Capítulo 582: Hell

The towers shut instantly as if equipped with electronic locks.

All but the largest tower started to fade, dragging themselves back into the Earth. Chains sprouted from the ground, wrapping the smaller gates, while the huge doorway that swallowed Nikolai did the same.

As if they planned this from the start.

.

.

.

Nikolai struggled against the hand that grabbed him like a toy, “Damn it!” Unable to shake himself free, he enlarged his fangs and leaned back with a fierce light in his eyes. Then, like a ferocious beast, it bit the giant, copper-skinned palm.

“!!!!”

A low, inaudible cry sounded, neither human nor a language that Nikolai recognised as he fell to the floor, rolling across the sizzling dirt below. ‘Red?’

It took ten seconds for him to come to a halt, the hot dirt creating burns down his forearms and chest. However, what shocked him the most was the surroundings.

Tall, flesh colours constructs lingered distantly on the horizon, towers of twisted bone and meat like a nightmare. Around Nikolai, the dull red dirt sizzled under the blood-red sky, which loomed above.

‘What the Hell is that sun? Why is it so strange!’

A black ring filled with blood covered half the sky.

Nikolai, wretched at the familiar smell of sizzling meat, carried a sour and almost nauseating stench. In the distance, humanoid figures hung from spiked pillars, their bodies weakly struggling while they cooked alive.

His throat sounded as he scanned the area, wiping the searing dust from his body.

“Fuck, this is a little ridiculous. No?” He spoke with a sarcastic voice, his eyes focused on the endless clump of monsters facing him.

Hundreds of dogs all stood still, growling and drooling from their wide maws. Beside them, thousands, maybe tens of thousands of imps bouncing, dancing and chuckling at Nikolai, who stood alone in the blood desert.

Then Nikolai’s glance shifted, further back, to a massive monolith, built with a black stage upon which all those monsters stood. But higher, sitting on a black throne almost fifty steps above, was the giant.

‘How did this bastard grab me from there!?’

Beside the massive deformed monster, with two huge, twisted horns and yellow eyes with tiny pupils, were hovering spheres of flesh with a huge single eye, and a mouth spanning from each side.

The big monster’s body was massive, with leg muscles the size of Nikolai’s torso and biceps bigger than a tree trunk.

Cough~

Clearing his throat, he stepped forward and grabbed the Heaven-Slaying spear from the ground, trying his best, formulating his escape plan. Behind him, the portal that brought him closed without a zip.

‘This isn’t good.’

[Human, no. Beast]

“Eh?”

Nikolai’s eyes naturally lifted to the sound of the voice, and that’s when he realised what the monolith truly was. The destroyed surroundings and the broken ruins, this was something he’d seen in the distant past.

‘This is the tower I met Amphitrite!?’

How could it be? His mind became confused. These monsters didn’t exist back then, so where could they have come from? The red sun, the flesh structures, none of this existed when he visited the forgotten tower in the past.

[Are you confused?]

Once again, the deep, barely tangible voice echoed within Nikolai’s brain, so intense was each word that it caused it to rattle like a baby’s toy.

“Who are you?”

[…]

The void didn’t answer, but the monsters ahead of him shifted and appeared anxious.

Nikolai’s gaze lingered on the hovering eyeballs and the strange Tyrant sitting on the black throne, which blocked the entrance to the tower.

‘I am lacking too much information. What should I do?’

Despite the confidence lingering in his heart, Nikolai didn’t want to rush into a battle without trying to gain as much knowledge as possible.

The silence almost felt like the air compressing itself around him, making it harder to breathe.

[I am the master of this fallen world, he who devoured the remains of divinity]

The voice finally returned an answer, with a deeper, heavier tone as if each word gathered mass.

Nikolai’s skin tingled with “Danger” as he gripped his spear tighter, still confused. “That isn’t an answer!”

A slow, deliberate sound echoed across the monolith, something trapped between a snort and a laugh.

[A tower without a guardian has no protection.]

The stone throne groaned beneath the Tyrant’s weight as it shifted, cracks spreading across the black steps like countless spiderwebs.

[Once that woman vanished, the tower lost all protection, and the gateway to Hell opened!]

Nikolai’s eyes swept across the twisted towers once again, from the flesh towers to the souls chained to the spikes; none of this was random.

‘Who is she?’

His mind raced, trying to think who could have protected the tower from this kind of collapse. For one, he’d never heard of these monsters. Nor about Hell, unless it was from the human’s silly religious texts.

