Chapter 140: After Ten Month of Suffering
On the other hand, ten months had passed in an altered dimension of the spire.
In the dark corridor, sitting on the cold floor while leaning against the wall, a boy was shivering while clutching his body. He brought his legs tight to his chest, and his face was buried in his knees, as his silver hair was a mess around his head.
For a long time, he sat there without moving a single step. After a while, he stood up with the support of the wall. He looked down towards the dark corridor once again, at least for the thousandth time or even more, since he had even forgot the actual count.
His face was a complete mess with a dark shadow covering his eyes. The eyes were red as an earlier sign of tears, but the moisture was buried deep inside his eyes, not daring to spill out from his eyelids.
He walked forward with a deliberate step, acting as if he had already got bored of walking through this exact same path.
His eyes were completely hollow, staring through the thick darkness with a piercing gaze. He walked down the empty corridor with a completely expressionless face, as if all of his emotions had been buried inside his heart.
[Hey... Are you okay? You should take a little more rest before walking again...]
The soft voice of a child could be heard inside his brain. It was the only soothing voice which prevented him from forgetting his true goal and stopped him from giving up on his path.
"..."
As the heavy silence remained and no answer came, Ravena fell silent. She didn’t want to press any more questions on him anymore, letting him walk according to his own personal choice.
As Alen passed through the first floor silently, walking right past the massive mountains of gold, opening the giant door next, and climbing the long staircase in empty silence, it didn’t take long for him to reach the second floor.
The darkness covered the entire area of the second floor, but for Alen, it was actually nothing he hadn’t got used to. Without wasting his time fighting, he directly dashed toward the illusionary wall without even alerting the wandering undead. He entered inside the wall and climbed through the hidden staircase to reach the third floor.
As he appeared inside the third floor once again, he looked ahead as a pitch-black dimensional hole tore open. It began flooding hundreds to thousands of vicious monsters continuously into the hall.
Alen stared with his hollow eyes toward them. He didn’t move, and he didn’t step forward to deal with them early. He remained in his place unmoved, just letting the massive flood of monsters appear.
As the newly appeared monsters and magical beasts found the silver-haired boy, without wasting time, they all launched straight toward him with incredible speed.
*SCREECH!!!*
As the violent armies of monsters ran toward him, Alen remained unmoved by their terrifying appearance. He didn’t even summon his weapon to defend himself, letting them get near him within a mere second.
Just as their sharp claws were launched straight at him with incredible speed, his figure suddenly blurred even faster than the incoming monsters. His bare fist directly punched the incoming waves of mana as dense Crimson Essence covered his hand.
*BOOOOOOM!*
The whole wave of monsters was launched backward, as half of the beasts in the front line were already disintegrated just by the sheer pressure of the impact.
Even the stone hall around him was beginning to crack as the violent waves of crimson lightning emitted from his hand. Everyone of the surviving monsters looked at him with pure terror.
Alen stepped forward calmly, taking measured steps as the dagger Godless manifested in his hand. The Crimson Essence was emitting through his weapon like striking lightning. The sheer volume of Crimson Essence contained within the dagger actually broke the floor beneath his feet as his hollow eyes stared blankly at the monsters.
Even the mindless monsters didn’t take another step forward, paralyzed in fear of the terrifying essence emitted by the Crimson dagger.
Alen stepped forward toward the pitch-black dimensional gate, walking with a cold, unhurried grace.
Some daring monster rejected its own survival instinct and launched at him, raising its giant stone axe high on top of Alen’s approaching figure.
With a slight pulse of Crimson Essence moving like a thin, sharp wave toward the monster’s body from the dagger, Alen kept his walking pace without stopping.
As the wave of Crimson Essence hit the giant monster, the beast’s body simply split open. The energy wave continued to pass through its body, slicing it in half as its internal organs spilled out from its torso, falling helplessly onto the ground.
*Thud!*
The hall fell entirely silent. In an unheard pace, Alen moved like an apex predator, while the remaining monsters stepped back in fear, letting him pass right through them as he went straight to the dimensional hole.
But the newer monsters who weren’t present earlier to watch his devastating attack stepped forward and launched toward him.
Alen looked straight toward them. He took a single step forward and disappeared from his position, moving with the speed of light. Only a streak of crimson light launched forward in a zig-zag line as he directly appeared in front of the gate. As he entered the gate, leaving the third floor behind, the monsters who had launched at him a second earlier fell onto the ground. Each of their bodies had been split into several bloody parts, scattered across the floor.
As Alen’s figure appeared on the fourth floor, all he could see were dark, heavy clouds above him while a dark rain was falling from the sky. The black water droplets fell toward his figure, but he didn’t try to cover his body. The Crimson Essence had already covered his head, preventing the falling rain from touching him like an invisible umbrella.
As the black droplets fell onto the ground, the native grasses burned away, leaving a slight smoke as the pungent smell of burning acid filled the surroundings.
He walked through the deadly surroundings, finding his path through the dense, burning foliage until he saw a dark staircase leading straight upward toward the dark, weeping sky.
He climbed the stairs again, seamlessly entering the 5th floor.
As his steps remained a constant rhythm, his sanity was already wearing incredibly thin. Even the monsters, the acid rain, and the disasters had failed to stop his steady ascent, leaving him to keep climbing until he reached the top once again, all after dying over and over again in the brutal darkness of the spire.