noveltune Chapter 1686: When the True Devil Whispers, Even the Saint Falls: Part-2
Chapter 1686: When the True Devil Whispers, Even the Saint Falls: Part-2
[Reader discretion advised]The further Young Aether travelled down the left pathway, the colder the atmosphere became.
The cheerful sounds of visitors gradually disappeared until only the silence lingered in the air and... his nose twitched, smelling the rot.
It clung to the back of his throat like spoiled meat left too long in the sun. Every breath tasted of shit, piss, old blood, and the sickly-sweet rot of decaying flesh that made his stomach churn violently.
The deeper he inhaled, the worse it became, as though the stench itself was crawling into his lungs.
A cold feeling settled inside his chest.
In his heart, Young Aether knew something was there and he definitely was not going to like it. His heart was already beating faster, and his throat went dry.
*I... I think I should leave th-*
"Don’t be a fucking pussy! Move your worthless ass forward right now!!"
The voice exploded through his mind before he could finish.
"Isn’t this why you dragged yourself here? Or were you expecting some happy little tour? Move your ass, you pathetic coward!"
*I am not a coward!* Young Aether growled with a furious expression.
"Hehe~"
The voice echoed through the back of his mind, forcing him to continue. Every instinct screamed at him to turn around and leave... yet his body moved forward hesitantly.
The lights here were dimmer.
Flickering orange strips lined the ceiling, their weak glow barely holding back the darkness gathering between them. Rusted pipes stretched overhead, dripping water onto the floor below.
Plink... Plink... Plink...
The repetitive sound echoed endlessly through the corridor.
The floor felt sticky beneath his foot.
Far ahead stood a metal door illuminated by a dying orange light.
But something else caught his attention.
A hunched figure sat motionless near the corner beside it.
Young Aether’s frown deepened as he summoned a sword in his hand and gradually walked toward the hunched figure.
Just as he reached it, the light flickered barely over the hunched figure and upon looking closer, Young Aether’s eyes widened in shock.
What might have once been an elf was now a twisted mass of elongated limbs and tumorous growths. Its spine had bent so severely that its head rested against its own back in a grotesque mockery of life.
Ba-dump...
Ba-dump...
Ba-dump...
His heart pounded.
Slowly, he reached forward to check whether it was still alive.
Then-
Twitch!
The body twitched.
For a brief moment, hope flashed through his mind.
Maybe it was alive.
Young Aether was about to pat it when,
Keeekkkee!
The flesh on its stomach tore open with a wet ripping sound as the rat yelped before running away, leaving behind a trail of pus and gore.
Young Aether’s eyes narrowed as he saw... There was nothing inside the stomach... nothing... not even bones, just a hollow cavity filled with writhing maggots and black sludge.
As though something had hollowed the body out from the inside and discarded whatever remained.
"..."
He simply stood up and looked at the door... The door had been left open, and from its parted gap the smell came through it, hitting his nose like a physical blow of pure decay.
He pressed his sleeve against his nose, but it did nothing... he nodded his head as if he was controlling his surge of emotions that were slowly barging inside his chest and making him lose his mind slowly.
The longer he remained here, the more those emotions clawed at his mind.
*Come on, Aether... Remember your wives’ words... You need to stay calm... You need to stay in control...*
He repeated the words to himself like a prayer before stepping through the doorway.
Cough! Cough!
The moment he entered, his stomach scrunched and the smell made him almost nauseated as he covered his nose and looked inside.
The room beyond was enormous and mostly dark. Weak overhead lamps cast sickly pools of yellow light across the floor, revealing rows of metal cages stacked three levels high along both walls.
When Young Aether squinted his eyes at what he saw... it made his heart skip a beat, and he staggered back slightly.
Most of the cages were occupied by things that should not exist, abominations born from the worst kind of suffering and death.
One cage held a beastkin whose entire lower half had fused into a single pulsating, legless sac of flesh. Maggots crawled openly across the open sores, feasting on the rotting meat while the creature’s eyes stared blankly in endless agony.
In the neighbouring cage lay an aquatic humanoid submerged in its own filth. Its gills had been torn from its neck and replaced with crude mechanical vents that hissed and sputtered every few seconds, even though the person died long time ago, the vents still working.
The vents leaked yellowish pus that mixed with blood and chunks of decayed tissue!
"Ha...Ha... Ha... Ha..."
Young Aether suddenly started to pant heavily as his ice blue eyes flickered between blue and darkness... his breathing turned ragged.
*I... I need to leave...*
"I said stop being a cunt and LOOK AT THEM! You snivelling little shit!!"
The voice roared.
Young Aether grabbed his head.
Pain exploded behind his eyes.
*P-Please... I don’t want to...*
"Then what? Pretend they aren’t here?"
The voice sneered.
"Pretend somebody else will save them? Open your fucking eyes and look at what true horror looks like!!"
*P-Please... I... really don’t want to*
Yet before Young Aether could answer,
"Coward!"
Young Aether turned silent as he bit his lips and slowly stepped forward, trying to avoid looking at those cages and yet... what he saw near the back wall made him stop even thinking about it.
Piles of dead bodies had been shoved against the back wall like worthless garbage.
Dozens of them!!
Elves... Beastkin... Aquatic folk... Dragons... Orcs.... Vampires... Harpies... and many more.
