Chapter 90
As soon as they reached the deepest part of the dungeon, the group truly felt the pearls' effect and gaped in astonishment.
“Wow! It reeks so musty and toxic, but breathing isn't uncomfortable at all!”
“B-but it's such a d-disgusting... place, yet the p-poison... it isn't c-coming close... it c-can't, can't reach us.”
“It's coming.”
At Perdikion's words as he drew his fire-infused sword, everyone sharpened their senses to the presence.
Clack! Screech.
Clang.
Sounds of hard, tiny things clashing against each other.
Rune pieced together their identity from the rusty stench and the whoosh of iron tools swinging.
'Bones. Rusty iron shackles. The smell of death.'
“Pirate skeletons. The kind that won't stay dead no matter how many times you kill them.”
Perdikion stepped forward first, and Dullahan took position beside him at Rune's glance.
“Leave it to me.”
Click!
Perdikion's eyes locked coldly on the approaching shadows, red flames flickering in one hand.
Even in this place thick with water energy and curses, Perdikion wielded his power without restraint.
"Answer the call. Crimson Flame and Azure Flame."
⟨ Flame Summon ⟩
Whoosh!
Perdikion's sword wrapped in blue flames, the seawater it touched boiling away.
The sizzling lasted only a moment before Perdikion's figure vanished in a blur.
Splash!
The five front-line skeletons froze mid-swing with swords raised, then blue fire engulfed them, melting their bones from within.
But the damp darkness snuffed the flames out slowly.
As one collapsing skeleton reached for Perdikion's face—
Boom!
Perdikion thrust his red-flame fist, seizing the skeleton's skull and detonating crimson fire within.
The charred cranium crumbled to ash.
Dullahan seized the opening and leaped into the back ranks.
Crack!
He gripped the haft of the massive hammer on his back and brought it smashing down over a skeleton's head.
Bones shattered into powder and shards, swept away by the currents.
The surrounding skeletons swarmed Dullahan, clinging to his dark steel arms and gnawing at his legs.
Encumbered by the swarm, Dullahan's chest heaved.
“Everyone, cover your ears.”
Rune plugged his ears as he spoke, and the others—experienced by now—quickly followed suit.
“Lord Perdikion! Ears! Your ears!”
Battle-hardened Perdikion covered his just in time.
A soul-shattering wail erupted from deep within.
-Rooooaaarrrgh!!
A roar of utter ruin, hair-raising in its ferocity.
Confirming the monsters' eyes fixed on Dullahan, Rune extended his hand.
'My turn.'
"Powers abandoned for ages untold, return to your master."
⟨ Curse Recall ⟩
Darkness and curses permeating the monsters seeped from the skeletons' joints, sucked straight into Rune.
The skeletons collapsed into lifeless bone shards.
That was when it happened.
A bone-chilling, spectral voice rang out.
Rumble!
“Kyaaang!”
“Peep!”
“Kyaaak! L-Lamel!”
Screech! Quaaack!
“Damn it! Flight magic isn't working!”
The pit caved in, the floor giving way beneath them.
Ramel and Baekya thrashed desperately, their flight spells useless as their bodies plunged endlessly downward.
Rune furrowed his brow and issued a vital reminder.
“Everyone, don't lose your pearls. Hold them tight.”
More attuned to darkness than anyone, Rune foresaw what came next without surprise.
'The very bottom of the abyss.'
The call of darkness from the depths.
That presence.
The darkness that had long awaited Rune—and hated him—gaped its maw and swallowed them whole.
Suddenly, all sound vanished.
Eyes shut or open, nothing but darkness.
Senses reeled; he couldn't tell if his hand was outstretched or if he was even walking.
Rune straightened up.
He knew this timeless haze all too well.
The sensation where a split second stretched into eternity—a feeling only the dead could know.
'Felt it only upon dying.'
The pulse of water, fire, and darkness within confirmed he wasn't truly gone.
He scanned his surroundings slowly.
No other presences.
'They're all in the same boat.'
He reviewed them one by one.
'Amelia's immune to darkness. Heungmi adapts fast. Dullahan was born from death itself—no issue there. And Baekya, the phoenix chick, has total immunity to it.'
Priority set.
'Perdikion first.'
