Chapter 499: 499

Powerful presences—five of them—converging fast. This was no surprise, the moment he peeled away the shroud of his curse—the power that had masked their divine signatures—he knew this would happen.

The Empire’s mages had long been hunting, watching, waiting.

They were searching for them, but Ikenga had made sure only he would be found.

A crack of thunder rumbled—not from storm, but from pressure.

The clouds parted with reverent obedience, unveiling five figures descending through the sky like executioners delivered by the heavens.

They floated down in perfect formation, each one radiating vast magical pressure, their robes flickering with runes and enchantments, their presence filling the air itself.

Five sixth-stage goblin mages—some of the Empire’s most terrifying spellcasters.

They did not land. They hovered, a deliberate distance away from Ikenga, not out of caution… but because they had no intention of showing respect.

One among them glowed with a golden hue that shimmered like sunlight refracted through shattered glass. Vellok—archmage and leader—floated slightly ahead, his stare locked on the man before him.

This was not what he expected.

There was no divine aura. No suffocating pressure. No overwhelming brilliance. The figure that stood below—unarmored, unadorned, just a single-eyed man bare chested and piece of clothing wrapped from his waist with a relaxed posture—seemed… ordinary.

Vellok’s first reaction was disappointment. This was the so-called god?His jaw tightened. The mages records were wrong.

But then—Ikenga tilted his head upward slightly, and their eyes met.

And in that single instant, Vellok felt something wrong stir inside him.

His heart skipped a beat.

A chill ran down his spine, unnatural and primal, like something from the deepest part of himself recoiling.

He had to force himself—truly force himself—not to look away.

The air around him no longer felt like his own. The world, the clouds, even the magic he wielded—it all suddenly felt distant.

That eye. That one eye.

It looked at him with a gaze that made him feel exposed. Stripped of pretense, reduced to meat and soul. It was the same gaze he’d given the terrified subjects in his mage tower—the test subjects strapped to stone, begging for mercy.

Now, he was the one being studied. No malice, No pity. Just cold, dispassionate interest.

Vellok swallowed hard. He dared not speak first.

Around him, the other four mages grew still. None of them laughed. None sneered. They too had felt it—that gaze.

A subtle shift passed through the air.

Ikenga’s gaze, once steady and relaxed, narrowed slightly—just enough for the seasoned eyes of the mages to notice. One of them had caught his attention.

Among the five floating figures, a particular mage stood out to him—a man wreathed in gentle arcs of flame, his presence simmering rather than burning. The crimson runes on his robe pulsed faintly, matching the glow in his irises.

Ikenga’s smile deepened.

“I believe we’ve met before,” he said, his voice carrying effortlessly through the space between them, smooth and unbothered.

The flame mage’s brow furrowed. He tilted his head slightly, his expression twisting in confusion—until recognition flared in his eyes.

“You…” he murmured, voice hoarse. “You’re the one… on the moon.”

Ikenga gave a slow, deliberate nod.

“Ah,” he said, as if they were old acquaintances crossing paths in a market square. “You found my eye, didn’t you? Clever. I had forgotten where I left it.”

The flame mage’s composure cracked just a bit. He took a subconscious step back, flames flickering more erratically around him. Ikenga’s tone wasn’t threatening, but it didn’t have to be.

Before tension could snap into something worse, Ikenga raised one hand lazily and waved in casual dismissal.

“No need to worry. I’ve no intention of dropping the moon on your world anymore. That plan no longer serves any purpose.”

The words were said with ease, but they hit like falling stars.

Vellok’s golden aura flickered. His instincts screamed that this man was lying—he had to be. Who spoke of planetary destruction like it was a fleeting idea? Yet something in Ikenga’s demeanor made interrupting feel… dangerous.

It wasn’t that any of the five lacked the capacity for planetary destruction. Each had mastered a unique concept to cement themselves as sixth stage beings.

It wasn’t a matter of lacking individual strength. Instead, for them to bring about the annihilation of a world, it would require a specialized method they could apply to a world, guiding it along a path toward its ruin. However, their power required a crucial link: the ability to connect their mastered concept to a world and then meticulously steer it through the process of its demise.

