Chapter 219: 116. Big Eyes -1 (Part Two)
**
Elusha’s feudal lord was currently in the castle’s audience chamber.
He sat on the throne with a dazed look on his face. Next to him was a magician kitted out in a robe, while his staff was tightly wrapped in some kind of fabric to hide its outer appearance.
“We’ve finished arresting the Eltera-ranked adventurer named Allen Rufus, my lord.”
A soldier made that report and the magician standing next to the feudal lord licked his lips.
He initially ordered ‘expulsion’, but cooking up a pretext to expel an Eltera-ranked adventurer from the fiefdom with an immediate effect proved to be quite difficult in the end.
And it seemed that the trio wasn’t planning to leave for the next few months, so there was no other choice but to do it this way.
But still, the end result proved to be quite satisfactory.
After all, the Eltera-ranked adventurer was stripped of his armaments, and shackles were put on him to make sure that he wasn’t going anywhere.
His subordinates were also likewise unable to resist anymore. The only thing remaining for this ‘magician’ to do would be to exact his vengeance on the adventurer.
The magician, Rudis, smiled insidiously.
‘Besides, it will not matter whether he’s an Eltera or Orichalcon-rank. Once the gate to purgatory opens, no one can stop us.’
The source of the calamity that would blanket the entire world would soon open up in Elusha. Death would dye this city black, and even the capital of Aihrance not too far from here would crumble down in no time at all.
The Theocratic Empire would no doubt urgently dispatch an army to stop the release of purgatory, but it’d be too late by then.
Rudis was planning to leisurely spectate this historical accomplishment play itself out from a close vantage point. He grasped the feudal lord’s shoulder to lean closer and whispered into the latter’s ear.
The focusless eyes of the feudal lord aimlessly shifted around. “All of you did well.”
“My lord. Is this right? Without a doubt, that Eltera-ranked adventurer is our benefactor who has clearly been protecting our fiefdom.”
A soldier and other knights began raising their voices of discontent. The magicians serving the fiefdom were included in the group.
Their feudal lord had been saying crazy things while exhibiting odd behavioural signs recently. Not only that, he even kept a very suspicious-looking magician by his side as well.
The court-hired magicians found those points just too suspicious to ignore, so they sneakily observed the feudal lord’s condition, but they couldn’t readily come to any concrete conclusion.
That was how exact and undetectable Rudis’ puppetry technique was.
The feudal lord didn’t reply to the questioning voices of his soldiers. After all, he was a mere ‘puppet’ where the only thing functioning in his body was his beating heart.
The feudal lord with his damaged brain could only respond to what the Necromancer, Rudis, said to him.
“Do not be worried. Whether it’s that benefactor of yours, or for that matter, you lot…” Rudis smirked deeply and addressed them, “…You are all going to die.”
The moment his words came to an end, monstrous howls rose up from the many corners of the castle. They came from the monsters which were supposed to be imprisoned within the building.
These creatures began rampaging violently within their steel cages.
“What the hell?! What’s going on here!”
The soldiers grew deeply wary and hurriedly pointed with their unsheathed swords and spears.
The ‘magicians’ tasked with minding the steel cages suddenly threw the cage doors wide open before taking off their regular magician garbs to reveal their true identities as Necromancers.
Countless monsters escaped from the cages and pounced on the flustered soldiers.
The soldiers fought back, and the magicians of Aihrance lent their aid.
The horde of monsters went on a rampage inside the castle, but the forces currently present were more than enough to deal with them.
Unfortunately, that remained true only when dealing with the monsters currently found inside the castle.
After finishing with sowing confusion, the Necromancers of Nemesis quickly gathered in the feudal lord’s audience chamber.
They then issued orders to their summoned creatures to gather up the corpses of the soldiers, and to capture the maids and servants trying to escape before bringing them into the audience chamber.
“Gather all the corpses!”
“We shall immediately start the summoning magic activation sequence.”
The Necromancers gathered the blood of the dead soldiers and began inscribing rune letters with it. The terrified servants and maids were to be used as sacrificial offerings.
The warp magic circle was created, and the Necromancers began injecting demonic energy.
“We must stop him!”
Knights and magicians rushed towards Rudis, trying to stop him in his tracks.
“Ahahahaha! This is only the beginning! This place shall be the starting point where the lifelong dream of the noble Necromancer King Amon becomes reality!”
Rudis raised his walking staff up before slamming it down.
The warp gate began opening up.
A line as thin as a piece of paper drew in the empty air before the space itself began splitting open.
The reddish-dark space about five metres big slowly widened. And dozens upon dozens of eerie eyes could be seen inside.
Tentacles suddenly shot out from this distorted space to capture the knights and magicians, dragging them inside.
Horrifying screams resounded out.
The surviving knights and magicians hurriedly stumbled back as all blood drained out from their complexions.
They lifted up their heads and witnessed it.
They saw the tentacles seemingly blanketing the entire audience chamber, and then, countless eyeballs floating in the air.
