【 ABYSS INVASION, THE ANCIENT SEA GOD 】

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A scream rang out from within the mist, only to vanish almost as quickly as it had appeared.

As the fog gradually dissipated, it revealed a group of grotesque demons.

The clothing on their bodies still faintly resembled that of the town’s inhabitants, and the weapons in their hands dripped with fresh, crimson blood. At their feet lay the mangled corpses of knights and priests, their forms utterly disfigured, with faintly recognizable faces frozen in terror.

As for the plump nobleman, he too had undergone a complete transformation.

Now standing at nearly four meters tall, clad in pitch-black armor, and bearing a head resembling that of a ram, he had become a horned demon whose strength had reached the Gold-rank.

He slowly licked the blood from the tip of his blade, a glint of madness and brutality flashing through his scarlet eyes.

With a sinister grin, he raised his demonic sword and commanded:

“You worthless wretches, hurry and fully open the dimensional passageway to welcome the great army of our Demon Lord!”

“Roar!”

The demons howled in unison.

They then hoisted the corpses of the priests and knights onto their shoulders and marched toward the dense forest behind the town.

Within the forest, thick mist lingered.

Beyond it lay a clearing, as though deliberately prepared.

At the center of the ground, a jagged spatial rift spread outward, exuding black miasma. The rift was only seven to eight meters long and less than two meters wide.

Beneath it, a massive hexagram array had been inscribed upon the ground. Its grooves were filled with dark, blood-red fluid.

The demons carried the corpses to the edge of the array, drew their curved blades, and began to drain the blood.

The dark red liquid slowly flowed into the grooves, gradually filling the final gaps.

Once finished, the demons let out cruel laughter and tossed the drained bodies into a nearby trench.

The corpses of the knights and priests tumbled down, piling together with countless others at the bottom.

These bodies were in equally miserable states, and from their faint features, they appeared to be the local townsfolk.

Among them was a plump figure whose body had already been half devoured—the true baron of the town.

After discarding the bodies, the demons returned to the array.

The horned demon took out several red crystals from his robe, each emitting a deep, eerie glow, and placed them into the slots of the array.

In the next instant, the crystals radiated a blood-red light, and the liquid within the array began to boil violently.

Placing his right hand over his chest, the horned demon chanted reverently:

“Oʼ Great Demon Lord Helel…”

“Your most faithful servant calls upon your power!”

As his voice fell, the massive array erupted in a dark crimson glow, and a pillar of scarlet light shot into the sky.

The beam enveloped the black spatial rift, then surged upward, piercing through the clouds as a subtle wave of energy spread outward.

Under the illumination of the crimson pillar, the seven to eight meter long rift trembled slightly, extending countless spiderweb-like cracks in all directions.

The cracks quivered, showing faint signs of self-repair, yet under the influence of the black miasma, their recovery gradually slowed down.

That was the corruption of abyssal power.

The earth trembled.

Mana churned violently.

Dark clouds gathered, slowly blotting out the sky.

In the next moment, accompanied by a roar that seemed to echo from ancient times, a massive, grotesque claw emerged from the rift.

The claw burned with flames, and through the opening, a colossal form could be vaguely seen.

This was a demon king whose strength had reached the Legendary-rank.

With a violent pull, the black spatial rift was torn wider, transforming into a far larger breach.

Amid sounds resembling shattering glass, a spatial passage over a hundred meters long was ripped open above the ground.

Excited, frenzied roars echoed from the other side. Along with the spreading miasma, countless lesser demons surged forth like a flood, akin to a swarm of locust.

Clad in crude armor and wielding bone blades, they beat their chests and howled wildly.

In the next instant, a vast shadow descended. A gigantic foot stepped out from the rift, crushing the lesser demons beneath it before they could even flee, reducing them to pulp.

Then, the terrifying demon king fully descended into the world of Seigües.

He greedily inhaled the pure air of this realm and burst into booming laughter.

With his arrival, even more demons poured forth from the rift.

There were greater demons of various races, clad in rough, standardized armor of the Abyss.

There were towering arch demons radiating immense power.

They advanced alongside siege engines covered in barbed spikes, emerging from the spatial passageway.

