Solo Cultivating in Superhero Academy
Chapter 85: Questions

Chapter 85: Questions

Next was an explosion of force that didn’t seem to belong to physics.

It was like being crushed between two galaxies.

His sand-woven body struck the ground, and for the first time in thousands of years, Soilandor experienced the forbidden sensation that had become alien to him.

Pain.

It ripped through him.

It pierced him like a sword forged from pure agony.

The ground didn’t accept him.

It rejected him.

Spikes of energy, shaped like divine stalagmites, surged upward through his back.

Stone twisted into strange, jagged blades of cultivated earth energy. Not a natural reaction. Not a superhero’s power.

A systemic punishment.

The Earth, guided by a foreign will—Elius’ system—had judged Soilandor.

And he was found unworthy.

Cracks exploded across his limbs. His joints screamed. His vision blurred.

He tried to pull away, but it was like his essence—his very soul—was pinned down.

The Earth was holding him hostage. Not out of hatred, but obedience.

"Gah!" He opened his mummified mouth in pain.

He could no longer tell if his wrappings were torn or if his flesh had simply evaporated into dust.

The agony was too complete, too intimate. It wasn’t a blow—it was a revelation of weakness.

And in the stillness that followed, as the wind howled over the shallow crater he now lay in, buried like a forgotten relic, a shadow loomed above.

Elius.

His long golden hair glowing like a divine banner behind him, each strand lifting faintly in the wind, his eyes shimmering with unshakable confidence, like a young god who had just slammed down a titan from another age.

He stood tall, calm, breathing steadily.

And then, his lips curled into a faint smirk.

He tilted his head slightly and, in a voice rich with mockery and triumph, he said one word.

"Satisfied?"

The world beneath Soilandor was a haze of pain, his vision swaying like desert mirages as grains of pulverized earth trickled down the cracks in his ancient skin.

He lay crumpled in the ground’s embrace, but not peacefully—no, not like a warrior at rest.

This was different.

This was disgrace.

And then it struck him.

Why?

Why had he felt that?

Why had pain—real, mortal, soul-wrenching pain—gripped him for the first time in thousands upon thousands of years?

The question, once unthinkable, now clawed through his thoughts like a starved animal chewing through silk wrappings. His desiccated fingers twitched, not out of defiance but confusion.

His mind, carved and hardened through ages of servitude, ritual, war, and holy ascension, began to unravel under the weight of one truth:

He was not supposed to feel.

He was blessed.

BLESSED.

I am the Soil’s Warden... I am the Sand God’s vessel... I was chosen...

His mind spiraled backward, drawn into the memory-etched corridors of the past, where golden altars towered before stone-faced gods, and he stood bare-chested before a congregation of thousands, his body branded with sacred runes.

He had been hand-picked by the Pantheon, forged in rituals and storms of divine sandstorms to be more than mortal.

The image of the Pantheon flared in his head like a dying sun trying to assert its presence.

Soilandor remembered them—faceless, yet unmistakably divine.

They had hovered like celestial judges over endless dunes and made him kneel upon burning rock, their voices vibrating with the weight of tectonic plates.

"You shall never break."

"No wound shall reach your soul."

"The Earth shall carry you. Always."

He had believed. For eons, he had believed.

He had become something more—an avatar of Earth’s will, given form to act in the world of men.

Elemental beasts and titanic horrors had collapsed under his presence.

Armies had fled, generals had knelt, and other elemental beings had acknowledged his ascendance.

So how?

How?!

How had a boy—a human—hurled him to the ground like a common bandit and hurt him?

Was this a trick?

A deception?

Some strange illusion conjured to mock his faith?

He struggled to rationalize.

Perhaps the Earth beneath New York had been cursed, inverted in essence.

Maybe this boy was just blessed by water Pantheon —blasphemous. He cannot be hurt by water like normal elementals!

Or could it be... maybe—just maybe—the Pantheon had abandoned him?

No.

No, that cannot be.

Soilandor clenched his fists. He refused to believe it.

He opened his mouth to speak—to demand answers, to curse, to scream—

But Elius’ voice cut through like a blade through parchment.

"It seems you still want it."

Soilandor’s body tensed. Before he could protest, he felt it again: the pull, the gravitational yank of unseen forces—the unknown power that could make him feel pain—as Elius lifted him from the earth like a ragdoll.

No.

Not again.

His body rose, limp but heavy, like a sandbag caught in a cyclone, and his feet left the sacred soil he had worshipped for lifetimes. His core trembled. His vision blurred as air rushed past his dangling limbs. And in the chaos of that flight, his mind continued to spin.

Why? Why?! WHY?!

Maybe it wasn’t betrayal.

Maybe it wasn’t the Earth.

Maybe he himself had changed.

Had this mortal shell—the avatar form—grown weak? Was this form... not worthy?

Had his years of silence—his eons of slumber—caused the bond between him and the Pantheon to erode?

Had he become a relic?

Or was it something deeper?

A buried truth he hadn’t dared to utter in the sands of his mind.

Maybe—just maybe—Elius was favored by something stronger than the Pantheon.

A new force. A new god. A new system that didn’t bow to ancient rules but rewrote them.

No.

No...

And then—

BANG!

The slam came again.

BANG!

BANG!

BANG!

With every crash, the Earth roared, and his ribs bent inwards like crumbling walls. He screamed without sound, his soul fraying at the edges like paper caught in a firestorm.

Elius landed beside him, that smug grin etched onto his handsome face like a holy mark of superiority.

"You stopped speaking."

Another slam.

"I thought you couldn’t be hurt?"

Slam.

"Why does it seem like you’re experiencing something worse than what Lava Scissor went through?"

Slam.

"Don’t tell me..." Elius leaned in, his voice dripping with contempt, "...you’re weaker than him?"

The words struck harder than the attacks.

Weaker?

Weaker?!

He had existed when Lava Scissor was still a crawling ember!

He had stood as a high guardian while Scissor begged for shape and form. And now this golden-haired human dared imply that he—

SLAM!

His scream tore through dimensions, but no one heard it except the gods.

And then—

Between the slams, between the pulverized breath and bones and buried pride, he felt something.

Something coming.

It wasn’t a force. Not wind. Not Elius’ hand.

Not a weapon.

Not a spell.

It was the ending of something.

The slow creeping of finality.

The chill that pressed against his core, not from cold but from absence—as if some essential tether was beginning to unravel, and whatever came after... was not Earth.

It wasn’t Hell.

It wasn’t Heaven.

It was Beyond.

He had faced destruction before.

He had died countless times.

But this?

This was the first time he felt it.

And that was the difference.

That made it real.

No rebirth. No reset.

Just the closing of the curtain.

The sensation coiled around him, thick and suffocating.

But amidst the despair—rage bloomed.

No.

NO.

He wouldn’t go silently.

He wouldn’t let some boy be his executioner.

And then—

Suddenly,

Soilandor’s eyes snapped wide.

From the depths of his ancient sockets, an intense brown light exploded outward, shimmering with molten anger, like sun-heated sandstone burning from within.

They glowed, not just with fury—

But with vengeance, ready to be unleashed.