NOVGO.NET Chapter 555: Ascendance...!
Chapter 555: Ascendance…!
Ugh…
A faint groan slipped from Lucas’s lips as he forced himself to move, every muscle screaming in protest.
His body slid off the broken wall, stone dust falling from his hair and shoulders as he staggered forward.
’What… happened?’
The question throbbed at the back of his skull as his hazy vision tried to settle.
His lungs burned, each breath dragging in the acrid stench of black smoke that still clung to the altar, heavy and unnatural.
Crack!
The wall behind him gave way, collapsing into rubble, its surface carved with the deep impression of his body.
He stumbled, knees almost buckling before he rammed his holy sword into the ground to steady himself.
The blade quivered, light flickering weakly along its edge.
“This place… the altar…”
He blinked, disoriented, until memory returned in a flash.
The masked demon…!
His senses screamed in warning, adrenaline cutting through the fog. Ignoring the pain tearing through his body, Lucas scanned the ruins.
His fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword, but even that grip felt weaker than it should have been.
He looked down at the blade, as though it could answer him.
But the sacred steel, once unshakable in its brilliance, was scarred. Its glow dimmed, sputtering like a dying flame.
As broken as he was, so too was she.
Blood dripped steadily from his chest, spreading across his clothes and sliding down his right arm.
His left foot was mangled, the flesh torn away as if gnawed by fire itself.
Every step was a limp, every motion another test of will.
And yet, he forced himself forward.
What truly unnerved him wasn’t the blood, or the broken bones, or the pain that clawed at him from every corner of his body.
It was the emptiness.
The crushing weight of divine strength he had wielded moments ago—gone.
His aura, his sacred blessing, the righteous fire that marked him as chosen—all of it bled out into the void left behind by that man.
Even his mana… nearly dry, as though the world itself had turned its back on him.
Lucas gritted his teeth, forcing air into his lungs.
Focusing what little remained of his divinity into the broken pieces of his body, Lucas pushed forward once more.
His chest burned, his ruined foot screamed, but he kept moving.
He had to.
PZZZZZT!
Sparks of energy snapped through the air, jagged and unstable, like the very veins of the altar were short-circuiting.
Purplish-black and deep crimson arcs danced around him, staining even the light of his holy sword.
The floor groaned.
The walls bled shadow.
The very sky above the dungeon bent unnaturally, warping as though it no longer remembered what “up” and “down” were supposed to mean.
Just breathing inside the altar felt wrong.
Every inhale sank into him like swallowing glass, as if the air itself wasn’t air anymore but something alien.
Thoughts twisted mid-formation, fragments of memory colliding with each other.
For one terrifying instant he wasn’t sure if gravity was pulling him down, or if it had forgotten to exist at all.
Even the dungeon’s mana—once a steady, oppressive flow—now felt distorted, eaten, rewritten into something else entirely.
His senses reeled, still off-balance and hazy, but his instincts pulled him in one direction.
The source of this blasphemous energy.
The eye of the storm.
And it didn’t take long to find it.
Lucas froze.
His throat locked, his breath caught.
“W…What is this…” he whispered, voice trembling despite himself. His god-given eyes widened, straining to process what they were seeing.
THUMP.
THUMP.
Down below, at the heart of a crater carved into the altar’s floor, something pulsed.
A cocoon.
Huge, grotesque, the size of a house, its surface writhed with oily darkness that bled outward in smoky tendrils.
Every pulse of its surface was a heartbeat—no, not a heartbeat, but something far worse.
A heartbeat inside a heartbeat.
A rhythm that no mortal mind was ever meant to hear.
The sound didn’t just echo in the air. It reverberated inside his skull.
“Guhhhckk—!”
Agony ripped through his mind the moment his gaze lingered too long.
He dropped to one knee, clutching his temple as a white-hot spike of pain split his head in two.
His teeth gnashed together, blood dripping down from his nose.
Don’t look.
Don’t think.
Don’t listen.
But it was impossible.
The cocoon demanded to be perceived.
Even as it tore sanity apart, it called, insisting it be witnessed.
Questions clawed their way into Lucas’s mind.
What is that?
What has he become?
But the questions collapsed before they could finish, shredded like paper in a storm.
The only thing keeping him tethered to himself, the only lifeline against the madness, was the faint warmth of the divine light he still forced to coat his body.
