Chapter 268 (1): Yellow Robe x Tentacles

The great hall was pitch black. Foul stenches permeated the corridors and passageways. The floors, walls, and ceilings were covered with twisted, grotesque faces. The sinister and eerie designs made one’s hair stand on end.

Walking through the space, it felt as if countless tentacles were wrapping around one’s body, dragging them to merge with the architecture itself. And it wasn’t an illusion. Those omnipresent whispers were like the sighs of some ancient creature, possessing the terrifying ability to corrupt human minds and flesh.

An ordinary person would instantly lose their reason and become permanently insane upon entering the hall. Even mages with powerful thoughts would transform into monsters like Knight after prolonged exposure to the whispers.

Wayne found it okay. Sure, it was creepy, but creepiness was relative. Compared to the ancient god he encountered on Dragonheart Island, these whispers were at most noises amid chaos, like the crackly static heard when the signal was poor.

Nothing special!

Wayne walked through the slimy, damp hall, his tendrils treading over sticky faces. There were no windows or lights around, so the only light source was the viscous phosphorescent liquid covering the ground.

Amid the rotten smell, the silence was unnerving.

Since entering the main hall, Vera had been holding her breath. Realizing that she was getting closer to her father, she couldn’t help but close her eyes and search for the Sun Knight’s power.

However, Wayne’s monster shell had enveloped him and Vera tightly, protecting her from the whispers’ corruption while confining her thoughts within the shell. Vera tried and failed to see the outside world with her thoughts. She glanced at Wayne carefully.

She knew that this was unwise, but she missed her family too much. Her father was here, and her mother might be alive, too. She wanted Wayne to allow her to connect with the outside world.

Besides, finding her father would be finding the Sun Knight’s power. Having a direction was better than wandering aimlessly.

“Release Vera, Wayne. With my protection, her thoughts won’t be distorted,” Valkyrie said. The Sun Knight’s power was in this hall, so she was getting impatient, too.

Wayne pondered for a moment before letting Vera go. He warned Valkyrie to stay as Vera’s armor at all times, never leaving her to her own devices.

Soft whispers surrounded Vera, giving her a slight headache. She frowned in confusion. She seemed to have heard similar sounds before. If her memory served her right, it should be back in Klofron. The same sounds were everywhere after she entered the Gate of Truth.

Vera was right. The source of this chaos came from the Void—the Astral Plane. Or rather, all sounds came from the Void, only they manifested differently through different interpretations.

For example, Wayne’s form after merging with the

Book of Greed

and the mutterings he had used to corrupt Senna’s thoughts and transform her existence also originated from the Void. It was knowledge and the information of life, which determined a life’s evolution.

Blessed by an ancient god, Valkyrie’s thoughts were immune to the surrounding whispers, and thus, Vera remained unaffected while wearing the armor. If Vera removed the armor, however...

It was hard to say what would happen.

Vera had entered the Gate of Truth and witnessed the vastness and greatness of the Void. At that time, a juvenile tentacle monster beside her had actively absorbed the surrounding knowledge, protecting her thoughts from being affected too much.

Still, what little knowledge she was exposed to had corrupted her thoughts to some degree. Given how limited the information conveyed by the whispers in the hall was, it was unlikely to affect her.

Similarly, Veronica and Kristen had undergone the same changes. It was something that only Gold-ranked mages were qualified to deal with. Premature exposure had inevitably affected their life essence.

Wayne wasn’t aware of that, and neither was Valkyrie. When they saw Vera moving around without issue, they let her extend her thoughts to look for the Sun Knight’s power.

“There are two...” Vera frowned with her eyes closed, extending her senses. “One in the main hall, and the other... It’s moving fast, over there.”

She pointed west. “That one is weak and moving away from the hall, like it’s fleeing.”

Fleeing?

Are we exposed?

Wayne turned in the direction Vera pointed. If he remembered correctly, it was toward the main mass of the black mountains. His heart sank. Based on the information Knight had provided, Thoggua was sealed in the black mountains, and the ancient beast’s sounds meant that Thoggua was about to awaken.

How powerful was Thoggua, and why would they need Sun Knight’s power? Wayne couldn’t tell for now, but one thing was for certain: they were exposed.

