Chapter 83: Triple Layered Domain, the Sea of Ten Thousand Cursed Corpses
The sky was gone.
The ruined dome of the nuclear power plant, already dim and oppressive, had been completely swallowed by writhing flesh. It hung overhead like the inside of some colossal living organ, pulsing faintly in the dark. No stars. No moon. No crack for light to enter.
Only meat.
Only curse.
Only death.
"Domain Expansion…"
The three Special Grade Cursed Spirits screeched in unison, and the space around Yami folded inward like paper crushed in a fist.
"[Sea of Ten Thousand Cursed Corpses.]"
The world changed.
Violently.
The floor beneath him rippled once, then burst open. Countless pale arms clawed their way out of the blackened ground, stretching upward with frantic, starving movements. They did not grope blindly. Every one of them reached for him.
But that was only the beginning.
A dry, grating sound echoed through the domain.
Click.
Clack.
Crunch.
Bone grinding against bone.
Flesh dragging across flesh.
The curses Yami had just cut down, the ones he had incinerated by the hundreds only moments ago, began to reappear. Not revive. Reform. Their remains melted into black sludge, then fused with the severed parts of other corpses nearby.
A Grade 1 torso merged with three different lower grade limbs.
A head split open and grafted itself onto the chest of another body.
Spines pierced outward. Bone spurs bloomed. Extra arms unfolded from ribcages and shoulders.
In a matter of seconds, a new monster rose where several dead ones had fallen.
Then another.
Then ten more.
The entire domain became a sea of stitched horrors.
This was no longer the inside of a power plant.
It was an ocean built from corpses and curses, a graveyard given movement and hunger.
Yami stood alone on the last intact piece of footing, a cracked concrete slab less than two meters wide.
Everywhere else, the corpse tide rolled and shifted.
Above it all, the three Special Grades loomed like executioners watching from the scaffold.
He exhaled once through his nose.
"A little more elaborate than I expected."
His tone was still calm, but not careless.
Because he felt it now.
The gravity had changed.
Every muscle in his body was heavier than it should have been. The air itself seemed dense enough to resist inhalation. Even standing still took effort. Breathing under this pressure consumed stamina several times faster than normal.
This domain was not just meant to bury him under numbers.
It was built to make those numbers matter.
Yami's fingers tightened around Shiranui.
Then he vanished.
"[Thunder Breathing, First Form: Thunderclap and Flash.]"
A golden streak tore through the corpse sea.
The movement was so fast it left afterimages hanging in the dark. Yami cut through the nearest line of stitched monsters in a single pass, heads flying, torsos splitting, limbs scattering into the mire before the cursed flesh had time to realize it had died.
He did not stop.
He aimed straight for the Special Grades above.
But just as he was about to break through—
The world bent.
The path ahead warped.
Space folded.
Yami's charge, which should have pierced forward in a clean line, was forcibly twisted into a curve. His eyes narrowed. Midstep, he torqued his body aside, barely avoiding a bone spear that erupted from empty air at the place his throat should have been.
He landed hard.
Right back where he started.
The same slab.
The same sea.
The same three curses.
The space folding curse rippled in the distance, its tentacles shuddering as it distorted the battlefield like a child kneading wet clay.
"So that's how you want to play."
Yami adjusted his footing and looked ahead, expression unchanged.
A front line assault would not work so easily.
Not while gravity dragged him down, space refused to stay honest, and the horde kept replenishing itself without end.
The monsters came again.
There was no tactic to it. Only instinct, hunger, and the certainty that if enough bodies threw themselves at him, one would eventually land a bite.
Yami drew one long breath.
Then his sword flashed.
"[Sun Breathing, Third Form: Raging Sun.]"
A deep crimson arc tore across the corpse sea.
It struck like a horizontal sunrise, expanding outward in a sheet of heat so intense that the front ranks vaporized instantly. Bodies blackened, split, and turned to ash before they could even scream.
But the empty space they left behind did not stay empty.
