Chapter 363: The Lost World (18)

Sticky trails of Gulp Worm’s mucus wriggled along the wall beyond my status window. I didn’t have the luxury of standing still and pondering my Assimilation Rate.

Fwoosh!

[Sprint Lv. 1 (???): Maximum speed increased by 100%.]

Detection.

I had planned to find Gilaut first and move together, but there was nothing nearby. My vision was limited under the suffocating darkness. It was far too careless for the worm to spit me out here. Besides, I was still throbbing from the crushing pressure.

Clatter... Clack.

Hearing about it and experiencing it myself were entirely different matters.

Is this because the area is still in the early stages of erosion?

Maybe the chewing-and-spitting tunnel hadn’t adjusted to the human realm yet.

Slosh... Slosh...

The mucus clinging to me peeled off on its own as I moved.

No clues.

Wandering aimlessly wasn’t going to help. No clattering armor, no footsteps anywhere. This was dangerous. I tried shouting, but the cave walls—coated in sticky demonic soil—swallowed the sound before it could echo.

Troublesome.

As the last of the mucus slid off, something stirred at the edge of my awareness.

What is that?

I could sense, faint but undeniable presence. One of my soldiers was somewhere in that direction, and being separated made it even clearer.

[Lord of Bones Lv. 2]

[Additional function awakened out of necessity.]

[Additional Function: Location Tracking]

[You can now roughly sense the positions of soldiers you have raised.]

[Accuracy and range increase with skill level.]

[Due to the awakening, proficiency in Lord of Bones has greatly increased!]

[Skill proficiency has increased!]

[Skill level restored!]

[Lord of Bones Lv. 2 → Lv. 3]

[— You can assemble even more complex bone structures.

— Base Affection of the race toward you has increased by 10.

— Control capacity has increased to 250.

— You can now train the creatures under your command. Training increases their Affection and individual abilities.]

That’s impressive.

My skill restoration was accelerating, recovering simply because it was "needed." This new category of skill restoration filled me with a rush of exhilaration. I gathered the soldiers stumbling in the dark, one by one.

[1024 is overjoyed to see you!]

[1024’s Affection has increased by 10!]

[1004 anticipates the final battle!]

[1004’s Affection has increased by 10!]

Lord of Bones Lv. 3 had immediate effects. They didn’t just obey without question; their thoughts and emotions were starting to sync faintly with mine. At a higher level, it felt like I could turn every skeleton into an ally.

After collecting all twenty soldiers, footsteps approached in a frantic rhythm, crushing demonic soil underfoot.

Fwip! Fwap!

"Gilaut!"

It was the one person I hadn’t been able to find.

"Gilaut! Over here!"

Only at my second shout, he staggered toward me, then collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.

Thud.

"What happened!?"

"Hurry... up..."

"Are you all right?"

"We must... hurry..."

There was no wind at all underground, coated as it was in demonic soil. Yet the shadows spilling from Gilaut’s armor trembled akin to leaves in a storm. Cracks spread across his black armor, and dark smoke leaked from the fissures each time he exhaled.

"You found an enemy? Did you fight?"

He shook his head with difficulty. "My lord... My body... this is the sign... that my lord is in danger... Hurry... hurry...!"

The smoke trembled violently.

I had the soldiers support him and move forward. "Don’t speak. Conserve your strength."

This was the same knight who had pushed through Murmur’s possessed army. Seeing his state emphasized the danger Gith-Za-Rai was facing. There was no way to help him directly.

Lord of Bones won’t work.

His armor held resentment and obsession, not bone or flesh.

"She is... ahead... My lord... is... there..."

We sprinted in the direction he indicated.

***

Gith-Za-Rai moved forward. Unhesitating and unafraid, she cut through the darkness with four Dullahans. The presence ahead maintained the same distance, always just out of reach. It had been moving that way ever since she abandoned the imperial assassination and first descended underground.

It was an obvious bait, basically announcing itself to be a trap. Still, Gith-Za-Rai followed anyway. If provoked, she responded. If challenged, she crushed. No matter what she collided with, she had lived believing she would win. Anything that attacked or annoyed her, she tore off their arms, crushed their legs, and turned them into quiet corpses. And the corpses, disassembled, were rebuilt, reborn to serve her forever.

Torture was noisy, but she found beauty in its final beauty, which was always silent.

Shhhk.

She slid forward alongside her Dullahans, cascading leisurely across the demonic floor. The bait wasn’t frightening, but just in case, she had sent the strange skeleton and Gilaut through an alternative path. To prevent needless losses, she had also left most soldiers behind. No matter what provocation awaited, she would win. She simply wished to avoid waste.

Eventually, the winding cave opened into a vast chamber with multiple branching passages. There, the presence stopped moving. Gith-Za-Rai strode boldly into the chamber.