When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

While Vera looked for her father Cushing and entered the Golden City, Cushing, corrupted into the lead priest of the city, had sensed it and divided the Sun Knight’s power to send a part of it to the black mountains.

They could not let him succeed!

Wayne made up his mind and rattled off his speculation. Following Vera’s guidance to the depths of the hall, he said, “Splitting up is too risky. I’ll have Snow monitor the mountains. What we need to do now is wake up the knight’s squire in Cushing. Once he wakes up, he can reclaim the Sun Knight’s power.”

“Vera, we might have to rough up your father. It’ll be harsh, so prepare yourself for that and don’t blame me.”

“Yeah.”

Vera nodded firmly. She knew what the right thing to do was in a serious situation like this. She gave Wayne the permission to go all out; she would help too as long as her father lived.

The monster lifted its shell like a skirt and moved at high speed. Time was tight, and Wayne couldn’t be bothered with keeping up the pretense. His short tendrils became the long legs of a man over a hundred and eighty meters tall. He ran like the wind, leaving the monsters guarding the hall stunned.

Invisible thoughts spread, sounding the alarms across every corner of the nest. The monsters belonged to a hive-like collective consciousness, so tens of thousands of them flooded into their group chat. The entire nest sprang to action in an instant.

From above, one could see a mass of black dots converging from all directions, surrounding the hall.

Unlike the chaos outside, there weren’t many monsters in the great hall. However, the guards possessed powerful psychic powers and had created defensive barriers that were difficult to break, slowing Wayne down mid-rush.

The despicable outsider decided to stop pretending to be a local. Wayne tore off his disguise and leaped out of the monster shell, using his heat vision to clear the way at full power. The two red beams penetrated barriers after barriers and walls after walls, leaving scorching red openings behind.

There was a limited amount of fire elements in the dark, damp nest, but Wayne’s affinity with fire was so incredible that he had no issue wielding the elements. With continuous heat vision at high intensity, he quickly turned the guards blocking his way well-done.

The smell was terrible. Wayne gave up on breathing and charged ahead.

Vera was even faster than he was. Wearing the knight armor, her body dissolved into light particles and disappeared before reassembling at the end of the passage. Walking was clearly not as fast as teleportation. Wayne had coveted the move for a long time, but Valkyrie didn’t know how to teach it—she had forgotten, and she could only use the trick because of her combat instinct.

𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

Boom!!

Fire elements expanded rapidly, causing a violent explosion in the narrow, dark passage. Everywhere Wayne passed, flames engulfed everything and scorched the black walls until they melted. Twisted faces screamed amid the fire, the piercing sounds reaching heaven.

The nest spasmed and convulsed. It was in pain.

The walls cracked. While the space shook as if an earthquake had hit, a light beam shone down from above, and the black hall opened up like a trumpet flower.

The ground beneath Wayne’s feet opened its twisted mouth, causing one of his feet to sink. The palace had come alive and was chasing him to capture him. When he was in danger of losing the light ahead, he lifted himself off the floor and detonated mana under his feet to launch himself like an arrow released from a bowstring.

Sonic boom roared. Wayne slammed through walls and monsters indiscriminately. It would be more appropriate to describe him as a cannonball.

His fourteen new vengeful spirits had the phoenix bloodline. After signing them, Wayne gained the power of flight. Currently, he could only levitate, and to accelerate mid-air, he still needed the Silver-ranked technique of detonating mana.

Wayne repeated the trick continuously, rushing out of the wriggling, contracting, and squeezing black palace. Light poured down from above the Golden City. The palace wriggled and blended into the ground. In the spacious courtyard, countless monsters stretched endlessly, their sharp hisses gathered to shake his thoughts.

Wayne’s expression darkened. There were too many of them.

The psychic power of one monster was nothing to him. He could take it down with a punch. When there were over thirty thousand of them, and they were able to stack their thoughts to launch a concerted psychic attack, though, the destructive power was terrifying.

Moreover...

The nest was closing like a massive Venus flytrap.

In the center of the courtyard, where the center of the palace had been, stood an altar-like throne with a four-sided pyramid structure. Standing on top of it was a slim figure draped in yellow robes.

The figure was thin as a skeleton, covered by a tattered yellow robe. Under the hood was a twisted pale mask. The tentacles extending from the long robe were their arms and legs.

Holy shit, Vera. Your dad looks creepy as hell!