Chapter 1457: Hall of Ascension (3)
Crunch-
Struck directly by the flat face of the heavy hammer, the ghoul’s head was crushed.
The skull, compressed bone and all, exploded, scattering flesh. A moment later, a desperate scream echoed.
BOOOOOM!!!!
[Krrrrrrk…!!]
[Kkheeeek-!!!]
Ghouls swarmed everywhere the eye could see, craving living flesh.
In their midst was the figure of a bird-headed giant, drawing their attention by crushing them with a single hammer.
Looking down at Felix serving as a lone decoy, Dylan wore a sour expression.
“I’m telling you, Felix has become even more of a monster since the war ended, jeez…!!”
Crack!!
Before he could finish, he threw his short spear, piercing the ribs of a charging ghoul and pinning it to the railing.
Kicking the head of the screaming, convulsing ghoul and snapping its neck, Dylan retrieved his spear.
Vwoom-
The mana emission he had learned directly from Atiya, Deadrise’s 6th Legion Commander, amplified his acceleration to its maximum.
With a heavy, resonant hum, Dylan, gripping his short spear, moved at an explosive, invisible speed.
FWOOSH-BOOM!!!
He zipped past the ghouls climbing over the railing at supersonic speed, crushing and bursting them with the shockwave alone.
Breaking through the mutants, now reduced to lumps of flesh, Dylan arrived on the rooftop in an instant and adjusted his earpiece.
[Hey, Dylan!!! What are you doing? Hurry up and give us the direction!!]
“Yeah, yeah. I just got here. Wait a second.”
Standing on the rooftop railing, Dylan confirmed the movements of the ghouls swarming throughout the satellite city.
The city center had been half-destroyed the moment Lennok’s lightning struck, leaving the underground facilities exposed.
But despite the life force from the World Tree’s fragment being temporarily cut off, ghouls still remained.
Behind the Singularity Reactor, the Corpse Ghost Spell Master trembled, while Lennok stood silently with his eyes closed.
Watching the ghouls charge madly toward the reactor from all directions, Dylan spoke urgently.
“Eighty approaching the reactor from the west. Two hundred more from the north. Uh… southeast? No, one hundred forty from the east!!”
[Can’t you even get the direction right?!! Shit, too late!!]
KWAGAGAGAGAG!!!!
Unleashing a mana burst from her shotgun, Mila cursed as she accelerated rapidly.
Mila’s mana emission was even more aggressive than Dylan’s, looking so violent it was as if she were striking the air to propel herself forward.
She crushed the charging ghouls with shockwaves, but she couldn’t lure all the monsters pouring in from three directions.
“H-Hic…!! I… I don’t h-have any flesh, so I t-taste bad!!”
The Corpse Ghost Spell Master trembled with a pale complexion, watching the ghouls approach from all sides.
Even so, the wizard remained motionless with his eyes closed. Just as Mila was about to urgently change direction…
A woman wielding a glaive landed in front of the wizard and smoothly spun around.
Whoosh—
It was an elegant yet serene movement, like a dance upon a lake.
The semicircular slash drawn by the glaive’s blade severed the upper and lower bodies of hundreds of ghouls in a single strike.
Splat!!
[Kkieeeee!!!!]
Rotten flesh was cleanly severed and fell to the ground, and the radiation-soaked ghouls let out desperate screams.
The mutants floundered, trying to pick up their severed lower halves, before their movements swiftly slowed and stiffened.
“Mila, leave protecting Van to me.”
Soo-ryun flicked the blood from her glaive with one hand, opened her eyes, and spoke.
“It seems we need at least one more person to cut down these minor fiends.”
“O-Okay!! I’ll leave it to you, then!!”
Mila replied, flustered, then changed direction and whispered quietly into the comms.
[Wait, was Soo-ryun always this strong…? I don’t remember her being this powerful.]
[They said that among those who learned the Apostle Transformation, her progress was the best after Felix’s.]
[She was always talented in the martial arts. She was already Level 6 before she joined the Tower.]
[What? So while Weian was running around making a racket, Soo-ryun was quietly achieving results?]
[Stop it. That’s too cruel to Weian.]
[What’s so cruel? He’s been spouting nonsense about being possessed by a ghost lately, right?]