[You look confused, dog of the corrupted moon]

‘?’

Each word felt like something sharp dragged across his brain, triggering both a sudden jolt of pain and his danger sense to activate with full effect.

“What is hell?”

He couldn’t just lose this chance for some information.

[Those abandoned by the Nexus, forsaken beings trapped in a world isolated, without water, food or safety. We have one thing! The blood-red sun!]

To the monster’s words, the imps, dogs and eyeballs danced, rolled and barked with delight. From the Tyrant’s words, it felt like power ruled everything in this strange world.

When it mentioned the Nexus, his brain began to race.

Nikolai thought of the information he and his father learned—about an existence, or something that sought to destroy the worlds, and only the tower offered protection.

His eyes shone bright; no longer intimidated, he glared directly into the cold yellow eyes of the Tyrant.

“Then, if you’re so strong. Why haven’t you managed to destroy Earth yet, a place with only weak humans!?”

[Hahaha!]

The blood-red sky churned slowly, the black ring above pulsing like a diseased heart.

[Good, Dog!]

“You need the tower to collapse, or for the corruption to spread!”

Nikolai’s memories of the first tower falling weren’t complete. He struggled to recall them at first. Until he came to this strange world, slowly, as if echoes of time, they seeped into his mind, reinforcing and repairing those vague memories.

[That which you call corruption, is Our blood.]

Nikolai swallowed, the dry heat scraping his throat. “And what does that have to do with this tower?”

The Tyrant leaned forward.

The simple motion caused several imps to shriek and scatter, crushed beneath invisible pressure.

[Towers are anchors.]

The moment the Tyrant spoke, the entire world resonated, the ground shook, and low whirring screams echoed from he tower itself as if to seal or block information.

[Those cowardly gods use them to bind worlds together, like nails. To stabilise their divinity as long as a tower remains and a guardian exists. Hell remains sealed and locked in the darkness.]

Nikolai’s mind flashed back to cold water, to a ruined altar and the lonely mermaid that remained inside a tower that fell thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years before.

“…Amphitrite.”

There was no hell because she still existed in the dead tower, forgotten by time.

But the moment he took her soul and reincarnated her, she lost her connection to the tower, and so the tower lost its nail.

A deep vibration rolled through the monolith beneath Nikolai’s feet, as if the structure itself were remembering its death.

“So this invasion, and the rapid corruption of our tower in the past months, was all my fault.”

Nikolai’s eyes shimmered with a strange light, his expression transforming rapidly, from forlorn to solemn, then settling on a fierce sneer and focused glare.

The Tyrant’s yellow eyes narrowed slightly.

There wasn’t much more to speak about; he’d learned the truth, and that if the tower in the Nexus fell, then these bastards would invade.

What worried him was that this Tyrant facing him wasn’t the strongest, and most likely held a low or mid-tier level at best in their twisted world.

‘There is also a chance that more than one Hell exists at once.’

Thinking back to the gates, this was his outcome and logical thought, since this gate was larger than the others.

Maybe it held no significance other than the huge Tyrant sitting on the throne. The other gates were likely weaker, with only dogs, imps and a few eyeballs at most.

The Tyrant’s claws scraped against the throne as it stood, although its words carried a profound intellect. Nikola couldn’t attribute such things to the ugly dog face.

With his movement, the dogs became unsettled, while the eyes all swooped through the sky, creating a net to capture or seal off Nikolai’s movements, and the little imps started to chant and dance with flames growing in their palms.

“You, what are you?” Nikolai asked, while lowering his posture, prepared to fight at any moment.

[I am what Hell sends when the gate stabilises.]

The air grew heavier, as if the gravity doubled instantly, pushing down on Nikolai’s shoulders.

[Nothing but a mere Tyrant that serves the lords of Hell, a warden of the gateway to Hell!]

Behind the Tyrant, Nikolai finally saw the glowing fire at the top, flickering, fluctuating with arcs of black lightning. It resembled the portal to enter the Nexus.

‘That is the gateway into Hell! It cannot be left like this.’

The hovering eyes drifted closer, their pupils dilating.

[And you, beast, are standing at the crossroads of cause and consequence.]

[You wished to learn about this world.]

The Tyrant’s gaze locked onto him.

[Now you have learned everything, accept death gracefully!]

The demons began to howl.

And the death tower behind, once again awakened.

Only this time, summoning endless streams of imps, dogs and eyes.

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