Crackle. Crackle.

Loosening her fingers, she scanned the surroundings. The space was over a hundred meters wide, yet somehow it felt small.

"My lord..."

"I know."

Dozens, no, hundreds of presences wrapped around her awareness.

There’s a lot.

Worthy opponents... one, two, three...

Five?

Yet none were beyond her ability to handle. Even if they all attacked simultaneously, the victory was hers. She didn’t even need her four Dullahans.

Her gaze relaxed. "If you can hear me, come out. I won’t waste time hunting you one by one."

Srrrrk...

As if her words were a command, shadows peeled away from the darkness on all sides.

A centaur stepped out. "To think you followed us all the way here, even when the bait was this obvious. Hard to believe. Did it never occur to you that you were being lured?"

So that fast runner was him.

Gith-Za-Rai’s lips curled upward. "Do you think an ant waving its arms in front of me counts as a lure? I was simply curious what you idiots thought you were doing."

"You hear that arrogance? Just as you said, Priest."

A gloomy laugh echoed. "Keke..."

A man sat atop an enormous crocodile over ten meters long. Still, calling him "man" was generous. His form was hideously twisted from countless necromantic rituals. Maggots writhed on the hollow sockets that riddled his putrid black flesh. His ears were crushed, while his temples caved in enough to shove in a fist. Then, the curled beginnings of ram’s horns. It was a sign of a soul sold to a demon.

Gith-Za-Rai simply burst into laughter. "Pfft. Oh, it’s you?"

"Keke... Laugh while you can, Gith-Za-Rai. You have calmly marched to your death. You will not escape."

"Oh, please. This, coming from you?" She tugged at her ear with a look of disbelief. "After all the beatings I gave you, you still haven’t learned?"

The man forced a laugh, but rage twisted beneath it. "Keke!"

She knew him well. "What are you laughing at? You can’t even laugh properly, you trash."

The necromancer clenched his teeth. "Ke!"

Is it resentment? No... not just that.

He was once Bassago’s priest, who was dismissed the moment Gith-Za-Rai was contracted. Even though she rejected the priesthood, he’d never been reinstated, reducing him to a laughingstock. She had spared him several times just because watching him struggle back up had been amusing.

I’ll finish him off this time.

She glanced lazily at the four figures surrounding the chamber. "So? What is it today? Ah. The ant has brought a small colony, I see."

A golden-skinned giant with a thick, lion-like black mane. A dog-headed humanoid wielding a staff. A hooded, mutated gnome riding an enormous wolf with spiked fur. Lastly, a massive, nearly three-meter-long bat. It clung to a stalactite while its red eyes glowed in the dark.

Gith-Za-Rai examined them one by one. "Well, you’re a little better than him. Maybe slug level."

Then, the dog-headed demon muttered, "Strange. We pulled her in perfectly."

"Yes, very strange," the golden giant answered. "It began long ago. We were already pouring power into her. So how is she still standing like that?"

The gnome chimed in, "Incredible! She’s enduring a completed ritual zone! This one is extraordinary. I want to recruit her!"

"Recruit her? Don’t be absurd," the gnome snapped back at himself, annoyed.

The bat’s eyes flashed darkly as it said, "Strong one... I, Lucas, must unfortunately kill you here."

Gith-Za-Rai snorted. "If you’re all here, then just attack at once. Why keep babbling?"

The aura of Demon Kings.

They were all high-ranking demons, heavily blessed by their patrons.

They have considerable power.

It was no exaggeration to say they carried every ounce of strength a Demon King could currently bestow. Still, none of this was enough to make her imagine defeat. Even if they had tripled their number, they wouldn’t be able to restrain her.

Zagan, Bara, Furcas, Gaap...

Strangely, Bassago wasn’t there. Even though his former priest was present, not a trace of Bassago’s aura flowed through any of them. Something felt wrong. They were stalling for time, deliberately positioning themselves.

"Should I kill you first?" she asked.

Crackle.

Just then, Gith-Za-Rai’s fingertips trembled.

"Keke... It has begun."

Her contract sigil with Bassago twisted into a pure curse. Binding. Venom. Contagion. Corrosion. Execution. Absorption. It bound her limbs, flooded her veins with poison, rotted her flesh, tore at her life, and tried to devour her.

A Demon King’s power could extend only into the Demon Realm. A contract sigil was both a conduit for blessings and a Demon Realm’s seed, embedded into the contractor. The more the contractor achieved, the wider the Demon King’s territory expanded.

To not only erase that territory, but also turn every connection into raw annihilation was the worst curse. No, far beyond it, it was a husk-burning obliteration. That was what erupted inside Gith-Za-Rai’s sigil.