Chapter 563: The One Behind The Game

This was the Demon of End.

And every time its chest rose, thousands of chains were pulled, and the sound of metal passed through the entire world of the prison.

Grrrrrrrr...

That sound alone was enough for Lian to feel a very weak vibration in the bones of his chest.

The world had said that this creature had been killed centuries ago, the history books had written the same thing.

The reports of the Federation, researchers, the great families, and even the count of hunted Demon Rank creatures were all based on the same claim.

But the creature that was supposed to be one of the greatest victories in human history was breathing right in front of them.

"Maybe it was only in my imagination, but I didn’t think it would really be the End itself, when I look at it, I feel like I’m looking at the End, the end of everything, the end of the world, the end of time, and the end of existence."

"I feel like nothing can exist after this creature, because it is the End."

Seris stood beside him, she did not reject his words, because she had exactly the same feeling, as if they were looking at the end of every concept.

Her right hand was wrapped around the handle of her sword, too tightly, and she stared at the dragon.

Maybe she was comparing the images she had created in her mind since childhood with what she was seeing now.

The Pendragon heroes, the dead dragon, victory, pride, and the reality in front of them were a little different.

"At least your ancestors still managed to defeat it," Lian said.

Young Pendragon gave him a quick look and their eyes met for several seconds.

"Anyway, what should we do now?"

He also did not want to let this Demon be released under any circumstances, and it was better for them to stop its release as soon as possible.

She said nothing and only turned forward again, after a few steps, her hand around the handle of her sword became a little looser.

The Ancestral Mark lit up again.

The girl stopped.

The light became weaker.

Then, when she took half a step to the right, it became brighter again.

Seris looked at a narrow path between two huge pillars.

"That way."

Lian followed her without asking a question, and the farther they went, the clearer part of the seal structure became.

And then he saw something that did not belong to the rest, a very thin silver thread moving across one of the black chains.

If the golden light of the prison had not lit it from that specific angle, it might not have been seen at all.

He moved closer.

[True Sequence]

His eyes focused on the structure, unfortunately, the information did not appear in front of him as a simple window, this skill was not always going to give him a ready answer.

But it allowed him to see the paths, the main structure of the chain was almost impossible to understand, thousands of layers with each command placed on top of another and thousands of mana paths connected to each other.

Something that probably several generations of the strongest Pendragon experts had created and then improved.

But the silver thread did not belong to it, instead, it was sitting on top of the network.

Not by force, as if it was using the paths of the seal itself, and with even greater precision, it seemed that whenever a golden command passed through the chain, the silver thread recorded part of it.

As if it was copying the structure and then returning an almost identical version to the network with a very small change.

Lian frowned, this logic was familiar.

Not because he had seen it before, but because he had spent several hours hearing about a certain artifact, this damn thing was acting exactly like the Thousand-Faced Mirror artifact.

Seris stood beside him, looking at the thread for several seconds.

"Primal Firmament?"

"It seems like it."

If such a structure really came from the same technology, then maybe this time the answer was truly the thing right in front of them.

The silver thread moved along the chain and they followed it.

The farther they went, the more the prison looked like the remains of an old battlefield rather than a structure that had been built afterward.

The first thing they saw was hundreds of swords, they were buried in a black field and were broken and burned.

Some only had their handles left and some still had a very weak light flowing along their edges.

The names of many of them were carved into their bases, Pendragon... Pendragon again... and again.

Lian looked at one of the broken blades, these were not decorations, someone had fought here and someone had died here.

A little farther ahead, a huge piece of armor was lying on the ground.

The center of the armor’s chest was completely crushed and nothing remained inside it.

On the other side, one of the main pillars of the prison was broken in the middle.

Lian raised his head, on a distant wall, five marks could be seen.

At first, he thought they were cracks, but then he saw the distance between them, they were claw marks from a monster that had struck it.

Just one of those marks was nearly a hundred meters long.

He slowed his steps for a moment.

The Demon of End had once been free here and had fought, this entire world was not originally a prison that had been built beforehand.

It was part of a battlefield where the ancestors of the Pendragons had later built the seal, every chain, pillar, and golden ring was placed over an old wound.

This family had not simply thrown the Demon into a cell, they had turned the entire place where it had been defeated into a prison.

The Eclipse Core pulsed again.

Thump.

Lian stopped, this time the reaction was not to the Demon of End itself, along the way, he had felt the presence of the Demon Rank from every part of the prison.

Its pressure was everywhere, but this pulse had come from ahead.

Seris also raised her hand almost at the same time, her Ancestral Mark became brighter and both of them looked in the same direction.

No dialogue was needed.

They started moving and their steps became faster, the silver threads also became more numerous.

One.

Three.

Ten.

Slowly, they had spread across the chains like foreign veins and all of them were going in the same direction, at the end of the path, the ground ended.

In front of them, a huge black platform was floating above the sea of red mist, there was no bridge, but when she stepped forward, her mark shone and a golden path came out of the empty space.

They crossed it.

The closer they got, the stronger the Eclipse Core reacted.

At the center of the platform was the heart of the prison, and thousands of golden rings were rotating in different directions around a black core.

Some were horizontal and some were vertical and some had angles that gave the mind a strange feeling if you looked at them for too long.

Every time two rings passed beside each other, a network of golden symbols formed between them and then disappeared again.

The entire prison was powered from this point.

And right in the middle of all this, there was something small that was silver in color.

At first glance, it even looked ridiculous, a seed about the size of a fingertip with a smooth and shiny surface.

But thousands of silver threads came out of that same seed.

They had entered the rings, the chains, the energy paths, and even some of the golden lines beneath their feet.

Lian understood with only one look, this was the center, whatever had infected the prison was spreading from here.

Seris pulled out her sword, and the sound of the blade leaving its sheath was unusually clear in the huge space of the prison.

The Young Vorhelm also took one step forward, but then... stopped.

He felt that something was watching them, but his instincts gave no warning.

Something was wrong.

If a living creature was waiting in ambush, even if it was much stronger than him, his instincts would usually at least give him some sign of danger.

Here? Nothing.

But the feeling of being watched did not disappear.

Seris noticed his stop a moment later, she took her eyes off the seed and looked in the same direction Lian was looking.

Behind the golden rings, farther away, at first only a thin shadow could be seen, but then one of the rings rotated and golden light passed over it.

And someone’s face became visible for a moment, long silver hair, pale skin, a thin body, and two long ears coming out from between the hair.

But it was not a Pendragon, it was not even a damn human.

The creature stood motionless among the lights of the prison and its eyes reflected the gold of the rings like the surface of a mirror.

Lian did not even blink.

In his mind, all the faces that had accused each other since morning came together for a moment.

Stormheart, Vorhelm, Primal Firmament, the Six Great Families, the Twelve Ancient Guilds.

Everyone had been looking for a traitor on the other side.

Everyone thought that one of the powers on Earth had started the game and now, behind the corrupted heart of the prison, a Silver Elf woman was standing.

At that moment, a simple and humiliating truth became clear in his mind, none of those powers were controlling the game.

They had all been pawns in the game from the very beginning.