Chapter 391: Episode 391

There once was a boy, born into a wealthy family in a chaotic era, wanting for nothing.

But.

“Senekta! Where are you!”

His father was a demon. His name was Silage Visabar, a necromancer—one of the corpse-handlers the world so despised.

Believing it would be beneficial to open his son’s core at a young age, he forcibly performed the procedure on the three-year-old’s heart. But Silage’s skills were mediocre, and the operation was an unbearable strain on the child. The boy’s core was shattered, condemning him to a lifetime of agonizing pain.

The side effects were horrific. The toddler’s body withered, his skin wrinkling like an old man’s, while his flesh swelled and burst. Inflamed lumps erupted across his skin, and he vomited blood twice an hour.

He saw the revulsion that inevitably flickered across the faces of the maids who had once bathed him so gently. His mother would hold the monstrous form he had become and weep for hours. But his father, the one responsible, would beat him, demanding to know why his own son couldn’t endure such a trifle.

The boy’s father, Silage Visabar, was a beast. He violated the mansion’s staff several times a day, indifferent to gender or race. He even laid his hands on his own family. The boy’s sister, four years his senior, took her own life.

He bought slaves and war orphans indiscriminately for his pleasure, and when he tired of them, he had them impaled. The boy’s father, who enjoyed drinking wine while watching slaves die in agony, was a demon.

His childhood was hell. At ten, the boy still suffered from the effects of his father’s failed procedure. He fought desperately to escape the pain, devouring every book on black magic in the mansion and hunting down those he couldn’t find. He was driven by a single, all-consuming need: to unlock the secrets of the core and free himself from this torment. He even frequented the clandestine academic societies of corpse-handlers, starving for knowledge.

And then, one day…

“An interesting theory.”

A man extended a hand to him.

“I will provide the funds. Research as you please.”

While his father squandered the family fortune on alcohol and women, this man was a savior.

Hiding from his father, the boy converted a warehouse into a laboratory and conducted countless experiments on living subjects. The estate was already overflowing with corpses, many of them rare species and monstrosities sacrificed for his father’s ‘amusements’.

Five more years passed. On the boy’s fifteenth birthday, he finally perfected a forbidden black magic. He called it ‘Consumption’. The idea came from monsters that shed their skin to change form. It was a technique to consume another’s blood, flesh, and bone, then use black magic to reassemble them within his own body, shedding his old form to be reborn in the image of the consumed.

“Where are you! My son, Senekta! As it is your birthday, I shall personally take you!”

His father, staggering drunk in broad daylight, smashed down the door to the boy’s warehouse laboratory.

“What is this! What is all this!”

The boy’s expression turned to ice. He had begged the staff to keep this place a secret. To be betrayed like this…

“Answer me, Senekta! What have you been hiding from me in here!”

The boy… smiled.

“Father.”

“Wh-what is it?”

“Thank you for the meal.”

From that day forward, the boy became Silage.

—

He walked the halls of the mansion, and no one recognized him. Not the maids who bathed him, not even his own mother.

“Master. Dinner is ready,” a maid said politely.

When the boy looked at her, she flinched with a sharp cry and threw her hands over her head, trembling. He wondered how many beatings it took to create such a reaction.

He gently extended a hand toward her. The young maid, her eyes brimming with tears, slowly looked up.

’SLAP!’

The boy struck her across the face with all his might.

“You lowly thing. Why do you block my path?”

“I-I’m sorry!”

He couldn’t be discovered.

“Master, what of the execution this afternoon?”

“Proceed without delay.”

If the world learned of his patricide, the family would be ruined.

“My love, what about our son, Senekta?”

“Forget him.”

The boy continued to treat everyone around him with ruthless cruelty. It was partly to protect his identity, but there was also anger.

Even with ‘Consumption’, he couldn’t alter his heart or brain. He could replicate every claw and spot on his father’s body, but the pain from his broken core remained. Just because he had become Silage didn’t mean those who had betrayed him deserved to be free of suffering. He refused to suffer alone.

The boy played the part of Silage with chilling devotion. Day by day, his evil reputation grew.

“Is that man Silage?”

“The butcher.”

“I heard he kills slaves and orphans for his experiments.”

“Horrifying.”

At banquets, nobles whispered of his atrocities. Silage. Silage. Silage. Silage. Hearing them curse his father’s name felt good. Yes, more.

Curse him more. His father’s evil needed to be known by all. The boy flaunted his research and experiments. In time, he devised a way to manage his broken core: the Blood Core.

It was different from a conventional core. The procedure was simple, but it came with numerous handicaps and a shortened lifespan. However, it was specialized for Hemomancy and produced outstanding power.

