So ti later, Boar departed, his massive fra vanishing into the trees, with Markos and the surviving monsters trailing behind in solemn silence. No words were spoken, no questions asked. The forest swallowed their footsteps without a sound.
Ti passed.
How long exactly—no one could tell. Perhaps minutes. Perhaps hours. The air was too still, the sky above too dim to mark its passage.
Soon, curious inhabitants of the forest—drawn by the earlier eruption of spiritual force and bloodshed—crept toward the clearing, only to pause at its edge.
Confusion painted their gazes.
There were no bodies. No bones. Not even the scent of lingering blood.
Only grass soaked a deep, unnatural crimson, as if the earth itself had bled and could not stop.
Then, sothing shifted.
A wind blew in—not the gentle rustle of a breeze, but a crawling, clawing gust that howled like a tornted soul. It swirled through the trees with unnatural malice, carrying a suffocating pressure, thick and sharp like the scent of old iron.
The entire forest fell eerily silent.
The birds vanished. The insects quieted. Even the trees seed to realize sothing was terribly wrong. Their branches ceased to sway, as if afraid that the slightest motion would draw attention to themselves.
Then—
Crack.
The ground in the center of the clearing split open with a low groan. A thin fissure erged, no longer than a ter—yet its presence felt bottomless, like it led to a place that should not exist.
A dark, bottomless black.
From within the fracture, a thick, smoke-like substance oozed out, coiling and writhing like sentient tendrils. They slithered across the bloodstained grass, sniffing the air like hunting hounds, their movents twitchy, frantic—hungry.
In the distance, lying half-hidden beneath the tall grass, was the twisted remains of Ramson.
The tendrils paused.
Then, they surged forward with glee. A manic, breathy giggle echoed—high-pitched, like children laughing in a dark room.
The smoke enfolded the broken corpse, swallowing it whole.
And then—the transformation began.
A cocoon began to form.
Veins pulsed across the surface, dark red and sickly black, weaving together into a wet, fleshy shell. It pulsed like a beating heart, expanding and contracting as if sothing inside was... breathing.
Then ca the faces.
Twisted, flickering visages flashed across the surface of the cocoon. One second, a tornted child sobbing in agony. The next, a woman laughing with wide, empty eyes. Then a beast snarling, fangs bared. Then a priest, lips parted in silent screams.
Joy. Pain. Hatred. Despair.
The cocoon reflected all extres of emotion—never resting, never still.
The forest no longer felt like a forest. The clearing had beco a borderland between nightmares.
The very air warped.
Light twisted as the world around the cocoon split into two jarring realms: one side bathed in cold, sterile white, the other swallowed by suffocating, infinite black. No gradients. No transition. Just a cruel, absolute division.
And through it all, the cocoon kept pulsing.
Growing.
Changing.
Sothing had been born—or perhaps, sothing had returned.
Inside the wooden castle, Ricky lounged comfortably on a jade-cushioned bench, devouring pills by the handful, each one glowing faintly with spiritual light. The scent of refined herbs and condensed Amma saturated the air, making the room feel more like a mystical fog-drenched shrine than a chamber.
These pills weren’t ordinary.
They were the fruit of Velmont’s madness—a week-long alchemy frenzy that had left the man on the brink of collapse.
For seven days straight, Velmont had worked like a demon, eyes sunken, hands trembling from fatigue, muttering incantations and refining herbs without a mont’s rest. He looked like a crazed cultist conducting rituals rather than a proper alchemist. And finally—this morning—his haggard figure appeared before Ricky with a manic grin and two bulging sacks of pills.
When Ricky opened the bags, he was shell-shocked.
Thousands.
Thousands of radiant pills, each one humming with energy, stacked neatly like treasure troves of concentrated life essence. The spiritual fog they emitted was so thick it clung to the walls, swirling around the room like a lazy mist.
Ricky had stared, slack-jawed, for several seconds.
Then, still dazed, he had nodded slowly—and with a casual flick of his hand—accepted Velmont as his first disciple.
Velmont cried.
Then he laughed.
Then he danced like a lunatic across the hall in celebration—until his body gave out from sheer exhaustion. He plopped down cross-legged in the corner and instantly entered ditation, snoring softly even while sitting up.
Ricky had just rolled his eyes.
"Dramatic idiot," he muttered fondly.
Now, back to business. He reached for another handful of pills when—suddenly—his eyes snapped to the window. The air around him stilled. His body froze, an ancient instinct stirring within him.
