Darwin glanced toward the nearby pillar and immediately noticed Sarah hiding behind it.
His grin widened the moment he recognized her, and whatever interest he’d had in fighting Nikolai disappeared almost instantly.
He casually pushed past him and made his way toward her.
“Well, damn. If it isn’t that slimy bastard’s wife,” Darwin said with a laugh, looking around at the flooded crimson dungeon.
“So I’m guessing all this is what’s left of Applecrest?”
Sarah slowly stepped out from behind the pillar and gave him an icy glare.
She had met Darwin before, though as far as she knew, he was simply Wallace’s eccentric and unruly older brother.
Wallace, Markus, and Darwin had gone out of their way to maintain that lie around her rather than attempt to explain the considerably stranger truth.
“You’re barely ever around, this day somehow keeps getting weirder, and don’t call my late husband a slimy bastard, you rude problem child.”
Darwin’s smile immediately weakened.
Even Nikolai glanced toward him.
“Alright, alright, chill.” Darwin raised both hands defensively and actually took a step back.
“I meant no offense. I didn’t even know the old man died. Wally doesn’t tell me shit.” His expression became briefly more thoughtful as he scratched his cheek.
“Honestly, I always figured that bastard was immortal.”
Sarah’s glare sharpened.
“Poor choice of words.”
“Right. Shutting up now.”
Darwin quickly turned away from her and looked toward Nikolai instead, apparently deciding that fighting a terrorist was currently less dangerous than continuing that conversation.
“So, Nicky, what’s it gonna be?” he asked, spreading his arms.
“We team up, get out of this hellhole, and make sure our second mother doesn’t get eaten by something horrible, or do you want us to blow each other apart first?”
“Team up,” Nikolai answered immediately.
“I’m not wasting my energy fighting you.”
“Aw. You’re no fun.”
Nikolai ignored him and began studying the surrounding chamber.
Unlike the narrow corridors and cells they’d passed through earlier, this section of the structure stretched far beyond what either of them could immediately see.
“This castle is considerably larger than the rest of the buildings,” Nikolai said, his eyes moving across the crimson walls.
“If I had to guess, the core of the Devil’s Footprint is somewhere inside.”
His grip tightened around his sword.
“We start searching here.”
Darwin’s grin returned.
“Works for me, but there’s something I need to do first.” He glanced toward one of the nearby walls before raising a hand.
“If my brother is anywhere in this place, I should probably let him know I’m awake.”
Darkness began gathering around his fingertips.
Nikolai’s eyes narrowed.
Darwin watched the growing mass with obvious excitement.
“I saw this in an anime once,” he said.
“Pretty sure they called the attack…”
The darkness condensed further, becoming so dense that the air around his hand seemed to distort.
Darwin smiled.
“Cero.”
The beam erupted from his fingertips.
A torrent of concentrated darkness tore through the chamber, blasting straight through the crimson wall and continuing outward into the Black Ocean.
The impact shook the castle around them, chunks of red stone breaking loose as the beam disappeared into the darkness beyond. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
For several seconds, the entire structure seemed to tremble.
Darwin lowered his hand, looking extremely pleased with himself.
“Hopefully Markus saw that. Even if the beam blended into all this darkness, there’s no way he didn’t hear it.”
Nikolai stared at the massive hole Darwin had just blown through the castle.
“You also just informed every monster in this place that someone is ransacking their home.”
Darwin shrugged.
“They were going to find out eventually.”
Sarah pinched the bridge of her nose.
Nikolai sighed.
“Come on. Let’s get moving.”
He started walking before Darwin could come up with another idea.
Meanwhile, Iris was still speaking with Avaritia when a massive beam of darkness suddenly erupted in the distance.
Her eye immediately twitched as the attack tore through what she could now recognize as an enormous crimson castle, the blast illuminating its outline for only a moment before disappearing into the darkness of the Black Ocean.
Iris stared at it.
‘Oh, fuck me.’
She had only met Darwin once during her previous life, but once had been more than enough.
