[Translator - Night]
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Chapter 141
Ever since she opened her eyes, it felt like things had only gotten worse.
The information flowing in from the Forbidden Zone was utterly bizarre.
It was an empty space, yet so kind of information was surging in.
It was so chaotic and mixed that it was hard to grasp what it even was, making question whether this was the ocean I knew at all.
If not for the divine relic, we might have faced trouble the mont we entered this place.
However, that only made it even more confusing.
An empty space.
The only thing found in the Forbidden Zone so far was the enormous grotesque fish we had seen before acquiring it.
Even now, the ground beneath our feet was nothing but dirt—completely devoid of any life.
"Are we even sure we can find it? We don't even know if it's actually here, and this place is way too vast."
It wasn't just a complaint—lissa's words were entirely valid.
"I'm picking up sothing."
It was true that the search was proving more difficult than expected, but that didn’t an it was impossible.
The information was too mixed up to confirm anything without seeing it firsthand, but I could sense sothing that seed like bones.
Other than that, everything was too hazy to discern, yet it was clear that nurous fragnts of information were rging into sothing massive.
"Follow ."
After deactivating the Machine God's Heart, I held my throbbing head and quickly descended again.
lissa and Luna cautiously followed behind , keeping a vigilant watch on our surroundings.
The distance wasn’t far.
Though it was hidden, the entrance wasn’t specifically designed to prevent entry, so we were able to locate and break through it quickly.
When we arrived, an unexpected sight unfolded before us.
"What... is all this?"
"A nest."
We had arrived at a mass grave filled with countless bones.
Among them were the remains of grotesque fish-like creatures, as well as a significant number of human skeletons.
"What the hell is this?"
"If it made sense, it wouldn’t be a Forbidden Zone. All known rules are warped here. You know the Black Forest, right? This isn’t like the usual dinsional rift incidents—it’s on a completely different level."
It might belong to the sa category of magical anomalies, but this Forbidden Zone far surpassed anything of that nature.
The divine relic protected only the three of us—nothing else.
That ant everything here was the result of the bizarre phenona within this Forbidden Zone.
"But then, where did these human bones even co from?"
"Let's check."
By examining the bones, we might be able to estimate when they died.
Walking through the grave of bones, I placed my hand on a seemingly well-preserved skeleton.
At that mont, a flood of information surged into once again.
Considering the state of the bones and various other details, I estimated the ti of death to be...
"Four days?"
"What?"
"This person... has only been dead for four days."
It was already strange that only bones remained in such a short ti.
Even more puzzling was why a human corpse was here in the first place.
The skeleton was male, with no signs of having been enhanced by aura or mana.
"Wait, but a normal corpse takes a long ti to turn into a skeleton…"
"In water, it would take even longer. Unless sothing ate the body, that is."
Judging from the condition of the bones, it looked as though they had been completely stripped away, leaving nothing but skeletons.
Out of curiosity, I checked the state of other bones nearby.
The result was the sa.
After finishing our investigation, we could only reach one conclusion.
Most of these skeletons were relatively recent.
However, the skeletalization process had happened abnormally fast.
"Luna, do you know anything about this?"
"It looks like a distortion of the space-ti axis. Other than that, I can’t say for sure."
It was likely that these individuals had actually died a long ti ago, but their bodies had been preserved while only their skeletalization had progressed abnormally fast.
And then—
Gurgle…
A strange noise echoed through the darkness as sothing massive drifted into the depths.
Unlike the other skeletonized remains, this one was a large, seemingly intact fish-like monster.
Sensing sothing was clearly off, we held our breath and carefully moved over the bone-covered ground, slipping deeper into the darkness.
And then we saw it.
"...What the hell is that?"
"Hmm?"
The sight before us was even more grotesque than the mountain of bones.
Like before, there was a massive pile of human and monster corpses.
But unlike earlier, these bodies were perfectly preserved.
Hundreds of human corpses and marine creatures were stacked like a mountain.
As the large fish-like corpse we had followed fell onto the heap with a dull thud, sothing in the darkness began to stir.
lissa instinctively drew her sword, aura flaring.
But the massive tentacles showed no interest in us.
Instead, they silently coiled around several intact corpses scattered about and disappeared back into the shadows.
Even with the divine relic’s power and the necromancer’s sight, the darkness remained impenetrable—sothing highly unusual.
"I have no idea what's going on here."
"These bodies... I don’t think they’ve been dead for even an hour."
"Are you saying all these creatures died at the exact sa ti? There are way too many of them!"
"My guess is, their actual deaths happened long ago, but their bodies are frozen in ti."
If that were true, then Luna had been right.
This space was a distortion of both ti and space.
We couldn’t be certain whether these corpses had co from outside or if they had died here in the Forbidden Zone.
