Chapter 1396: Paradise Lost (7)
Rumble, rumble, rumble…!!!!
The darkness that had spread across the sky of Paradise Lost surged, pouring rapidly in one direction.
The tidal wave of darkness rushing from beyond instantly swept across the heavens and earth, accelerating.
The black magic that had remained dormant since Lennok’s arrival in Paradise Lost now poured down.
In that instant, it began to engulf the Ascendant’s Ideological Domain, covering everything in sight with an unending night.
CRASHHHHHH!!!!!!
“T-Tower Lord!!”
“…”
Freya cried out with a trembling voice, but Lennok couldn’t answer, simply gazing up at the sky.
A long time ago, Lennok had witnessed a similar sight once in Gateway City.
A black wizard who had reached a transcendent state far beyond anyone Lennok knew. A slaughterer who stood before the gate of ascension.
The countless scents of death he had gathered under the pretext of Gabihaeng, as he toured the continent.
“…No way.”
BOOM!!!
Beyond the tidal wave of darkness, black giants, dozens of meters tall, began to emerge one by one.
A legion of giants, bound in shackles like prisoners, their bodies bent, walking with a strange swaying motion.
Endless black chains rattled wildly on all sides, covering the earth in a shroud of black.
Clatter, clatter, clatter!!!
CRASHHHHH!!!
“I-Is it really him?! How could…!!!”
Freya, realizing the true identity of the darkness encroaching from beyond a step too late, flinched in shock.
The remnants of the Nether King who was defeated after a decisive battle with Jinwa in Paradise Lost. Were they still lingering, wandering through the Ideological Domain without perishing?
Only then did Lennok vaguely understand why Jinwa had not yet appeared within Paradise Lost.
What if Jinwa had been reclaiming Myeong’s power, which had been wandering Paradise Lost since the end of their battle?
What if she hadn’t properly ‘settled’ the outcome of the battle she won against Myeong?
“H-haha… Ahahaha…”
The subordinate, trampled beneath Lennok’s foot, twisted his body, laughing with a grotesque voice.
“It’s already too late… there’s nowhere to run…”
“…”
“You, too, will become sacrifices to that loser here, along with us…”
BOOM!!!!
Before he could finish, the tidal wave of darkness descended overhead, engulfing everything in shadow.
Within the endless veil of darkness, the black giants had already drawn right before Lennok.
The Nether King’s hounds marching within the tidal wave of darkness. Black pilgrims, burdened with Black Coffins, embarking on an endless penance.
Powerful monsters that, long ago in Gateway City, had slaughtered all of Lennok’s enemies in the name of Gabihaeng.
However, Lennok gasped, taking a sharp breath as he saw the black giants approaching.
“…This is.”
[Ah… Ahh…]
The black giants’ eye sockets were gouged out, and black tears flowed incessantly from below them.
Their blankly agape mouths and jaws melted and dripped, only occasionally emitting unintelligible groans.
[Ah… Grrraahh…]
A wretched sight, completely different from the unstoppable disaster they had once seemed in Gateway City.
Perhaps, at the moment of Myeong’s defeat, his summoned hounds had also been irreversibly broken.
Like prisoners with gouged eyes and sewn mouths, the giants, their bodies crumbling and melting, stared blankly down at the ground.
As if only now noticing the presence of the humans standing before them.
“Hah, hah…!!!”
Barely able to breathe, Freya desperately trembled her shoulders, suppressing her presence.
Freya, trying to remain unnoticed, and the subordinates, still letting out grotesque laughs at this moment.
The giants, who had been staring blankly at Lennok, who silently gazed up at the pouring tidal wave of darkness, slowly extended their hands-
And seized the subordinates fallen beneath Lennok’s feet.
Sizzle!!!
“Kugh…?!!”
The subordinates, whose slimy skin was instantly crushed and pulped as they were caught in the melting giants’ hands.
But the subordinates who had been mocking Lennok instead scoffed at the black giants lifting them.
“Yes. Eat… Offer him and us to your dead master…”
[…]
“Like a defeated dog, just pick up and eat the scraps… A sacrificial feast for the dead…!”
CRUNCH!!
The giant’s hand immediately crushed the subordinates’ bodies, slowly submerging them into the darkness.
The subordinates disappearing, swallowed by the melting darkness, as if sinking into a swamp.
“Hah, ahahahaha…”
[Ah…]
“Hahahahahaha… cough, gurgle…!”
[Ahh…]
WHOOSH-
As if inhaling the death that filled their throats, the subordinate’s body was completely swallowed by the tidal wave of darkness with a grotesque gasp.
The giant, who had offered the subordinate it held to the darkness, slowly knelt in place with a drawn-out groan.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!!!
In that instant, the black pilgrims, burdened by the tidal wave of darkness, knelt with their hands clasped, bowing their heads as if in prayer.
From within the endless darkness, a hand, pale and withered, emerged.
“…That’s.”
GROOOOWWL…!
The gaunt hand, receiving the full weight of the giants’ prayers after they devoured the subordinates, materialized.
