Chapter 149: Ancient Evil

Caelum’s eyes gleamed as he stepped onto the fifth floor of the dungeon.

Without wasting a moment, he expanded his Spirit Sense, allowing it to spread across nearly five hundred meters in every direction.

A few seconds later, he frowned.

"...This floor is huge."

Within the entire range of his Spirit Sense, he couldn’t detect a single passage leading to the sixth floor.

Instead, he sensed countless undead roaming the area.

Skeletons wandered in groups, zombies crawled between ruined structures.

Even flying undead circled high above the gloomy sky.

’Was this floor designed for group combat?’ Caelum wondered.

Compared to the previous floors, the number of monsters had increased dramatically.

Finding the hidden entrance while avoiding every undead would take far longer than before.

Caelum immediately concealed his presence and continued moving through the ruined landscape.

Along the way, an idea suddenly crossed his mind.

’I haven’t tested that yet...’

Stopping atop a broken stone pillar, he slowly raised one hand toward the sky.

The surrounding Dark Mana immediately began gathering above his palm.

The black energy condensed rapidly as he leaped high into the air.

The sphere grew larger and larger, until it reached nearly five meters in diameter.

The nearby undead instinctively raised their heads.

Their empty eye sockets locked onto the enormous sphere of darkness floating overhead.

"Take this, you undead bastards!"

Caelum grinned before hurling the massive sphere downward.

The undead were instantly engulfed by the overwhelming Dark Mana.

Only after the sphere completely swallowed them did Caelum quietly utter a single word.

"[Discharge]."

BOOOOM!

The condensed Dark Mana violently erupted outward.

A devastating shockwave swept through the battlefield, shattering countless skeletons into fragments while blasting apart the surrounding undead that had been raised from long-forgotten corpses.

Dust and dark mana filled the air.

Looking at the destruction below, Caelum nodded thoughtfully.

"...Still not on Asta’s level."

Compared to his Divine Mystical Horse, his control over [Discharge] still felt crude.

However, there was something else that puzzled him.

"...Isn’t this a little too easy?" He frowned slightly.

Manipulating ordinary mana still required his attention.

Yet controlling Dark Mana felt... Natural.

As though Dark Mana had been waiting for his command.

He was unable to understand the reason.

Soon afterward, his Spirit Sense finally detected a hidden passage concealed behind a collapsed stone wall.

"There it is."

He immediately rushed toward it.

’I should cultivate here sometime later,’ he thought, mentally adding the fifth floor to his growing list of interesting training locations.

The concentration of Dark Mana alone made the place incredibly valuable.

Without hesitation, he stepped through the hidden doorway.

The moment he crossed into the passage, a strange spatial distortion suddenly swept across his body.

"Hm?"

His [Heaven Reading Eyes] instinctively shone, before he could properly investigate the phenomenon, the distortion vanished.

A moment later, he found himself standing on the sixth floor.

"...Whatever, I made it to the sixth floor first!"

A satisfied smile appeared on his face.

Naturally, he had absolutely no idea that two shameless competitors had already arrived there long before him.

Just as he prepared to continue searching.

His eyes suddenly narrowed.

Not far away, a bizarre procession slowly advanced.

Four Hollow Liches carried an enormous throne constructed entirely from bones.

Walking before them were two heavily armored Undead Knights, acting as silent escorts.

Seated upon the throne itself, was another Hollow Lich.

Unlike the others, mysterious runes covered nearly every bone of its skeletal body, faintly glowing with sinister power.

The entire procession was concealed beneath an advanced Dark Concealment Spell.

To ordinary people and the Observation Spells, it would have been completely invisible.

However to Caelum’s [Heaven Reading Eyes] they looked as though they were leisurely taking a walk through a park.

"...???"

**

Grozni Gefährlich Morozov Höllenbrand.

In an age long forgotten, when magic had reached its absolute peak, that name was synonymous with terror.

Wherever he walked, death followed in his footsteps, despair spread among civilizations, darkness swallowed hope, and destruction reduced kingdoms to ruins.

Those who survived his passing would later describe him as the embodiment of the classic Four D’s of Evil.

Whether in the mortal world, the Heaven of Gods, or even the depths of Hell, his existence was feared equally by all.

Grozni Gefährlich Morozov Höllenbrand was an unparalleled genius of his era.

He elevated the Dark Arts to heights no one had ever imagined, mastered countless forbidden disciplines, and even created several dark spells that later generations considered impossible to reproduce.

To those who stood beside him, he was a miraculous scholar.

To those who opposed him, he was a walking catastrophe.

However, his insatiable curiosity eventually led him toward the greatest taboo of his age.

The flesh of an Old Great Ancient God.

Determined to uncover the mysteries hidden within a fallen divinity, Grozni began conducting experiments upon the divine remains without the slightest hesitation.

And the price he paid was beyond imagination.

For attempting what no mortal should have touched, he was struck by an ancient curse and banished into the Ruins of Reincarnation.

There, he entered an endless cycle of false existence.

The cycle repeated endlessly, allowing him to experience reincarnation countless times while forever denying him the peace of true reincarnation.

It was an eternal prison disguised as an endless series of new lives.

Any ordinary person would have eventually surrendered to despair or would have lost themselves.

Grozni Gefährlich Morozov Höllenbrand, however, was anything but ordinary.

His will proved stronger than the curse itself.

Across innumerable lifetimes and countless millennia, through his accumulated knowledge, he refined his understanding of existence itself, and patiently searched for even the smallest flaw within the prison that confined him.

Eventually, his opportunity arrived.

Several thousand years ago, the world’s cycle of reincarnation began to grow unstable as something had changed within it.

From within the Ruins of Reincarnation, Grozni sensed numerous ancient beings quietly preparing for their return.

Forgotten evil beings, ancient kings, legendary monsters.

Even remnants of entities erased from history itself.

Many of them became impatient, and unable to wait any longer, they attempted to descend directly into the world by force.

The result was absolute annihilation.

As the world itself rejected them. Its laws erased them before they could establish their existence.

Grozni simply watched their failures.

Unlike those impatient fools, he understood that opportunities favored those willing to wait.

After enduring countless millennia inside the Ruins of Reincarnation, waiting a few thousand more years meant almost nothing to him.

So he remained patient and when the perfect opportunity finally revealed itself...

He escaped.

At last, he stepped out of the prison that had confined him.

Yet the moment he regained his freedom, another realization dawned upon him.

He had not escaped into freedom, he had merely traded one cage for another and this one was even bigger.

Even so, that truth failed to shake his resolve, because this cage... offered a chance at exit.

Grozni Gefährlich Morozov Höllenbrand would return.

He would reclaim the glory he had once possessed, recover everything that history had stolen from him, and surpass the limits that had once defined his existence.

This time...

He will stand higher than the world itself!