Chapter 106: The Funeral March and the Graveyard of Legends
The world was a sickly purple and smelled of rotten sulfur, ammonia, and broken promises.
In the Swamp of Oblivion, every breath burned the throat and left a copper aftertaste on the tongue, as if the atmosphere itself had passed through an open wound that refused to heal. The ground was not dirt; it was a black, viscous sludge that seemed to have a will of its own, seeking to swallow every boot with a hungry slowness, demanding a tribute for daring to walk upon it.
Kael Morningstar got to his feet with a monumental effort, the toxic mud sloughing off his obsidian armor with a sickening sound. He didn't look at his own wounds. His golden eyes locked immediately onto the figure lying a few meters away.
Violeta was not simply unconscious. Her core's ultimate defense mechanism had sealed her. She was encased in a block of Spiritual Ice, a translucent, bluish stasis. Her body floated suspended inside, inert, like a pearl trapped in a frozen tear. The frigid crystal emitted a dull hum, keeping her vital organs functioning at the absolute minimum after the exhaustion of invoking the Lotus of Absolute Zero.
Eris was kneeling next to the ice. Her hands were still an ashen gray, a side effect of the [Ash of Oblivion]. The destruction technique had temporarily stripped her of empathy. Her eyes were hollow, devoid of the rage or fear any human being would feel upon seeing their twin sister in a coma.
—"Her core closed from the inside," —Eris said, her voice monotone and icy—. "If we try to break the ice by force or melt it, the thermal and spatial shock will tear her in half."
Kael did not shed a single tear. Weeping was a luxury the dead could not afford, and they were one step away from the grave.
The King of the Vanguard untied thick strips of beast leather from his spatial ring. With precise, mechanical movements, he passed the straps around the ice sarcophagus and tied it to his back. The weight was immense—spiritual ice was denser than steel—and the absolute cold began to seep through his armor plates, biting into his spine. Kael clenched his jaw until his teeth ground together. He didn't utter a single groan.
—"In formation," —Kael ordered, his voice raspy but laden with unbreakable authority—. "Bren, point. Varian, scout the route. Elara, cover the flanks. Eris, rearguard."
Bren nodded. The giant of the Iron Mountain advanced, sinking his boots up to his knees in the muck. His immense basilisk tower shield was half-melted and smoking from the previous beast's acid, but it still served. Bren didn't walk; he used his body and his shield like an organic snowplow, pushing aside the dense sludge, rotting roots, and thorny vines to carve a safe furrow for the rest to pass through.
But the true tactical tension fell upon the sky. Or rather, upon the absence of it.
Varian, the sniper, climbed the petrified bark of a twisted tree, trying to gain altitude. He activated his [Eagle Vision], but his yellow pupils constricted painfully.
—"Damn it..." —Varian hissed, rubbing his eyes.
The yellowish-green mist of the swamp wasn't just water; it was a soup of dense miasma and Qi-blocking spores. Varian's vision, capable of piercing storms kilometers away, hit an opaque wall less than twenty meters out.
Varian jumped back down into the mud, his face tense. For a marksman, losing his long-range vision was like losing an arm.
—"I'm blind past twenty paces, Kael. The miasma distorts thermal signatures. There could be an army of Semi-Saints thirty meters away and we wouldn't see them until they were on top of us."
—"Then we rely on close range," —Kael replied, adjusting Violeta's weight on his back—. "Elara."
Elara nodded. The Flower of Mist unsheathed her daggers. Her own frost mist couldn't compete with the swamp's miasma, so she kept it close to her skin, insulating her body from the environmental toxins. She advanced just behind Bren, her senses heightened, searching for physical traps.
—"Step exactly where I step," —Elara ordered—. "The mud has sinkholes. There are pale vines hanging from the low branches; they smell like sweet blood. If you touch them, they'll drain your Qi in seconds."
The march began. It was not a glorious battle; it was a funeral procession through the intestine of a dead god.
Every meter was a tactical agony. The mud bubbled, releasing gases trapped for millennia. The trees had bark that looked like porous bone, and from their canopies fell a constant, acidic drizzle that hissed as it hit the squad's obsidian armors.
Soon, the swamp began its true offensive. Not with claws, but with the mind.
