After confirming that no other threats remained, Charles cautiously descended the slippery steps toward the shadow-shrouded area below.
There, he found the remains of a cage that had fallen from the overhead framework: several oddly shaped throwing knives and a complex weapon that reeked of blood, the “Saw Spear.”
“I never expected the bones in those cages to leave behind such a pleasant surprise.”
The throwing knives had vicious serrated edges, and their surfaces were covered in indecipherable runes.
The Messengers whispered that they had once been sacrificial implements used in an ancient “Ritual of Birth” and contained the power of a curse.
As Charles ran a fingertip over one of the cold blades, he could clearly feel a faint, chilling, ominous presence flowing through it.
Its direct killing power might be limited, but it could prove crucial for restraining enemies or triggering certain special effects.
The Saw Spear, meanwhile, was a masterpiece of the Hunter’s Workshop’s brutal aesthetic.
When folded, its compact frame resembled the foreleg of a mantis poised to strike.
Once extended, its enormous blade revealed a mass of vicious metal barbs.
Each differed slightly in shape and wear, as though fragments of countless Nights of the Hunt had been frozen within them.
More disturbing still was the small scrap of dried, blackened skin caught at the base of one barb.
It hinted at a forbidden truth.
The last time the weapon drank blood, it had pierced the wrist of its own wielder.
Even so, some Hunters favored it for its sheer destructive power.
Built around brute force and ruthless design, the weapon was perfectly suited for dealing with large, thick-skinned creatures.
It could deliver broad, devastating slashes or savage thrusts with its spearpoint.
By comparison, Charles’s usual Threaded Cane had begun to feel inadequate against the powerful monsters within the shipyard.
He carefully put it away and tightened his grip on the heavy, vicious new weapon.
The battles that followed quickly proved that its sharp barbs could tear through tough hide and muscle with ease, saving him considerable strength and shortening each Hunt.
However, he had yet to master its weight and balance, and his footing remained somewhat unsteady.
During one evasive counterattack, he lost his balance on a narrow platform and plunged awkwardly into the filthy water below.
Fortunately, the water was shallow, reaching only as high as his waist at its deepest.
The stench, however, was almost suffocating, a foul mixture of rot, excrement, and unknown chemicals.
“This is… humiliating…”
He struggled back onto relatively dry ground, fighting the urge to vomit.
After drinking deeply of Beast blood, the Saw Spear in his hand seemed to awaken some hidden imprint and began releasing fragments of memory into the mind of its wielder. Get faster updates on novelping.com.
Faint echoes of arguments between Hunters from long ago rang in Charles’s ears.
“We should forge the core using a fragment of Cainhurst’s Ring of Betrothal…”
“No. We must mix in the umbilical cord blood of an Orphan of Kos to grant it a spirit…”
Charles shook his head hard, trying to drive away the disturbing voices from the past.
“These boats… They’re all rotten. None of them can sail anymore…”
His original plans had included the possibility of escaping by boat along the waterways.
But after the Scourge of the Beast had ravaged the area for so long, the docks had been abandoned, and every vessel had been badly corroded and overrun by parasitic organisms.
With no other choice, Charles endured the filth covering his body and continued struggling along the riverbank.
Before long, a human skull half-buried in silt and refuse caught his attention.
It was completely unlike an ordinary set of remains.
From a crack in the top of the skull came a strange, shifting radiance that shimmered like an aurora.
As though compelled by some unseen force, Charles reached out and touched the crack.
The change was immediate.
The aurora-like colors suddenly surged to life, transforming into a liquid, nebula-like substance that coiled violently around his wrist.
At the same time, the faint phosphorescent matter within the skull’s eye sockets swelled rapidly and melted into starlit sludge.
Its internal structure became instantly clear to Charles, and it bore an eerie resemblance to the inhuman structure he had once glimpsed within Gehrman’s eyes.
Meanwhile, the flock of crows perched upon the shipyard’s beams seemed to answer some unseen summons.
They began crying out together in sharp, measured rhythms.
The sound was no longer meaningless noise.
It resembled an obscure hymn chanted in some ancient language.
Rainbow-colored droplets of light flowed from their eyes like tears.
When they struck the ground, they arranged themselves into complex and mysterious patterns of stars.
The Messengers whispered in his mind at just the right moment.
This was “Madman’s Knowledge,” a forbidden relic capable of directly granting a Hunter the power of “Insight.”
It was not the product of human wisdom.
It came from nameless deities or lifeforms beyond the distant sea of stars, and embodied knowledge and truths from dimensions far beyond human understanding.
To touch such alien wisdom was both a blessing that allowed one to glimpse the world as it truly was and a curse that could lead to utter madness.
Charles recalled Gehrman’s words.
To truly grow stronger, one first had to attain “Enlightenment” and awaken one’s inner perception.
Whether he wished to find the elusive “Paleblood” or gain enough strength to escape this terrifying place, he no longer had any other choice.
Without further hesitation, Charles raised the Saw Spear and brought the heavy end of its shaft down upon the skull that contained the forbidden knowledge.
“Crack! Boom!”
The sound of the skull shattering seemed to trigger a chain reaction.
A vast, chaotic, ancient power surged forth like a flood breaking through a dam.
It instantly shattered the barriers of his consciousness and forced its way into his mind.
The world before him overturned.
The mold growing across the shipyard walls transformed into a living, rotating map of the stars.
Every stain of rust reenacted the violent birth of the universe before his eyes.
He felt as though the substance churning inside his skull was no longer brain matter, but a miniature nebula in the process of being born.
Millions of pupils formed from light appeared upon the filthy surface of the water below.
Together, they became a flowing galaxy.
When Charles instinctively reached out to touch it, his fingertip passed through more than ten overlapping layers of reality, each belonging to a different dimension.
His consciousness continued to rise, breaking free from the confines of his physical body and ascending into the cold, immeasurable reaches of the cosmos.
Amid that boundless darkness and bewildering radiance, he witnessed the heavens giving birth.
A rapidly spinning star radiating an ominous crimson light branded an eternal spiral mark into the deepest part of his soul.
Within every groove of that mark, fragments of memories from different times and places flowed like strips of film.
He saw ancient Hunters dissecting unborn, twisted “Great Ones” to obtain the Umbilical Cords that contained their divine power.
He saw mad scholars committing blasphemous acts by candlelight as they sought the ultimate mysteries of life.
He even saw himself at some point in the future, beneath blood-red moonlight, holding a sharp blade as he carved into a vast, twisted, unformed fetal membrane.
As the power continued pouring into him, an invisible barrier that had long confined his body and mind collapsed completely.
The muddy ground beneath his feet became transparent, revealing the embryo of an ancient deity buried deep beneath Yharnam, so vast that its scale defied imagination.
Its surviving fragments of memory and knowledge formed the very foundation of the “Insight” Charles had now obtained.