Chapter 121 Cosmic Horror
Chapter 121 Cosmic Horror
From the shadows above, Iryoku and Mr. K watched closely, analyzing every movement.
That man… Magnus. He’s the one who caught us. Strong—no doubt about it, Iryoku thought.
His eyes shifted to the short woman beside him. That one—Vadia. Small, agile… rough attitude, but there’s something off about her aura. Dangerous too.
He scanned the surrounding warriors. All high-level fighters. Not just guards.
Then his gaze drifted to the servant girls trailing behind. They wore fragments of black armor—shoulder plates, shin guards—but the rest of their bodies were bare. Probably just decorations… sexual slaves.
When his eyes landed on the tall, black-haired woman—Laila—he paused. She’s different. Not strength exactly… something else.
Below, one of the warriors produced a small stone gem and pressed it into the gate’s socket. Gears clanked and turned as the massive door slowly unlocked..
In the dark, Iryoku turned to Mr. K. Both nodded silently.
As Magnus’s group entered, the two men crawled along the ceiling, using every ounce of focus and stealth to slip through behind them, staying hidden among the shadows and stalactites above.
Inside, they advanced through a long, winding corridor. Iryoku immediately felt the shift in atmosphere. A pale fog drifted from the mouths of those below—and even from his own. It’s gotten really cold…
The passage soon opened into a vast cavern. Tables lined the area, cluttered with papers, scrolls, and jars filled with dark, pulsing tissue that looked disturbingly alive. Butchered human remains lay across some of the tables, blood still dripping, as if freshly carved.
The slave women trailing Magnus recoiled, trembling and turning their faces away.
“Sigil! Where are you? There’s a problem with one of your beasts!” Magnus shouted, his voice echoing across the stone chamber.
Vadia stepped closer, brushing a lock of brown hair from her face. She flicked one of the jars with a fingertip—the black flesh inside rippled faintly, beating like a heart. “So this is how he makes those flesh prison orbs,” she murmured, half in fascination, half in disgust.
The group advanced farther in. Even the hardened warriors shifted uneasily, glancing around. The deeper they went, the stronger the sense grew—an invisible weight pressing from the dark.
“Shit… just what the hell is that old fart doing?” Magnus muttered, his irritation seeping through the cold air.
The temperature dropped sharply as they continued. Frost crept along the walls, and even their breath came out in pale clouds. The chill bit deep—so deep they could feel it in their bones.
At last, they saw him.
A tall, thin man stood ahead—almost skeletal in frame. He wore a heavy, layered coat, the kind suited for an alchemist or a scholar. Strange articulated goggles covered his eyes, multiple lenses clicking and rotating with tiny mechanical sounds. His hands were lined with magical trinkets, thin chains and rings glowing faintly.
On the table before him lay a slab of dark flesh. In one hand, he held a small, glowing scalpel—a magical bistoury—that sliced with eerie precision. With the other, he lifted a dropper filled with black liquid and let a single drop fall onto the exposed tissue.
The reaction was immediate—the flesh twitched, pulsing rapidly like a frantic heartbeat, before settling back into a steady rhythm.
Unbothered, the man continued his work, cutting again with practiced care. He reached for another vial, this one filled with a bluish fluid, and mixed it with a different reagent. His gaze flicked between his instruments and a nearby parchment filled with runic markings and erratic formulas.
“Sigil,” Magnus growled darkly, “do you even know there’s chaos outside? And here you are—still buried in your damned experiments.” His eyes flared with anger. “The killer of my older brother escaped confinement, and one of your creatures is running wild.”
A hoarse, deep voice answered without turning. “Lord Magnus. Lady Vadia. I apologize for the inconvenience, but my research has reached... interesting developments. To a degree that a mere escaped killer does not outweigh its importance.”
Magnus clenched his fists, about to speak, but Vadia cut in first. Her tone—unusually sharp, without her usual mocking lilt—dripped with offense. “We’re talking about the killer of our older brother, Sigil.”
The alchemist’s hands didn’t stop moving. “If you’re concerned about Lord Alexander,” he replied, calm and detached, “then I’ll remind you of his own words: ‘The work I gave you takes priority over all else.’”
Then, at last, he turned to face them—his face pale and sunken, a grim smile curling across his lips. “And now… we are close.”
From the shadows above, Iryoku and Mr. K exchanged uneasy glances. Whatever this man was doing, it wasn’t simple research—it was something far darker.
Sigil seemed to sense the tension. “Come with me,” he said, his voice oddly calm.
They followed him deeper through the cave, passing grotesque sights along the way—creatures chained and dismembered, their remains stitched or spliced together. Pieces of goblins, orcs, minotaurs, even bird-like beasts—all mutilated, dissected, and preserved.
