Chapter 49- Secrets of the Inverse
[Forge Sight Activated]
The world bleached into layers of data as the structure of the hammer unveiled itself before his eyes.
Mjölnir stood revealed exactly as he had mapped it in the Inscription Realm: forty-seven dead runes scorched into silence, and nearly forty percent of the divine metal body eroded into porous, lifeless lattice.
The binding matrix—the intricate lattice of divine energy that once held the hammer whole—lay cracked in seventeen distinct places. Hairline fractures radiated outward from the core like frozen lightning, each one leaking a faint, constant bleed of corrupted thunder-god power.
Wrapped around the white core, feeding like a parasite, was the creature.
In every previous clash, the thing had been only a smear of hunger and darkness. Now, under Forge Sight, it stood fully exposed: a twisted mass of living corruption barely the size of a small cat, coiled tight around the fractured binding matrix the way a serpent coils around a warm egg.
Its body pulsed with slow, rhythmic contractions, drawing threads of divine energy into itself with the methodical greed of something that had never known satiety.
The hammer had been eaten from the inside out. Slowly. Methodically. For centuries.
Leo focused on the creature.
[Entity: UNKNOWN]
[Classification: INVERSE FRAGMENT]
[Threat Level: ????]
[Status: STARVING]
Starving.
Leo stared at the word.
It’s not hostile. There are no tags for Destroyer... but starving...
Surtr stirred in his mind. The ancient being that had remained quiet since they entered the chamber finally spoke.
"It’s been eating away at the hammer to survive. It’s basically a child—it has never come into contact with another Inverse entity. So it cannot truly be considered evil. It’s just hungry. But..."
Surtr paused....
"But it can consume everything in its path—people, the world—and still be hungry."
Leo let out a slow breath and reached for Starfall Hammer. He wanted to try Mnemos—the memory rune that allowed him to touch minds and read histories.
Closing his eyes, he extended a careful tendril of consciousness through the hammer, using Starfall hammer as an extension of his senses, reaching toward the entity sealed inside Mjölnir.
A whisper, gentle and careful:
"I know you’re in there."
Silence.....
No reply came.
....
Then...
A flicker.
In the darkness, two points of dim light opened. Corruption swayed and shifted around them.
It seemed to recognize him from their previous encounter.
A voice—thin, broken, like wind through a cracked window—sounded.
"You...came back?"
The creature uttered the words, yet corruption already pressed against Starfall hammer’s surface, coating the contact point in restless dark energy.
Leo faced it without flinching.
"I came to end this," he said.
The creature remained silent, merely staring.
He tried again, coaxing.
"I can get you out. I can free you. The binding matrix is cracked. I can open it and release you. You can go somewhere else—somewhere with food. Real food. Not this limited aged energy."
The creature seemed to consider the offer. A faint ripple of something almost like hope moved through it.
A tiny spark of hope also lit inside Leo. Perhaps he would not need to eradicate it after all.
For a moment, even the corruption within the hammer receded.
The creature almost seemed to agree.
Leo set his hopes higher.
But right at that moment.....
...
Something within it snapped.
...Crack...
....A sound like ancient glass fracturing under impossible pressure.
It was like a failsafe—an ancient programming—had been triggered.
Its hunger surged all at once.
The creature suddenly screamed in pain, as if something inside it were being erased. Its body seized and convulsed. Darkness surged outward in a wave of black energy.
Leo’s hope shattered.
The small, timid presence was gone—replaced by something raw, primal, and dark.
"Set me Free?"
A terrifying new voice rose from it. No longer the broken, childlike tone of before.
It repeated, laughing: "Free? Hahahaha..."
All of this unfolded in the conscious world, unseen by anyone else. To the observers in the chamber, Leo simply stood holding Starfall hammer pressed against Mjölnir, with occasional spikes of corrupt energy flaring around him.
Inside Leo’s mind, however—where he examined the hammer through Starfall hammer and Mnemos—the situation had turned deadly serious.
The creature had become hostile. This time, it was not acting purely on instinct the way it had during their first clash.
This time, something was driving it. Controlling it.
"Freedom?" the voice snarled. "Hunger has never allowed me the luxury of freedom. This constant hunger..."
The corruption exploded.
It struck Leo again—overwhelming and suffocating. It flooded his mind, his memories, his soul space.
He saw flashes: his childhood in the forge, the endless days of hammering, the humiliation, the ridicule, the moment he had been cast out. The creature was feeding on his pain, his anger, his fear.
Leo gritted his teeth and called upon the Eternal Flame.
The fire answered differently this time. It carried the full weight of annihilation. Epic-tier golden fire slammed into the spreading darkness, and the creature screamed again as the flames bit deeper.
The creature was stronger than he had expected.
Surtr’s voice was grim. "It’s been feeding on Mjölnir for centuries. Divine metal. Thunder-God energy. It has grown fat on the hammer’s life force."
As Leo burned the corruption from his body, the properties of Logi’s fire took effect. The fire did not merely destroy the corruption—it consumed it. Fragments of the creature’s own memory began to bleed into Leo’s mind the same way Surtr’s had once done.
His mind blurred as new information flooded in.
