Chapter 45

Mors had never tried to force his way directly into those rings of lavish palaces, and this time he did not intend to try either—indeed, he did not know exactly where the Lord of Pleasure in Blissful Heaven was.

So he decided to address the problem from the heart of the upheaval taking place in the material universe: the royal palace of Lokos. Multiple presences were gathering there, and he had already scented enough corruption.

If he could stabilize the veil dividing reality from the Sea of Souls without entering that vast ocean, he would not need to expend more strength.

Before Mors headed for the palace of marble and gold, another event drew his attention away.

Without the slightest restraint, he vented all his irritation at being interrupted upon the Long Prince, who was too exhausted to keep carrying himself and had to drag himself along the ground. This took the concrete form of a kick that snapped the bastard's spine.

The soft laughter winding around his ears drifted away like fine sand, while the rusty scent brought by dripping blood gradually thickened.

"What important instrument are you, child?" Mors muttered softly.

Some things seemed to be paying an absurd amount of attention to Peturabo. Never before had he seen the countless voices beyond the veil work so single-mindedly to expend their power in the material universe.

Then, an utterly dreadful possibility—one more terrifying than even the simultaneous descent of all four wills—finally stubbornly emerged from the corner of his mind that he had instinctively ignored and entered his awareness.

He wasn't really doing this for that guy...

Mors gritted his teeth and, as rage erupted within him, unleashed a stream of curses at the Throne of Bones.

Damn it...

Over tens of thousands of years, he had collected countless obscenities, enough that he had even compiled an exceedingly thick catalog of them in his mind. Following his self-made catalog, he passionately launched his rudimentary attack.

Naturally, the language he used was not fit for mundane conversation.

Runes were released invisibly from within his black Greek toga. A language older than the Old Night was the foundation of his survival to this day; mankind had once sought to spread their name with it, and so their language had been confused.

Conceptual blood spilled from the corner of Mors's mouth. This was not physical damage, yet it rapidly became imperceptible to the naked eye in the material universe.

His defenses were remarkably effective, and the noise by his ears had become nearly inaudible. Yet he knew that the gods of the vast ocean often failed to understand one thing: cutting their losses in time.

He needed to preserve a portion of his strength for their descent and for stabilizing the veil here.

The next instant, Mors appeared at a side gate of the capital of Lokos. Several soldiers under the Long Prince, who were opening heavily fortified gates to allow foreign armies to slip in, fell to the ground at once.

After a simple inspection, Mors destroyed their forms.

Even the Dark Lord would not waste blessings on every vulgar soul that knelt beneath the gauze curtains of its canopy.

Harkon had made thorough preparations for this treasonous coup. The plan had likely begun with Kardis's murder of the envoy: they could not possibly have failed to realize that this would first draw Peturabo, now at the height of his renown in Olympia, along with spears and guns far beyond the technological standards of other nations.

The subsequent flight had been meant to lower others' guard, making it easier for him to rendezvous outside Lokos—where its troops were relatively sparse—with support from other nations and cults. Working together with those answering from within the capital, they would seize control of the situation and strike at the heart of power.

Given Harkon's personal limitations, Mors had no choice but to conclude that the cults had contributed greatly to this.

And regardless of whether the Lord of Hue had bestowed even the slightest favor upon this rebellion from the beginning, the rebel faction was now clearly inseparable from the great powers of Chaos.

So killing them all was for the best.

Mors temporarily hung the Long Prince from the top of a spire, freeing his hands to move faster.

His already pitiful patience was being depleted faster than the lives of the fallen. His use of comparatively cumbersome conventional psychic powers gradually diminished, while more obscure utterances—sounds so incomprehensible that it was almost impossible to imagine a human could produce them—directly pried at the foundations of reality through their most basic encoding.

Thirty minutes later, Mors decided to temporarily abandon his throat—after a string of profound sounds vibrated his vocal cords, he would be unable to say another word until his torn throat healed. Everyone linked to this rebellion—the keyholders, attendants, craftsmen, cooks, cleaners, even high-ranking ministers, court officials, physicians, judges, and writers—turned into bloody water from the inside out. Gilded fires of nothingness ignited upon the blood, and amid the wavering light and shadows beyond the phantom flames, countless vile spirits screamed as they perished.

In Lokos's ten bell towers, every night watchman died at the same time. One of them dropped the oil lamp in his hand onto the wooden stairs of the tower.

That summer had been especially dry, and this bell tower had, by coincidence, only been repaired halfway during renovations the week before due to a miscalculation in material allocation. The fire from the wick spread to the tower itself, and its wooden-and-stone structure began to crumble.

This purge was not limited to the capital of Lokos. Beyond layer upon layer of mountains, across the entire surface of the planet, wherever there were people, there were suddenly dead bodies collapsing to the ground.

The phenomenon provoked cries of alarm and panic everywhere. Countless people shrieked and wailed without end, while the night on half the planet and the day on the other half were filled with fallen traitors slapped into eternal death.

Extreme terror and rage spread across Olympia like a calamity. Such a tide of emotion was enough to make any unborn thing drool with desire, yet the portion of the composite command meant to resist the corrosion of Highest Heaven was like an iron anchor in the depths of a wave, blocking further inquiry by the powers of destruction.

The twinkling of the stars became ever more apparent. In the deepest, darkest reaches of the boundless void, endless voices laughed in delight at the stakes a tiny chess piece had added to the board. Pieces shifted, wagers rose, and all things changed without end.

The condition most favorable to Mors now was that Olympia's relatively superior conditions in every respect had kept it from receiving any particular favor over the endless years: no excessively intense wars, no harmony born of full bellies and indulgence, no craving for excessive technological advancement, no rotten and decayed foundation.

The planet lay sufficiently far from the boundary of the veil, limiting the large-scale intrusion of Chaos's power.

Within Mors's field of vision, blood, fire, and smoke were appearing in multiple directions.

The time had come for the sun to rise over the horizon, yet the sun remained dark. Visions of blood flowing from the moon appeared, and the state of affairs had changed greatly.

The dazzling royal palace, covered in gold, silver, jade, and precious stones, stood at the very center of myriad illusions. Before entering the main hall, Mors finally made up his mind and completed his last preparation.

He returned to his workshop, lifted the white cloth, and revealed the stone statue he had carved over the years.

Before Peturabo descended into the world, he had spent three years carving the old statue. After the child came to his side, he recarved it, and another ten years had passed since then. This was precisely the most appropriate moment.

Back then, he had merely wanted to make a work of art, so he had deliberately avoided every detail connected to mysticism. But if he wished to fill them in now, it would be effortless.

He pressed his fingertips to the statue's surface. Stone chips scattered everywhere, and in an instant, every emblem and image formed a connection with the subject represented by the statue. All the sigils on the blade it held were recarved, leaving only the final rune unfinished.

If completed, this blade would ignite with an intensely brilliant light, piercing the starry river like a lighthouse beacon in the ocean of night and clearly marking a path of guidance.

Mors drew the longsword from the statue's hand, then took the Long Prince down from the spire, and carried both toward the royal palace.

If there was absolutely no alternative, he would complete the final rune. Of course, he did not believe matters would develop that far.

After he stepped through the gates of the royal palace, the burning bell tower finally collapsed.

A flock of birds was startled into flight, scattering aimlessly toward the remaining nine bell towers.

Got the princess at guaranteed pity after a thousand pulls. ()