It flickered weakly, barely more than embers.
And yet, it was the only barrier between him and total collapse.
Lucas swallowed hard, eyes still wide, his breath ragged.
“…Masked demon… what have you done?”
Gripping his holy sword so tightly his knuckles turned bone white, Lucas forced his trembling body to obey.
He sucked in a ragged breath, trying to steady himself, to bury the madness clawing at his skull.
Right now, he couldn’t think clearly.
He couldn’t even feel properly.
His senses were twisted, broken—but instinct screamed louder than reason.
Whatever that thing in front of him was… it was dangerous.
No—it was an abomination.
Something that should never have existed.
“I… need to…”
His golden eyes flared, burning against the oppressive haze. He drew what remained of his dwindling divinity into himself.
It was foolish, reckless, suicidal even… but his gut whispered a truth he couldn’t ignore.
That cocoon… that thing… it’s an anomaly. It doesn’t belong to this world.
It must be destroyed.
No matter the cost.
—SSZZZZZZIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEE!!!
The holy blade in his hands ignited, blinding light gathering along its length, vibrating with lethal purity.
Lucas’s legs surged forward, propelling him across the crater with a speed born of desperation.
Each step cracked the warped ground beneath him, his wounds screaming with every motion.
He raised his blade high.
His chance was now.
The cocoon pulsed—vulnerable.
Weak.
Exposed.
This was it.
His only chance to end the nightmare before it could awaken.
“RRRAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!”
SWOOOSHHHHHHHH!!!
His sword carved the air, a streak of divine brilliance that split the darkness as it descended toward the cocoon.
But then—
The world changed.
Heat. Overwhelming, suffocating, absolute heat.
FWOOOOOOSHHHHHHHHH!!!
The atmosphere itself caught fire, burning red and gold.
In the distance, above the warped altar sky, a miniature sun ignited into existence, its corona bleeding flames across the horizon.
Lucas’s blade was inches from the cocoon when the world itself roared against him.
From that newborn sun, a torrent of fire crashed downward like divine judgment.
CLAAAAANNNNGGGG!!!
His blade never touched the cocoon.
It was stopped—blocked.
A red sword, glowing with flames hotter than any forge, intercepted his strike mid-swing.
Sparks exploded, light and flame colliding in a storm of clashing forces.
Lucas gasped, choking, his arms trembling violently against the weight pressing down his blade.
The heat was unbearable.
His mana boiled in his veins, his divine reserves burned and melted away as if they were nothing.
His body screamed in agony as his flesh blistered and seared just by being close.
It was too hot. Too much. Too divine.
But through the haze of pain, his eyes widened—straining, disbelieving, breaking.
Because the one who stood before him, flames dancing across her body like a sovereign of the sun itself, was someone he knew.
“…Junior… Stacia…??”
There she was—calm, radiant, and utterly unyielding.
Surrounded by crimson-golden fire, she stood casually, almost effortlessly, blocking his desperate strike with a single hand on her sword.
“I can’t have you harm my dear senior…”
Her voice was gentle, almost affectionate, but to Lucas it felt like a blade sliding between his ribs.
“Dear—? What… what are you talking abou—”
The words never left him.
BOOOMMMM!!!
An eruption flared beneath his abdomen, fire blooming from nowhere.
A spark had slipped past his guard and detonated inside him, as if her sword had planted a brand within his body.
“AaAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”
His scream tore through the altar.
Blood burst from his lips, hissing and bubbling as it hit the scorched stone.
The crimson droplets boiled away into steam, carrying the coppery scent of his life being erased.
Lucas staggered, clutching his chest, every nerve in his body shrieking.
His vision swam.
His thoughts—fragmented. What was happening?
What had Stacia done?
But no matter how he tried to cling to reason, his mind slipped like sand between his fingers.
And then—he noticed.
Stacia wasn’t looking at him anymore.
Her burning gaze had softened, turned away from him entirely.
She looked toward the cocoon.
Not with fear. Not with suspicion.
But with warmth.
“…Dear…”
Her voice melted into reverence as the cocoon shuddered.
SSSZZZZZZZHHHHHHH!!!
A slit tore open down its center, stretching vertically like a wound in the fabric of reality itself.