Skin as pale as a corpse. Black, congealed blood beneath ragged fingernails that looked ready to tear off.
The owner of the hand was nowhere to be seen, only a sinister, blackened, corpse-like form.
But the moment Lennok saw that strangely gaunt hand, he vaguely realized.
Though vaguely hinting at Myeong’s appearance, that incomplete form was neither Myeong himself nor his remains.
It was the culmination of Myeong’s defeat by Jinwa, having been stripped of all rights over his soul and body.
Only his residual will and power, having taken on a form, were rampaging as they wandered Paradise Lost.
“…”
The subordinates, collapsed helplessly on the ground, watched the dark hand with tense expressions.
Lennok stood tall among the subordinates, gazing up at the tidal wave of darkness with Freya.
The moment the pale hand, commanding the army of darkness, slowly extended its will towards the living.
WHOOSH!!
“N-No…!”
The subordinates who had, just moments before, stoically accepted their demise, swallowed by the darkness, reappeared.
They thrashed wildly, struggling to break free from the darkness that bound them.
Unlike before, the faces of those first swallowed were consumed by inexpressible despair and terror.
“Th-This isn’t the death I imagined… This isn’t the end I wanted…!!”
“It’s different… Different, I tell you…! I hate it…!”
“Let me out!! I, let me out!!!”
Splash, splash. They thrashed and pleaded like children in the sinking darkness.
“Let me out, let me-”
“GASP…!!!”
Black tears streamed from the convulsing subordinates’ eyes, and their heads snapped back with silent screams.
Soon, even those screams were swallowed back into the darkness, never to emerge again, simply vanishing.
Watching this, the complexions of the other subordinates, fallen at Lennok’s feet and awaiting their turn, drastically changed.
“Tch, damn it…!!”
They struggled to their feet, trying to put distance between themselves and escape.
“You get eaten…!! You go first!!!”
“Not here, I…!!!”
“The place where I’m meant to offer my body for the Archduke is not here, I tell you!!”
ROOOOAARRR!!!!
Following the black hand slowly stirring the air, the tidal wave of darkness swept across the horizon, approaching.
The subordinates desperately crawled on the ground, widening the distance from Lennok and pushing each other away.
But Lennok showed no reaction to the approaching darkness from beyond.
He neither concealed himself with magic or will-thought, nor attempted to escape this place.
“Ugh, gasp…!!”
Freya, clutching Lennok’s coat, squeezed her eyes shut. In that instant, a faint relief flickered across the subordinates’ faces.
The wave of darkness, having bypassed Lennok and Freya, swallowed the fleeing subordinates with terrifying speed.
CRASHHHHHH!!!!
“Aaaaargh?!!”
“Gurgle…!! Why…?!!”
“N-No!! I, I…!!!”
The subordinates, unable to offer any resistance, thrashed and were swallowed by the darkness.
Inhaling the death that filled their throats, the black-teared subordinates reached out to Lennok.
“Why, why…!!!”
“Why only you…!!”
Even their cries and screams, filled with resentment, were not spared, swallowed into the darkness, never to emerge again.
Whether formed or formless. Living or dead, it devoured all impartially, sinking them into its depths.
Beyond the overflowing tidal wave of darkness, the black hand slowly stirred its fingers, as if presiding over the entire process.
[OOOOHHHHHH!!!!!!]
Black pillars piercing the heavens and earth wept like tears, and the giants let out silent screams.
Within the wave of darkness, Spell-Word Stones broke and were torn out, and the purple trees began to crumble into dust.
A total eclipse unfolded over the sky of Paradise Lost, engulfing and dissolving everything into an immeasurable darkness.
Rampaging wildly, continuously devouring the sacrifices offered to it, without any intellect or criteria-
“…”
Even after losing everything at the end of the decisive battle in Paradise Lost, were its remnants still so dangerous?
A surge of transcendent power that, despite having already been defeated by Jinwa, felt utterly unlike that of a vanquished being.
The moment Lennok realized that fact, involuntarily shuddering, and looked up at the black sky where the total eclipse was happening.
BOOM!!!
The black giants, who had been kneeling in prayer, rose to their feet and slowly looked down at Lennok.
Giants screaming, black tears ceaselessly streaming from their gouged, empty eye sockets.
The pilgrims, suffering, bound in black chains, extended their hands towards Lennok.
Like beasts feeling an endless hunger, even after devouring everything in this place.
“…”
Only after facing that sight could Lennok truly accept one fact.
That was not the Myeong Lennok remembered.
It was merely the remnants of Myeong’s lost power, a part of his formless madness, after his defeat in Paradise Lost.
It was nothing more than the phenomenon itself, hinting at the end Myeong met, an end he wouldn’t have wanted Lennok to see.
Perhaps, in truth, he had known it even before coming to Paradise Lost.
That the Myeong Lennok remembered could no longer return, the moment his defeat was confirmed at the end of the great battle.
“T-Tower Lord…”
Freya, watching the giants’ hands approaching from all directions, clutched her throat with trembling hands.
