Chapter 270: Lord of Hell

Priam moved through the shadows of the night, as quietly and discreetly as possible. In that small artificial world, the cycle between day and night functioned perfectly, emulating reality with unbelievable perfection.

Within a few hours, he crossed a dense forest and a chain of steep mountains, getting closer and closer to the edge of that world.

When he stopped, all his eyes could see was an open field and more hills on the horizon.

However, after expanding his senses to their maximum, Priam realized that something was deeply wrong. Any experienced Mage would have noticed the anomaly in the air.

He stretched his hand forward...

The space before him suddenly rippled, as if a heavy stone had been thrown onto the surface of a calm lake.

Priam snorted and took a firm step forward.

He passed through the spatial barrier, which acted like a portal connecting two different planes...

At that very second, the pleasant night and pure air disappeared. The dense, suffocating, vile atmosphere of the Miasma hit him head-on. He had left the magical illusion behind, emerging into the raw reality at the bottom of the abyss.

Priam stopped and activated the System’s domain. The Miasma around him bent and moved away, forming a perfect isolation bubble around him.

Just two meters ahead of him stood a monumental wall of black earth.

Without hesitation, he looked up and jumped.

He dug his fingers into the rocky protrusions and clung to the vertical wall. Then, he began climbing in a methodical, steady manner...

...

When Dandara woke up, she was surprised to notice where they were.

Priam was still climbing the wall of the abyss. However, he wasn’t climbing straight up; he was moving at a precise diagonal angle.

"Sleep well?" Priam’s voice echoed calmly, close to her ear.

Dandara silently nodded, using what little strength she had left to hold his neck even tighter.

Priam maintained his pace for several hours. At one point, he called Mirra out. Since the little girl was light, she easily sat on his shoulder and helped feed Dandara while he continued his ascent without stopping.

When Dandara woke again, it was at the exact moment Priam reached the entrance of a colossal cave carved into the cliff.

He stepped onto the rock without making the slightest sound.

Inside the chamber, incredibly dense wind runes floated through the air like twinkling stars, generating a gentle, continuous current of air blowing outward. Because of this constant elemental pressure, the Miasma was unable to invade the interior of the grotto.

A satisfied smile appeared on Priam’s face.

Right ahead, deep in the darkness, all those Heavenly Beasts rested.

This was the pack’s nest, which he had discovered the exact location of earlier.

It had taken many months of attempts, but that last battle had finally revealed its location.

Certainly, the Goddess’s mark and energy imbued within their bodies prevented these beasts from leaving the abyss. However, for creatures possessing a certain degree of intelligence, it hadn’t been difficult to realize that crossing through the illusion and establishing a refuge outside the simulated ecosystem was the safest option for the colony.

The only real obstacle there was the Miasma. But by joining forces and combining their elemental affinities, the pack had managed to shape that sanctuary, driving the Miasma away. Whenever they felt hungry, they simply returned to the illusion to hunt.

Possibly, that race was the only one in the entire abyss capable of such a feat—not merely because of their individual power, but because they possessed the rationality necessary to understand that cooperation ensured everyone’s survival and prosperity.

However, now... the ultimate predator had arrived at their den.

Priam let out an imperceptible sigh as he advanced with slow steps.

He felt no pleasure in it. The act of taking lives—whether humanoids, demons, or beasts—left him with nothing but a bitter existential emptiness.

However, the Goddess’s own recording had instructed him not to show mercy. Besides, to overcome this challenge, he needed to complete the mission.

Suddenly, Priam stopped.

The instant his foot settled onto the rock, the airflow inside the cave subtly changed. The wind runes floating peacefully through the air wavered for a fraction of a second.

From the depths of the darkness, dozens of pairs of slit yellow eyes lit up simultaneously.

*SCREECH!!*

A chorus of deafening hisses and furious roars tore through the silence of the nest, making the echoes reverberate with ear-splitting violence. The Heavenly Beasts immediately recognized the invading aura. Without the open sky of the illusion to maneuver through, the colony’s territorial instinct exploded into a murderous frenzy.

Dozens of compressed wind blades were fired en masse toward Priam, slicing through the darkness like a storm of steel.

Priam didn’t retreat a single inch.

His body pulsed. The Yin Enchantment power rune was burned. His power suddenly multiplied.

*Wooooosh!*

The aura of wind surrounding him collided head-on with the enemy attack, nullifying the blades in midair before they could even scratch the cloak protecting Dandara on his back.

With the cave’s confined environment, the beasts’ mobility and flight advantage were reduced to zero. That place, which had once been the pack’s perfect sanctuary, had just been transformed into a claustrophobic slaughterhouse.

