Chapter 703: I Will Take You Home

Colossus!

The first true Flesh Ascender.

The divine flesh and blood once gathered from countless lives across billions of worlds!

And at this moment, every Root finally understood what He intended to do. He scorned the struggles of this hell, never once giving them even a glance, because His goal had never been here, not them, but the Upper World, that once-pure land they had fallen from and which had since been tainted.

Sir Aiwen stared blankly into the distance.

Time itself seemed to stop at this instant.

Only the countless curses clawing up from the shadows, screaming as they swarmed, seemed to devour that deafening giant that shaded the sky like a flock of ants.

But those sharp eyes still fixed unmoving, stabbing straight into the heavens.

Until—

The last fragment of flesh returned home at His call.

Everything seemed to lose its tone.

Within the blood-red mental space, Lynn watched the final pillar of light descend, and below the steps where he stood, an endless congregation of Colossus consciousnesses stretched out of sight.

The King and the Queen, and their subjects—this was almost a nation.

No...

This was a living... civilization.

And as the final subject returned, high above in that crimson sky, he saw that void-like figure emerge beneath the radiant divinity. He lifted His head, countless of His people behind Him, and in His eyes flickered the hope of returning to their homeland.

In His hands He cradled a heart.

It was His Queen.

A tradition their entire Colossus Civilization had remembered from the Era of Eating Raw Meat and Drinking Blood up through ascension.

The light reflected on the face of the girl asleep in Lynn’s arms, as if a faint sorrow also crossed her features.

He turned once more to look at Lynn.

And the girl Lynn held.

The wind stirred the blood-red mist, and then He never looked back.

“Home.”

He lifted His gaze toward the high horizon and, in a voice so gentle, spoke to the heart in His hands and to the subjects behind Him who had been lost for thousands of years.

“I will take you home.”

...

Buzz—

Those enormous eyes snapped open, shooting out countless blinding beams.

The panicked blood erupted, tearing off the vicious hands that had crawled on Him from hell. The thundering heart surged, powerful strength flooding every part of His body, bringing a deluge of fresh blood that restored the once-dismembered Colossus to new life.

There was no more hesitation, no lingering.

He leapt up, thrust His head high, treading the void. His vast, sky-blocking hand ripped through the shroud that had covered this world for countless years within the silver pupils.

Crack—

The sky split with a horizon-spanning rift.

The black mist from east to west was cleaved apart by that strike.

All the Roots on the battlefield were affected by that tremendous might, suppressed to the ground by the aftershock, unable to move.

“Did you really think you could break out of the world?!”

“Did you really think you could escape this hell?!”

That hysterical voice.

Filled with endless fury and ferocity, the God of All Machines screamed up at the sky in wrath and hatred. Bound by chains, he madly extended his claws inch by inch toward that colossal figure.

That nameless rage and hatred seemed ready to burn his soul away.

“Even if you leave this hell, you cannot stand against the Darkness!! Without the Trinity ascension!! Without breaking that boundary!! You are only walking to your death!! You are only digging your own grave!!”

His tearing voice echoed thunderously across the sky.

Sir Aiwen leaned there, eyes hollow and lifeless as he gazed up at the rift tearing the heavens.

Within the writhing vines, the Desire Mother Tree’s eyes slowly opened, her gaze filled with the same rending, unattainable agony as Sir Aiwen’s.

Only the Flesh and Blood Dominator watched that scene coldly.

As if he had seen through the fate that doomed them to defeat.

...

“That is the completed... Colossus...”

Below the charred, ruined Hanging Tower, the Doll Mistress murmured as she far-off watched the rising red glow above the horizon.

Beside her, Bloodsaw—clad in a White Coat, his body crisscrossed with suture thread—lifted his head and slowly clenched his rough hand. His eyes reflected that surging blood-red light.

He did not speak.

All the Colossus flesh and blood he had gathered from the remnants of the Demonkin Association had, in that instant, been summoned away by that overwhelming force.

Just as he knew the Colossus Project was something they could never complete.

Back then.

It was precisely because they had deciphered the truth from fragments of the Colossus’s Heart that they understood.

They were mortals trying to enact the deeds of gods.

So they could never truly create a Colossus, because the real Colossus still lived in this world, and the realm they dared to touch would bring upon them hell’s darkest curses.

But...

This place is called hell for a reason.

Is it not because some lunatics will, again and again, gamble on results they don’t understand?

His fluttering eyes reflected that red glow.

If he had not been so mad...

Why would he have implanted the Colossus’s Heart he’d collected into his own disciple?

The only thing he had not expected was that, while countless other powerful subjects he experimented on did not survive, that heart had, in that child’s chest, miraculously burst into life.

“Child, are you now...”

“Already part of the Colossus.”

“Walking that return path with Him.”

...

Silence.

A deathlike quiet spread across the ruins of the Cursed City.

In their hollow gazes, only the thick black mist closing in and the small point of retreating crimson light remained.

This must be the ending every fallen one secretly yearned for.

Break the curse’s blockade.

Step to the border of hell.

Tear off the shackles.

Escape the prison of fate...

“He cannot escape! No god can leave this prison! Not even Him!”

The God of All Machines’s frantic voice thundered, the lunacy flickering in his great dragon eyes dragging him almost into ruinous hatred.

Anyone could hear the unwillingness in his tone.

And at that moment, a hoarse voice repeated his words.

“You are right, He cannot escape.”