Think of it like this: they couldn’t just punch a planet into oblivion. Their power needed to work in concert with an existing cosmic alignment or an inherent instability within the planet itself and skillfully guide that process to its conclusion.

However, this new god’s pronouncements carried a different weight entirely. His confidence suggested a capability far beyond subtly guiding existing forces. He spoke of directly interfering with the very forces that held the moon in its orbit. To displace those fundamental forces and cause the moon to fall upon their world implied a level of power that operated on a completely different scale, one that didn’t rely on pre-existing conditions for planetary destruction. It was a direct act of cosmic manipulation.

Their previous arrogance was gone as their feet touched the ground since the first time they have made their apperance.

Before Vellok could find his voice, another mage stepped forward, limping on ancient, gnarled crutches. He was a hunched figure, shrouded in layers of dark robes that jingled faintly with every movement—the sound of small skulls swaying from his belt like trinkets of forgotten prayers.

He carried a staff of blackened wood, worn smooth by time and ritual. His eyes—milky and rimmed with scarlet veins—locked onto Ikenga’s bare chest, and he inhaled sharply.

There, carved into skin and soul, were the signs. Cursed sigils. Symbols twisted in agony and power, crawling like ink burned into muscle.

The old man trembled, not from fear—but from desire.

He knew what he was seeing. This god… had a curse for a divinity and he was the one who amde an appernace at the town now overlooked by Vellok.

To him, Ikenga was a being sculpted in suffering, pulsing with the purest cursed energy he had ever witnessed.

The old mage’s tongue darted across cracked lips. His grip tightened around the staff as his breathing grew shallow.

He looked at Ikenga not as a threat, nor as a god… but as a treasure trove. A living embodiment of everything he had chased through rituals, sacrifices, and death.

Ikenga felt the weight of the stare and turned slightly, his one eye meeting the old man’s.

His single eye meeting the old man’s clouded gaze. For a brief heartbeat, the air thickened with expectation. The old mage braced himself, anticipating a look of disgust, perhaps revulsion—the gaze any divine being would cast upon something as tainted and vile as himself.

But what he saw instead unnerved him more than any disdain could.

Fascination.

Ikenga’s eye shimmered faintly, not with malice, not with pity—but with an almost childlike curiosity. It was the look of a predator admiring another species of predator—an acknowledgement of the monstrous, an appreciation of the grotesque.

The old man’s breath caught in his throat. Why? Why would someone like him—someone with pure, ancient, overwhelming cursed energy—look at him like that?

He had spent centuries cloaked in rituals, experimenting on the dying and the innocent, sacrificing those untouched by corruption just to extract the raw essence of suffering. And all of it—every sigil inked into his skin, every artifact clinging to his gnarled form—was an echo of that pursuit. Of power. Of forbidden understanding.

If he stood in Ikenga’s place, looking at himself with cursed purity, he would’ve felt revulsion. He would’ve destroyed himself for being impure.

But this god didn’t.

And as their eyes remained locked, something inside the old man shifted. A thought—half dread, half wonder—bubbled to the surface.

It wasn’t him Ikenga was staring at.

It was the space around him.

His heartbeat quickened. Sweat beaded on his brow despite the cold void of the sky above. A question formed in his mind—one he had never dared to ask aloud, not in his studies, not even to the spirits he tried to commune with.

His voice wavered.

“Your grace…” he whispered, almost reverently. “Are… are there people behind me?”

The other mages turned to look at him, confused and wary. There was no one there—just the vast openness of the land beneath the dark sky.

But Ikenga’s nod was slow, deliberate.

“In my world,” he said, voice like rustling chains in the dark, “The cursed spirits would have had a ball with you. You’d have been a nightmare whispered across kingdoms… a story used to frighten children into silence. An abomination cloaked in human skin.”

His tone was calm, but the words hung heavy.

The old man’s lips parted to speak, but he could feel it now. He could feel them.

A chill clawed down his spine.

Though he couldn’t see them, he knew something was there—behind him, around him, within him, he has always known. The godsight in Ikenga’s single eye saw far more than his perception ever could.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep