novelraw Chapter 298
Chapter 298
Chapter 298
A white world.
A world where nothing could be heard, nothing could be seen.
The primordial void. This perfectly comfortable moment where it felt as if the five senses didn't exist.
However, after a few seconds, Cellinne realized that warm blood was flowing from her ears.
In the silence, a high and sharp sound that scraped at her nerves gradually grew louder.
[When the end comes, you shall become ten who wait.]
Someone sang. No, this was an auditory hallucination. No one was singing. Cellinne staggered to her feet.
[Five of them are foolish. The foolish ones have no oil in their hands, and their cultivated fields shall be used to feed birds.]
Dardin and Valter also lay prostrate in place without moving, blood flowing from their ears.Only she here was witnessing the miracle as a living human.
[Five are wise. The wise ones hold oil in their vessels, and from their abundant fields they shall gather only grain.]
White sky. Pitch-black night.
The slowly crumbling beast. A being with horns that blew trumpets to command wicked kin. Destruction for Aquilonia, liberation for the blasphemous demons.
[When the lamp is extinguished, when the world is submerged in darkness. The wise ones' oil shall be coveted by the foolish ones, and you shall envy each other and kill among yourselves.]
The man standing before it.
His red hair flew in the wind, and he, detached from everything, looked down upon the crumbling beast.
The beast was not important to him. In fact, nothing was important to him.
The cold north wind gently brushed past his face. He was a miracle called from afar.
[You shall place one of the survivors among you on the altar. You shall offer the most wise, the most powerless, the most unrighteous one and raise up nine.]
The man extended his hand to Cellinne.
Cellinne forced herself to move her feet with only the intense desire that she must go to him.
Don't go, don't go. The voice of reason crying out was buried in awe and became faint. She finally took his hand and stood beside him.
[When that day comes, you nine shall become the greatest fruit raised by one blood. Eat, become intoxicated, covet. Thus you shall become completely one with him.]
The hallucination sang. From here, everything could be seen looking down. There were traces of destruction to the ends of the horizon.
Even though it wasn't even flat ground, she could see unpleasant beings writhing beneath the half-blown-away earth.
There was the beast that called destruction, and a red woman standing on its remains.
She rose from the ten fallen horns where she had been sitting. She had once possessed human form but was now here as the mother of all corruption.
Eyes with only black pupils were looking at the second adversary.
[Face to face, hate, envy, and grieve.]
The corrupt mother raised her trumpet high.
The darkness contained within the inverted horn trumpet bubbled and boiled.
Black, dark masses erupted from within like explosions. Things that blessed birth flowed endlessly.
The darkness rising to the sky looked like smoke. Or perhaps a giant curtain, or both.
Eyes appeared in the black darkness that filled the sky. Teeth formed, and some bulged taking the shape of hearts or lungs.
From the mass that writhed for a long time, several thick tentacles suddenly descended and preciously wrapped up the red woman.
The woman was lifted like a doll and buried in the darkness.
Cellinne instinctively knew something had changed.
"I found the main body. Not deciding on a form was truly a wise decision."
The man muttered. She couldn't keep up with what he meant with her mind.
The chorus that buzzed and rang in her ears, the song, shattered her mind and mixed it up messily like sand on a beach.
"Human. There's something you need to do."
"......"
"That thing has consumed too much blood. It has also harbored excessive human fear and wishes. So completely protecting this body while repelling that thing is impossible."
"......"
"From now on, this body will die."
"......"
"Nearby there's a dam that confines monsters, and there are also you humans. I won't harm humans, but I don't know what might happen while fighting that thing. So when this body dies, you must guard the corpse."
The man's words were deeply embedded in Cellinne's mind.
Like a scar burned with a branding iron on a white palm, it was a command that would never disappear.
He let go of her hand and rolled up his own sleeves.
When he swept down the inside of his arm once, a red, long wound opened and dark red blood began pouring out.
"[You there, being who has slept for a long time.]"
Splatter. The blood spilled on the ground was tremendous.
The man approaching the black cloud chanted without regard for the roughly writhing tentacles above his head and the terrible acidic vapor.
"[Delusion, disbelief, blasphemy, temptation, gluttony. Mother of corruption who built towers with blood. Master of a thousand black goats. Black goddess who blesses the birth of all twisted and mutated beings.]"
The tentacles struck the ground all at once. The ground cracked and earth shot up. The walking man also rose into the air then fell toward the sinking floor.
But with a whooshing sound, a tentacle snatched his body before he could touch the ground.
"Kheuk."
Sounds of bones breaking could be heard from the man's body that was completely squeezed. The blood he vomited flowed down, wetting the tentacle.
Between the black clouds, three or four mouths packed with dense teeth were revealed.
Dark green thunder and lightning raged inside the mouths.
The difference was too overwhelming.
Tentacles endlessly falling from the black clouds that completely stained the sky,
The forms of mutated beasts and humans flowing from the tentacles.
Dead kin that couldn't gain life and merely mimicked filled the earth.
