“Mhm? The others are already getting close to me, I’ll need to step up my pace then,” I let out a cold breath.

The control nexus was directly below this position, down another level, through what should have been a heavily fortified corridor that connected to the primary power distribution system.

According to the intelligence, there were three possible routes to reach it from where I currently stood.

The main route went through a series of checkpoints and defensive positions that would be heavily manned, designed to funnel attackers into kill zones where they could be overwhelmed by superior numbers.

The second route went through maintenance tunnels that were supposedly less defended but also more cramped and easier to trap someone inside.

The third route went straight down through the floor.

I looked at the ice-covered stone beneath my feet, at the frost patterns still spreading from where my Authority had saturated the area, and made a decision that would probably have horrified any tactical planner who believed in conventional approaches.

BAAAAAAAM!

I raised Midnight above my head and drove it straight down into the floor with all the force I could muster, the blade punching through stone and divine reinforcement like they were made of paper.

Then I channeled the Authority of Frost directly through the sword into the structural supports beneath the floor, flash-freezing everything in a spreading pattern that made the stone brittle enough to shatter under its own weight.

The floor collapsed beneath me in a cascade of frozen debris, and I fell through into the level below, landing in a crouch among the rubble with both swords ready.

I’d dropped directly into what looked like a barracks area, but surprisingly… There wasn’t a single soldier within my sight.

“…What the actual fuck?” I couldn’t help but exclaim in surprise.

I also made a little too much noise, and yet, I couldn’t feel any godly aura nearby, as if this place was completely… deserted.

And so… I continued walking, with my instincts on alert.

“…”

Step, step, step….

“…”

After exactly twelve minutes of walking, I didn’t find anyone.

“I’m finally here…”

I reached the final chamber without anyone stopping me, which should have been my first warning that something was wrong.

After everything I had already fought through, after the hundreds of soldiers and the strong gods who had tried to stop me on every level above this one, the silence here felt wrong in a way that went deeper than simple absence.

It felt like walking into a room where a conversation had been cut off mid-sentence, where every person inside had turned to stare the moment you crossed the threshold, except now there was no one left to do the staring.

The air itself felt still, too still, like it was holding its breath.

I should have stopped and thought about it.

I should have slowed down and questioned why the final approach had been left completely open when everything else had been defended so heavily.

But the control nexus was right there, and the path to it had finally cleared.

That was enough for me to keep moving.

At the end of the corridor stood a set of massive reinforced doors, their surface covered in layered protective arrays that glowed faintly even through the frost that still clung to everything around me.

Just before them, one last wall blocked the direct path forward, exactly where the intelligence reports had said it would be.

Break that wall, and I would be inside.

I stepped up to it without hesitation.

Midnight rose in my hand, and I pushed the Authority of Frost through the blade until the temperature around me began to drop again, the air turning sharp and thin as ice spread across the stone in delicate, branching patterns.

Then I drove the sword forward.

KRRRSHHH!!!

The wall did not crack so much as it failed all at once, the reinforced stone freezing solid and then collapsing into fragments that burst inward in a wave of white dust and shattered debris.

I stepped through.

Fwoooom!!!

Light exploded from beneath my feet.

A golden array instantly flared into existence faster than I could react, lines of glowing energy racing across the floor and climbing up the walls in an instant before snapping inward toward me.

Chains formed out of that light.

They wrapped around my wrists.

Around my ankles.

They pulled tight with brutal force.

Clang, tling…

Both swords slipped from my hands as my fingers went numb, the metal striking the ground with heavy, dull impacts that echoed through the chamber.

My body jerked as the chains yanked my limbs apart, lifting me slightly off the ground and locking me in place with a strength I could not immediately break.

The energy was very strong… but there was something wrong about it.

It crawled across my skin like something alive, sending a sharp, uncomfortable sensation through my nerves that made every instinct in my body tense.

Still, I did not panic.

Panic would not help me here.

Instead, I forced myself to slow my breathing and look around, to understand exactly what I had just walked into.

The chamber was large, much larger than the corridor had suggested, its shape circular with a high ceiling that disappeared into shadow above.

The floor beneath me was smooth stone, broken only by the glowing array that held me in place.

And the figures.

There were twelve of them.

They stood in a perfect circle around me, spaced evenly as if placed there with careful precision, each one positioned like a number on the face of a clock.

Each of them had twelve wings.

That alone should have been impossible, but what held my attention was not the number; it was the way those wings looked.

Half of each set shone with a clean golden light, the kind I had come to associate with higher divine beings, carrying a sense of order and authority that felt almost familiar.

The other half was… wrong.

Dark, but not a simple darkness.

The color shifted when I tried to focus on it, somewhere between black and purple, and something else that did not belong in any natural spectrum.

It clung to the wings like oil, spreading slowly across the golden surface without fully consuming it, as if the two states were locked together in a constant, quiet conflict.

Even standing still, that darkness seemed to move.

Not in any clear direction, but in a way that made my eyes want to slide away from it, like my mind refused to accept what it was seeing.

The figures themselves were humanoid, tall and still, their bodies covered in simple forms that did not draw attention away from their wings.

Their faces were hidden.

Each one wore a smooth mask made of the same golden material as the array that bound me, featureless except for two hollow openings where eyes should have been.

Inside those openings, there was nothing.

No light or reflection at all.

Just depthless darkness.

I turned my gaze away from them, searching the chamber for anything else, anything that could explain this setup, and that was when I noticed something strange…

On the far wall, set within an ornate frame that looked older than anything else in this place, something hung.

At first glance, it looked like a painting.

But the longer I looked at it, the more that word felt wrong.

A painting did not push back against your awareness.

A painting did not make your body react as if you were standing too close to something dangerous.

This did.

The image itself refused to settle into a clear shape.

I tried to focus on it, and the details shifted, sliding out of place before I could fix them in my mind.

There were hints of a figure, tall and thin beyond any normal proportion, but every time I tried to define it, the outline changed.

The background was worse.

Angles folded into each other in ways that made no sense, spaces that should have been flat twisted inward like they were collapsing, forming patterns that repeated and overlapped until looking at them made a slow, sick feeling rise in my chest.

My divine core instantly reacted… I felt it stutter, tremble even.

The Authorities inside of me also started quivering, not in response to a threat I could fight, but as if it was trying to shield me from something it recognized on a level deeper than thought.

Below the frame, carved into the stone with letters that seemed to shimmer faintly, was a name.

But it wasn’t in our world’s language, nor in the normal godly language.

It was actually… in English.

And… it was a name I already knew.

The name of a being that starred in some of the books I loved to read.

A name of a being overwhelmingly powerful, second only to the so-called Supreme Ruler.

I spoke it anyway.

“Nyarlathotep.”

The moment the word left my mouth, the air in the chamber changed.

Crack!

The twelve figures moved at the same time.

All of them.

Their heads turned toward me in perfect synchronization, the motion smooth and precise in a way that no group of individuals should have been able to match.

The golden chains around my limbs tightened.

I felt them bite deeper into my skin, the pressure increasing until it bordered on pain.

“…Damn Outer Gods…”

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