Gradually, a vast and well-equipped demonic army began to take shape.

The Legendary-rank demon king raised his nearly forty-meter-long flaming blade high into the air.

Gazing toward the fertile plains in the distance, a bloodthirsty gleam flashed in his crimson eyes as he roared toward the heavens:

“Charge! Destroy this world! Slaughter its inhabitants!”

“Destroy this world! Slaughter its inhabitants!”

Excited roars erupted from within the demonic horde.

Thus, the Abyss descended upon the land.

And the Demon’s invasion of the realm of Seigües…

—Had officially begun.

༺⟐༻

Mindel Realm, the Oceanic World inside the Ruins.

After Evé displayed her overwhelming power, all the marine creatures in the vicinity ceased their attacks against her.

Not only that, but as Evé advanced toward the core region of the ruin’s seal, all the sea creatures along her path trembled in fear and instinctively gave way.

She moved forward with calm ease, as if strolling through a garden.

Each step appeared to cover only a short distance, yet in reality, she would emerge several kilometers ahead.

Kelez and the ten players followed behind her.

Enveloped by Eve’s power and lifted by divine force, they were barely able to keep pace with the Goddess.

Kelez gazed at Eve’s graceful figure with fervent admiration, while the players curiously observed their surroundings.

By now, their initial excitement upon entering this world had gradually faded.

Now, their attention was focused solely on completing the quest and gathering valuable treasures.

Unfortunately, after witnessing the terrifying frenzy of the marine creatures, none of them dared to act alone. At the same time, they feared falling behind if they left the goddess’s protection.

Thus, although they coveted the magical creatures around them, they ultimately did not dare to stop.

Of course, any seaweed or coral that could be taken along the way was swiftly collected without hesitation.

Like a calamity sweeping through, nothing was left untouched.

Evé advanced unhindered.

It almost seemed as though the earlier resistance and fear from the will of the world had been nothing more than an illusion.

Yet Evé knew with certainty that it had not been an illusion.

Nor did this smooth passage mean that the opposing force had abandoned resisting.

Most likely, it feared Eve’s strength and had chosen to consolidate its power, preparing for a final confrontation at the core.

Though Evé appeared relaxed, she was in fact fully alert, ready at any moment to summon the Gate of Reversal and draw upon the power of her true form.

The megalithic formation within the ruins was vast.

Fortunately, Eve’s point of descent was not far from the core.

She passed through towering stone structures resembling mountains, steadily approaching the heart of the seal.

As they progressed, the already dense magical energy in the surroundings grew even more intense.

The hazy mist of mana had disappeared and in its place, floated countless translucent, spherical droplets were suspended in midair.

These were not water droplets, but liquefied mana formed from extreme concentration.

On the ground stretched a vast ocean of crystalline spheres.

These were formed as the liquefied mana gradually solidified and fell to the surface.

Each crystal sphere was about the size of a marble. Together, they formed a shifting sea like flowing sand, refracting brilliant, multicolored light that left the players staring in astonishment.

If not for the ongoing quest, they would have eagerly stopped to collect every last one of these spheres.

In fact, some had already begun weighing the rewards of completing the quest against the benefits of ignoring it altogether in favor of farming these crystal spheres.

However, before their internal struggle could reach a conclusion, the crystalline sea suddenly trembled, revealing a massive, illusory sea serpent.

It had apparently been hiding beneath the crystals all along. But upon sensing Eve’s presence, it fled in panic.

Feeling the terrifying aura emanating from the creature, the players swallowed nervously.

Only then did they realize that this seemingly harmless sea of crystals concealed deadly danger.

In the end, the monsters of this world were simply too powerful. Therefore, staying close to the goddess was the safest choice.

Under Eve’s guidance, the group continued forward in silence.

Gradually, they arrived at the core region of the megalithic formation.

It was a vast, open plaza, ancient and worn.

Surrounding it stood a ring of colossal stone pillars, each hundreds of meters wide and thousands of meters tall.

The pillars were carved with archaic patterns, upon which flowed a strange, multicolored radiance.