His gaze sharpened and pierced through the distance, crossing the castle walls and trees, reaching the distant corner of the forest—where a faint, pulsing aura flickered like a dying star.
And there it was.
A black cocoon, pulsating slowly amid the blood-drenched soil.
The aura it released wasn’t loud. It wasn’t overwhelming.
But it was wrong.
Ricky’s pupils narrowed, his earlier relaxed deanor vanishing like mist under sunlight.
"What... is that?"
His thoughts slowed. His perception expanded, locking onto the strange cocoon that shouldn’t exist.
Just then, a familiar chi echoed in his mind.
Ding!
A blue window blinked into existence in front of him.
---
[Target: Undead Princess Zygote]
[Lifespan: 0 years]
---
Ricky’s lips moved silently as he read the title again, his frown deepening.
"Undead Princess... and zero years?"
He was still processing it when the number on the screen flickered—
Then climbed.
One year. Ten. Thirty. Seventy. One hundred.
In a re blink, it crossed the 100-year threshold, the digits growing so quickly they blurred.
Under normal circumstances, Ricky would have celebrated.
A being gaining such a lifespan ant potential. It ant nourishnt. It ant a harvest ripe with rewards.
But this ti...
This ti, a cold unease settled in his chest.
Because just like him—the zygote was absorbing vitality.
He could feel it now, like thousands of threads being pulled from the environnt into that cocoon. The trees nearby were withering. Flowers turned black. The grasses curled into ash. Even insects dropped mid-flight as life was drained indiscriminately.
And in the background, Ricky felt it—
The sorrow.
The faint, barely audible cries of the forest itself.
The spirits of the trees, the song of the land—it was mourning.
In rely a few monts, the forest within a several hundred-ter radius had withered into a haunting wasteland. Towering trees, once proud and lush, now stood as brittle, gray husks—silent witnesses to their own slow death. Not a single leaf remained. The vibrant underbrush had turned to dust, the scent of life replaced by the dry, coppery sting of decay.
It was as though ti had accelerated a thousandfold—centuries of erosion compressed into re seconds.
Ricky stood by the tall windows of the wooden castle, watching silently. His gaze lingered on the cracked soil, and the black cocoon pulsing in its center like a diseased heart.
A single na slipped from his lips.
"Noctyss..."
He paused.
At first, he had considered summoning her, asking her to investigate this anomaly. But then—
He shook his head slowly, expression grim.
"She’s too weak for this right now."
Even if she wasn’t, it felt... wrong to let her near that thing. It emitted a miasma that whispered promises of suffering and eternal hunger.
Then—a flicker.
His nostrils flared faintly.
"Boar’s breath?"
There—faint traces of spiritual essence. Familiar. Heavy. He hadn’t noticed it before—too busy stuffing pills down his throat like candy—but now the lingering residue was clear. It clung to the air like invisible smoke.
Boar had been here. Recently.
Ricky raised an eyebrow, slightly intrigued.
"What drama did you cause this ti...?"
Without wasting another mont, he sent out a silent command with a flicker of intent.
"Co here."
---
Elsewhere, Boar—currently surrounded by a group of wide-eyed Stage 1 monsters—froze in place mid-sentence.
He had been walking through the castle’s outer courtyard, explaining the so-called "rules" of this place with an air of solemn authority. His deep, calm voice rumbled like distant thunder as he addressed the group.
> "You must always rember—never enter the floor where the Venom Fang Overlord resides. Not without an explicit summons."
He paused dramatically.
"If you do... even I won’t be able to protect you."
His eyes glinted with intensity.
The monsters following him looked awestruck. A few of them gulped, tails and claws twitching with nervous reverence.
It wasn’t that there were actual rules in this castle.
Boar had made them up on the spot.
But that didn’t matter.
Rules gave structure. Fear gave obedience. And together, they forged unity.
And unity... was the beginning of an army.
That was Boar’s true goal.
Now that a kingdom was forming under Ricky’s shadow, it needed more than loyal subjects.
It needed soldiers.
Warriors.
Power.
But just as he was ntally planning recruitnt drills, a deep voice echoed directly inside his head, cutting across his thoughts with irresistible authority.
"Co here."
Boar’s body straightened instinctively, his eyes sharpening.
He gave a respectful nod to the others and growled, "Stay here. Don’t move an inch."
Then he turned and bolted toward the castle’s core, leaving behind nothing but a faint tremor in the ground and a breeze swirling dust into the air.
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