Chapter 165: The Curious House
He saw the toad lower its head to look at the wound in its own body. Those crimson eyes were full of confusion, as if it could not understand what that human had just stuffed into its gut.
Then he heard it—
Boom.
The three explosive potions detonated at the sa ti deep inside that wound. Fire burst outward from within its body, blowing its organs, flesh, and bones to pieces.
Ryan saw the toad’s body go rigid for an instant.
It opened its mouth, trying to scream, but no sound ca out. Flas poured from its mouth, from its eyes, from every wound on its body. It was burning from the inside out, from the core to the skin.
Then it exploded.
It blew apart into countless chunks that flew in every direction, splashing into the mud, crashing into the reeds, and scattering everywhere.
Dark green blood fell like rain, covering more than a hundred ters in every direction.
Wherever that blood landed on the mud, it corroded pits into the ground. Wherever it fell on the reeds, they withered at once and crumbled into ash. Wherever it splashed onto the blasted chunks of flesh, the pieces began dissolving themselves, lting into pus, into smoke.
Ryan stood dozens of ters away and watched it all happen.
He was spotless. Not a single drop of blood had touched him.
The long blade was still in his hand. The flas along it had already gone out, leaving only a thin wisp of bluish smoke curling upward.
The light of dusk fell across him, covering his whole body in a faint wash of gold.
Wind passed over the marsh, carrying the stench of burning flesh and blood. In the distance, the chunks of at still smoldered. The corroded pits were still hissing. Entire swaths of reeds were still withering away.
He stood there like a statue.
Or a gravestone.
In the distance, Lillian and Rex stared at the scene, unable to say a word.
Rex’s mouth hung open, his jaw nearly dropping to the ground. He had just watched the monster that had driven them into despair, that towering beast seven or eight ters tall, beco nothing more than slaughtered livestock before Ryan.
He had watched that long blade, wrapped in fla, sever the tongue and cut through those scales.
He had watched Ryan shove the potions into the wound.
And then the thing had blown apart.
Blown apart so completely that not even one intact piece of flesh remained.
Rex stood there with his mouth open for a long mont before finally managing to force out a single sentence.
“...By the gods.”
Lillian said nothing.
She stood there, looking at that dark gray back, at the long blade hanging loosely at his side, at the dusk-light falling across him.
Suddenly, she thought back to what had happened only monts ago.
That tongue pressing down.
Her body on the verge of collapse.
Rex charging forward to take the blow for her.
She had almost used that forbidden magic. She had almost burned away her own life. She had almost died here.
If Ryan had not arrived—
She did not dare think about it.
The wind blew past, carrying the sll of char and blood.
He really was powerful.
Powerful enough to seem almost monstrous.
And yet she also rembered the feeling from the mont he had stood in front of them and stopped that tongue.
It had not been fear.
It had been safety.
How strange.
She had actually felt safe because of that gloomy, forbidding man.
“Ryan!” Rex hurried after him. “That move just now was incredible! How did you get those flas wrapped around your blade? And that tornado too—was that your doing? Gods above, how did you even manage to lift all those trees?”
Ryan glanced at him and said nothing.
Rex did not mind at all and kept talking anyway. “I knew you could do it! If you can even beat Senior Eleanor, what’s a monster like that to you—”
“Idiot,” Lillian could not help but cut in. “Can you be quiet for one mont?”
Rex scratched his head and grinned.
Ryan suddenly stopped walking.
He stood there with his head tilted slightly to the right, as if listening to sothing.
Rex and Lillian both stopped as well.
“What is it?” Rex asked.
Ryan did not answer.
His gaze had fallen on a stone a few paces to the right. It was black, half-buried in the mud, and the pus-blood had corroded several small pits into its surface. Thin wisps of smoke were still rising from it.
He walked over.
“Ryan?” Lillian frowned.
Ryan crouched down and stared at it for a few seconds. Then he reached out and pried it free from the mud.
It was not a stone.
It was a fist-sized crystal. Dark green, like congealed bile, or stagnant water in a deep pool.
It was a regular dodecahedron.
Every face was so perfectly even that it looked asured by a ruler, with sharp edges sharp enough to slice a finger. Held against the light, nothing could be seen inside except a murky swirl of dark green, as though sothing were moving slowly within.
Ryan stared at it.
Syl’s voice sounded in his heart.
“The sa as before.”
“Yes,” he answered inwardly.
The previous monster had had one inside its body too. That one had been dark red.
This one was dark green.
He turned the crystal over in his hand several tis, but could make nothing of it. Deep inside that dark green murk, sothing seed to be shifting, like a heartbeat, like breathing, like a sleeping life.
Rex ca closer, his eyes wide. “What is that?”
Lillian walked over too, frowning as she stared at it.
Ryan gave no answer. He tucked the crystal into his pack and pulled the strap tight.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Rex was just about to ask sothing else when—
Rumble.
The ground jolted violently.
Rex lost his footing and staggered. Lillian swayed too, nearly falling.
“An earthquake?” Rex’s eyes widened.
Rumble.
Another shock followed, stronger than the first.
Lillian’s legs gave way, and she toppled sideways. Rex caught her in one arm and pulled her against him. With his other hand, he grabbed the greatsword planted in the ground to steady himself.
Ryan dropped to one knee and drove the long blade into the mud, gripping the hilt tightly.
The earth was trembling, as if sothing were turning over beneath it, as if so enormous beast that had slumbered for thousands of years were beginning to wake.
Mud splashed up from the shaking ground. The reeds bent and swayed wildly. The white smoke rising from the corroded pits was scattered in all directions.
The three of them held themselves in place as best they could.
One minute.
Two.
Gradually, the shaking subsided.
Rex was breathing hard. He glanced down at Lillian in his arms. Her face was pale, but she was not hurt. She pulled herself free from him, turned her face away, and the tips of her ears had gone a little red.
“W-what happened?” she asked.
Ryan rose to his feet and looked toward the center of the marsh.
His pupils contracted slightly.
That place—the place where the toad had died—had changed.
Originally, there had been a huge pit there, left behind when the toad burst up from underground. Now that pit had been filled, forced upward, as if sothing beneath it had pushed its way to the surface.
It was a structure.
No—not a structure. An entrance.
A massive opening had risen from the center of the marsh. It was dozens of ters wide, its edges made of black stone engraved with countless patterns. Those markings were dense, spiraling inward ring after ring, like so ancient script, or perhaps so eerie formation.
The opening descended in a flight of steps.
Those steps were black as well, leading down into the depths of the earth, into a darkness no eye could see through.
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