‘If Darwin is really awake, then my night just got so much worse.
I still remember that psychopath blowing up the entire cafeteria because they ran out of dinosaur chicken nuggets.’
She rubbed her forehead.
Markus, meanwhile, seemed far less concerned.
He looked toward the distant castle and smiled.
“Well, that makes things easy. Looks like we’ve got our destination.”
Avaritia’s glowing eyes were fixed entirely on the fading traces of the attack.
“That blast…” he murmured.
“It was composed almost entirely of Miasma.”
His expression brightened with fascination.
“I didn’t realize a human was capable of wielding it so directly. Even I find pure Miasma difficult to manipulate, and I am the greatest mage among the Seven Sins.” Avaritia turned toward Markus, practically glowing with excitement.
“I wish to learn more. Can you take me to whoever created that attack?”
Iris glanced at him.
Of course that’s what interests you.
“Sure,” Markus said.
“Better than wandering around blindly.”
He bent down and lifted both Iris and Avaritia into his arms.
Avaritia glanced at Markus’s hold with immediate dissatisfaction before unfurling his enormous black wings.
The appendages folded inward and slowly sank into his back, disappearing completely so they wouldn’t get in the way.
Markus placed the lantern between his teeth.
“Hold on.”
Iris wrapped an arm around his shoulder.
Avaritia reluctantly did the same.
Then Markus jumped. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
He launched himself across the crimson maze, clearing enormous gaps between bridges before landing and immediately springing toward the next.
His movements were so fast that even the Remnants wandering throughout the Black Ocean barely had time to react before the three of them had already passed.
Iris tightened her grip.
Avaritia remained remarkably calm.
After several jumps, the demon prince shifted slightly in Markus’s arms.
“This human isn’t particularly comfortable.”
Markus’s eye twitched.
Avaritia rested his head against his shoulder anyway.
“But he will suffice.”
Iris bit her lip to keep herself from laughing.
Markus ignored both of them and continued forward, quickly closing the remaining distance between them and the castle.
Up close, the structure was even more ridiculous than Iris had expected.
It was enormous, built entirely from the same crimson material as everything else within the Black Ocean, though calling it a castle almost felt generous.
It looked more like something created by a person who had only ever seen the color red, had never actually visited a castle, and had been asked to guess what one should look like.
Cylindrical towers erupted from every side of the structure at strange angles, some stretching upward while others seemed to grow sideways with no concern for gravity.
Bridges connected different sections of the castle, though many appeared to lead nowhere at all, disappearing into walls or ending abruptly over the black water below.
Entire sections overlapped one another in ways that made Iris’s head hurt if she stared for too long.
Still, one thing was obvious.
This place mattered.
If the core of the Black Ocean existed anywhere, Iris would bet everything it was somewhere inside.
Markus finally landed in front of the castle’s enormous entrance and set both Iris and Avaritia back onto the ground.
Then Iris noticed the corpse.
Something massive had died directly in front of the gates.
At first glance, it resembled an enormous flesh-colored lizard, though the longer she looked at it, the worse it became.
Its scales weren’t scales at all, but countless human faces hardened together across its body, their expressions frozen in agony.
Its teeth appeared to have been fashioned from pieces of bone, jutting unevenly from a jaw that had been torn almost completely apart.
The creature’s body had been butchered.
Limbs severed.
Chest carved open.
Black blood flooded the crimson ground around it.
And standing in the middle of the carnage was a man.
Iris stopped breathing.
Michello slowly turned toward them, his clothes and hair soaked in black blood as he struggled to catch his breath.
In his hands rested From Hell, the grotesque chainsaw spear roaring loudly as its blade continued to spin, almost as though the Artifact itself was delighted by the slaughter.
Then Michello saw Iris.
His exhausted expression immediately brightened.
“I finally found you, Oracle.”
Iris’s stomach dropped.
Michello lifted the chainsaw spear onto his shoulder and smiled.
“Don’t worry. I’m here to save you from the heathen who’s taken you hostage.”