The scene twisted. A public square.
The man knelt in chains, bloodied, bruised, surrounded by an angry crowd. Stones were thrown.
Spit hit his face.
"They called me a criminal. A monster."
A raised platform.
An executioner.
"I was beaten," the man said hollowly. "Dragged to be executed."
Then—
The sky split open.
Darkness descended like a curtain falling.
A towering figure stepped forth and it was very terrifying.
The Demon Lord.
"You are a great magician," the Demon Lord said. "Your mind bends reality itself."
The man looked up, hope and terror warring in his eyes.
"You can work under me."
The chains dissolved.
Power flooded his body.
"I accepted," the man whispered. "Because I wanted to live."
The scene shattered violently.
Fire.
Screams.
Bodies.
"My children died," he said, voice barely audible now. "All of them."
The vision faded.
The light left behind by Nerothiel did not fade completely.
Instead, it lingered—thin, trembling—then spread outward like ripples on still water.
Kael felt it before he saw it. A weight pressed against his chest, not hostile, but heavy with sorrow.
The dungeon answered.
Images formed again, clearer this time, slower, as if the memories themselves wished to be understood.
After the man accepted the Demon Lord's offer, power flooded him—dark, intoxicating, overwhelming.
His magic grew sharper, deeper, no longer simple street illusions but reality-warping visions capable of bending minds.
The Demon Lord kept his promise to one extent.
The man lived.
But that was all.
His wife was taken to a distant city under demon control.
She lay in a cold chamber where demonic healers examined her not as a person, but as a resource—something to be measured, judged, and discarded.
"Too weak," one of them said flatly.
"She has no value to the war," another replied.
The Demon never visited her.
Not once.
The man begged. He knelt. He offered his loyalty, his magic, his future.
"Serve well," the Demon Lord said indifferently. "If you are useful, perhaps I will reconsider."
No medicine was given.
No healer stayed.
His wife died quietly, alone, calling his name until her voice failed.
By the time the man was allowed to see her body, it was already cold.
He screamed that day—screamed until his voice broke—but the demons around him only laughed.
"Love is weakness," they told him.
And then came the children.
They were not killed outright.
That would have been mercy.
The Demon Lord had no interest in raising human offspring, nor in wasting resources on them.
The children were left on the outskirts of a demon-controlled zone, in a ruined settlement where no humans dared to stay and demons rarely cared to look.
The man was forbidden to visit them.
"Attachment leads to hesitation," the Demon Lord warned. "And hesitation leads to failure."
Still, he tried.
He snuck away during missions, stealing scraps of food, hiding them beneath his cloak. Each time he returned, the children were thinner. Weaker.
They smiled anyway.
"Father, you're back," they said.
Days passed.
Then weeks.
The missions grew longer. The punishments are harsher. The guards are tighter.
One day, when he finally broke through the patrols and reached the settlement again—
There was silence.
Three small bodies lay huddled together, arms wrapped around one another.
Only hollow eyes and skin stretched tight over bone.
They had starved.
Days.
Then more days.
Waiting.
Believing he would return.
The man fell to his knees and held them, shaking, begging them to wake up.
They never did.
That was the moment something inside him shattered completely.
The illusions he later used to break others were born from that grief—from hunger, abandonment, and unanswered prayers.
The vision faded.
Yumi covered her mouth, tears streaming freely now. Her shoulders shook as she struggled to breathe.
The white-eyed saber lowered in silent respect.
Kael stood unmoving.
Now he understood.
Why Nerothiel whispered instead of roared.
Why fear and deception were his weapons.
Why, after seventy years, he welcomed peace.
"…They didn't even let him mourn," Yumi whispered.
Kael closed his eyes.
"No," he said softly. "They turned his grief into a tool."
The dungeon was silent again.
But this time, it felt like a grave.
Kael found himself back in the dungeon, still holding the man's hand as his form continued to vanish.
"I became a demon," the man said. "Nerothiel. The Thousand-Faced Whisper."
He laughed bitterly.
"The Demon Lord discarded us later," he continued. "The three of us generals… dumped after we failed a mission fifty years ago."
His eyes closed.
"We were left to rot in dungeons. To break challengers. To feed on despair."
Yumi and the white-eyed saber stood at the edge of the arena now, having entered quietly at some point. They said nothing.