“Could you stop gossiping about others over the comms?”
At that moment, Lennok, standing with the Singularity Reactor in the center of the half-destroyed satellite city, opened his eyes.
“I’ve found a point where the ground is unstable. We’re going in now.”
Ruuuumble!!!
Debris from the melted asphalt slid away as the cracked road split open, revealing a hidden space.
Lennok plummeted down into the area beneath the satellite city, along with piles of ruined concrete.
Simultaneously, the mercenaries who had followed him down kicked debris to block the path.
“Thankfully, they can’t crawl in this far.”
“To think there are still this many after Van wiped a wave of them out. Just how many people died here?”
“The Outer Zone is already littered with corpses. It’s not like there were only one or two human experiments conducted in this city.”
“The more you learn about this place, the more disgusting it gets.”
Grumbling as they piled up concrete debris to firmly block the entrance, the mercenaries looked around and grimaced.
“This is…”
“An underground hangar?”
Rumble…!!
A vast underground passage, wide enough for an airship to pass through, stretched endlessly beneath the satellite city.
Lined up along the massive, semicircular tunnel were rows of rusted armored vehicles and tanks.
The mercenaries, who had quickly fanned out to survey the area, returned and shared their conclusion.
“These abandoned tanks and armored vehicles have defense force serial numbers. They’re property of the City Government.”
“With all this military equipment, it must have been more than a simple warehouse. It seems to have been used as a military base.”
“They tried to build such a large military base under a satellite city? Then and now, I can’t understand what the City Council is thinking…”
“B-But… isn’t it t-too dark in here…?”
The Corpse Ghost Spell Master, who was crouching next to Lennok, muttered while trembling.
“It feels a little c-cold, too… I-It feels like something s-strange is going to pop out… I-I’m not the only one who’s scared, am I…?”
“Hey. Right now, you’re the only one trembling so strangely.”
Mila looked back at the Corpse Ghost Spell Master, dumbfounded.
“Aren’t you a Spell Master from the Order Alliance? What’s a specialist who deals with corpses so scared of?”
“I don’t even know if she’s a real Spell Master. She didn’t do a thing against the ghouls, did she?”
“She was just muttering about how she’d taste bad. Nothing would be funnier than a Corpse Ghost Spell Master getting eaten alive by ghouls.”
Cowering under the mercenaries’ strangely cold gazes, the Corpse Ghost Spell Master protested.
“L-Lousy ghouls and Corpse Ghosts are d-different… A c-corpse that’s that d-decomposed can’t be used as a target for my spellcraft…”
“…”
“A-And anyway, don’t you think you’re d-demanding too much from a h-hostage…?! I-If anything, I’m the one who’s being treated unfairly…!”
As the Corpse Ghost Spell Master cried out with an aggrieved expression, the other mercenaries started to lay into her as if they had been waiting for the chance.
“Look at this. The absolute nerve.”
“I’ve been thinking this for a while, but doesn’t it seem like she pretends to stutter while managing to say everything she wants to?”
“It’s not just saying what she wants. She says things she shouldn’t, all while stammering.”
“You think a little stuttering makes it okay? Huh?”
“A real expert at speaking her mind, this one.”
“Aghhh…!!”
With a sullen look, Mila grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and lifted her, the Corpse Ghost Spell Master flailing in place.
Lennok, who had been staring with a dumbfounded expression as the spell master struggled like a duck, shook his head and turned to walk.
“If you’ve rested enough, that’s it. Let’s get moving. In any case, we’ll need the spell master’s help for this.”
“It’s because of the Gate, isn’t it? You think we need the Corpse Ghost Spell Master to find it?”
“If Heaven’s Gate is a type of dimensional portal that exists using the ‘moon’ as a medium, then the one best suited to find it would ultimately be a spell master who deals with yin energy.”
Just as the sun symbolizes yang energy, the moon is a medium that symbolizes yin energy.
And in the Magic Tower, the spellcaster most attuned to yin energy was the Corpse Ghost Spell Master herself.
“Spell Master. You must know from your detection that this military base is unrealistically vast. For us, that makes it just as difficult to find our way.”
“Ah, I haven’t tried a mana scan yet…”
“Then from now on, I want you to point the way. Can you find in which direction the yin energy is strongest?”
