was bubbling lava, bubbling like the cauldron in Ronin’s abdomen. His stomach.

The hunger for Flame was becoming mixed with hunger to physically feed now. He really had become an insane beast that will cannibalize Lovushka once he defeated him.

The former god of art had noticed this. “Your inner state is being reflected by the world around you….. I can feel these fires and eruptions wanting to consume me.”

“Go on then!” Lovushka spread his arms wide. “Destroy me if you can! Be a god fully consumed by the human desire to eat, your instinct for domination!”

‘He’s messing with my mind even more!’ Inner Ronin thought.

He was so small in terms of the large beast that had taken over his mind. His focus was motly to keeping his teeth from biting the amber necklace within the cave of his mouth.

As his enraged self and Lovushka continued this constant dance of brutality, he wondered what even Lovushka really wants.

First, he killed himself just because he knew the truth about Fausforus and Aurion. Then, he was attacking Ronin again after acting like a normal human for years.

He was so unpredictable that there was the possibility that he was just doing things just for the sake of it.

He does it because he felt inclined to, not because he have any plans.

Like a painter just slashing colors and pouring all his emotions on the canvas. Lovushka was like an abstract art that was difficult to understand in a logical view.

He took a jab at Ronin’s stomach, and spun around as quickly as light to deal repetetive blows on it.

Ronin almost coughed out, but kept his jaw firm to secure the amulet. He wanted to eat those hands that punched him so much, but had to resist.

“Until now… You are both protecting him and consuming him. It never changes. It’s so beautiful!” Lovushka’s eyes were burning with fervor as he summond as much amber goo as he could.

“You want to destroy him the most, to keep him from being destroyed by anyone else. Taking ownership of him completely— that’s human greed!”

Lovushka went to aim a kick at his cheek, but Ronin blocked it again, only for him to raise his other leg and hook it on his shoulder!

He then twiststed himself so Ronin would be forced to carry him, and pulled at his hair. “I want to have that greed! That burning desire and possesiveness for something!”

“I want to be the subject of that greed! Much like the damsel that I always play that was obssessed over by heros and villains alike!”

‘Ah, so that’s what it was.’ Inner Ronin thought. ‘It still doesn’t make any sense though, for a god to want to have or be the subject of human greed.’

Meanwhile, the wild outer Ronin just wanted to knock this pesky prey that hoocked its legs on his shoulders and uses his thighs to squeeze his neck.

So he laid back to slam the both of them to the ground!

Lovushka’s bones audibly cracked from the impact, and the forced made another dent on the ground.

As the dust settled…

It was pure chaos and destruction around them, with geysers and fault lines everywhere, the magma still roiling and would eventually form a narrow river at this rate.

The goo still kept on moving about and had wrapped itself on other buildings and objects. It would take a while for these ruins to be fixed.

And as for the two perpetrators of it….

Lovushka’s small human body was crushed under the weight of Ronin laying on top of him. He had coughed out blood, his chuckles hoarse and strained.

“Beautiful.” He said.

Ronin lift himself up and looked at him stuck on that dent in the ground. He then watched the injured man and reached for his chest……

He can feel the Flame moving on his fingers just from touching him alone as he continued to heave from losing blood. The fast, erratic beating of his heart had filled his ears.

A string of saliva fell from the side of his lips as his scent had taken over his nostrils, pervading them. Without opening his mouth, he bared his teeth and growled.

“You want to eat my heart. Just like you want to eat his.” Lovushka looked so happy as he salivated over his chest. “Go ahead. Succumb to your instincts…. Your hunger….. Your greed.”

Beast Ronin growled, and spat out the amber to his hand. He held on to eat, and looked at Lovushka who was slowly dying yet never losing that crazed anticipation to be destroyed…..

The effects of the Magmatic Rage was disappearing, and his mind had slowly cleared. He was in between now, still having strong urges, but sane enought to speak.

“I see now. Let me ask you something that I have forgotten now as someone who was no longer Fausforus.”

He wiped the drool from his face. “Were gods ruling their domain because they wanted to…. Or were the domains ruling what they do with their life?”

Lovushka’s smile disappeared with this.

“It’s the latter, isn’t it?” Ronin said. “I have an inkling when I talked to this god, many years ago……”

What Freya said about being forced to no longer be a war goddess. It was a proof of this, that gods were being controlled by what they have to be the god of.

Be the god of human art and you would be obsessed with human art. Be the goddess of womanhood— the sense that womannhood was about being a docile housewife— and that’s how you’ll be too.

Be the god of destruction… And you would want destruction no matter what.

“You want your life to be as artistic as the humans have. But your view of it was artistic, therefore it’s exaggerated and embellished.” Ronin told him.

“Yes, humans are driven by instincts. But so are animals. And so are gods. Instincts are not just there to be beautiful they’re there for survival.”

He looked at the amber on his hand. “We kill and destroy for a purpose, us humans. Not just to be an entertaining display for gods who can’t understand.”

Lovushka was quiet, but eventually, he reached to Ronin’s teeth.

“Consume me…. Make a beautiful scene with me…..”

Ronin pushed his hand away. “You’re a slave to the aesthetic, Lovushka. You romanticize the extreme, that’s why you seek of it from me.”

“You want to expereince the depth of humanity, but to the shallow degree. We are not like characters in a play. To amuse you and to fall in love with our brutality and flaws and greed at all.”

He was a hypocrite.

Is it Lovushka who was the only hypocrite, though?

Lovushka knew this, and sighed. “You will let me die without consuming me, then?”

Ronin looked at his pulsing bright veins like lava lines. “I already did. I consumed what I needed.”

He pointed at the amber on his hand.

“But I can let you live and try again until you’re worthy to be consumed by me. If you free him.”

Lovushka had a bit of glimmer at hope in this, and eventually…..

He touched the piece of amber with the tip fo his finger, and turning larger and larger until…..

Cermin has returned. Returned to this scene of carnage and destruction.