But they felt it.
The grief.
The regret.
The unbearable loneliness of seventy years.
Yumi's claws trembled.
"…Kael," she whispered.
Tears gathered in her eyes, spilling freely as she watched the man fade.
Kael squeezed the man's hand gently.
"You didn't deserve that," Kael said. " And none of it."
The man smiled.
"Thank you," he whispered. "For seeing me… not as the demon."
His body dissolved completely into motes of pale light, drifting upward like fireflies before vanishing into nothingness.
Silence returned.
Kael remained kneeling for a long moment, head bowed.
Then he slowly stood.
Yumi wiped her tears with her sleeve.
"He… he wasn't evil," she said.
"No," Kael replied quietly. "He was broken."
The last remnants of Nerothiel's form dissolved into faint motes of violet light, drifting upward like dying fireflies.
They did not scatter violently, nor vanish abruptly. Instead, they rose slowly, gently, as though carried by an unseen current—an unspoken farewell.
Silence followed.
A deep, profound silence that pressed against the ears and heart alike.
Kael remained standing where he was, his hand still half-raised, fingers slowly curling into a fist as the final trace of the demon disappeared.
"Rest in peace," Kael said quietly.
For a brief moment, nothing happened.
Then the world shifted.
The ground beneath their feet trembled—not violently like a collapse, but deliberately, rhythmically, as if massive mechanisms long dormant had begun to move.
Lines of dim crimson light spread across the stone floor, forming intricate patterns—circles within circles, ancient runes interwoven with symbols Kael had never seen in any book or novel.
The air changed.
It grew heavier, thicker, saturated with raw mana so dense it made breathing feel like inhaling liquid. Every breath carried weight, power, and an oppressive sense of finality.
"This…," Yumi whispered, "this feels different."
Kael nodded slowly. His instincts screamed—not of immediate danger, but of significance.
The dungeon walls began to pull back.
Stone slid against stone with a deep, grinding roar, retreating outward in all directions. The space expanded far beyond what should have been possible, defying logic and scale.
What had once been a confined level now unfolded into something vast—something monumental.
They had arrived.
The final level of the dungeon.
The hall revealed itself layer by layer.
The ceiling was impossibly high, disappearing into darkness far above, dotted with slow-moving constellations of glowing runes that resembled stars trapped in stone.
These symbols pulsed faintly, not randomly, but in a measured rhythm—like the heartbeat of the dungeon itself.
Massive pillars lined both sides of the hall, each one thicker than an ancient tower, carved from black obsidian-like stone veined with molten crimson light.
The pillars were etched with reliefs—countless scenes frozen in time.
Wars between mortals and demons.
Kings kneeling before shadowed thrones.
Heroes standing triumphant… and heroes falling broken.
Some carvings were so detailed Kael could see expressions—fear, rage, despair—etched permanently into stone faces.
"This hall…," the white-eyed saber murmured, her voice unusually subdued, "it records history."
"Not history," Kael corrected, eyes scanning the walls. "Trials."
The floor stretched endlessly forward, smooth yet marked with countless intersecting sigils.
Each step Kael took caused faint ripples of light to spread outward beneath his boots, as if the hall were alive—aware of his presence.
At the center of the hall ran a wide pathway elevated slightly above the rest of the floor, like a ceremonial road. On either side of it lay enormous statues—broken, weathered, and ancient beyond measure.
Some statues depicted demons of terrifying forms: multi-headed beasts, winged horrors, armored generals wielding weapons larger than siege engines.
Others depicted humans, elves, and races Kael could not even identify—some holding swords, others staves, others nothing but clenched fists.
What struck Kael most was not their power.
It was their posture.
None of the statues stood arrogantly.
They all faced forward.
Toward the far end of the hall.
At the end of the pathway stood a colossal gate.
It dwarfed everything else.
The gate was forged from an unknown metal—dark, reflective, yet faintly translucent, as if something moved behind it.
Countless chains wrapped around it, each chain engraved with glowing seals that radiated suppressive mana. Some chains were cracked. Others were intact.
Above the gate floated a massive sigil, rotating slowly in the air.
[FINAL SEAL — ABSOLUTE DOMAIN]
Chapter 347: The final level of Dungeon!
7 min read