Chapter 231: Marvel Cthulhu
The abandoned mine, after being dug open, had revealed an entrance nearly eight meters tall.
Inside the cave, there was actually a statue.
Several corpses in black robes had been blasted into the deepest part by a huge force, sliding dozens of meters before finally crashing into the stone statue.
Whoosh—
A sharp sound swept through the air as two figures shot into the depths of the mine. One of them was even carrying a corpse.
Skye grabbed the corpse by the neck and casually flung it forward.
Beside her stood a beautiful woman with a mature, charming figure, dressed in a dark-brown coat over a white turtleneck, jeans, and black boots.
Her graceful, seductive air was clear at a glance.
It was none other than Needy, Commander of the Grey Knights.
The two walked side by side until they stood before the statue.
The statue in front of them was very strange. It looked ancient, and there was an indescribable wrongness to it.
A twisted kind of beauty.
Based on normal human taste, it had a humanoid body.
Its bony frame was hidden beneath layers of tattered yellow robes. Though it looked thin and clumsy, it carried an elegance that was clearly not mortal.
From under the yellow robe stretched dense clusters of tentacles.
"What is this thing?"
Skye stared at it, a wave of revulsion twisting her face. Just looking at it made her feel as though her mind was coming apart.
She could sense a strange force radiating from it, clawing at her thoughts and trying to corrupt her mind and will.
"A Great Old One," a low voice said from behind them before Needy could answer.
Neither of them needed to turn around to know it was Mordo, a sorcerer from Kamar-Taj.
Unlike the two women, whose enhanced physiques let them move through the mine with ease, Mordo had needed a little longer to catch up.
His expression was much the same as Skye's, but unlike her, he carried an old-fashioned British hand lantern.
A blue flame burned within it.
Its light bathed Mordo in a soft, flickering glow that was strangely beautiful.
The flame's mystical power shielded his mind from the corrupting influence emanating from the statue before them.
"A Great Old One?"
Skye suddenly realized.
She had heard of this thing, though not from Kamar-Taj's brief history of magic, but from the internet.
As a hacker who often wandered through the web, Skye had browsed quite a few posts about Great Old Ones.
Judging from the written descriptions and the images uploaded in those posts, they were nauseating.
Skye had no interest in such things, so she had only skimmed them back then and stopped caring.
"Those who cross the boundary and come here—neither human nor god, neither demon nor spirit, sacred before creation, sleeping in the cracks between dimensions—are known as Great Old Ones," Needy's magnetic voice echoed through the mine.
Mordo nodded, then continued, "Yes. The dimensional isolation laws of the Sorcerer Supreme once mentioned them. Great Old Ones are clearly defined as original chaotic entities born before the multiverse took shape, earlier than planets, gods, civilizations, and the current laws of the universe.
"They are not gods in the traditional sense, but primitive beings beyond good and evil, life and death.
"They do not obey order. They know only instinctive chaos, corruption, and assimilation.
"Any mortal who lays eyes on them catches a glimpse of the higher dimension they inhabit—a realm containing the true nature of the universe and the stars. But the human mind cannot comprehend such truth. In the end, it collapses into madness and is assimilated."
"Wow. That really sounds grand."
Skye could not help clicking her tongue.
Just from Mordo's description, these so-called Great Old Ones were honestly a little absurd.
"Okay, so what do we do with this place?"
"This should only be an altar. Those cultists did not complete the summoning ritual, so this Great Old One has not descended. We only need to destroy and seal it."
Mordo answered. A place like this was something he could handle.
Of course, the main issue here was not too serious. The real problem was the believers whose minds had fallen into mad distortion and whose bodies had changed.
Among them were many residents of the town. Mordo could not deal with all of them alone. He needed help.
So Mordo asked Needy, the Commander of the Grey Knights, for aid. He needed the entire Warband to assist him.
Needy agreed to Mordo's request.
Mordo then had to draw a reverse countermeasure chaos rune array around the mountain area near the mine. This would cancel out the altar's energy-boosting effect and completely cut off its mental link to the Great Old One's true body.
As for those believers who had already changed, although it was cruel, they could no longer be saved.
Once the body had warped, it meant the mind had already fully changed. It was a deep infection.
Mordo planned to isolate and imprison them separately in a deep Mirror Dimension isolation zone.
…
"Great Old Ones?"
When Matthew received the news, he could not help raising a brow.
So the Marvel universe really did have the Cthulhu.
Nameless, impossible to look at directly, and most of them were beings of an absolute higher-dimensional level.
The most ridiculous thing was that these creatures basically could not be killed.
For example, the well-known eye demon Shuma-Gorath, also known as the Lord of Chaos. In terms of position, it seemed like a demon, but in truth, it was one of the Great Old Ones—and one of the strongest among them.
Billions of years ago, it had once visited Earth, ruling over and devouring the ancestors of mankind.
It was the ruler of hundreds of dimensions. Before time and all things existed, it had already been waiting, devouring the screaming souls in the universe and sucking on dead stars.
Within its own domain, it was all-powerful.
In other smaller domains, or domains that did not belong to it, its power would be weakened.
Even so, it was still enough to make powerful demons like Mephisto and Satannish seem like little mice before it.
In other timelines, the Ancient One died because of it.
It tried to descend upon Earth again and use its own consciousness to pollute and control the Sorcerer Supreme, the Ancient One.
Because of that, the Ancient One could only have Doctor Strange kill her.
So Doctor Strange had no choice but to kill his own teacher with his own hands.
Not only that, Doctor Strange himself almost became its avatar afterward and nearly brought it to Earth. With no other choice, Doctor Strange decisively killed himself to stop its plot.
And even then, that had only been an extremely tiny portion of the eye demon's power.
The Great Old Ones' main trait was that they could not be understood and could not be killed. As long as one faced them, a price had to be paid to solve the problem.
Fortunately, these Great Old Ones could not directly descend upon Earth. In terms of pure crisis level, they were actually less threatening than many other major disasters.
What Matthew was truly wary of was Parker, the representative chosen by Dormammu.
Why had he guided Skye and Jessica to find this place? Was he planning to use an Great Old One to kill him?
But Matthew immediately rejected that thought.
It was not that Matthew looked down on Dormammu. Dormammu was strong, yes, but in front of these Great Old Ones, he was still not enough.
If Dormammu coveted this universe, he would never allow a Great Old One to appear on Earth. Once beings like this descended, the entire universe would be completely polluted in a very short time.
...
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