At the sight of this prismatic light, the players’ gazes became momentarily unfocused, and a faint buzzing echoed within their minds.

For an instant, they seemed to perceive countless fleeting images, from the birth of worlds within the cosmic void to the emergence of life itself.

The visions vanished as quickly as they appeared, leaving no clear memory behind, only a profound sense of ancient history lingering in their hearts.

“The power of a world’s core origin…”

Evé recognized the source of this energy.

That strange, multicolored radiance was the very essence of the Mindel Realm.

At this moment, Evé had fully discerned the mechanism of the seal.

This place was the space where the core origin of the Mindel Realm was located.

The entire sealing formation was built upon this space, using the core’s power to govern the entire realm and mobilize the laws of reality to maintain the suppression of the seal.

Of course, the core origin of a realm could never be as vast as that of an entire world.

This space had clearly been altered, transformed into a state suitable for sealing.

In other words, the Mindel Realm had, from the very beginning, been a world specifically created for the sole purpose of sealing an entity. The oceans, lands, and various forms of life that later evolved upon it were merely incidental byproducts of chance.

Even the magnificent oceanic world within the ruins had gradually formed as a result of magical power gathering near the seal and being influenced by it.

Every effect has its cause.

The geographic environment that evolved within Mindel was an oceanic one, and the scenery within the ruins likewise took the form of an undersea world.

Thus, the nature of the entity being sealed, and the laws it was associated with, had already become evident.

“Kelez, have you ever been here before?”

Evé asked as she gazed at the plaza enveloped in multicolored radiance.

Kelez’s eyes had already grown distant with astonishment.

He frowned slightly before replying:

“Your Majesty…, I came here more than eight hundred years ago. But at that time, these multicolored lights still did not exist…”

It’s likely because the seal had not yet deteriorated significantly, and the power of Mindel’s core origin had not begun to leak…

Evé completed the thought silently in her mind.

She turned her gaze toward the center of the plaza, where the multicolored glow was slowly converging upon a platform.

Atop the platform stood a solitary, weathered stone pillar, engraved with ancient script that exuded a sense of profound antiquity.

The multicolored radiance gathered upon the pillar before vanishing into it.

In front of the pillar stood a coffin formed from black mana crystals.

“I remember that platform… but at that time, that coffin was not there…”

Kelez said, his expression grave.

“The coffin wasn’t there…”

Eve murmured thoughtfully.

Her gaze lingered on the coffin for several seconds before shifting to the pillar.

The radiance of the origin’s power upon the pillar shone even more brilliantly, like a radiant spectrum.

The ancient, decayed aura she had previously sensed originated precisely from this pillar.

This pillar was the true core of the entire seal.

By contrast, the coffin seemed to have appeared abruptly, as if added later.

Yet it was not unrelated, as Evé could see streams of multicolored origin power continuously flowing into the coffin, where they were steadily absorbed as though nurturing it.

Her gaze moved repeatedly between the pillar and the coffin before settling upon the ancient inscriptions carved into the monolithic stone.

Following the knowledge she inherited from the World Tree, she read the ancient script aloud in the language of the Titans:

“Pontus…”

Pontus.

An ancient name.

In the Titan tongue, it meant the ocean, or more precisely… the Sea God.

The moment Evé spoke the name, the entire space within the ruins began to tremble violently.

A vast tide of magical power surged and gathered, forming a vague, colossal face above the platform.

It resembled the head of an octopus, bearing a striking resemblance to Leviathan, nearly identical in form.

However, its aura was much older, and far more ancient.

It turned its gaze upon Eve, its oppressive presence tinged faintly with fear.

“Leave this place!”

A deep, thunderous roar echoed throughout the ruins.

Before Evé could respond, the indistinct face dissolved into a gray mist and surged into the coffin.

In the next instant, the black crystal coffin exploded apart as a dark figure emerged into view.

Seeing the figure rise into the air, Eve’s gaze sharpened slightly, while Kelez cried out in shock:

“T-Teacher?!”

A tall figure, with black hair and black eyes, and a cold yet strikingly beautiful appearance.

The dark figure was none other than the guardian of the Shadowshade Clan, the Shadow of Night, Eris.

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