The main body featuring all those things finally revealed itself.
A hideous roundish lump of flesh that would easily rouse the feeling of disgust was ‘crawling out’ from the opening in the space.
Hundreds of eyeballs seemingly floating in the empty air darted around rapidly.
The roundish flesh split open to reveal hundreds of eyes, which looked as if it was shoved in there, darting around like some kind of freakish nightmare. Meanwhile, rows of sharp, serrated fangs spread open within the mouth-hole of the creature.
One of the magicians who was witnessing this sight cried out, “Big Eyes!”
It was an ancient demon, a monster referred to as the gatekeeper of hell.
“We don’t have enough sacrifices.” Rudis roared out while undoing the fabric covering his bone staff. “Turn this place into a Negative Field. Unleash the undead and drag in more sacrifices to this very ground. This place shall…”
The summoning magic was activated as he spoke.
“…Become our starting point!”
The warp spell was connected to the headquarters inside the forest of demonic beasts, and a large wave of monsters was set loose upon the unsuspecting city.
Countless monsters dashed along the city’s streets and began hunting down the fiefdom’s citizens.
The fiefdom’s defence forces quickly rushed out to fight against the horde of monsters. But in the midst of the defensive battles, the soldiers and magicians flinched nastily and ungainly stumbled back in shock.
Dozens of huge crimson-coloured monsters were now standing before them.
“R-red Ogres!”
The Red Ogres grabbed the soldiers and ripped them apart with their ravenous fangs.
Blood began dyeing the fiefdom of Elusha.
Rudis, who was spectating on this spectacle, heartily guffawed out.
‘A little bit more. Yes, just a little more!’
So, so many souls were gathering up here.
All around him were the mangled, torn corpses of knights and magicians killed by the Big Eyes.
‘Death’ continued to gather here, and the warp gate connected to purgatory gradually widened to match the incoming death.
More undead flooded out from the opening.
Dozens, hundreds, thousands of undead, their bodies made out of bones and souls, continued crawling out.
The ones that deeply resented the living were now being freed from their prison.
And so, as long as this gate was maintained, undead would continue to flood out infinitely from beyond.
…As long as the gate was maintained by offering enough sacrifices, that was.
“Soon, this place will transform into a living purgatory!”
This land would soon turn into a world of death.
**
(TL: Back to 1st person POV.)
Even if we were inside an enclosed space, the muffled screams from the outside still managed to come through the walls.
Inside this prison filled with sickly dampness and a mouldy smell, I stared at my new visitor standing outside the cell.
A nose-stinging stench, and the attributes appearing on his status window as displayed by my Mind’s Eye…
Yup, an old Necromancer was gracing us with his presence.
His face was full of wrinkles while his hand gripped onto his staff.
He cackled like a madman and kept pointing his bony finger at us. “Ohh, the Paladin of silver-white! This look suits you well! Everything you have done, I shall make you regret every single one of them from this moment on!”
“Everything we have done?”
“That’s right! The Ratman Queen, the mutated Hydra with five heads, and even the Two Headed Ogre! All those were glorious achievements we have carefully prepared for the past several decades. Yet, you dare to wreck them all?!”
The Necromancer angrily waved his walking staff around and skeletons were summoned around him.
They wielded spears fashioned out of bones while their jaw bones clattered in noisy laughter.
The skeletons opened the cell’s door and pointed their bone spears at us.
“Allow me to stab you all over your body! Your hands and feet are bound so you can’t even put up any resistance. Quietly turn into a skewered lump of meat, and…”
I silently injected divinity inside me and twisted my arms a bit. The shackles made out of steel easily got crushed and fell apart.
From the looks of these things, they must’ve been magic restraints capable of confining even Eltera-ranked adventurers. However, they couldn’t even last three seconds against me.
While the Necromancer geezer was flinching in shock, I reached out and grabbed the skeleton’s skull before crushing it.
The undead without a head collapsed on the floor in a heap before disappearing.
“I gotta say, I’m relieved by this.”
I raised my head away from the skeleton and stared at the Necromancer.
Meanwhile, my own rune letters began engraving on the floor. As divinity began flooding out, the holy skeletons broke through the prison’s dirty floor and howled out loudly.
What a relief it was to learn that the ‘decision’ hadn’t been made by the royal court of Aihrance. They must’ve been still keeping their wary eye on me, all the while procuring more information and ‘investigating’.
In that case, what I’m about to do shouldn’t pose a problem.
I didn’t know what the current situation was like on the outside, but even a moron could tell that something major was going down.
I’d be making the Aihrance royal court owe me a big one by cleaning up the mess.
“Did you just tell me to become a skewered lump of meat?”
That’s why…
“Even I’m kind of curious about what that will look like.”
My skeletons raised their steel spears and glared at the Necromancer.
“Why don’t we find out by using you?”
< 116. Big Eyes -1 (Part One and Two) > Fin.