The remains that fell into the mire liquefied and were drawn into other bodies.
A broken leg fused into a torso.
A severed arm grafted itself onto a ribcage.
A crushed skull rolled through the muck and embedded itself into something still moving.
More monsters rose.
Not weaker.
Not slower.
Just more.
Yami's breathing deepened again.
Then again.
He cut.
He burned.
He advanced a step, lost two, then cut again.
But the domain was doing exactly what it had been designed to do.
It was consuming time.
And in his case, time was flesh.
Time was lungs.
Time was muscle.
The higher ups had calculated it perfectly.
They knew he had no cursed energy reserve to reinforce his body the way ordinary sorcerers did. They knew every Breathing Technique, no matter how monstrous, still depended on a human body reaching beyond its own limits.
And human bodies ran out.
In the monitoring room, the elders laughed openly now.
Their tea had long since been forgotten on the floor.
"Look at him."
"One man against rules themselves."
"That swordsmanship means nothing in a proper Domain."
"Make him kneel."
As if in answer, the gravity within the Domain multiplied again.
Boom.
The slab beneath Yami's feet cracked down the middle and collapsed inward.
His knees buckled.
For one dangerous instant, he nearly hit the ground.
Pain tore up his legs and into his spine. His blood felt heavier. His bones groaned under the weight. Before he could fully recover his footing, the pale arms rising from the mire latched onto him.
One wrapped around his ankle.
Another around his calf.
Three more seized his waist.
Two locked onto the arm holding Shiranui.
The grip was cold, wet, mindless.
They did not fear him.
They did not hesitate.
They only dragged.
Dragged downward.
Dragged inward.
Toward the bottomless black.
"Let go."
Yami's voice came out low at first.
The hands only tightened.
His veins rose along his neck and forehead.
The hidden mark beneath his skin flickered, threatening to emerge.
Then he roared.
"Get off me!"
Flames detonated around him.
"[Sun Breathing, Sixth Form: Solar Heat Haze.]"
A vortex of fire exploded outward with Yami at the center. The nearest ranks of curses were blown apart in a storm of ash and burning flesh. The gripping arms disintegrated. The mire hissed. A broad circle opened around him.
For half a heartbeat, he stood alone.
Then the dead sea moved again.
The gap filled.
The curse horde surged back into place.
And the three Special Grades finally seemed to decide the spectacle had gone on long enough.
They descended.
Not rushing.
Not raging.
Certain.
The space folding curse drifted down first, its many tentacles swaying like strands in deep water. One finger slowly lifted, as though marking Yami's execution.
The gravity curse followed, its stone like frame cracking the ground with each ponderous step. It planted both fists into the corpse sea, and the domain shuddered in response.
Then the proliferation curse lowered its massive body, mouths along its torso peeling open one after another as fresh black curses spilled from within and dropped into the tide below.
The trap had entered its final stage.
Three Special Grades.
A dying battlefield.
A single target.
Yami planted Shiranui point down for a moment and leaned against it just enough to steady his breathing.
Sweat slid down his face. Droplets hit the heated black blade and vanished with a faint hiss.
His chest rose and fell harder now.
The fatigue was real.
The pressure was real.
But when he lifted his head, the fire in his red eyes had not dimmed at all.
If anything, it burned brighter.
"So this is the part where I die?"
He straightened slowly.
Every joint in his body protested under the crushing pressure, but he forced himself upright anyway.
The three Special Grades stopped a short distance away, surrounding him in a triangle.
The corpse sea writhed.
The gravity pressed harder.
Space trembled.
The infinite horde gathered behind them, waiting for the order to devour.
Yami rolled one shoulder, then lifted Shiranui fully once more.
The black blade steadied in his hand.
"Come take it, then."
His voice was quiet.
Far too quiet for the scene around him.
"If you can afford the price."
The three curses screamed together.
And Yami, standing alone in the center of the Sea of Ten Thousand Cursed Corpses, smiled without warmth.
.....
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