But one thing was clear:
Every single corpse here existed under the sa conditions.
There was nothing in this place capable of decaying or damaging the bodies—or perhaps, there was another reason.
Judging by what we had seen earlier, one thing was certain.
Even the pressure of the deep sea here defied the natural laws.
Just then, lissa grabbed my sleeve with trembling hands.
"O… brother…"
Her voice, shaking with fear, called "brother" instead of my na, Leon.
When I turned to look at her, tears stread down from her bloodshot eyes.
rmaid magic was strange—it allowed movent and even made expressions like hers possible.
"Why are you calling that in such a creepy way, you damn platyp—"
My words trailed off as I followed her gaze.
Before I could even think, my body was already moving, stepping forward into the mountain of corpses.
The existence presud to be the king of this forbidden land, stretching out from the darkness, no longer registered in my perception.
Honestly, I had expected this.
I thought I would find them soon.
Or maybe, I thought I might never find them at all.
But right now, there was only one thing occupying my mind.
Amidst the mountain of corpses, two figures lay still, their eyes gently closed.
As if they had just fallen asleep monts ago.
[Translator - Night]
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One hand grasped a sword, while the other held tightly onto his mother’s body—preserving the mont of their final stand.
“…Ah… Dad, Mom. Ah, aaaaaah…”
Then, lissa finally burst into tears and rushed toward the bodies of her parents.
She frantically pulled their corpses from the mountain of the dead and began sobbing uncontrollably.
Perhaps it was because she never imagined she would find them this way, but I felt as though my emotions were being crushed.
What should I say first?
Should I say, “I’m glad we found them quickly”?
Or, “Why are you here like this?”
The words wouldn’t co out.
The only thing running through my mind was that we needed to retrieve their bodies as soon as possible.
“Huaaaaaa! Mom… Dad…”
I gently patted lissa’s head as she wept, her emotions pouring out.
Normally, she would have snapped at , calling crazy, but this ti, she didn’t resist at all.
She simply held onto her parents and let her tears flow.
“Leon. That creature… It wouldn’t be wise to provoke it right now.”
“It’s too late. If it’s like a beast that just had its al stolen, it’s going to be pissed.”
BOOOOOM!!!
At that mont, dozens of writhing tentacles slithered out from the darkness.
Was it reacting because we had touched the corpses—its food—within its domain?
Even though it hadn’t directly seen us, the tentacles shot toward us, knowing our exact location.
However, before they could reach us, chains of black shadow surged from beneath my feet, wrapping around the tentacles, binding them in place, and scattering them in all directions.
THUUUUD!!!
“Muyeong, take them and fall back.”
At my command, the spectral wolf, Muyeong, erged from my shadow.
“We still need to find Arsha, so let’s take this thing down.”
“Think we can?”
“We’ll find out. If I bind it, you hit it. If you bind it, I hit it.”
“Understood.”
Luna cracked her fingers with a loud snap, then unfolded her hidden halo and a pair of wings.
At the sa ti, another pair of shimring, ethereal wings flickered into existence, appearing and disappearing intermittently.
[The mories of the New Hall are transferring.]
Right on cue, the librarian’s text smoothly appeared before .
[The mories of the Hall of Truth have been fully transferred.]
‘Status window.’
As I murmured the command, the librarian’s strings of text rapidly reorganized themselves before my eyes.
Na: Leon Cascadia
Age: 17
Gender: Male
Abilities:
(Hall of Swords)
Sword Master (Highest Rank)
The ultimate [Aura] is preserved.
(Hall of Martial Arts)
Fist Master (Highest Rank)
The fierce [Aura] is preserved.
(Hall of Necromancy)
Great Necromancer (7th Circle)
Deathlord’s necromantic mana is preserved.
The dominion over death is preserved.
Authority [Death] Thanatos is bestowed.
(Hall of the Sages)
[Gate of Truth]
The heart of the Machine God and all its mories have been transplanted.
(Hall of Truth)
No Circles Held ×
The Demon God’s elental mana is preserved.
The language of spirits has been acquired.
The mories I had just obtained from this new hall.
It seed to be a hall centered around magic, as an overwhelming amount of magical knowledge was forcefully cramd into my head in an instant.
The absence of spell circles didn’t matter much.
But what concerned was this ‘language of spirits’ ntioned in my status.
Spirit language… If I recalled correctly, it was a power I had gained at the very end after surpassing the realm of a Demon God.
At the very least, it was unfamiliar to .
It wouldn’t be useful in this situation.
“Luna, I have a question.”
“What is it?”
“How many wings do you have?”
She hesitated for a mont before flashing a playful smile.
“Two.”
At the very least, she should hide those flickering, ethereal wings beneath her real ones before saying that.
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