The Lord’s Manor

The Hunter Family’s estate was built to rival a royal palace, and in some ways, it even subtly outshone the palace of Suinhor.

In all the ways that counted, the lord of the Hunter Family seemed every bit a king.

Perhaps he truly believed he was one.

In the southwestern reaches of Suinhor, he was the king.

Now, this “king” had called upon another “king” to stand before him.

The midday sun blazed overhead.

As Akmanmon moved through the heavily guarded structures, he glanced up at the sky.

His entire body was hidden beneath a wide cloak, a divine artifact that masked all traces of his presence and appearance.

Even so, the scorching sunlight made him uneasy. He pulled the cloak tightly around himself and murmured, “Compared to the sun…”

“I have always preferred a sky filled with stars.”

He walked on, speaking softly to himself. “They say the world of the gods is an endless void, and that at its deepest reaches lies the Dream Starry Sea left behind by the Creator.”

“I wonder if I will ever see it.”

Akmanmon had first learned what the gods’ world looked like from the Abyss Monsters.

Led by an attendant, he stepped onto a staircase guarded by Ability Users. They passed through an outer corridor along the side of the building before he was brought into a concealed chamber.

This was the most heavily fortified place in the Hunter Family’s estate, filled with those the old lord trusted most.

Akmanmon had come alone, seemingly placing himself at the other man’s mercy. Among nobles, this act symbolized complete and unconditional submission.

Outside, a Third-Rank Ability User was stationed to inspect him for anything dangerous. However, Akmanmon simply lifted his gaze, looking at the man for a moment. A red glow filled the Ability User’s eyes, and his mind sank into a daze.

“Are you finished with your inspection?” Akmanmon asked.

The Third-Rank Ability User nodded slowly, his voice subdued. “It is done, sir.”

A low, resonant hum filled the air.

Akmanmon observed as two burly soldiers heaved open a heavy door. Beyond it was a concealed hall, dimly lit and designed in the likeness of the Divine Blessed King’s palace.

“Mr. Manmon,” a voice called from across the chamber. “I have been waiting for you.”

From atop a bed in the distance, the lord of the Red Earth Territory forced himself upright and looked toward Akmanmon.

He was clearly in a dreadful state. This chamber was one the lords of the Hunter Family used only when their lives were nearing an end, a place to settle their final affairs and pass on the family’s inheritance.

In front of the bed’s curtains stood two Ability Users, their longswords held firmly. Their eyes were fixed on Akmanmon with cold and unyielding vigilance.

Both of them were Third-Rank Ability Users.

Beyond that, the entire room was filled with layers of barrier formations and ritual arrays.

It seemed the full strength of the Hunter Family’s core forces had gathered here. For this one meeting, they had mobilized everything, leaving nothing to chance.

The old lord spoke, his hoarse voice resonating through the vast and empty space.

“Your recent actions have been far from subtle. You have already exceeded the boundaries of our agreement.”

“And now, you have gone so far as to summon this so-called God of Silver and White.”

“What are you truly trying to achieve?”

The old lord fixed Akmanmon with a sharp gaze, firing off his questions. “The King of Ghouls, Suero! That madman who dared to devour a divine being with a mortal body. Is he truly still alive?”

“Is he the God of Silver and White?”

The old lord voiced every suspicion as he pieced the puzzle together, watching Akmanmon’s reaction with unblinking intensity and searching for any telltale sign.

Akmanmon met the old lord’s gaze. “No,” he said firmly.

“Suero is dead. He was killed by the schemes of the Evil God of Original Sin.”

The old lord’s expression shifted, taking on a hint of regret. “He was a formidable man. I had hoped for the fortune of meeting him in person.”

Yet beneath that expression, he let out a deep and silent breath of relief.

A figure like Suero, had he survived, would have been enough to unsettle even him. There was no one who did not fear such a reckless madman.

“Then tell me,” the old lord asked, “what is it you are after?”

Akmanmon did not answer, instead turning the question back on him. “What do you think?”

The old lord gave a knowing smile. “You must be Suero’s student.”

“You are spreading your faith everywhere because you wish to resurrect Suero.”

“Though Suero died, he did not die completely.”

“Because before he perished, he left behind a method for immortality. Is that not right?”

The old lord spoke with the air of someone who had uncovered profound truths, his expression brimming with confidence and certainty.

Akmanmon stood motionless for a long moment, saying nothing. The old lord’s words seemed to have struck a hidden chord, or perhaps Akmanmon was simply piecing together how the man knew such things.

The old lord’s smile widened. Seeing Akmanmon’s reaction made him feel that everything was firmly within his control.

“I can allow what you are doing. I can even help conceal it, ensuring neither the temple nor the goddess finds out.”

“But in return, I want what you possess. The secret to eternal life, the way to escape death.”

Akmanmon raised his head. “You are a believer of the Scarlet Goddess, yet you would betray your divine being?”

“The patriarch of the Hunter Family desires the dark arts of the Ghouls?”

Here, where he held every advantage, the old lord no longer felt the need to hold back. “The divine beings are far too stingy,” he said. “Some things must be taken by our own hands.”

Before Akmanmon could respond, the old lord’s voice rose again. “Let me be clear. I want true immortality, not some hollow trick you use to deceive others.”

“Agreed,” Akmanmon said.

“I can provide the method, but you must completely fulfill every promise you have made.”

“Of course,” the old lord replied. “However, you must first prove your method truly works.”

“I will need a material,” Akmanmon said.

The old lord clapped his hands. Before Akmanmon could even specify what he needed, a dying figure was brought forward. This was the “material.”

The old lord gestured toward the figure. “Please.”

It seemed everything was firmly under his control.

Akmanmon looked at the Snake Person before him, whose body was riddled with festering sores. He could sense the immense suffering radiating from the man.

Even in his wretched state, the Snake Person raised his eyes to meet Akmanmon’s. They were filled with a desperate refusal to give in.

“Please! Help me!”

“I don’t want to die!”

Without hesitation or mercy, Akmanmon reached out and gripped the man by the throat.

The Snake Person’s body jerked sharply, his eyes widening in sheer terror as he stared at Akmanmon, unable to look away.

“No…”

“I don’t want to die… I can’t…”

“I… am alive…”

“Ugh…“

At first, he managed to force out a few broken syllables, but soon, all that remained was a dreadful, breathless rattling sound.

Akmanmon seemed to prolong the process intentionally, forcing the man to experience the full weight of death’s approach.

Little by little, the man felt death creeping closer.

Yet with each passing moment, his terror of death grew stronger, and his hunger to live burned even fiercer.

One of the guards shouted, “We told you to save him! What are you doing?”

But the old lord raised a hand, silencing him. He then spoke the words that had become a common refrain among the followers of the God of Silver and White.

“Death is not the end,” the old lord said, watching Akmanmon with a faint smile. “It is a new beginning.”

“Is that not right? That is the doctrine of the Church of the God of Silver and White.”

Without raising his head, Akmanmon replied, “You seem to know quite a lot.”

At that moment, the “material” took its final breath and died.

Then, the Silver Insect marking on Akmanmon’s hand began to shift and move as the power within him flowed outward.

A ritual array unfolded beneath him, spreading across the floor.

As the Snake Person’s lifeless body lay still, an unusual phenomenon began to unfold.

His Life Dream had drifted far away, moving toward the Dream Starry Sea of the Divine Kingdom of Creation.

The fierce, burning refusal he had left behind, that desperate clinging to life, began to take shape under the ritual’s influence. Slowly, it crystallized into the form of a phantom insect.

At first, the insect was incorporeal. The moment it burrowed into the Snake Person’s body, however, it began to consume the flesh and blood within, and through this process, it became real.

A Cannibal Worm.

Ridges began to form on the surface of the Snake Person’s skin, rising one after another as if something beneath was relentlessly pushing upward.

Finally, the worm burrowed into his brain.

At that moment, the Snake Person who had just died started to convulse violently.

Akmanmon turned to the old lord. “I need more material.”

The old lord, now out of his bed, leaned forward in his seat without realizing it, his eyes straining to see what was happening below.

From the moment the dead Snake Person began to tremble and move again, the old lord lost all semblance of composure. His eyes revealed his shock, and beneath it, a hunger so profound it seemed to shake him.

In comparison to the Snake Person who had been dying moments ago, the old lord’s own desire to live burned even more intensely.

The moment Akmanmon spoke, the old lord bellowed, his voice leaving no room for hesitation, “Give it to him! Give him everything!”

Two armored soldiers entered from outside. They dragged a gaunt, emaciated slave bound in ropes and tossed him to the ground.

The slave, unaware of what was about to happen, whimpered in terror as his instincts drove him to struggle relentlessly.

Roar!

At that moment, the newly dead Snake Person jolted upright with a wild, guttural howl. His eyes burned red, and his throat emitted strange, unnatural noises. He scanned his surroundings instinctively, desperate to find something, moving with the ferocity of a starving predator.

Akmanmon turned to the soldiers. “Kill the offering,” he commanded. “Let the blood and the scent of death flow.”

The soldiers looked up for confirmation before quickly following Akmanmon’s order and killing the slave.

Blood pooled across the floor, and the frenzied Snake Person instantly fixated on the corpse. With a burst of terrifying strength, he broke free from his restraints and lunged forward.

What followed was a scene of horrifying intensity.

The newly “revived” Snake Person devoured the corpse whole, right before their eyes.

The sound of chewing filled the vast chamber and echoed through the stillness.

At the same time, enormous changes began to take hold of the Snake Person’s body.

As he consumed, the festering sores across his flesh started to close and heal, one after another.

His body, once skeletal and withered, gradually grew strong and full.

This was the power of the Cannibal Worm and the countless souls who refused to accept death, burning with the desire to remain alive.

It was something that emerged from death itself.

A true ghoul, an entirely unique kind.

They emerged from the radiant power of the Divine Artifact, the Silver Insect. Formed from the living’s fear of death and their intense will to survive, this energy condensed into Cannibal Worms. The worms then took over the original body, transforming it into a ghoul.

As long as the Divine Artifact, the Silver Insect, remained intact, and as long as death itself persisted, they would continue to exist and multiply.

As it fed, the newborn ghoul slowly recovered from its frenzy and hunger. It eventually staggered to its feet in a daze, wandering aimlessly across the stone-paved floor before it regained awareness and looked down at its own body.

“I’m alive.”

“I’m well.”

It spoke with a puzzled expression, blood still smeared at the corners of its mouth.

Everyone in the room heard the words distinctly.

Every soul in the room was frozen in a mix of astonishment, exhilaration, and fear.

Akmanmon kept his head lowered, his expression detached from the creation before him.

No one noticed as Akmanmon, with his head still bowed, moved his lips ever so slightly, silently shaping the same two lines.

“I’m alive.”

“I’m well.”

All eyes remained fixed on the one who had returned from death.

With the help of a young girl, the old lord slowly rose from his seat and took a few steps forward.

He leaned down, staring intently for a long moment, as if finally confirming something he had doubted until now.

His dry throat strained as he managed to force out a single word.

“Good!”

“He truly lived. He has come back to life.”

“So it is truly possible for someone to return from death.”

“The King of Ghouls, Suero, the one who dared to devour a divine being, was certainly no ordinary man.”

Even now, he still believed everything was made possible by what the former King of Ghouls, leader of the Cannibal Cult, had left behind.

He could not accept that the young man standing before him was the one who had achieved something as extraordinary as “returning from death.”

Nor could he begin to imagine that everything Akmanmon had done was not for the purpose of resurrecting Suero at all, but to become a divine being.

What he did not know was that the process he had just witnessed was deeply flawed. A Ghoul born through this method could never retain its former memories. From the very beginning, it was an entirely new individual.

The old lord, who moments ago seemed to hold all knowledge and control, now realized how little he truly understood.

The information he had received appeared accurate, yet it was incomplete.

All he knew was that everything he had believed had now been confirmed before his eyes.

Akmanmon did possess a method left behind by Suero.

Akmanmon did carry a powerful divine artifact.

Akmanmon could indeed bring the dead back to life.

Each step had been proven, one by one.

This had pushed him to a state of absolute, unwavering belief.