Some were half-dissected, their glistening organs spilling out and rotting where they lay in pools of blackened blood, slime, and congealed pus that stank like spoiled entrails left in the heat.
Others were fused together in grotesque piles... arms growing from chests, faces melted into one another in a nightmarish tangle of twisted flesh and exposed bone.
Flies swarmed thickly over the corpses, their constant droning filling the air as they feasted greedily on the decaying meat, laying fresh eggs in open wounds.
Young Aether blankly stared at those things, not even breathing, as everything in his body stopped utterly.
What were they doing?
Why?
Why were they treating people like this?
J-Just what’s wrong with these humans?
These weren’t monsters.
These were people too... they could talk, they could laugh, they could smile, they could cry... t-they could feel sadness and deep, unbearable pain.
*W-Why? What did they ever deserve to have this kind of nightmare happen to them?*
A sharp pain shot through his mouth.
He realised he had bitten his lower lip hard enough to draw blood.
Just then,
Co-cough...
A soft, wet coughing came from a cage near the floor, weak and gurgling like fluid-filled lungs fighting for air.
Young Aether turned to the source and immediately saw a child-sized figure crawling toward the bars on broken, malformed limbs that dragged uselessly behind.
Its face was a ruin of mismatched features. One eye was huge and watery, bulging unnaturally, the other missing entirely with only a raw, pus-filled socket staring back.
It reached a trembling, clawed hand toward Aether, fingers twisted at impossible angles.
It rasped in a broken, childlike voice, "It... hurts... everywhere..."
Young Aether immediately struck the physical lock on the cage with his sword, shattering it, and picked the child up from the pile of shit, blood, piss, and rotten flesh.
Young Aether didn’t care for anything. He just scooped the child into his arms, cradling the frail, trembling body with his own shaking hands, his eyes wide with trembling horror and pity.
"It’s alright... Y-You will be fine," he muttered softly as he checked the child’s ruined figure, "You’re going to be okay..."
The child didn’t look normal... he looked similar to the grotesque experiments that the Previous Dragon Emperor had created in his lab... and this child looked like a forced mixed blood or something unnatural.
Considering this kid just spoke this Empire’s language clearly, that meant... the child was born here, in this hellish place of endless suffering.
The child stared at him.
Confusion filled its remaining eye.
Since birth, nobody had ever touched it with kindness.
Nobody had ever held it without fear or disgust.
A single tear dripped from his one good eye, cutting a clean trail through the grime on his cheek.
"I-It hurts... Hurts so much... P-Please..."
"I’ll help you. Don’t wor-"
"...Kill me."
"..."
The child smiled weakly.
"P-Please..."
The word nearly shattered him.
Young Aether’s fingers tightened around the child’s frail body as he desperately searched for some sign of hope. Anything.
A reason to believe the child could still be saved. Yet the longer he looked, the more his heart sank.
*No.25...* Young Aether whispered into the silence of his mind. *Please... help this one. Just this once. I won’t ask for anything else. Please...*
He begged desperately in his mind to the man who once saved his empire, praying for that same power to come again and save this innocent child. However, only the dead, mocking silence lingered in his mind.
As though the person he was calling had never existed!
Then a laugh echoed through his mind.
"He won’t."
The dark voice came back with disgusting and pure disbelief, laced with cruel laughter.
"I seriously can’t believe you’re still sucking his dick again? Huh? Waiting for somebody else to solve your problems?
Man up and do your fucking job, you spineless worm! If you truly want to give freedom, then kill that thing right now! End its misery and let it free from this shit!"
Young Aether shook his head violently, *N-No... I cannot... Without my powers-*
"Look at it."
The dark voice sharpened.
Against his will, his gaze lowered toward the child.
The child was trembling.
Its remaining eye was filled with pain so intense that even looking at it made his chest ache.
"That’s not living. That’s suffering. You want to help it? Then help it."
Young Aether shook his head.
"NO!"
"Hehe... You look utterly pathetic right now. The moment you lose your power... You become the same worthless loser"
"..."
"The same coward who spent his life drowning in regrets."
Young Aether’s jaw tightened.
"Always wanting to suck his mommy’s tits... sold his dignity, fucked his fucking happiness, abandoned by that bitch, killed in the road like a beggar..."
"You couldn’t save yourself."
"You deserved every bit of it, you utterly pathetic failure!"
"..." Young Aether gritted his teeth with an ugly face as if someone had slapped him 100 times!
"If you’re nothing without the power, then you shouldn’t have it in the first place."
His hands began to shake uncontrollably as he stared at the child’s face, twisted in endless pain and suffering, those broken eyes pleading silently for release.
"Kill him and end his suffering."
"..."
"End its suffering."
"..."
"End him! He is begging for it with every breath! Look at his eyes! That’s not living... that’s pure begging for death! And your duty is to give it to him, you coward!"
The voice was cold and merciless as it made Young Aether tremble in quiet, agonising stillness, his thoughts spiralling in a storm of horror and self-doubt.
"Do it! Do it! End his suffering now!"
Young Aether clenched the sword tightly as he raised it toward the child in his hand, ready to give what the child wished for, his arm heavy with doubt.
Yet,
"No! Kill him with your hands... With your bare fucking hands. Grab his neck and... snap it clean."
"A painless death~Hehe~"