Chapter 464: The Greatest Monster Maker III

"For making my greatest masterpiece... for creating a Calamity Seed... I need you."

All of Lian’s attention immediately focused on the last three words, and the man did not notice the very small change in his expression and continued excitedly.

"I tried! I really tried!"

His chains made a sound as he moved his hands.

"I went, I searched, I looked, I cut, I experimented... There are so many talented people in this world, you know? So many."

Then his face suddenly became sad.

"But it’s your fault."

"Me?" Lian raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, you!" The man pointed at him almost like he was complaining.

"You ruined my standards!"

The young Vorhelm stared at him for a few moments, and the white-eyed man continued.

"After seeing you, everyone else became ugly. Incomplete. Boring. Good bones, bad mana. Good mana, weak body. Good body, worthless soul."

He shook his head sadly.

"None of them were complete." Then his smile slowly returned.

"That’s why I came back to you."

The young Vorhelm became silent, until this moment he had thought the white-eyed man had been running from the Federation all this time.

Hiding, changing locations and trying to stay alive, but apparently he was wrong, this man had still been working on his own project all this time.

He was looking for people, experimenting, creating and apparently killing. Just because none of them reached what he had seen in Lian, he had come back again.

But even this was not the most important part of what he had said.

Calamity Seed.

Lian had seen this term before, in the Special Area and more exactly in the Giant Forest when he met that Ant Queen.

The System had judged that creature as something beyond a normal monster.

[Calamity Seed.]

At that time, he had not paid much attention to it, not because those words were unimportant but because he had no idea what "Calamity" meant in that context.

But now things were different.

He had seen the Black Silence, fought a Calamity and swallowed it in the heart of the Ruined Realm.

He had seen the memories of that Calamity and now he knew what Calamities actually were and what they referred to.

Those two words now had a different meaning.

"A Calamity Seed?" Lian asked quietly.

The white-eyed man froze immediately and his eyes opened slightly wider.

"Oh, I shouldn’t have said that word." He pressed his lips together.

He showed no reaction and only waited, the man slowly shook his head several times.

"No, no, no. I won’t explain it. There’s no point." He started muttering to himself.

"You people of this world know nothing. Nothing. Zero. Every time I explain it, you look at me with those stupid eyes as if I’m crazy."

"Me? Crazy?" He suddenly looked at him and gave a short laugh.

"That’s ridiculous." Then he started mumbling again.

"I told some of you before. No one believed me. You say our people were crazy, you say it’s a legend, superstition, the fear of the people of a dead world..."

His voice suddenly became louder.

"But you are the crazy ones!"

His voice echoed through the cell and one second later, he became completely calm again.

"Happy idiots."

Lian looked at him for a few seconds, he did not have enough information, but he had something he could try, something that might show him the man’s reaction.

He leaned a little closer and spoke in a way that only that man could hear.

"What is it that we don’t know? About the Five Calamities?"

The white-eyed man... froze, this time the difference was clear, it was not acting, it was not a show and it was not one of his strange changes in mood.

It was real shock, and his completely white eyes opened wider, his lips stayed slightly open for a moment and his whole face seemed to ask one question.

How do you know?

But he did not say it, he only stared.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

Then the corner of his lips rose... more... more, until the smile on his face became almost unnatural.

"I knew it... I knew it!" The man suddenly stood up from his chair.

Clang!

The chain around his neck pulled tight and did not let him stand completely, but he did not care.

"I knew you were different from the others! I knew it! I knew it! My eyes don’t make mistakes, they never make mistakes!"

His crazy laughter filled the room.

"Oh..." He lowered his head and then looked at Lian again.

"Now I want you even more!"

The young Vorhelm only looked at him, at this moment, he had no doubt anymore, this man was truly crazy.

The only thing he did not understand was how someone could reach such a state.

Even so, his stupid and exaggerated reaction had at least proven two things, the white-eyed man knew about the Five Calamities and the Calamity Seed was related to them.

He opened his mouth to ask his next question, but the man suddenly became silent, his laughter stopped and his head lowered.

"Now that you know... there is no need to waste time anymore." He then whispered quietly.

Lian’s eyes narrowed, the man slowly raised his head and a new smile appeared on his face.

"I’ve made my decision again, you will be the final piece."

Ding...

Suddenly, a strange sound echoed from nowhere.

The young Vorhelm immediately stood up from his chair, the sound was very quiet, but the strangest part was that he had not heard it with his ears.

The sound had directly entered his soul.

Ding...

No mana fluctuation appeared, none of the suppression arrays reacted, even the warning light did not turn on.

Then something appeared behind the white-eyed man.

A small bell.

It was half-transparent, but it had not come out of his pocket and it had not come from anything like a storage space, instead it seemed to have been pulled directly out of his soul.

The surface of the bell was covered with hundreds of tiny symbols, writings that he did not recognize even one of.

Ding!

This time, the room shook.

No... he understood it immediately, the room was not shaking, space itself was shaking, the table in front of him was divided into dozens of half-transparent cubes for a moment.

Part of the wall moved three centimeters to one side, while another part stayed still.

The floor.

The lights.

The chair.

The man’s body.

Even Lian’s own hand all became cube-shaped blocks of reality for a moment, his eyes opened wider.

"What the hell is this—"

And at that exact moment, the world disappeared.

White.

The first thing he saw was only white, snow stretched all the way to the horizon.

Huge frozen plains spread under a heavy gray sky, and strong wind carried small pieces of snow across the entire area like white fog.

Ice-covered mountains could be seen in the distance.

He slowly blinked.

He felt no cold.

The temperature of the area could kill a normal human in a short time, but for the Heir of Winter, it was almost meaningless.

He looked around, there were no buildings, roads or any sign of civilization, there was only ice.

Lian thought for a moment about his possible geographical location.

"Antarctica?" he whispered quietly.

A laugh came from behind him, the white-eyed man was standing several meters away.

There was no ring around his neck and no chains on his hands, and he opened his arms happily.

"Welcome to my new home!" Behind him, at the bottom of a huge wall of ice, the dark entrance of a cave could be seen.

Without giving any other explanation, the man turned around and walked toward it.

The young Vorhelm watched him for a few seconds and then followed him.

If this man had wanted to attack him immediately, a few seconds ago would have been a much better time to do it.

And more importantly, he still had not gotten his answers.

"So all this time, whenever you wanted, you could leave the prison?" he asked while walking a few meters behind him.

"Yes!"

The answer came without any pause, and then the man started laughing.

"That’s so funny. They built those things beneath mountains, placed arrays, placed soldiers, built doors, first lock, second lock, third lock..." He counted with his fingers while walking.

"They thought I was a prisoner." Then he turned slightly toward him like a child telling a funny secret.

"I only stayed there because I wanted to."