Akmanmon stood his ground and addressed the old lord. “I have done what was asked. Is it not now your turn to honor your promise?”

The old lord kept his eyes on the one who had returned from death and did not look at Akmanmon at all.

“Incredible,” he said, his voice trembling with emotion.

“It is true.”

“I no longer face death. I can live on.”

Only then did he seem to respond to Akmanmon, his next words spoken as if in reply.

“What you said,” he murmured, “is indeed true.”

As those words faded into the stillness, a figure stepped from the shadows of a dimly lit corner. Their skin was pale, and their eyes held a faint red hue within their pupils.

Dressed in neatly arranged clothing, the figure offered a response with the precise etiquette of a noble. “Of course.”

“Everything I told you was true.”

It was the old ghoul who had been at Akmanmon’s side all along. He had apparently defected to the Hunter Family and the Red Earth Territory long ago.

This was not particularly surprising.

On the surface, the Hunter Family, with its control over the entire Red Earth Territory, appeared to offer far greater prospects than the shadowy and heretical Cannibal Cult.

The old lord began to laugh, the wrinkles on his face deepening as his eyes gleamed with boundless greed and triumph.

Although he had not yet become a ghoul, in that moment, he looked no different from one.

He said nothing more. Without even looking at Akmanmon, he gave his command with absolute certainty.

“Capture him!”

“I want the divine artifact he holds, and the knowledge he possesses!”

The ambitious old lord had never intended to form a genuine partnership with Akmanmon. Everything he had done was to confirm that the “traitor” had spoken the truth and to verify that Akmanmon truly possessed what he desired.

At that moment, the conflict broke out completely.

Barriers and ritual arrays activated in rapid succession, layering over one another to enclose the space like an impenetrable cage.

Walls of light appeared one after another, sealing everything inside.

No matter what unfolded within, those outside would remain completely unaware.

One Ability User after another entered the room, closing in on Akmanmon from every direction. It seemed he was completely trapped, with no way out.

Akmanmon, however, simply looked to his left and right before lifting his eyes to meet the gaze of the lord of the Red Earth Territory.

“I wonder,” he said, “whose cage this truly is.”

The Ability Users advanced with precision, their intent clear: to restrain and seal Akmanmon.

Once Akmanmon was subdued, his divine artifact and dark arts would inevitably fall into the hands of the old lord.

The ritual array beneath him flared to life, unleashing a force that suppressed Akmanmon’s power.

Divine techniques surged from every direction, and artifacts of various kinds converged upon him.

Animated ropes twisted through the air.

Third-Rank sealing scrolls unfurled with purpose.

Spikes designed to pin down his abilities shot forward.

Each individual played their part, every action seamlessly connected to the next. From the very start, this had been a carefully orchestrated trap, crafted specifically for Akmanmon.

“Take him alive!”

“He must not die!”

“This one is a high-rank Ability User! Exercise the utmost caution!”

Then a single voice rose above all the others.

“Silver-White Domain.”

A silver-white radiance spread outward as a Mental Domain surged, enveloping everything at once. It suppressed the two innermost layers of ritual arrays.

It continued to expand outward.

In an instant, every divine artifact was cast aside, and everyone in the room was frozen in place.

“What is happening?” people cried out, watching the artifacts they controlled fly backward, unable to make sense of the sight.

“A Mental Domain!” the two Third-Rank Ability Users shouted in alarm.

“It’s a Fourth-Rank ability! A God’s Apostle!” another Third-Rank Ability User screamed in terror. He turned to flee, desperately reaching for his Seal Puppet, but the silver Mental Domain had already engulfed him. The Seal Imprint he summoned was instantly suppressed back into nothing.

A swarm of countless insects poured out from Akmanmon’s body, spreading across the entire domain.

They surged forward and burrowed into everyone in their path.

Terrified screams filled the air, but they were quickly silenced as the translucent insects engulfed them completely.

The bedchamber, with its dark and oppressive palette, transformed into a vast sea of writhing worms.

Akmanmon’s form began to rise, slowly lifting from the ground. He drifted forward, emerging from the swarm of insects toward the old lord’s position.

Only then did the old lord clearly see the silhouette beneath Akmanmon’s information-concealing cloak. He had long since shed the appearance of a Snake Person, long since left behind the shape of a mortal.