Then he saw something that made his skin crawl.
In the chamber, the others watched Leo freeze.
Corruption slowly crawled along his arms, held at bay only by the Eternal Flame.
But Leo was witnessing something far greater—a secret of the universe, a secret of the Inverse itself.
A full vision from the creature’s memories struck him.
.....
He saw endless darkness.
A place where light had never existed, where stars had never burned, where the very concept of illumination was a foreign language.
And in that darkness, an army stood.
Leo’s breath stopped as he saw the army.
The army stretched to infinity—thousands, millions, billions. Formless creatures like the one curled around Mjölnir, only larger, stronger, more complete. They writhed and pulsed and hungered: a sea of darkness given purpose and direction.
In front of that sea of army stood a smaller host of refined beings.
Tall. Solid. Humanoid. Refined. Not twisted masses of low-level corruption. These were shaped, deliberate. Their bodies looked like living obsidian. Red eyes burned in their skulls—not the dim flickers of the starving creature, but steady, controlled flames.
Intelligence lived in those eyes. Purpose.
And at the head of them all stood a lone entity.
Their Commander.
The pressure radiating from that single figure tightened Leo’s heart.
It was taller than the others—by a head, perhaps two. Its body was the same obsidian-dark, yet its form was sharper, more defined, as if a sculptor had spent a thousand years perfecting every line, every angle, every edge. It stood at the front of the army with the quiet confidence of a thing that had never known defeat.
Its eyes were red suns burning in the face of darkness—ancient, patient, filled with intelligence and conviction. Looking into them made Leo’s mind buckle.
The Commander spoke.
Its voice was not loud, yet it carried across the infinite darkness, reaching every low-level and high-level Inverse creature.
"We have consumed forty-seven worlds so far."
"Their energy has been harvested."
The army began to roar and cheer.
The Commander raised one hand, silencing them.
"We shall continue to devour. Continue to harvest. When we have made enough preparations, we shall feast upon the universe itself."
The army roared.
The sound from the memory shook Leo’s brain. He felt it in his bones, in his soul.
He could not move, could not think, could not even breathe under the residual pressure.
The vision recoiled, burned, and dissolved. Somehow he managed to tear himself free.
Then the vision shifted again.
Suddenly he was looking at the creature that curled around Mjölnir—but now he saw it for what it truly was.
A low-level dreg. A scout. A pawn. A parasite whose death the higher beings would not even notice.
They had sent this dreg ahead to weaken, to consume, to prepare the way for their arrival. It was nothing more than a sacrificial piece on a board so vast that its existence barely registered as a rounding error.
The real Inverse was out there.
And it was coming.
The vision shattered again.
Leo slammed back into the real world, gasping for breath.
The corruption had already reached his arms. The Eternal Flame still burned around him, but it was dimmer. The darkness was spreading fast.
He urged the fire onward. It flared with full power once more—burning with pure annihilating intent.
The flames scoured the corruption from his body. The creature screamed, a high, thin sound like metal tearing, yet it refused to release either Leo or Starfall hammer.
"It’s been feeding on Mjölnir for centuries," Surtr said, voice grim. "It’s stronger than it should be. Stronger than you expected."
Leo gritted his teeth. The corruption was winning—slowly, inch by inch, pushing the flame back. His Spiritual Integrity was dropping: 92%... 90%... 88%...
"Any help?" he asked.
"Tsk." Surtr snorted.
Then the golden Eternal Flame suddenly turned pure white. Absolute white. The annihilation property roared into full display.
It struck the corruption with overwhelming force—disintegrating it. The fire did not merely burn. It consumed. Erased. Unmade. Reduced everything it touched to nothingness.
The creature screamed. Its voice shook the chamber. Stones cracked. The binding matrix groaned. Even Mjölnir trembled.
Leo locked eyes with it.
"Let go," Leo said, "or I will burn you even at the risk of destroying the hammer."
The creature hesitated, fear of the white fire holding it in place for a moment.
Throughout the struggle Leo had continued working on the rune matrix that imprisoned it. The final rune locked into place at this moment. Leo lifted it and the seal opened.
If the creature retreated back inside now, even after the seal was open, forcing it out again would require further damage to the hammer.
So, in that brief hesitation of the creature, Leo formed a giant hand of white fire, seized the mass of darkness, and yanked it free of Mjölnir.
The parasite was set free.
It rose, expanding, laughing with a sound that no longer pretended to be anything but hunger given voice.
"HAHAHAHA! Now you have done it, mortal!" it roared. "I am no longer trapped in that darn thing. I can eat all I want. I shall destroy this world and consume it!"
Leo shouted, "NOW!"
At his signal, Odin, Freya, and the judges who had been holding a prepared sword drove the blade into the ground.
A wall of runes erupted from the sword, linking together to form a sealed chamber. The chamber was built from the same runes that had once held the creature trapped inside Mjölnir.
The creature was now locked inside a cage of these same runes.
Then the holy priests, fire users, and lightning users surged forward, attacking with full force.
"HAHAHAHA!" the creature laughed.
"Petty humans! You can try all you want, but you cannot kill me. I am Eternal!"
...