“Well, um… Hehe…”
Freed from Mila’s grasp, the Corpse Ghost Spell Master glanced at Lennok and gave an awkward laugh.
“W-Well, my spellcraft… it’s far s-superior to necromancy, but…”
“But?”
“I-It’s usually specialized in drawing out the p-potential of human corpses, so…”
Fidgeting with her hands, the Corpse Ghost Spell Master continued.
“For o-ordinary searching or tracking… a regular n-necromancer might be b-better at it… Hehe…”
“…”
“So.”
In the strange silence, Mila crossed her arms and asked.
“You’re saying you’re useless for finding Heaven’s Gate, so we should find someone else?”
“I-If it’s not too much trouble, could you perhaps send me safely back to the Magic Tower…?”
“Are you completely insane?!!”
Yank! Mila grabbed the spell master by the scruff of her neck, hoisted her up, and strode forward.
“Just because Van is being lenient, you think you can say whatever you want, huh?”
“Ugh, agh!!”
“Enough! Shut up and lead the way. Don’t even think about going back until you find that Gate!!”
“N-No!!! I-I want to go home!! Send me back!!”
“The Magic Tower isn’t your home, you know?”
Mila strode into the dark underground passage, carrying the struggling spell master over her shoulder.
Watching them with a baffled expression, Felix gave a wry smile and looked at Lennok.
“It seems she’s full of energy, maybe because it’s been a while since she’s worked with you… Should I stop her?”
“No, let her be.”
Lennok followed Mila, his hand resting on the Singularity Reactor.
“It’s not my preferred method, but sometimes, the stick is more necessary than the carrot.”
“I’m starting to understand just how low your internal assessment of the Corpse Ghost Spell Master is…”
Felix followed with a sour expression.
“I-I think it’s this way…”
“That path is completely blocked by debris.”
“Th-Then this way…”
“We just came from here.”
Lifting the dangling spell master by the scruff of her neck, Mila’s face contorted into a deep scowl.
“Hey, be honest with me. You’re deliberately pointing in the wrong direction, aren’t you? How can you be wrong every single time!”
“I-I want to go back to the Magic Tower…”
“That’s not the kind of honesty I wanted!! Seriously, why is she so obsessed with our Magic Tower?”
Twenty minutes had passed since they entered the military base hidden beneath the satellite city.
They had put the whining Corpse Ghost Spell Master in the lead to find the way, but they had made surprisingly little progress.
Every direction she pointed was so wrong that they had to be content with the fact they weren’t just walking in circles.
“Even so, the interior of this base seems ridiculously vast.”
Soo-ryun, who had been walking silently with her glaive, lifted her gaze.
“I’ve been circulating my mana continuously, but I can’t seem to get a sense of its end. A rough estimate puts it at several times the size of the city above ground.”
“The size is one problem, but as expected of a military base, it’s plastered with jammers and mana-blocking materials, making detection difficult,” Dylan replied, adjusting his mask.
“On top of that, we have an engine that belongs on a spaceship running at full blast right next to us. I can’t tell a thing about our surroundings.”
The thermal energy contained within the Singularity Reactor was on a scale that far surpassed even a Level 7 superhuman.
It was impossible to accurately scan the surrounding terrain while next to such a massive energy source.
This was made even more difficult by the base’s impossibly large size and the mana-blocking materials installed throughout.
“At this rate, it’ll take too long. Shouldn’t we split up?”
“Didn’t you hear what Van said? He told us we don’t know what might be near the Gate.”
“We just have to not get too close. We can find it, then come back and tell him.”
“If it were that easy, why would we be struggling like this in the first place?”
The mercenaries’ conversation continued, making it hard to tell if they were arguing or strategizing.
Meanwhile, the Corpse Ghost Spell Master, having produced no results, quietly gauged the mood.
“There’s no need to split up, so don’t worry.”
Lennok spoke from the back of the group, his hand still on the Singularity Reactor.
“The fact that the Corpse Ghost Spell Master can’t sense anything is, in itself, proof that we’re on the right path.”
“What do you mean?”
“You all mentioned earlier that it was hard to detect presences inside the base because of the Singularity Reactor. It’s a similar principle.”