The gas bubbling up from the mud wasn't just toxic to the lungs; it was an hallucinogenic neurotoxin that directly attacked the insecurities within the Sea of Consciousness.
Eris walked in the rearguard, immune. Her state of apathy from the Ash of Oblivion had emptied her of emotions, leaving the swamp gases with nothing to latch onto. She saw the forest exactly as it was: gray, rotting, and dead.
But Kael and Elara began to suffer.
Elara's breathing quickened. Through the yellow mist, she thought she saw silhouettes moving. She saw children running, minor disciples of the cradle, but their faces were melting.
"You left us... you weren't fast enough..." a voice whispered in the haze, mimicking little Celeste. Elara choked back a scream, squeezing her eyes shut and digging her nails into her palms until they bled, trying to anchor herself to physical reality.
Kael felt the weight on his back multiply by a hundred.
The gas seeped through the slits in his helmet. Suddenly, the landscape in front of him changed. The rotting trees became the columns of the Morningstar Citadel. The columns were on fire. The fire was devouring everything. And in the center, the Pool of Origin was boiling. Samael, his skin cracked and black, sank into the emerald water as his lifeless eyes accused Kael of being too slow, of having failed.
"You are unworthy of the crown, boy..." the tyrannical voice echoed in his mind.
Kael stumbled. His hand flew to the hilt of his sword, his breathing turning into a death rattle of panic.
—"Kael!"
Eris's cold, hollow voice cut through the illusion. A hand covered in gray ash grabbed Kael's shoulder pad, giving him a brutal, physical yank backward.
—"You're breathing the gas from the bubbles," —Eris said, her face expressionless—. "There is no fire. There is no cradle. There is only mud. Move your feet."
Kael blinked, shaking his head. His Sword Heart beat, sending a pulse of the [Slash of Doubt] directly into his own brain to purge the neurotoxin from his meridians. The vision of the burning cradle vanished, replaced by the tangible horror of the swamp.
—"Thanks," —Kael grunted, cold sweat beading on his forehead.
They continued. The attrition was extreme. They walked in circles for hours, avoiding mud banks that suddenly opened like gigantic mouths, full of calcite teeth formed from the remains of digested beasts.
At one point, Bren was about to step onto what looked like a patch of firm, rocky terrain.
—"...don't step on the shadow..."
The voice was barely a frozen whisper. Kael stopped dead. It came from the block of ice on his back.
Violeta was still in a coma, her eyes closed beneath the frost. But her mind, accustomed to dimensional singularities, perceived reality even while shut down. Her shattered internal compass was warning her subconscious.
—"...space... folds... to the left..." Violeta murmured, her voice resonating weakly through the residual telepathic connection of the ice.
Kael grabbed Bren by the shoulder strap just before the giant placed his boot on the solid rock.
—"Back."
Varian picked up a stone from the ground and tossed it toward the supposedly firm rock. The instant the stone touched the shadow zone, space "crumpled." The stone didn't hit the ground or bounce; it was sucked into an invisible spatial micro-fault, sliced cleanly at the molecular level before disappearing into nothingness. If Bren had stepped there, half of his body would have been teleported to another dimension, killing him instantly.
Bren swallowed hard, staring at the invisible void.
—"Bless your sister," —the giant muttered, taking three steps back.
After ten hours of marching, the mud gave way to a rocky elevation. The mist cleared slightly.
In front of them, rising from the mud like a macabre monument, stood the thoracic skeleton of a forgotten Behemoth. The ribs were arches of pale bone, the thickness of watchtowers, forming a natural tunnel that protected a dry area from the acidic rain starting to fall.
—"Shelter," —Varian said, his voice betraying desperate relief.
The squad crawled under the ribcage. Kael knelt slowly, untied the straps, and deposited Violeta's block of ice onto a smooth patch of rock with extreme care. He leaned against the giant bone, his lungs burning, feeling his legs finally give out.
Elara invoked a small flame of thermal frost, just enough to provide heat without emitting visible light.
In the dim light, Varian began inspecting the ground beneath the ribs. His boot struck something metallic. He knelt down and scraped away the mud with his dagger.
—"Kael. You need to see this."