“This is truly a foundational technology.”

He met again with the man from his youth, who, after decades, was still funding him. He, too, hadn’t aged a day.

“Will you not join me? For the sake of this world’s truth.”

The man’s words resonated deep within the boy. The world he described was everything the boy had ever wanted. He believed it was a cause worth dying for.

And so, the man and the boy joined hands.

The Blood Cult was born.

In the name of the cult, Silage committed countless atrocities. He did it to end the gnawing pain in his heart, to make more people revile the name Silage, and to reach the ultimate truth.

When the body of Silage grew old, the boy established a new rule for the Visabar family.

-The head of the Visabar family is solely Silage Visabar.

-Upon the head’s death, the successor shall inherit the name Silage.

It was a measure to preserve the name. The boy fathered many sons, and when the time came, he consumed the one in the best condition to become Silage once more. He consumed his sons, his grandsons, and their descendants after them.

The boy and Silage Visabar continued on, an immortal line of one.

Only the boy knew the truth. And somewhere along the way, without realizing it…

“Kill them all.”

“Bring the next corpse.”

He had become the very thing he despised: his father, Silage Visabar.

Ages passed. The era of necromancers and priests dawned. Silage Visabar VI served as a Hemomancy professor at Kizen. With the changing times, the reputation of a horrific experimenter had softened into that of a great and prestigious family of hemomancers.

“I need sacrifices. Hearts and cores, brimming with youthful power and vitality.”

To offer the finest hearts. To execute the long-awaited Apostle’s Revival Project. He taught at Kizen for twenty years.

Just as he was about to sacrifice 600 first-years, Kizen unexpectedly dispatched him on a mission to disable the ring of blood. It was a setback, but Silage adapted swiftly. He consumed the body of Walter Han, the successor he himself had recommended, and returned to the academy.

A brat named Simon Polentia had interfered at times, but Silage slipped past every obstacle, using the cunning he had honed over centuries and the secret arts of the Blood Cult, unknown even to Nephthys.

And now, just as his tragic, long-held wish was about to be realized…

“I’m not a fan of simplistic dichotomies of good and evil, but…”

The one who stood in his way at the final moment was that same Simon Polentia. And he now wielded the power of a Legion Commander.

“You are the most horrific evil on this continent, Silage Visabar.”

Silage smirked.

“I think so, too.”

Simon’s lips pressed into a thin, hard line as he glared at the professor. He looked pleased. How twisted could one person be? Did such words sound like a compliment to a man like him?

But beyond all that, something about him was fundamentally broken.

’‘I think so, too.’’

Simon squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again, his gaze sharp.

“You must have spent an unimaginable amount of time changing bodies like that.”

Silage tilted his head in confusion.

“I’m not talking to that shell.”

Simon’s eyes blazed.

“I’m talking to ’you’. Have you been a monster for so long you’ve forgotten how to have a proper conversation, human to human? You ghost.”

At that single word, a jolt went through Silage, a tremor deep in his chest.

’An insight that pierces the very essence of things. As expected.’

It had been a long time since his heart had leaped like this. He let his arms fall to his sides.

“More importantly, I have yet to hear your answer to my proposal, Simon Polentia.”

“I refuse,” Simon spat, holding Herseva forward. “I will stop you, no matter what it takes.”

“I see.”

Silage’s expression turned to ice as he spread his arms wide.

“Then die here.”

’Silage Original – ‘Bloodstone Fortress’’

Behind Silage, a crystalline fortress of bloodstone began to rise, gleaming like a malevolent ruby.

“I will disintegrate you so that not even a speck of your corpse remains.”

It was a black magic that required time to cast. Simon knew with chilling certainty that the moment the fortress was complete, it would be over.

“Herseva! It has to be the Third Authority! Please!”

[Ah, really!]

She trembled, her entire form shuddering in agony.

[I don’t care anymore!]

Golden sand poured from her body, and Simon raised his staff to command it.

’That sand… it’s no ordinary spell.’

’I have to complete my dungeon before his fortress is finished!’

The two men glared at each other, their black magic swelling. In moments, Silage’s Bloodstone Fortress was complete, bathing the entire basin in a deep, bloody crimson. It was a spell of mass slaughter, designed to annihilate all life in the vicinity by evaporating every drop of blood.

And then…

Herseva’s vast sea of golden sand surged outward, engulfing both Simon and Silage.

’Herseva Original – ‘World of Sand’’

At the same instant the Bloodstone Fortress unleashed its crimson light, the two men vanished into the sand.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep