Chapter 665: The Mourners

Thoren slowly stepped through the ancient doorway, his expression guarded as he crossed the threshold of the Hall of Tallies.

The moment he entered, the scene before him opened up, revealing an enormous chamber that stretched far beyond what he had expected.

His Soul Lantern of Eternal Crypt floated above his head, its eerie light spreading across the vast space and gradually illuminating the surroundings.

A thick atmosphere of mourning permeated the air, pressing against him with an inexplicable heaviness.

The air was cold and damp, carrying the faint smell of ancient bones and stagnant water.

Beneath his feet, shallow black water covered the stone floor.

But the water was not what caught his attention.

It was the figures.

Hundreds of them knelt throughout the enormous chamber, their bodies partially submerged in the shallow water.

Every single one was nothing more than a collection of cursed bones, their skeletal frames wrapped in remnants of decayed clothing that clung loosely to their bodies.

Their knees rested against the stone floor, their backs bent forward, and their heads hung low as though they were bowing before an unseen.

None of them moved from their positions.

Yet their bodies were trembling.

Their skeletal shoulders shook repeatedly, creating a strange, continuous movement that spread throughout the chamber.

They looked like mourners attending an endless funeral.

And the most eerily part of it all, they were weeping.

The sight was disturbing.

Hundreds of cursed figures kneeling in silence, their shoulders shaking as they mourned.

For several seconds, he simply stared at them in disbelief.

‘What the hell is going on here?’

His eyes swept across the chamber, taking in the countless figures scattered through the shallow water.

Not one of them raised its head.

Not one of them acknowledged his arrival.

The silence should have been reassuring, but instead, it made the entire scene far more disturbing.

Thoren had encountered countless bizarre scenes since entering the Abyss. He had fought powerful beasts and conquered dangerous territories.

Yet something about these figures made his instincts scream.

Danger!

His expression immediately hardened.

Every nerve in his body warned him that something was terribly wrong. The pressure was not coming from a visible enemy or an approaching attack.

It was a deep, instinctive warning that seemed to rise from within his very soul.

Without hesitation, Thoren summoned his undead legion out of his Undead Space.

Dark energy surged through the chamber as one undead servant after another materialized in the shallow black water.

Within moments, the previously empty space around Thoren was filled with undead servants, their weapons raised and their attention fixed on the hundreds of kneeling figures.

Yet the moment his legion appeared, the atmosphere changed.

A suffocating sense of death descended upon the chamber.

Thoren’s breathing immediately became shallow as an invisible pressure settled over his body. His muscles tightened instinctively, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

It felt as though something ancient had awakened in response to his arrival.

His heart pounded heavily against his chest.

Something was wrong.

Terribly wrong.

He did not hesitate.

“Grave Shift!”

The instant he activated his escape skill, his figure faded from his original position, leaving behind a faint distortion in the air.

At the same moment, an undead Scorpion Men standing several meters away appeared where he had been, while Thoren materialized in their previous position.

It was an instantaneous exchange.

However, before he could even stabilize himself after the movement, he noticed something horrifying.

One of the mourners was already standing in his original position.

Just moments ago, the mourner had been kneeling in the shallow water with its head bowed and its shoulders trembling.

Now, it stood upright before the undead Scorpion Men. Its movements were so sudden that Thoren could barely follow them.

The mourner slowly extended its skeletal hand. The skeletal hand touched the undead Scorpion Man.

In the next instant, the undead body began to dissolve.

Thoren’s pupils contracted sharply.

The undead Scorpion Man did not explode.

It did not break apart into scattered bones, nor did its body suffer any visible physical damage.

Instead, its entire form began losing its structure, as though an invisible force had erased the very substance holding it together.

Its armored body softened.

Its limbs collapsed.

Its weapon slipped from its grasp and struck the shallow water with a sharp clatter.

Then the rest of its body followed.

The undead Scorpion Man dissolved directly into liquid.

Not just any liquid.

Black water.

Thoren stared in disbelief as the undead entire body transformed into the same dark substance flowing through the chamber.

The transformation happened so quickly that he barely had time to process what he was witnessing.

One moment, the undead Scorpion Man had been standing beside his comrades, ready to fight.

The next, it had ceased to exist.

Thoren’s breathing stopped for a brief moment.

His gaze snapped toward the mourner, which had already withdrawn its hand. Without sparing the surrounding undead another glance, the creature lowered its head and returned to its previous posture.

It was as though nothing had happened.

As though dissolving an undead warrior into black water was nothing more than an insignificant interruption to its endless mourning.

Thoren felt a chill run down his spine.

Worse still, the attack had happened so quickly that even his reaction had been insufficient.

His eyes narrowed as he stared at the black water spreading across the stone floor.

‘What the hell are these things?’

For the first time since entering the Hall of Tallies, Thoren understood that the danger before him was far beyond what he had initially imagined.

The mourners were not merely strange cursed figures gathered in an ancient chamber.

Their touch could turn anything into the very black water beneath their feet.

And judging by the hundreds of figures still kneeling throughout the Hall of Tallies, the mourner that had just destroyed his undead Scorpion Man was only one among countless others.

Just as he stared at the mourners and averted his gaze, he felt it again.

That same feeling.

The feeling of death.

‘Fuck!’