NOVGO.NET Chapter 381: Forgotten Nexus.
Chapter 381: Forgotten Nexus.
The Titans were not mountainous or colossi.
No, he had long since passed that stage.
They were planets, walking on a sea that stretched forever.
Each step they took sent tsunamis reaching stars.
Each swing of their arms broke Suns.
They did not see him.
He was too small for them, too weak.
These Titans were locked in a war.
Dozens of them, fighting without sound.
Punching each other without regard for those in the sea.
And beneath them…
Beneath it all…
A black hole.
Larger than all the others.
At the bottom of the ocean.
Spinning and sucking up all that was around it.
Malik set his eyes on it.
This was his exit out of here.
Fire ignited from his limbs and…
BOOM.
He launched forward, flying between fists that tore through reality.
Yes, reality, breaking Laws with every single movement.
A leg came up.
He weaved under it.
A blade of bone cut through the ocean.
He twisted, barely spinning past the tide.
Such actions kept repeating.
These were beings as strong as Malāks.
And he was a mote, but he survived.
He dodged the crashing low blows.
He bent his path through exploding ribs.
Malik was passing by everything without any problems.
At least until one of them noticed him.
Or rather, a… Giant on its chest did.
Its mouth opened wide as he passed, as it spat a tongue of flame wider than an entire realm.
He couldn’t dodge, courtesy of its size and proximity, so he readied himself to carve through it instead, his white fire flaring.
With Spine Splitter in hand…
“Fall.”
He split a world of flame in half.
None of it injured him, and he fell through it all.
After a few more near deaths, he’d already reached the black hole, having learned from what came before.
It welcomed him.
He dove once more…
And woke in a void.
The same void.
Only it was…
A little darker?
Yeah. The void was deeper.
He turned and looked back.
Behind him were many black holes.
Each one was moving down—
Deeper.
There were thousands of them.
Maybe more.
’…I see.’
Malik understood it now.
This place wasn’t just depth.
It was a choice.
One could wait.
Wait for gravity to drag them down over thousands of years.
Let their body rot.
Let their soul starve.
Or…
One could dive.
Dare the skip, push deep.
The Abyss offered no guarantees…
But Malik had no time; his hourglass had long since cracked.
So he chose.
Another black hole and another.
Each one was worse than the last, more Corrupted.
One was a storm of black thunder that chased him throughout.
One swallowed him into a maelstrom of golden shackles. One was a womb of flesh that nearly drowned him in blood. Another held a Maw where Malāks once wept, a land of broken Laws worse than that of the Titans.
The Eleventh Depth played with his mind.
A land of Trumpters Of Death.
One’s telling him that Jasmine waited… making a mimicry of the Nether’s River.
Leaving what he most despised, he returned to the void, falling deeper than in any realm.
He kept falling and entered his twelfth one, his Twelfth Depth.
And for the first time since his arrival in this Layer, Malik landed.
Right, no longer was he falling; he finally landed.
His feet were on soil.
A soil without Aether.
He blinked.
The sky was not sky.
It was a membrane of twitching veins.
The stars above were blinking Black Eyes, and the ground beneath him pulsed.
Following the trend, it, too, was alive.
All around him was a planet overtaken by Corruption.
A planet without an ounce of Aether, completely lost to IT.
He breathed once and exhaled.
Malik had reached the final one.
It had to have been.
After all, nothing could be worse than this.
Nothing could be worse than IT.
BOOM.
Malik stepped forward, breaching the sonic barrier even without his Devil’s Footsteps, and flying across the dark terrain of the Twelfth Depth.
He didn’t waste time.
BOOM.
One step.
BOOM.
Then another.
BOOM.
Then ten more.
And in a few minutes, he’d covered tens of thousands of miles.
Even at those speeds, he saw everything to the last detail: the twisted ranges of black bone, the forests of charred coral, and the valleys teeming with twitching roots and pale ichor.
His eyes more or less saw the entire planet.
Stone and skin and sky, all soaked in Corruption.
It made every gust of wind sick, every drop of rain black sludge, and every storm a cyclone of hungry veins.
His body didn’t respond to it, of course, but death was felt all the same.
If he didn’t do anything…
If he failed here…
This was what Fam Iblis would become.
Failure was not an option; he had to succeed.
He could not allow the Fall to complete itself.
And so, he kept moving.
Skipping between warps in the land, dropping into canyons, and leaping over ridges.
Everything bled smoke.
Every living thing was dead.
Every dead thing still pulsed.
Then, finally, he stopped.
Before him lay the core.
A mountain.
Not of stone, ice, or magma, but flesh.
It was shaped like a heart.
A living organ.
Black sludge oozed from it in waves, coating the soil, the air, everything in this realm.
Its veins ran miles in every direction, forming rivers of putrid life.
They, like every other disgusting part of it, pulsed.
With every beat came a shockwave.
A tremor that shook the ground.
Malik narrowed his eyes.
The Corruption here was immense.
Worse than anywhere else, maybe even worse than ITS’ home
Malik didn’t believe he’d ever have thought this, but this realm was even worse than the Sixth Layer, that ocean of bodies.
But he, again, despite all his thoughts, remained untouched.
He was immune to its symptoms, and he, who was already Corrupted, could no longer be.
Besides, even though Aether wasn’t present, his Nār Al-Khals was in him, stopping Corruption from entering.
It came a bit too late, but, eh, that was life.
Malik turned towards it.
The goal was clear.
Destroy the heart.
Only then would the black hole appear.
He raised his foot—
’Hm?’
—And stopped.
Figures emerged from the haze.
Humanoid, tall, perfectly black, their skin absorbing all light, their presence silencing the very hum of the core.
Their eyes, in stark contrast, were white.
Pure white, glowing like twin moons buried in ink.
Malik wasn’t hallucinating.
They were real.
And they were familiar.
They looked like IT.
Copies of IT down to the last feature.
They moved slowly, surrounding Malik, but making no move to attack.
Malik stared at them, prepared to strike at any moment, but a second later he…
He lowered his sword.
His eyes were on one of the beings, nearly showing surprise.
It had gestured toward Malik with one arm and raised the other, pointing at the heart.
A second followed, pointing at the heart as well; more specifically, at a point near its base.
The lateral coronary artery.
The outer sheath of fibrous muscle, where the ventricle splits into two dark lobes.
The most vulnerable part of any heart, exposed in this grotesque imitation.
Malik remained still.
His eyes were low.
Head slightly tilted.
’A trap?’
No.
If IT were behind this, IT would’ve remembered.
IT wouldn’t forget his Return by Death.
Wouldn’t forget what IT most wanted.
What IT waited for.
So…
He moved.
A leap carried him halfway up the heart.
Another took him to the exposed artery.
He stood before it, still.
Then, without any more delay, he stabbed.
Spine Splitter slid into the black mass with little resistance.
Malik slashed upwards, beginning to carve into the heart.
Roars resounded as he did so.
They came not from the heart but the sword.
It screamed for duty, using the embers left deep within its core.
Pure fire surged from it, flooding into the living organ, igniting it from within.
And oh, it ignited, like a dry forest set ablaze.
The heart convulsed with each strike.
Black sludge shot from its wounds and pores, painting all that it touched in death.
Still, Malik kept going, caring not for its Corruption.
He sliced away as its beats grew faster and faster, and faster still until—
SPLAAAT!
It exploded.
The moment it did, Malik was nowhere to be seen.
Indeed, he had already moved, leaping back even further as the shockwave blasted out, destroying the ground, the sky, and its own people, who waved him goodbye as they were caught up in the explosion.
Everything around it was destroyed.
Sludge flew in all directions, from all things, but none touched him.
He protected himself, sword in hand, demolishing all that dared near.
Seconds went by until all that remained was silence and husks of death.
Malik turned towards his Path.
The heart, or what remained of it, sagged inward.
And in its center…
A swirling black hole.
He stepped and leapt.
The black hole caught him, swallowed him, and once again, Malik was gone.
Back into the void.
But this time…
’Hm.’
It was different.
Beneath him, floating in this void, was a pure white core.
It, unlike everything around it, didn’t pulse; instead, it bent reality, its own light curving into it, void stretching toward it, as if desperate for its touch.
A singularity.
The Mouth of God.
The universe’s tunnel to the Forgotten Nexus.
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