Chapter 384
Chapter 384
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 384
Chapter Title: Omen (3)
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Leaving behind the whirlwind of chaos that had ravaged the eastern continent, one ventures further west—crossing deep, nameless mountain ranges through sparsely inhabited forests and into even more secluded depths—until a rugged highland appears, thick with untamed woodlands and littered everywhere with unclaimed lands.
These were the administrative fringes of kingdoms or the outermost edges of empires. Worthless frontiers, forsaken and undeveloped, where the resources to be gained paled in comparison to the manpower needed for settlement, offering no geographical advantages either.
Even in this era, when civilization's light was thought to have spread across the continent, such untouched regions were still not hard to find—places where human feet had never trod.
Dense thickets of mixed woods that would regrow in a single season even if logged. The timber they yielded was far too meager to sustain any industry, and prospecting the mountain veins offered no promise of profit.
Not even bandits or slash-and-burn settlers dwelled in these highlands. There was no reason for bandits to haunt such remote mountains, far from trade roads or passing travelers, and even tax-dodging slashers couldn't seek safety here.
That's right. Safety. Places beyond the reach of civilized light inevitably drew creatures hostile to humanity. The vermin that fled the light gathered in these shadowed vales, harboring endless hatred and loathing.
"Calm yourselves."
According to elven legends, the ocean depths housed a pandemonium of eyeless monsters. In those lightless abysses, ancient horrors that had forsaken sight roamed blindly, their milky eyes twitching as they hunted prey by scent and touch.
At this moment, the young man thought those tales might be sober fact rather than myth. In this deep, dense forest where even midday sun couldn't penetrate, he sensed the presences encircling him and let out an awkward laugh.
It was the smell of blood. Not just the thick blood-scent clinging to his own body, but the aroma of the wounded prey slung over his shoulder—that was goading these beasts.
The young man shook the torch he'd been holding in a deliberately menacing grip. Keeek, kick. With strangled cries, one four-legged beast recoiled in a fit.
Revealed in the torchlight was a bizarre, humpbacked monkey-thing with no eyes, its long, spindly spider-like legs splayed in all directions. The young man growled without hiding his disgust.
"Back off! Get back!"
He rolled up his sleeve as he shouted. In that instant, the musky stench of the surrounding beasts noticeably faded. The weaker ones whimpered, tails tucked, and slunk into the darkness.
A red seal had risen on the young man's forearm. Depending on how one looked, it resembled letters, meaningless blotches, or even the head of a beast, shifting with the play of light.
"Fallen wretches. Your master has been routed, and no hope remains for you! Submit, and clear the way!"
"Even if a human voice spouts human words, do you think these beasts will comprehend?"
A eerie voice drifted from the darkness. The beasts' breathing was stifled into silence, and a sticky hush descended over the forest shadows—no insect chirped.
The young man narrowed his eyes and turned toward the sound. Rustle, rustle. Like silk brushing against itself, a mask-like porcelain-white face emerged from the gloom.
It was a beauty to stop the breath. Porcelain skin and a smooth nose bridge floated alone amid the heavy shadows.
"With a noble among the routed remnants, what omen could that be?"
"Witch. Whose servant are you?"
"Once I served the lord of the abyssal hells, but now I serve time and fate alone—the one existence no great lord can escape."
Even as she spoke, her lips didn't so much as twitch. The young man set down the sack slung over his shoulder. It hit the ground with a thud, and the person inside writhed.
"You've brought a poor child. Too feeble for a sacrifice, yet having crossed too many leagues to send back with kind words..."
"I am Carlo Mano Pavilos. What is your name?"
"Names hold no meaning here. Neither yours nor mine..."
-Rustle.
The sound of silk fluttering drew closer. Carlo instinctively gripped the hilt at his waist. Amid the crickets' cries, a low laugh echoed from the dark.
"Will you try carving my flesh with a noble's blade? That could be amusing sport."
"Don't come closer, witch. I have no business with you, and you can't harm me!"
"Neither is true. What the noble seeks can't pass me by, and I can indeed wound you."
The buzz of insect wings filled the air, and soon a long black rod emerged into the torchlight. The white face rose higher and higher, revealing beneath it a massive black insect with glossy chitin.
It was a spider. One bearing a human face on its back, gliding through oily silence while dripping white mucus, its gleaming yellow eyes fixed on Carlo.
"The noble shows no surprise."
"You don't know me. I know your kind all too well."
The Fairn Hunting School, established under the banner of national defense to slay sea vermin, monsters, and beasts. Carlo was the school's most outstanding graduate in history—and its current professor.
Among the countless beasts and monsters pursued by the school over its long history were ones like these: creatures that beguiled with human speech, mimicked human skin, and craved noble blood, lurking in the dark.
Beings that fed on fear. Once a threat to human civilization, now they were mere stragglers—scum fled beyond the light of progress. Carlo stood tall without a trace of fear, meeting its gaze.
Carlo swung the torch in a menacing arc. The firelight's trail made the forest shadows writhe violently. The beasts hidden among them hissed, crouching low in rage.
"What you fear, what you hate, your weaknesses, your thoughts... the ancient secrets you hoard are but stale jokes from old fables. That's the age we live in. You who once ruled night and dawn are now refuse of the past, and your time will never return."
"Then why have you sought us out, noble one?"
The spider asked in a voice laced with amusement. Audacious thing—Carlo bit his lip and glared. The spider's chitin-clad legs clacked against the ground.