"Hold on tight," Priam murmured in a breath near Dandara’s ear.

His figure wavered and disappeared.

The next second, he appeared directly in the center of the pack.

*BOOOOOOM!*

Priam drove a punch into the chest of the first beast. The force of the impact tore through the monster’s shell and bones, causing the air around them to collapse and generating an overwhelming shockwave that made the entire cave tremble violently.

Huge chunks of rock came crashing down from the ceiling as the creature’s body nearly exploded into a bloody mist.

Without giving the monsters any time to react, he spun around his own axis like a living storm.

*BANG! BANG! BANG!*

With every step, a devastating fist or kick found the flesh of the predators of the skies.

In such a confined space, Priam’s raw strength and absolute speed were simply unbeatable. He moved like an invisible demon, leaving them no chance to escape while dodging their desperate attacks.

Crimson blood and viscera splattered across the stone walls.

The gusts of wind generated by his own attacks collided with the rocks, creating secondary explosions that deafened the entire area.

In less than a few minutes, the chaos came to an end.

The dust slowly settled. Nine large Heavenly Beasts lay dead and torn apart on the ground.

Priam remained standing in the center, his breathing steady and his body spotless, without a single drop of blood touching either him or Dandara.

He simply adjusted Dandara’s weight on his back and calmly walked through the pools of blood toward the corpses.

Without wasting a second, he extracted the nine Heavenly Beast cores before the dense elemental energy of wind within them could dissipate. With the trophies secured, he took slow steps out of the cave.

Now, stealth was irrelevant.

With a single push, Priam leaped into the void. The wind roared beneath his feet, launching him through the skies like a spiraling missile.

Within minutes, reality around him rippled, and he pierced through the spatial barrier, returning to the illusory world.

He didn’t slow down. Using his mastery over the wind element, he continued flying, ascending vertically until he reached the highest limit of that false sky—hundreds of kilometers above the ground.

After reaching the exact geometric center of the entire ecosystem, Priam hovered at the apex of the world, his eyes shining with a cold, calculating light.

He took a deep breath. Then, he guided all the corrupt poison accumulated from thousands of beasts over those exhausting months into the Nexus Seed. At the same time, he channeled the Yin essence of the high-grade medicinal herbs he had collected.

[Synthesize?] [Yes / No]

He fused the two together.

The Calamity Yin Toxin Rune was created.

At the same time, Priam burned his entire Eyes of the Wind bloodline and withdrew the 10 cores filled with the beasts’ elemental power.

His eyes instantly changed color, burning with a mystical hue as a storm of elemental pressure formed around him.

He waved his hand.

The Toxic Power Rune exploded in the air. Assisted by furious gusts of wind, the concentrated poison expanded into a colossal cyclone, transforming into a black, toxic cloud that began to descend upon the earth in the form of deadly acid rain.

But that was only the beginning.

Priam began synthesizing Power Rune after Power Rune without stopping.

Having accumulated absurd reserves of toxins over the course of months, he now unleashed everything in a continuous flow. One Rune after another was destroyed and amplified by the winds, covering the skies with a purple, macabre storm.

His mastery over the winds, combined with the immense power within the cores, worked in perfect synchronization. Without those things, accomplishing this at his current level would have been impossible.

The toxic rain relentlessly fell upon more than 70% of that entire illusory world.

For some beasts, the force of the cutting winds accompanying the storm opened thousands of micro-wounds across their skin, allowing the toxin to seep inside.

For others, more resistant ones, simply having the poison come into contact with their skin was enough. After all, the Yin power combined with the poison was far from ordinary. Within seconds, the Yin energy corroded their skin, allowing the poison to penetrate.

There was nowhere to run.

Caught completely off guard, those beasts that had nowhere to take shelter received the toxin without any chance to defend themselves.

Within minutes... the ecosystem had been transformed into an infernal slaughterhouse.

Howls of pain, roars of agony, and desperate screams echoed in every direction. A mass slaughter unfolded below. Death spread in an unstoppable domino effect.

Priam remained at the top of the firmament for twenty uninterrupted minutes, creating more than fifty Toxic Power Runes until his poison reserves were finally depleted completely.

The storm slowly subsided.

Down below... absolute silence descended upon the land.

A dense mist of the Yin energy of death slowly rose toward the skies, covering the horizon with the unbearable stench of decomposition.

Floating above that vast, desolate graveyard, surrounded by the macabre atmosphere he himself had created, Priam looked like the worst and most sinister demon to ever walk beneath the heavens.

[Karmic Title Acquired!]

[Lord of Toxic Hell]

[+5,000 GP]