The green mouth opened before the one trapped in a tiny human body.
[Yoư̷̙̹̠̲̖̘̻̘̪͓͊̀̆̾̃̚͝ can͔͍̦̙̦͕̓̐̓̌͊̊̾̅͐ͅ't̡̬͎̼̙̞̑͆́̊̓͗̎̃ stop̡̛̟̰̲͚̂̋̔́̉͢͝ mḝ̸̦̼̮͍̮̀̃͋̑̉͆̍̎.]
You can't stop me.
The crackling voice used a language that could only be understood by beings of equal status.
[Ȉ̙̻̳̬̦̟̠͐̀̍͘͘͠ͅ am̷̧̡̺͙͈͍̣̔̄̀̍̍̍̓͆̑͢ thḙ͔̼̀̽͒̊͊̌͘͢ͅ only̢̧͉̫͕̖̰͓̑̐̆̇͗̆̿̚ͅ motheř̷̡̫͇͉͍͍̯̍͂̄̈̀͋͢͞ of̢̛͓̭̠̱̼̪͉̰͈͋͌̃́̈̊̑̚͞ this̨̹̤̭̬̅̏̊͆͐̊͆ land̶̢̯̦̹͈͇̖́͐̓͛̀͡, one̙̭̭̻̥̤͊́͛̄̚ who̞͈̣̮̤̭͓̬͑̊̌̆͋͊͋͠͝ blesses̩̹̥̩̣͗̇͊̓̉̌̅̀ eternal̘̠̦̫͇͎̰̓́̀̐͌̀̍̑̕̕ birtḩ̥͎̹̺̜̪͎̲͂̓̌̓̈͡...]
I am the only mother of this land, one who blesses eternal birth...
"[Yes, you have made yourself great. But goddess bound to earth, behold.]"
The red-haired vessel spoke.
"[What is there above?]"
Above.
A fragment of truth visible beyond the miserably torn and split sky.
There, only uselessly twinkling stars were dying out, diluting their presence.
Yet amidst it all, a fierce light burned hot and was gradually growing larger.
Suddenly, the surrounding atmospheric pressure crushed everything.
An ominous sound rang through the air, growing larger and larger.
Cellinne captured that scene in one glance.
An uninvited guest that absolutely couldn't exist on this planet.
Long ago, in the days when people made wishes on the tails of light flying across the night sky.
What she thought could only be seen from distant places was coming here?
The moment she thought that,
The man wrapped in tentacles spat out his last mouthful of blood and declared.
"[I, Arcturus, declare- the bitter cold of the universe shall come to earth. You who are bound to the ground, endure the punishment coming from the sky!]"
Under the name of Arcturus, Lord of the Extreme Realm and eternal ruler of ice,
A lost meteor received the call and came.
* * *
All countries in western Thurian discovered an ominous star.
One hideous, fiercely shining blue star discovered in the forcibly opened sky.
Besides that, astronomical phenomena interpreted as bad omens were observed here and there.
And one meteor shower cutting across the sky.
The direction it fell was toward the frontier small country, Aquilonia.
Including the Leng Plateau, about 7 villages, 18 towns, and 4 small cities literally disappeared in an instant.
In addition to this, uninhabited territories outside the kingdom and maritime areas suffered serious damage.
If there was any fortune, it was that the people who disappeared with the cities probably didn't understand what was happening until just before they died,
And strangely, the scale of damage was miraculously small.
The kingdom designated three cities relatively close to the damage area and dispatched officials and soldiers as investigation teams.
This was to understand what exactly had happened in the region.
However, when they entered the disaster zone, what they could see was cleanly swept, empty land.
In a place where the temperature was low enough to be strangely chilly, there were no trees, no grass, no flowers, no saplings, no sprouts, no beasts, no insects, no birds, nothing.
Truly a scene where life had gone extinct only here.
They slowly advanced. They measured the range of the affected area and recorded this terrible incident while shuddering.
On the seventh day of conducting observation and search,
They discovered an impact crater.
The meteorite remaining intact in the impact crater wasn't small, but it wasn't very large either.
When the investigation team, who had been carefully speculating that perhaps the outer surface had all burned away when it came down here, descended into the impact crater,
They discovered miraculously surviving survivors.
One man, one old man, two women.
All unconscious and abandoned near the meteorite, they were unharmed except for soot, burnt smell, and blood that had flowed from their ears.
One of the women was clutching a white box.
The modest box that could be held in one arm wouldn't separate from the woman no matter how much the investigation team tried to remove it, as if it was stuck to her.
Moreover, the box had no lid, and only the small sound of something sloshing inside could be heard.
The investigation team had various questions,
But first they transported these survivors and witnesses of the disaster to a safe place.
However, a few days later, when they regained consciousness and were investigated and their specific identities were confirmed,
The royal palace urgently summoned the survivors.
Under the pretext of charges of summoning an ominous star to threaten the lives of kingdom citizens and causing serious political internal strife.