“I-I’ll… I’ll try to d-distract them first…”
“No. Retreat and run.”
Lennok said in a calm tone, drawing up his magic.
“Once you’re out of the Spell-Word Stone’s range, contact the nun. As for here… I’ll buy some time.”
Rumble, rumble, rumble!!!!!
As the pale hand pointed at Lennok, the army of darkness surged in from all sides like a tidal wave.
The mad remnants that had devoured the Three Grand Dukes’ subordinates now moved to consume Lennok himself.
The moment Lennok, facing the endless abyss beyond that darkness, was about to unleash lightning and turn around.
A powerful gravitational pull erupted from beneath the Spell-Word Stone, relentlessly sucking in the darkness pouring from the sky.
WHOOSH!!!!
Something wrapped in thick cloth lay beneath the purple-glowing Spell-Word Stone.
The item the Three Grand Dukes’ subordinates had been carrying. The sacrifice they intended to offer Myeong in this space.
That which was covered by thick cloth, its shape unrecognizable, relentlessly absorbed and devoured the pouring black magic.
“…!!!”
ROOOOAARRR!!!!
The movements of the pale hand commanding the tidal wave of darkness faltered, and the approaching black giants staggered back.
As the direction of the wave pouring towards Lennok shifted, changing its course, and even its remnants were entirely absorbed into the cloth.
On the plains that had swallowed everything, only Lennok and Freya remained standing, alone.
WHOOSH…!!!!
“W-What in the world…”
Freya murmured blankly, her voice sounding hollow.
“What is this, exactly… I…”
“…”
An momentary void, where the previous clash and rampage seemed like a lie, even the magic Lennok was about to unleash losing direction and scattering.
The item in question, having swallowed the entire tidal wave of darkness that had poured from the horizon, remained silent as if nothing had happened.
Something that had absorbed all the remnants of the Nether King wandering this space, returning to its original form in an instant.
Lennok, who had silently stared at it for a long time, turned his steps.
“It seems the item the Three Grand Dukes’ subordinates transported… wasn’t just an ordinary sacrifice.”
“…”
“The reason they tried to offer this to the Nether King was likely because of this. Though I don’t know the exact reason…”
Lennok said, approaching the item placed before the Spell-Word Stone.
“We’ll know the reason once we confirm what’s inside.”
“A-Are you sure…?”
CLICK!!
Instead of answering, he dismantled the barrier spell formation and security devices covering the thick cloth with a single gesture.
The moment he unhesitatingly grabbed the thick cloth and pulled back its contents before Freya could say anything.
Lennok’s words caught in his throat as he saw the form of the Black Coffin revealed within.
“…This is.”
He already knew what it was, even without needing to articulate it.
The Black Coffin he had found in Gateway City’s underground labyrinth had been perfectly identical to this one.
At the same time, he understood why the Nether King’s remnants had come all this way for it.
One of the countless traces Myeong had left across the continent through Gabihaeng.
The Three Grand Dukes’ subordinates had intended to use that very Black Coffin to summon Myeong here.
“…”
The fact that the Three Grand Dukes’ subordinates possessed this Black Coffin… did that mean Myeong had, at some point, handed it over to them?
Or had the subordinates who entered Paradise Lost found the Black Coffin hidden somewhere within this Ideological Domain?
Even now, having uncovered much about the Nether King, much about his true intentions remained unknown.
Why had Myeong traded with the Three Grand Dukes, suffered defeat at Jinwa’s hands, and relinquished all his rights?
Why had Myeong attempted to absorb the deaths of others into his own being through Gabihaeng?
“…Open it.”
“…”
“This Black Coffin… have you ever seen it with its lid closed like this…?”
Freya spoke, her voice still trembling.
“There’s something inside. Then… we have to check.”
“…Indeed.”
The contemplation was long, but the answer was set.
What was contained within this Black Coffin that could pacify the Nether King’s rampaging power?
How could it absorb all the black magic Lennok himself couldn’t control and then remain silent as if nothing had happened?
Even if Myeong hadn’t wanted its contents to be revealed, they couldn’t know anything without opening it.
Taking a moment to steady his breath, Lennok gripped the lid of the Black Coffin and slowly pushed it aside.
CREAK…!!
The first thing that met his eyes was a bouquet of pure white flowers filling the coffin.
The coffin’s interior was filled with snow-white petals, seemingly untouched by the Black Coffin’s darkness or Paradise Lost’s corruption.
Within that bouquet, a young boy, astonishingly similar to Myeong, lay with his hands clasped, as if in a deep sleep.
“…”
This time, even Freya fell silent, unable to utter a single word.
In the stiff silence before that incomprehensible and inexplicable sight.
“…Ah.”
The ‘young Myeong’ enshrined in the Black Coffin slowly opened his eyes.
The boy blinked, sat up, and, gazing blankly at Lennok and Freya, spoke.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you all.”
“…”
“Pardon me if it’s rude, but could you tell me what year it is, precisely?”