Rune drew the black pearl and channeled its power.
In that instant, an even more sinister aura cloaked it.
'Company.'
Gripping the pearl, he stared into the void.
“Come out on your own.”
Giggle.
A faint titter tickled his ear.
She materialized like drifting mist: a palm-sized girl with deathly pale skin and long, loose silver curls.
She exuded an ethereal fragility.
She dipped her head in a slight bow, her dull silver eyes glinting as they fixed on Rune.
“You're no original dungeon master. Who are you?”
The woman hovering before his impassive question exhaled a breath like winter wind.
An elegant yet icy resonance lingered in his ears.
The hovering woman descended slowly before Rune.
A pale hand reached toward him.
“Invitation?”
His gaze, laced with puzzlement and unease, bored into the tiny fairy without mercy.
Undeterred, she lifted a fingertip toward his hand.
Rune raised his hand.
A sudden realization struck; he eyed the fairy.
“You mean this?”
The Mana Key materialized in his palm.
The fairy's eyes sparkled; she smiled mistily and nodded once.
'So that's it. Now I grasp what this key truly is.'
He pocketed the key and posed another question.
“What about the others who came with me?”
“I need to find them. Tell me the way—or open it.”
The fairy's face went blank as she stared.
“We'll clear this dungeon together and get out. We're just passing through.”
'Us?'
His senses sharpened at the plural.
He realized the entire darkness was one with the fairy before him.
'A personality birthed from the dark.'
Dark kin powers skirted death; untouched for ages, it was a forsaken ruin.
Such places often harbored entities incompatible with the living.
She spread her bony hands wide, gaze piercing Rune as he pieced it together.
Suddenly, darkness thickened around him.
More oppressive, like sinking into compacted mud—his breath grew labored.
The spirit intoned a faint, haunting verse.
Eerie, sorrowful, mesmerizing—a siren's allure that pulled unwittingly.
But Rune circulated his mana steadily, shrugging off the enchantment.
“That's precisely it. Far better a world that fears death than one where folk flee life into its arms.”
He'd sensed an uncanny wrongness since first laying eyes on her.
Yet her tale—timeless, almost childlike—unveiled the source.
“Mortals dread the unbeatable by nature. Death's just one. Far pettier fears rule lives too.”
Dreading a superior's rebuke tomorrow.
Trembling at an unknowable future self.
The weak, consigned to unkillable lives amid war.
The powerless, cast into hopeless mire without salvation.
In irrationals abound, spurning the invincible, fearing peril—that's the instinct of survival.
“Many can't endure what death steals. The weary wonder if they'll perish unchanged, if better days await—tasting life's vanity.”
Regret of chances forever lost.
Sorrow of parting from shared joys eternally.
Or sinners, relinquishing mortal glory for judgment beyond.
All grieve and dread ‘death’.
Rune spoke evenly.
“But... imagine it. A world where the living embrace death—how monstrous.”
Any darkness-walker pondered it sometime.
The spirit glanced around.
This realm of naught but darkness and death—that was the proof.
“Should the living spurn life for death's allure, that world's true hell.”
'And its terminus looks like this.'
He withheld the last, but her gaze betrayed she shared the thought.
The choking darkness eased a fraction.
Rune drew a deep breath and pressed on.
“Not offering solace, mind you—but some defy all caution. Those unbowed by ‘death’ itself. Or who live beyond its grasp.”
He addressed not just her, but the void entire, scanning slowly.
“They do. I've witnessed them myself.”
'That lunatic from my past life who slew me. Death was but a snack to him.'
Silence fell; she pondered.
Rune seized the lull.
“We've talked plenty. Time for my errand.”
He raised one hand and declared.
“This darkness—I'm claiming it all.”
Hiss.
Darkness loyal to her will yielded to Rune's overriding authority, flowing into him.
“It's mine by right. No clue how you gained form, though.”
A personality spawned from dungeon darkness.
That was her essence.
'Like a lingering spirit in an antique. Thought answering her doubts might dispel her—but evidently not.'
She clawed desperately at the fleeing power.
Yet the darkness heeded Rune's summons, nesting within him.
Her shriek tore through, not just power draining but her very essence twisting.
The cry warped into deeper torment, unendurable.