NOVGO.NET Chapter 376: One Entire Million
Chapter 376: One Entire Million
“I’M NOT FAILING HERE.”
Malik, caring not for that, jumped.
Walls slammed down from above and below, aiming to crush him midair.
He twisted, blasted forward, and slipped between them with less than a finger’s width to spare.
And then, just a moment before the gate could snap shut…
He dove in, his cape nearly caught by stone.
The labyrinth screamed behind him until all sound was suddenly cut off.
Everything was.
Malik experienced complete darkness as he reached the other side.
Glow faded from his now bootless feet.
The Seventh Layer was no more.
He was now upon the Eighth Layer.
There was not much falling this time.
He neared its surface in seconds.
And he landed on…
Tents.
Millions.
A near-endless number of them.
Stretching as far as he could see, all stitched from… human skin.
Yes… the ground here wasn’t even solid.
It was just endless rotting skin, barely stitched together with crude sinew, hair, and veins.
They were covered in crude runes drawn in what seemed to be blood every mile or so.
Each ruin collectively pulsated like feverish eyes.
Beneath this land, always beneath, something moved, something big, something that occasionally pressed a massive shape against the skin, as if testing whether it could break through.
Now… the skin wasn’t deprived of inhabitants.
Surprisingly, they weren’t monsters but… hooded figures.
And these hooded figures wandered around, carrying cages full of… brains.
Okay, this was all very unusual, more than anything he’d seen so far.
But, again, Malik didn’t seem to care, calmly walking over the cloth.
He passed those he deemed villagers without saying anything.
And whenever he neared, they paused, heads tilting as if sniffing his scent.
They didn’t attack; they only stepped aside and stared as if recognizing something.
Somehow, they knew him… they knew what he was… or at least what he represented.
Many of them showed respect to him, but some feared him.
Still, and again, neither group revealed any signs of wanting to attack him.
So, since they weren’t hostile, Malik wasn’t planning to be either.
There was no need to make enemies unnecessarily, especially not in a place like this.
With that decided, he continued to walk around, trying to find his way down.
He searched the skin.
The stitched skin of the dead, or the living—perhaps both.
One might think that all these tents housed millions of villagers, but they amounted to only a few dozen.
Perhaps making tents was these hooded figures’ pastime.
A hobby in a place where only death and tragedy reigned.
In any case, with each step, each wet slap of rot, the enormous ’something’ beneath kept stirring; it kept pushing, distorting the fabric of this terrible platform, always in his vicinity as if calling for him.
It could obviously sense him to be an outsider.
A being that could free it.
Malik gave no response.
Hours passed.
He had circled thousands and thousands of miles, but still—no descent.
There were no cuts in the cloth or even a single tiny hole for him to wiggle through.
Only skin…
Only skin that never ended.
If there was a path downward, he wouldn’t find it, not with his luck.
He had to make one, cut through this skin, and dive in.
But… he didn’t know what would happen to those villagers if he did that.
In the time that he spent here, he saw them rebuilding the runes, painting them again with hooks and bone needles. Some cut their arms to fuel it, while others reached into their cages and smeared grey matter mixed with blood across the seams.
By that point, Malik understood.
He realized.
A quiet, brutal truth.
These figures weren’t of Al-Fawra.
They weren’t born in this land.
They were like him…
Seekers.
Ones who made it past seven Layers.
Ones who’d somehow made it here.
But they had failed.
Or rather, they were too terrified to continue.
They had made it to the Eighth Layer’s surface, but never further.
They couldn’t go back up; going against the Aether-flow would shred them to bone and thought. And to make things worse, the Seventh Layer, a damned labyrinthine beast, was a hundred thousand miles tall of a twisting puzzle; no sane Magi could scale that backward.
So they remained here…
Trapped.
Too afraid to face what lived beneath, and too weak to escape above.
And the platform—this rotting stretch of skin—
It was theirs.
Malik was right.
The skin came from both the living and the dead.
Self-regenerating, self-harvested skin taken from their own bodies, again and again, for decades, centuries, or maybe more, cut and sewn together to form a barrier against what flew below.
Whoever came first must’ve started this; they must’ve done it to save people from what they had chosen to never confront.
The skin was protection, and the runes weren’t decoration.
They were prison bars… the very thing that kept what stirred at bay.
Malik stood still.
He was now sure of something else as well.
If he cut the skin…
The runes would die.
Or perhaps the entire thing might fall, judging by how rotten it was.
And the villagers—these failed seekers—they’d all be dead.
Ripped and eaten until nothing of them remained.
Malik stared at the skin beneath his feet.
Then, at the curved sword on his belt.
He had to make a decision.
Would he go forward with it, knowing that those villagers would die?
Or would he go back up, have a go at Aether itself?
’Hm.’
The decision was easy.
Spine Splitter sang.
The moment it gleamed, the platform screamed.
Hhhaaaa… hh’gghhheeeeEEAAAHhhkk… krkkk—KKHHHEEHHH!
Its villagers dropped to their knees, howling and clutching their heads.
Blood poured from their hoods, from beneath their robes, as most of them convulsed.
Those carrying cages ripped them open in panic, falling to their knees.
The brains inside began to…
“Atirajak!”
Chant.
“Aqtulna!!”
“Aqtulna!!”
“Aqtulna!!”
Chant words he could not understand.
“Atirajak!”
Words in Old Tongue.
“’Atawasal ’Iilayk Aqtulana!”
“’Atawasal ’Iilayk Aqtulana!”
“’Atawasal ’Iilayk Aqtulana!”
…They begged.
Though he could not understand, Malik at least knew that much.
For what exactly, he didn’t know, but he didn’t care to listen.
With one clean motion—
“Do not forgive me.”
He cut.
The skin beneath him split.
Every rune died at once, eyes dimming.
Aether fizzled and popped like a severed artery.
The entire skin-field collapsed, and he—
“May you rest in peace.”
Fell.
Malik fell into absolute darkness.
No, no… no. No. NO.
It wasn’t darkness.
It was worse.
It was alive.
A swarm met him.
A swarm of Sinbad-sized bugs.
They were in their billions…
Trillions.
A collective hive of winged, bladed things, with obsidian shells and long serrated limbs. Some had too many eyes, some had none, and all of them moved in one direction—up—until Malik fell through them.
They drowned him instantly.
Clawed, bit, and screeched.
They tried to rip him apart in the first second.
They failed.
BOOOM.
Malik detonated.
His Aether ignited in a single, violent pulse.
Flames expanded from his hands and feet, bursting outward in concentric rings, lighting the abyss in every direction.
Hundreds of thousands of bugs exploded, their flesh charring and wings melting.
Above, the skin fell like an avalanche, killing many more of them.
…All those near the surface were dead.
The seekers who survived for who knows how long were gone.
And yet…
He didn’t stutter.
Malik fell faster, boosting himself down.
Flying past, he grabbed one insect by the throat, jammed fire into its abdomen, and hurled it down.
It burst into others like a gunpowder bomb, clearing an entire mile of them.
He immediately shot through that momentary gap.
Grabbing another, he implanted a second flame.
A third, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
One after another, he used them to detonate the ones below.
He was making weapons from his enemies, clearing a path for his fall.
Malik became a rhythm.
Fire. Throw. Detonate. Dive.
Each second, he dropped hundreds of miles.
Hundreds of miles that barely got him close to his destination.
After all, this was the Eighth Layer, and if the trend didn’t change, then it…
It was likely a million miles deep.
One entire million.
Malik had a long, long way ahead of him.
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