God’s Form.

“An Apostle?” the old lord finally breathed in disbelief.

The words had barely left his mouth when he panicked, pushing away the girl who had been supporting him. She fell to the ground in fear, trembling so much she could not move.

The old lord turned and ran toward a side corridor.

At that moment, the old ghoul who had defected to him stepped forward, blocking his way, and bowed with the same polite deference as before.

“My lord,” he said, “where are you planning to go?”

The old lord pointed at him, his voice faltering. “You… you…”

A realization seemed to strike him.

In that instant, Akmanmon raised his hand and pulled back the hood, uncovering his youthful and smooth face.

“I must thank you for letting me enter this place,” he said, “and for providing such a perfectly secluded environment where I can take everything from you.”

“It is exactly what I wanted.”

The old lord looked toward the old ghoul. “Was he placed here by you?”

Akmanmon spoke. “A cannibal may betray the chief of the Cannibal Cult, but a ghoul will never betray its master.”

“Suero looked to the sky and the farthest horizon. I, however, prefer to keep what is mine firmly within my grasp.”

“You will never understand such a principle. You thought your power and wealth could buy anyone, did you not?”

“But power and wealth mean nothing in the face of true strength.”

“Lord of the Red Earth Territory…”

“This is the world of divine beings. The only real strength is one’s own, the Power of Ability.”

The old lord finally understood everything, crying out in fury and defiance.

“What is your intention?”

“Do you plan to become the king of Suinhor and claim the supreme throne?”

Akmanmon paused.

He seemed to sense the mockery in the man’s words, the way he looked down on him.

“A throne?” he asked.

“I am the one who chose to step away from it.”

“What is a king? The one sitting on that throne is nothing more than a captive.”

“I have no desire for such a thing.”

The old lord stared at Akmanmon, his voice beginning to tremble as he asked, “Who are you, exactly?”

The moment the words left the old lord’s lips, the name came to him.

“Manmon?”

He had never given much thought to that name before, but now, with Akmanmon openly admitting he had once been a king, everything seemed to fall into place.

The old lord’s voice cracked as he screamed the name aloud.

“Akmanmon!”

“The last King of Ten Thousand Serpents?”

The old lord’s voice trembled with disbelief. “A man like you… someone like you…”

“Why would you ever choose to become a ghoul?”

Akmanmon continued to approach. “I did not choose to become a ghoul. Suero and I created the ghouls together.”

He walked until he stood before the old lord, then gripped the man’s head firmly in one hand.

His gaze was cold, and though his expression remained calm, his voice was filled with unmistakable contempt.

“What is a king?”

“Even the highest throne is not a throne of kings.”

“It is,” he said, “a Divine Throne.”

The silver insects devoured everything, leaving no one alive.

From the remains of those bodies, new individuals emerged one by one.

They were true ghouls.

Akmanmon settled into the old lord’s seat and said, “Old one, you did well this time.”

The old ghoul bowed. “It was all in service of Your Majesty’s plan.”

“I am no longer anyone’s Majesty,” Akmanmon said.

The old ghoul responded, “If not Majesty upon the throne of kings, then Majesty upon the Divine Throne.”

Time passed without measure.

The doors opened again.

Outside, the same guards stood at their posts, showing no sign that they were aware of what had occurred inside.

The old lord stepped out with his retinue and gave his first command.

“I am growing old, and I wish to have a tomb built for myself.”

“As for how it is to be built, you will follow the counsel of Mr. Manmon.”

Akmanmon stepped forward, giving the impression of complete submission to the old lord’s commands.

With that, the Red Earth Territory summoned a vast number of laborers and craftsmen.

Once gathered, they vanished from public view.

They traveled through the dense jungle to a desolate and remote wasteland, where they began constructing an enormous tomb.

A tomb in the shape of a pyramid.

A vast number of craftsmen and Ability Users assembled on the barren plain as an unending flow of materials and supplies arrived at the site.

“Why is the lord building such a grand tomb?”

“How would we know what the lord is thinking?”

“Why does it have to be done so quickly?”

