Chapter 194: To Hell
Ren Sihue violently blinked.
The cataclysmic, blinding pillar of pure black light that had just swallowed him whole on the edge of the cliff suddenly vanished, dissipating as quickly as it had appeared. The roaring gale of the coastal wind, the smell of the freezing ocean, and the damp earth of the artificial continent were instantly gone.
Instead, Ren found himself completely engulfed in suffocating darkness.
His boots were no longer standing on cracked dirt and moss. They were resting on cold, unnaturally smooth stone. Ren’s breath hitched, his assassin instincts immediately flaring to life. He dropped his center of gravity, crouching low into a defensive stance while his right hand locked onto the hilt of his dagger. He strained his enhanced eyes, trying to pierce the pitch-black void, but it took his vision several long, agonizing seconds to even begin adjusting to the density of the darkness around him.
Before he could process his surroundings, a heavy, wet thud echoed through the silence just a few yards to his left. It sounded like two boots hitting the stone floor.
Ren whipped his head toward the noise, his muscles coiling to strike.
Suddenly, a brilliant, piercing light washed over the immediate area. It wasn’t the harsh glare of a facility lamp or the orange glow of fire. It was a perfectly spherical, condensed ball of white mana.
The glowing sphere hovered just inches above the palm of the man kneeling on the stone floor.
Ren’s icy blue eyes widened in shock. It was Commander James Maddox.
But this wasn’t the flawless, arrogantly cheerful illusion that had mocked Ren on the cliffside minutes ago. The man kneeling in the light of the white mana was battered and ruined. Maddox’s clothes were completely shredded. He was drenched from head to toe in thick, reeking dark blood belonging to high-tier Calamity Beasts, mixed heavily with his own bright crimson blood that seeped from several deep, nasty-looking lacerations across his ribs and shoulders.
Yet, despite his horrific physical condition, the presence radiating from the kneeling man was apocalyptic. The white mana in his palm illuminated the dust in the air, but it was the aura leaking from Maddox’s body that made Ren physically stagger backward. The atmospheric pressure around the Commander was so incomprehensibly dense that it felt like an entire mountain was pressing down on Ren’s chest.
Ren had grown up under the tyrannical rule of his father, Hiken Sihue—a legendary S-Rank exterminator whose mere gaze could make veteran killers drop to their knees. But this... this was entirely different. The raw weight of Maddox’s true presence vastly eclipsed his father’s. It was like the presence of a god bleeding out.
"Commander..." Ren whispered, his voice uncharacteristically fragile as he lowered his dagger. "...are you okay?"
Maddox flinched at the sound of the voice. His head snapped up, his auburn hair plastered to his forehead with sweat and blood. He was breathing heavily, his chest heaving with ragged gasps as he stared at the master assassin. Maddox gritted his teeth, the muscles in his jaw bulging as recognition finally hit him.
Pushing through the agonizing pain of his wounds, Maddox lunged forward. He grabbed Ren violently by the shoulder, his grip like a tightening steel vice that nearly cracked Ren’s collarbone.
"What..." Maddox rasped, his brown eyes wide with panic. "What the fuck are you doing here!"
Ren swallowed hard, the overwhelming dread of the environment finally cracking his iron-clad composure. He couldn’t even bring himself to look the Commander in the eye.
"I... I came to see what was happening here?" Ren answered, his voice lacking its usual cold authority, sounding more like a lost civilian than the deadliest assassin.
Maddox’s grip tightened, his expression contorting into a mask of pure frustration and despair.
"You fool," Maddox spat, his voice trembling with a mixture of anger and grief. "Even after your father died. What else would it take to instill fear? You should have never come here."
Ren’s pupils shrank. The confirmation from Maddox himself that Hiken had fallen in this very place sent a chilling spike of ice down his spine. If someone like Maddox was reduced to a bleeding mess on the floor, what chance did Ren have?
"Would it be rude if I interrupt?"
The voice was soft, ancient, and dripped with a sickly, aristocratic elegance. It didn’t echo from the walls; it seemed to manifest directly from the shadows themselves, descending from somewhere high above and in front of them.
The moment the words were spoken, the absolute darkness surrounding them suddenly seemed to peel back and retreat, chased away by a sickly, pale illumination that had no visible source. The large hall they were standing in finally came alive with light.