"I sought you? No, you're simply in my path. Had I not met you here, you'd never stand eye-to-eye with me like this."
"Ah, but you're mistaken, noble one. That mark of his upon your body... you followed it here. I gladly admire the wisdom that uncovered this place's hidden history, but you're already too late."
"...What?"
Carlo couldn't help but falter at the spider's words. Bad intel? Impossible. That bastard... the saint of the great wilderness, that monster—never pursued false leads.
He might sow deliberate misinformation at times, but not this. This was the dying testament left as he departed with death in his eyes.
The trace of the last archdemon sealed in the material world. No way he'd leaked faulty info on something so priceless. Carlo narrowed his eyes, and the spider chuckled busily.
"Why else would we be here? As you said, we're stragglers. Our foolish lord fell to that hypocrite's hand, but remnants have their own ways."
Violence and bloodlust gleamed joyfully in the spider's eyes. Carlo felt an instinctive threat and stepped back.
A mistake. Beasts innately sensed fear in prey. The spider's body began advancing slowly.
In the dark, its bulk seemed to swell. Reality blurred, senses warped—the roles of prey and hunter inverting... Carlo reflexively seized his sword hilt and the crossbow in his coat.
"Fear not, noble one. Would we truly harm you? If so, you'd never have reached this spot."
"I heard it was an abandoned mine. An abandoned mine should still bear some human trace—enough to keep your kind out."
"True. Yet here we are. What does that imply?"
"Your 'master'... found his tomb first. Recently, no doubt."
Carlo spat each word like chewed gristle, then sighed deeply. But soon he sensed something off. Like he'd overlooked something...
Tyban. If these wretches had found the ancient demon's seal first—and broken it—why were there no fitting omens?
No archdemon had fully trod the earth since the War in Heaven. What happened when one broke free was realm of speculation and fancy.
But one thing was certain: the advent of an archdemon couldn't be this quiet. Not mere corruption from hellish mana—something cruder.
Demons, especially archdemons, were conceptual beings. One walking the material world meant the phenomenal concepts forming it would twist, the laws of reality warping.
Carlo eyed the spider, narrowing his gaze. Sensing his doubt, it raised its voice like a song.
"Most perceptive, noble one. A fine apostle chosen by him. You're right—my master couldn't unseal that entity. It demands the blood of the living, forgotten lore, and the wisdom and power to wield it. Beyond us."
The spider clacked forward, rubbing the bloodstain near the sprawled sack with its foreleg. Fresh red blood clung to its chitin tip, which it savored like a sip.
"But... outwitting our eternal foe? Foreseeing what that thousand-times-cursed traitor plots? That, at least, we can manage."
"You read his plan?"
"My master learned his true nature. After crumbling by his hand, he had ample time to ponder: what that wretch schemes, what those cowards in the high heavens crave. And finally... how frail and hollow this world truly is..."
Isn't it absurd? This material world we so coveted might be someone's dream. The spider whispered with clacking legs. Carlo scowled, and it retreated a couple steps.
"You haven't grasped that far yet, it seems. Lingering here has made me too chatty—a blunder. To conclude, noble one: what you seek is no longer here."
"You moved the seal? Is that even possible?"
"Not in ordinary cases. But every problem has a solution. My master found it and sent us here—to wait and relay the message. He likely thought that traitor would come first."
"What message for him?"
"'If ascending to the heavens is possible, then plummeting to earth must be too.'"
The spider tittered like it had cracked a wicked joke. A foul rot-stench began wafting from its body.
As Carlo recoiled, the spider melted into shadow, whispering.
"Tell him: don't return here. Your master will come for you himself. I serve fate alone now, and as ever, fate will descend to its rightful end—for your master, that foe, and this world."
"Not for me, at least."
In that instant, a grim voice rang from behind Carlo. Spider and man alike jolted, glaring into the dark. Carlo laughed hollowly.
"Damn it all... things are going straight to hell. Why'd you come so fast? Huh?"
Carlo shook his head and turned. Slowly, a shaft of light bloomed in the darkness, shaping itself into a spearpoint.
The spider groaned at the sight.
"Shrike...!!"
"So your 'fate' didn't foresee my arrival today, demon?"
"You're nothing but his most ridiculous puppet!"
-Shreeeek!
No reply—instead, a sound rent the air. Carlo belatedly realized the thing that grazed his cheek had pulverized everything behind the spider's former spot, piercing several trees beyond.
Twisted snaps of old scrub echoed in succession. The beasts' presences vanished utterly. And from the dark advanced a figure, eyes blazing, fury incarnate.
Darian. The wounded predator fixed him with ghostly eyes, drawing his blade from its sheath.
"Listen, Sir Shrike. Just wait—the power behind me that will upend this world. How could you alone defy the church's hypocrites and triumph? I'm not saying join forces or follow us. Think rationally. We share a goal, so let's move together for now..."
Carlo couldn't finish. Though clearly beyond sword's reach, he keenly felt the blade graze his throat.
Darian had closed in unseen, glaring down with blazing eyes. Beyond him loomed Carlo's own headless corpse, crumpling.
It couldn't end so pointlessly. Carlo's eyes bulged in a silent scream—his voice never escaped.
In his shaking vision, Carlo heard Darian.
"Kill gods, kill demons, save men."
Amid that fanatic zeal, as consciousness faded, Carlo thought: That's no longer human. Just a natural disaster in human form.
Like trying to harness storm or tsunami with bare hands. Carlo found it laughable and closed his eyes.