“You don’t know? The lord isn’t long for this world. Of course his tomb must be built without delay.”

Common Snake People Ability Users worked tirelessly, placing stone after stone to raise the massive structure of the pyramid.

Elite Ability Users, guided by partial blueprints provided by Mr. Manmon, took charge of carefully laying out the ritual arrays across the pyramid’s surface.

Meanwhile, the common craftsmen, assigned to their roles, carried out the most grueling and exhausting tasks under the supervision of the Ability Users and overseers.

The lord was relentless, driving the construction of the pyramid forward day and night with almost no pause.

As the pyramid’s structure began to take shape, Akmanmon stepped inside its unfinished interior.

In the central stone chamber, every surface, from the vaulted ceiling to the floor and the four walls, was covered with dense and intricate patterns.

Akmanmon summoned the Divine Artifact, the Silver Insect, and gently set it down in the chamber.

He then began to speak.

“Death is not the end!”

“But a new beginning.”

“Let the race born from death go forth and seek those souls bound by refusal and bitter longing.”

As the words were spoken, the pyramid’s power merged with the strength of the rituals, sending the Silver Insect’s energy radiating outward in all directions.

The massive pyramid functioned as a signal tower, extending the Silver Insect’s influence far and wide.

As the pyramid neared completion and its design became more intricate, its influence gradually extended across the Red Earth Territory.

The Silver Insect, while powerful, was not a Mythical Artifact and lacked the ability to connect through the Dream Realm’s power at this time. For now, this was the extent of its reach.

For Akmanmon, this was sufficient.

He had designed this pyramid based on the one constructed by Kurmis, and it was all part of his second plan.

His goal was to turn the ghouls into a genuine race, a vast and flourishing people.

As the pyramid took shape, peculiar events started to unfold across the Red Earth Territory. Their impact was still limited, but they carried an air of profound unease.

When Ability Users died, their bodies were rarely buried in common graveyards.

The temple maintained its own burial grounds, and Ability User families had private plots, each carefully maintained by a dedicated caretaker.

Only under rare circumstances would the body of a solitary Ability User be left unburied.

Recently, however, strange occurrences had started to take place within the temple’s burial grounds and certain Ability User cemeteries.

Reports emerged of sounds coming from within sealed stone coffins.

“Movement from inside the graves?”

“There are only dead people in there. How could there be any movement?”

“How could this be?”

However, by the time others arrived to investigate, the sounds were gone.

Only those who had heard it themselves believed it had ever happened.

“You must have misheard.”

“The dead are dead. Are you saying they can come back to life?”

Out on the road, people spoke of rotting corpses that seemed to walk again.

These decaying bodies, heavy with the stench of death, looked as if they had clawed their way out of their graves and now moved with an eerie sense of purpose.

Yet, those who shared such tales disappeared shortly after.

Among the common folk, other strange and disturbing events began to surface as well.

Along a trade road, an ordinary beast lay dead, its body emitting a foul, overwhelming stench. A passerby who approached to investigate discovered the carcass was covered by a thick, writhing swarm of peculiar insects.

“What is this?”

“Insects. So many insects.”

“What kind of insects are these?”

When they tried to brush the insects away with something, the creatures dissolved instantly and vanished as if they were made of water.

“Where did the insects go?”

“They just disappeared?”

The members of the trading caravan exchanged puzzled glances, unsure of what they had just witnessed.

This was not an isolated incident, and such occurrences grew more frequent with each passing day.

The strange insects appeared not only on the bodies of beasts but also on the corpses of Snake People.

If a dead Snake Person was not buried quickly, the same phenomenon would take place.

These insects seemed to come from nowhere and vanished just as mysteriously.

They fed solely on the flesh of the dead, leaving behind an overwhelming sense of dread and disgust.

Despite the unsettling nature of these events, they had not yet escalated into a major disaster, as no living humans had been harmed.

From that day forward, however, corpses, death, and the writhing insects became inseparably linked.

People did not know where the insects came from, only that the creatures were tied to death itself.

It was seen as a curse, a cycle that repeated endlessly.

Countless years later, the phenomenon took on a different form, stripped of its supernatural essence and power and known by another name, but it persisted in memory and legend.