The dark shell split apart slowly, deliberately, the sound of rending flesh and cracking stone echoing across the altar.
From within spilled a glow unlike anything Lucas had ever seen—bluish-purple, streaked with pale white light that writhed like living veins.
VOOOOOOOOOSHHHHHHHHHH!!!
The altar shook violently as energy surged outward.
The air itself grew heavy, collapsing under a pressure that crushed lungs and bones alike.
Lucas, trembling, tried to rise to his knees.
But the instant his eyes turned toward the opening cocoon—
He froze.
His entire body refused to move.
His soul screamed at him, louder than instinct, louder than fear.
Do not look.
Do not acknowledge.
Whatever was emerging—whatever was inside—was not meant to be seen.
His head pounded, his vision blackening, his mind on the verge of shattering.
Why am I still alive?
Why hasn’t my head exploded yet?
And then he heard it.
That voice again.
“Dear…hehe it’s been so long~”
Stacia.
Her tone was trembling, yet filled with devotion so pure it made Lucas sick.
He forced his blurred eyes open just enough to glimpse her.
She stood before the cocoon, her noble form shaking, blood trickling freely from her nose.
Crimson streaks ran down her lips and chin, staining her proud, flame-wreathed face.
Her flames flared desperately around her, but even that was crumbling.
Even she couldn’t endure the thing that was coming forth.
And yet—
She was smiling.
Because what stepped out of that cocoon… was a formless being, a warped silhouette shaped vaguely like a man, yet impossibly not.
The longer Lucas looked, the more the “shape” bled into itself, unmaking and remaking in an endless paradox.
An existence that should not be.
[…You’re hurt.]
The voice wasn’t spoken.
It simply existed, rippling inside their skulls like an echo that had always been there.
Lucas and Stacia froze.
Their senses failed to keep up with the sound, their very thoughts unraveling.
Yet—Stacia did not recoil.
No.
She looked… nostalgic. Her trembling eyes softened, as if she had been waiting an eternity to hear that tone again.
The formless creature shifted.
From its incomprehensible mass, a hand began to take shape—if one could call it that.
It was neither solid nor fluid, an outline that seemed to phase between realities.
And it reached for her cheek.
Stacia did not resist.
She welcomed it, tilting her head against the touch like a child finding warmth.
—SSHHHHRRRAAACKKK!!!
A portion of her face detonated instantly, flesh and bone bursting into ash and motes of divine flame.
Half her jaw, her cheek, her eye—obliterated.
But she never screamed.
She smiled.
Because to her, the pain did not matter.
[Don’t worry… all of this never happened.]
The voice was calm.
Comforting.
Gentle enough to lull the world into believing it.
Yet beneath it, a vibration whispered.𝑎
[The Anomaly has lied.]
CRRRRRRKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!
The air cracked like a pane of glass shattering.
Reality itself splintered, breaking into fragments.
The altar, the flames, the cocoon—everything collapsed into shards of meaningless scenery.
Darkness swallowed it all.
And then—
Haaahhh…!
Haaahhh…!
Haah….!
Lucas shot up, chest heaving, drenched in sweat.
His breaths came ragged, like he’d been drowning for hours. His trembling eyes darted around wildly.
“W-Where…?”
No cocoon.
No Stacia bleeding with devotion.
No impossible being touching the world.
Instead—rock walls. Jagged stone lined with veins of faintly glowing mana crystals.
The stale air of a dungeon corridor.
Lucas blinked, trying to understand. This place—he knew it.
The first safe zone of the first floor of the dungeon.
“Senior! Wake up—oh, you’re up. Tch, stop being such a lazy bum, you’re supposed to protect us, aren’t you?”
A teasing voice rang out, sharp yet familiar.
“Flamme…?”
Before he could think, another voice followed—softer, gentle, almost apologetic.
“Flamme! Don’t be so harsh. I’m sorry, senior. You know how she gets… you can rest if you want. I’m sure you’re tired after staying up all night on watch.”
Reina.
Two faces he knew. Faces he’d seen countless times before.
They were here.
Safe.
Smiling.
As if nothing had happened.
“What’s… going on?”
Flamme tilted her head at him, frowning in confusion.
“What are you talking about, senior?”
Lucas stared at them.
His heart pounded.
But no matter how hard he tried to grasp it—
The memory was gone.