They all gathered around. Half-buried in the petrified slime were the remains of armor.
But they weren't mercenary armors or tribal leathers. They were breastplates forged from complex alloys, shining even under the grime. Varian pulled a helmet from the ground.
—"This is Meteoritic Steel forged with Immortal Lotus silk," —Varian whispered, disbelief coloring his words—. "These are Saint-level materials."
Bren picked up a massive breastplate lying nearby. It was compressed, crushed as if an empty can had been stepped on by a titan. Inside, the remains of human bones, pulverized and crystallized by the passage of hundreds of years, could still be seen.
—"Whoever wore this was an elite genius of their time. Someone with resources and power at an Ancestor's level," —Bren said, dropping the dented metal—. "There are no emblems. The mud corroded the markings. They've been here for centuries."
Kael looked at the graveyard. There were at least twelve sets of crushed armor, high-grade broken swords, and withered talismans. They were an expedition from the past, warriors at the pinnacle of the continent who had dared to cross the Swamp of Oblivion seeking glory or treasure. And they had all died here, beneath the ribs of a dead beast, crushed by an enemy their divine armors could not stop.
Eris kicked a broken sword. —"Arrogance is no shield here. This place is a mass grave for elites."
Kael crouched down. On the inside of the nearest giant rib, carved forcefully with the tip of a desperate sword, were letters in an ancient language, written with blood and petrified Qi.
Kael read the warning left by the ghosts aloud:
—"The King dreams beneath the mud. No armor withstands his awakening."
Suddenly, the silence of the shelter was desecrated.
The centuries-old warning was not poetry. It was applied geology.
The atmospheric pressure of the swamp multiplied all at once. The ground beneath Bren's boots vibrated. It wasn't a quick tremor. It was slow. Rhythmic.
BOOM... BOOM...
A subterranean heartbeat. A geological heart throbbing hundreds of meters beneath the mud.
The dark sludge outside the bone shelter began to boil on a massive scale. The toxic gas bubbles were no longer small; they were the size of carriages, bursting and releasing black clouds. The earth itself seemed to be breathing, rising and falling slowly.
The anomaly that had besieged them—the fluctuating gravity, the acidic sinkholes—were not environmental effects. They were the digestion of a creature whose size spanned kilometers of terrain. The King of the mud was about to wake up from his millennial nap.
Violeta's ice emitted a loud hum. Her lips trembled, and her telepathic voice cut through the group's panic like a cold beacon.
—"...critical distortion... exit... at twelve o'clock... tear open..."
Kael jerked his head up, his instincts overloaded by the imminent danger.
—"Varian! Twelve o'clock! Filter the mist!"
Varian climbed onto a rib, forcing his yellow eyes to the brink of hemorrhaging. He looked north. The mud was rising in thirty-meter-high waves all around them, but through the storm of toxic sludge, Varian saw a light.
It wasn't a magic lantern, or a bioluminescent trap. It was a tectonic fault in reality. An immense spatial anomaly floated on the dark horizon, pulsing with silver and violet colors. It was a natural portal, a wound in the Sea of Beasts created by the area's gravitational instability.
—"A dimensional anomaly!" —Varian shouted, pointing into the midst of the boiling blackness—. "It's unstable, but it's the only route out before this entire basin becomes the King's stomach!"
The heartbeat became deafening. The Behemoth ribs sheltering them began to crack, pushed upward by the mass ascending from the swamp's underworld.
Kael Morningstar didn't hesitate. He grabbed the straps of Violeta's ice and tied it back onto his back in one brutal motion, ignoring the crunch of his own ribs. He gripped the Whisper of the North.
—"Bren, wedge formation! Eris, burn the mist, I don't care if they see us, just run! Elara, Varian, don't stop running until you touch that portal!"
Kael looked at the remains of the fallen geniuses adorning the ground. He wasn't going to be part of their exhibition.
—"We won't be fertilizer for any King! Move!"
The obsidian Pillars launched themselves out of the shelter, sprinting directly toward the chaos of mud rising into the sky. The Swamp of Oblivion roared, opening its kilometric jaws, but the desert demons were already racing toward the abyss, willing to force their own destiny through the stars.