Chapter 706 Fifteen Years Of Despair

Eldric smiled as he stared at Liam, seemingly unaffected by the hatred burning in the young man’s eyes. The underground chamber remained unnaturally quiet except for the faint movement of the tentacles wrapped around Liam’s body and the occasional drop of water falling somewhere in the darkness.

Eldric slowly folded his hands behind his back and took a few steps away before turning around again. "If you really want to know why I killed them all," he said calmly, "then we need to go back in the past. We need to go back fifteen years, to the day everything went wrong."

His expression changed as he looked toward the stone ceiling, almost as though he could see through it and into a memory buried beneath fifteen years of hatred. "Fifteen years ago, I was still powerful. I had spent years cultivating my strength, building myself into someone who could stand above ordinary people. Then I discovered what was beneath this village. I found something I didn’t understand, something that had power far beyond anything I had ever encountered." Eldric’s eyes narrowed as he continued, his voice becoming quieter.

"When the battle happened, I thought I could use my abilities to disrupt the dome. I thought I could force my way through it or destroy whatever mechanism was responsible for creating it. I was confident because I believed my cultivation was enough."

A bitter laugh escaped him. "I was wrong."

Eldric’s fingers slowly curled into fists. "Instead of disrupting the dome, my attack backfired. The power I released was swallowed, redirected, and turned against me. Every bit of cultivation I had spent years building disappeared in a matter of moments. It wasn’t weakened. It wasn’t damaged. It was taken from me." His voice trembled slightly as he remembered it.

"Imagine that, Liam. Imagine possessing everything you have ever worked for, believing you are powerful enough to control your own fate, and then watching it all disappear in front of your eyes. Imagine standing there and realizing that you are trapped in a place you cannot leave, with no idea whether you will ever escape."

Liam’s muscles tightened beneath the restraints. If he could have slammed his feet against the ground, he would have, but the tentacles kept his legs completely immobilized. Instead, his teeth ground against one another as anger continued building inside him. Eldric noticed the reaction but continued without hesitation.

"I needed them," Eldric said.

Liam’s eyes narrowed.

"I didn’t want to kill them," Eldric continued, almost defensively. "I needed the little soul power they had."

"You needed it for what?" Liam demanded.

Eldric’s calm expression suddenly shattered. His face twisted with rage, and the veins along his neck became visible as he shouted, "I needed to restore my power!"

The sound of his voice exploded through the chamber. Liam stared at him in disbelief, unable to process the simplicity of the reason behind everything he had heard. Eldric had killed countless people, allowed children to suffer, destroyed families, and maintained an entire town under fear for fifteen years, all because he wanted to regain what he had lost.

"I needed their soul essence to replace what was taken from me!" Eldric continued, his chest rising and falling rapidly. "To replace what this place stole from me! Don’t you understand, Liam? They are responsible for what happened to me! Their town did this to me!"

Liam stared at him for several seconds before slowly turning his head and spitting onto the stone floor in disgust. "Shut your mouth." His voice was low, but the hatred behind it was unmistakable. "Your greed did this to you. Nobody forced you to attack that place. Nobody forced you to gamble with powers you didn’t understand. Nobody forced you to sacrifice innocent people just because you couldn’t accept losing your strength."

Eldric’s eyes narrowed.

"Nobodies deserved what you did to them," Liam continued, his voice becoming harder with every word. "And I will make sure you suffer before you take your last breath. Every life you took, every family you destroyed, every bit of pain you caused those people, I will give it back to you a thousand times over."

For a moment, Eldric simply stared at him.

Then he laughed.

It started as a quiet chuckle, but within seconds it grew into a loud, almost hysterical laugh that echoed through the chamber. Eldric bent slightly as he laughed, one hand resting against his stomach while Liam watched him with growing disgust.

"Ahahahahaha!" Eldric finally straightened, wiping the corner of his eye as though Liam had just told him the funniest joke imaginable. "You really are serious, aren’t you? You actually believe that threat means something."

Liam’s expression remained cold.

Eldric stepped closer. "You clearly don’t understand your situation yet."

He stopped only a few feet away from Liam and looked him directly in the eyes. "You look at me like I am some kind of monster."

"You are a monster."

The laughter immediately disappeared.

Eldric’s face became strangely empty as he stared at Liam. For several seconds, he said nothing. Then he sighed, slowly moved closer, and lowered himself slightly until his eyes were closer to Liam’s.

"Do you know what it feels like to be trapped here?"

Liam remained silent.

Eldric’s breathing became heavier.

"DO YOU?!"

His sudden shout shook the chamber. He slammed both hands against his thighs, his fingers trembling as years of buried frustration began spilling out of him.

"Do you know what it feels like to be trapped here?!" Eldric screamed, his voice cracking with anger and pain. "With these people! These lowlifes! Powerless to do anything!"

His eyes were wide now, his face twisted with emotions that had clearly been festering inside him for years. "I had power once! I had a future! I had a life! And then this place took everything from me and left me here with them!"

He struck his thigh again, breathing heavily as he stared at Liam.

"I didn’t do what I did because I wanted to."

Eldric’s voice suddenly became quieter, almost exhausted.

"But I had to."

Liam stared at Eldric for several seconds before a small, almost humorless smile appeared on his face. "You had to?" he asked silently, repeating the words Eldric had just used. There was something about that statement that bothered him more than the confession itself. Eldric spoke as though the murders had been some unavoidable necessity, as though the suffering of hundreds of people had simply been the price he was forced to pay for his own survival. Eldric noticed Liam’s expression and slowly nodded his head.

"Yes," Eldric replied. "I had to." His eyes remained fixed on Liam, but there was no longer any trace of the desperation he had shown moments earlier. The anger had faded, replaced by that same unsettling confidence he had carried since the beginning. "You really don’t know how fucked you are, do you?" A faint smile returned to his lips. "You have no idea how long I have been planning this. If you knew what awaits you, Liam, you wouldn’t be standing there looking at me like that. You would be cowering in fear."

Eldric straightened and glanced toward the darkness behind him. "But for now, there are more important things I must attend to." With those words, he turned around and began walking away, his footsteps echoing through the chamber as he slowly disappeared into the shadows. Liam watched him go, his mind already working through everything he had learned, but there was one question that still refused to leave him. He couldn’t let Eldric disappear without answering it. "Wait," Liam called.

Eldric stopped.

Liam stared at his back. "One last question. How did you know about the meeting I had with Voss?"

For several seconds, Eldric didn’t move. Then his shoulders began to shake slightly, and a quiet laugh escaped him. He slowly turned his head, allowing Liam to see the side of his smiling face. "How do you think a little boy discovered the Cryovail Veil?"

Liam’s eyes narrowed.

"The Cryovail Veil," he repeated quietly.

The name immediately clicked inside his mind. That ridiculous blue cloak Voss had discovered as a child. The full-body suit that concealed his presence, allowed him to move through the village undetected, and gave him the ability to perceive consciousness and traces of the soul. The same suit that had transformed Voss into the cold entity Liam had watched fighting the fire being from the treetop.

Liam’s expression slowly changed.

"So that’s what it’s called."

Eldric didn’t answer.

He didn’t need to.

Liam’s smile returned, but this time there was no humor in it. He finally understood. The entire situation had been a game to Eldric. From the very beginning, it had been nothing but a game, and Liam had been looking at the pieces from the wrong side of the board.