A low, thunderous grumble vibrated through the air, shaking the very marrow in Ren’s bones. It sounded like the furious churning of an apocalyptic storm. Ren slowly tilted his head up. High above the cavernous stone ceiling, thick, bruised-purple clouds rolled and violently grumbled, exactly like the ones he had seen from the cliffside.
From the grumblings of the clouds and the impossible architecture of his surroundings, Ren’s mind deduced one horrific, impossible truth. They weren’t underground. They had been teleported by the black pillar and were currently standing inside the colossal dark castle at the very center of the floating island he had seen in the ocean.
Ren looked around the main hall, his blood running completely cold.
The scale of the room was insidious. The walls were forged from seamless, pitch-black stone that seemed to absorb light and radiate pure dread. The vast floor was an absolute massacre. Massive, unnatural craters shattered the polished obsidian tiles. The room resounded with the eerie, lingering echoes of a catastrophic battle.
There were massive blood splatters—both crimson and dark violet—painting the walls and the floor. Countless broken swords, shattered shields, and twisted, dark-metal lances were scattered indiscriminately across the expanse, jutting out of the stone like gravestones in the aftermath of an ancient, forgotten war.
"It would be, god forsaken bastard!" Maddox grumbled fiercely. He released Ren’s shoulder, forcefully pushing himself up to his feet to face the depths of the hall, the white mana in his palm flaring aggressively.
"How many years has it been, and this is how you greet me?" the ancient voice asked once again.
This time, the sheer, hypnotic command laced within the tone made it entirely impossible to look away. Ren’s body trembled violently, his breath hitching in his throat. He tried to force his eyes down, to distract his gaze toward the broken weapons on the floor, but his muscles completely refused to obey him. He was a puppet forced to look at his master.
Ren’s gaze was dragged toward the far end of the blood-soaked hall.
Rising from the ruined floor was a grand, monolithic staircase forged of pale, bone-white stone. There had to be almost a hundred steps leading upward into the dim light. Adorning the sides of the massive staircase, positioned exactly halfway up, were six ornate chairs—three on the left, three on the right. Slumped perfectly still in each of the chairs was a towering, heavily armored skeleton, their hollow eye sockets burning with dormant, violet flames.
But it was the peak of the stairs that completely shattered Ren’s sanity.
High above, sitting at the absolute pinnacle of the hundred steps, was a lone, towering throne crafted from fused spines and melted iron.
And resting upon that throne was an abomination that defied all laws of nature and life.
It was a Lich. But it wasn’t a clean, polished skeleton. The entity sitting on the throne was a horrific, sickening amalgamation of rotted flesh and exposed, blackened bones. Thick, leathery strips of necrotic, grey skin hung loosely from its massive ribcage and elongated limbs. Where the flesh had rotted away entirely, thousands of fat, glowing violet maggots squirmed and writhed within the hollow cavities of its joints, feasting perpetually on the highly condensed dark mana radiating from its core. Its skull was partially shattered, half-eaten by time and decay, yet two burning, abyssal-red pinpricks of light floated within its hollow eye sockets, exuding an intelligence and malice so profound it made the air physically heavy to breathe.
"I believe it’s been a little over a hundred and fifty years since you trapped me here," the Lich laughed. The sound was wet, rattling, and utterly grotesque, like rocks grinding inside a diseased lung.
Ren frowned, his mind violently short-circuiting as he tried to process the impossible sentence.
Trapped me here? Ren’s blue eyes darted frantically toward the bleeding Commander standing beside him. The Lich was talking directly to Maddox. But that made absolutely no sense. According to the international registry and the known history of the Awakened era, Commander James Maddox was an old man, yes, but he was barely a century old. How could Maddox have possibly fought and sealed a Supreme Calamity Lord—a literal Lich—over a hundred and fifty years ago? It broke every established timeline in history as he knew it.
But the abomination on the throne wasn’t finished. And its next words were what made Ren’s eyes widen to a fraction of their normal size, stopping his heart entirely.
The Lich leaned forward on its throne of spines, the violet maggots spilling over its jawbone as it looked down at the bleeding S-Rank Commander.
"How have you been, Vincent?"