At the back stood a massive steel door, thick and covered in faintly glowing runes of frost and binding. Sigil inserted a small trinket into the lock.
Clank. Clang.
The door shuddered open.
Every eye—Magnus, Vadia, their warriors, the trembling slaves, even Iryoku and Mr. K hidden above—widened at what lay beyond.
The chamber stretched wide, filled with towering magical apparatuses powered by glowing stones. Frost crept across the floor and walls, the air biting cold.
At the center, bound by several metal rods, stood an abomination.
It was half a being—almost skeletal. A single leg of dark, diseased bone rose from a pelvis and merged with a jagged spine. Sparse veins and strips of flesh clung to it, twitching faintly. At its core, suspended within a web of sinew, was a tiny piece of pulsing meat—a heart, beating slowly… once every ten seconds.
Like something ancient trying to remember how to live.
Magnus’s face went pale. “W-wait… don’t tell me…”
Vadia trembled, her voice unsteady. “That thing—we brought it back from the war.”
Magnus nodded, his expression hard. “But it was only a small lump of flesh back then. You’re saying it grew into this? By itself?”
“The demon… it’s different from all the others the army faced,” Sigil whispered.
He smiled darkly, eyes glinting behind his lenses. “Yes. This creature is on an entirely different level.” He turned toward the frozen abomination. “Minions, Exalted Demons, Demon Generals—even the so-called Demon Emperor we’ve only theorized about—our classifications may have been wrong.”
His voice lowered, trembling with reverence. “If not for this ice prison, this thing would have likely regenerated… fully revived, whatever it truly was.”
Vadia’s voice cracked. “You’re saying this… could be the Demon Emperor?”
Sigil’s grin widened, manic with awe. “Perhaps. Or something in between—a bridge between the generals and the Emperor. A Demon King, as I like to call it. A new classification entirely.”
Magnus’s eyes darkened. His thoughts drifted back to that battle—to the day they fought a so-called Demon General. It had taken his father, his sister, two of his brothers, King Alden and his sons, and an entire company of elite mages to bring it down. Even that monster, with all its regeneration, had eventually stayed dead.
But this… this thing had grown back from a scrap of flesh.
Vadia’s hands trembled. “What does this have to do with Father’s orders? What did he ask you to find with this? You should just burn this thing to ashes!”
“Oh, but I tried,” Sigil said softly. “Fire. Wind. Earth. Water. Raw magic. Leben. Nothing worked. In fact, it’s most resistant to fire of all.”
The group’s stomachs turned.
“But cold…” Sigil began pacing, his tone turning almost giddy. “Cold is different. Through trial and error, I found that demons—at least those of this caliber—are vulnerable to frost. It wounds them deeply. But it takes an immense force—ordinary spells barely scratch them.”
He grinned faintly. “That’s why all my tools and instruments are enchanted with frost magic.”
From above, Iryoku’s eyes narrowed. Images flashed through his mind—his enchanted daggers piercing Lunara’s demonic flesh, the way the wounds burned with ice.
My twin blades… weaker than Wolf Fang, yet they cut deeper. Even more than the fang’s full force…
Sigil stopped, spreading his arms as if addressing a crowd. “Do you remember the front lines? The battlefield was freezing. The mountain range—the Holy Barrier that sealed the demons away—it was frozen death. That’s no coincidence.”
He chuckled softly. “Oh, and there’s one more thing I still don’t quite understand… that thing—the massive flying lizard that tore through the Holy Mountain. Its pillars of vaporizing light… that creature hurt this one. Ultimately destroyed it, even. Perhaps that attack wasn’t fire at all—or maybe it was simply heat beyond measure. A greater god devouring a lesser divine.”
A dull ache spread through Iryoku’s chest as confusion and dread tangled in his mind.
Could it really be her? His fist clenched hard. But if I free this thing and it’s not…
The group stayed silent, their unease thick as frost.
Sigil’s grin widened, almost worshipful. “Don’t you see? These beings—terrible, magnificent—they tread close to the divine. Creatures that defy death itself. Horrific. Eternal.”
He lifted his arms, laughing softly as his breath fogged the air.
“Monsters born from the cold of the dark void itself.”
Then his voice dropped, low and eager. “And with that thought… I realized something. So did Lord Alexander. We could harness that power.”
Magnus and Vadia exchanged a glance—they already knew where this was going. Sigil had been using the demon’s remains to craft weapons—like the flesh orbs that served as living prisons, grotesque cocoons of screaming vitality.
Sigil turned to them, his smile widening into something unholy. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking. Weapons, yes… but that’s not the true goal—not for me, nor for your father.”
He raised a finger.
“Regeneration. Immortality. That is what we mortals lack—time. Even the demi-humans, with their long lives, cannot compare to what I’m about to discover.”