Lennok tapped the reactor.
“An immense yin energy permeates this underground space, which is precisely why she can’t read anything. That fact alone implies our destination is close.”
“S-So…”
Listening to Lennok’s explanation with a surprised expression, the Corpse Ghost Spell Master’s slumped shoulders slowly straightened.
“It… It wasn’t m-my fault… Phew… And here I thought I’d m-made a mistake.”
“…”
“O-Of course my detection abilities c-couldn’t be lacking… I-In fact, wasn’t I perfectly doing my p-part…?”
Her shameless self-recovery was no longer surprising.
The spell master ignored the mercenaries’ dumbfounded stares, confidently placed her hands on her hips, and turned around. The moment she did…
Her body suddenly plunged into the ground.
Whoosh—
“Huh?”
With a short scream, the spell master instantly vanished into the darkness of the corridor ahead.
At the same time, the other mercenaries read the terrain in front of them, and their expressions stiffened.
“Wait—”
“It’s a steep slope right ahead. Don’t tell me…!!”
“Ah, ack!! Eek! Kyaa!! Kuuuuuuaaaaaah!!!”
The spell master was sent tumbling down a dizzyingly long ramp.
Strange screams echoed with each bounce, rapidly fading into the distance.
Realizing what had happened, the mercenaries immediately dashed past Lennok and down the slope.
They came to a halt behind the sprawled-out Corpse Ghost Spell Master at the edge of a seemingly bottomless underground cavern.
And then they saw it—a colossal shadow looming in the darkness beyond—and froze solid.
“…That’s.”
“It seems the general direction wasn’t wrong from the start.”
Lennok walked down from behind his speechless comrades and lifted his gaze.
“Looks like what we were searching for was here all along.”
“This… is what you called Heaven’s Gate?”
Kuuuuung…!!
They were in the central underground hangar of the military base, a space thousands of meters in diameter.
In the vast cavern, reminiscent of a bomb shelter, lay mountains of containers and tank wreckage.
Beyond the rusted fighter jets with broken wings and piles of metal strewn with caterpillar tracks…
A pale moon, bleeding dark red blood, floated in the air, bathing the hangar in an ominous light.
Crack, crack…!!!
The moon’s surface was fractured, and with each faint tremor, dark red blood poured onto the floor below.
It was a bizarre and gruesome scene, as if the moon itself were crumbling and writhing in agony.
So that is Heaven’s Gate. The dimensional portal of the Old World that uses the moon as its medium.
For a moment, even the mercenaries, prepared to risk their lives, were captivated by the incomprehensible sight.
The instant Lennok saw it, however, he realized the true nature of Heaven’s Gate.
“H-Huh…?”
Sprawled on the floor and trembling, the Corpse Ghost Spell Master looked bewildered.
“That moon thing… it’s registering as a target for my spellcraft…?”
“What did you say?”
“I-It’s too big to turn into a Corpse Ghost, but…”
She stammered with a sour expression, muttering as if uncertain.
“It… it might be a c-corpse I can interact with…?”
“A corpse? What are you…”
Just as the others’ expressions hardened at the spell master’s incomprehensible words, Lennok began to walk forward slowly.
“According to lore, Heaven’s Gate was a relic that existed in both the First and Second Worlds. It was also described as a phenomenon observed through the moon as a medium.”
“…”
“I always wondered how Heaven’s Gate alone could have survived two world-ending calamities and maintained its original form… Now my question is answered.”
“Van, what are you…”
Olivera had said the moon in the night sky was a concept that had existed since the Old World, and no one knew exactly how long it had been there.
Sakia had called Heaven’s Gate an artifact of the Old World that controlled the spacetime multi-spectrum, the pinnacle of dimensional portal technology.
The reason a relic directly connected to the moon could exist beyond the First and Second Worlds and into the Third.
The reason the Corpse Ghost Spell Master could identify it not as a relic but as a corpse, a target for her spellcraft.
Heaven’s Gate was never a relic “left by humans” in the first place.
“The moon that exists in this world is no ordinary satellite. That thing is the dead egg of an Outer God.”
Standing before Heaven’s Gate, Lennok’s gaze grew cold.
“We now have to enter the body of a dead Outer God.”