Chapter 358: Agony
His eyes had already been swallowed by darkness. After the Level 2 Courage Rune in his heart disintegrated, Arno had lost his source of power.
He looked back at Ollie, a flash of tenderness in his eyes, then leaped into the raging black liquid.
“When I gaze into the abyss, I too become the abyss?
“If that’s the case, let me see the power of the abyss! Courage is powerless, the Light of Virtue can no longer protect my love. Demons run rampant, the abyss whispers. Then let a demon end everything!”
Arno soaked in the black liquid. Myriad sins and thousands of negative emotions assaulted him. He opened his eyes, feeling that sin, feeling the agony it represented.
Countless people seemed to be grabbing at him, wanting to tear him apart, wanting him to enter the abyss with them and share in the boundless suffering.
“I feel your agony. Then let me make you feel mine!”
Thump! Thump! Thump!
Intense heartbeats. The hollow Heart of Virtue, having lost the super-complex Courage Rune, no longer emitted an orange-yellow glow. Instead, it was replaced by a dark red light.
Gloomy, ominous. The sin and negative emotions brought by the black liquid, along with the inexplicable whispers from the bottom of Mt. Baal, all tried to pour into Arno’s body. Arno didn’t resist; he absorbed them frantically. A vortex gradually appeared in the ocean of black liquid, growing larger and larger.
Alex, who had been laughing maniacally, stopped his delighted laughter. He looked at the growing vortex with suspicion and uncertainty, watching the level of the black liquid ocean drop at a visible rate.
“You want to steal my power? What a sinful thought! What a thought that delights the Abyss! Then take it all! I’d like to see if you can break through the authority of the ‘Star of Ultimate Evil’!”
Splash!
The Star of Evil suspended in mid-air continued to expand. Ominousness surged, countless shadows raged, and more substantive black mud gurgled out from the “Star of Ultimate Evil.” It sounded like someone screaming frantically. The black liquid ocean gradually solidified, and pitch-black humanoid figures made of black mud crawled out one by one, like demons climbing out from the deepest layer of the Abyss.
At this time, Ace arrived near Mt. Baal. Using the 3-Ring Spell “Invisibility and Concealment,” he hid motionless in mid-air. The rune structures of the Eye of Truth in his eyes operated at their limit, frantically analyzing and forcing understanding of the terrifying phenomenon before him.
“This tangible ominousness and disgusting stench, plus the whispers drilling straight into the brain, trying to alter one’s thoughts and assimilate them… what the hell is this thing?”
Ace couldn’t help but complain. He had already seen the expanding pitch-black giant sphere, the Great Demon Alex bathing in the pouring black mud, and Ollie lying halfway up a nearby hill.
“It seems Arno and the others have lost. But why haven’t I found them? Do not even their corpses remain?”
Ace frowned in thought. His eyes’ runes operated to the extreme, observing the anomalies of the entire black liquid from a distance. The level seemed to be dropping rapidly? And there was a vortex growing larger, accompanied by a terrifying ominous aura, as if some terrible power was growing.
Ace pushed the Insight effect of his eyes to the limit. The cowlick on his head shook violently—Spirit of the Book ability: “Understand the Unknown”!
With the ability “Understand the Unknown” overlapping with the Eye of Truth, Ace finally saw clearly what was happening. It was Arno. He was undergoing the baptism of the ominous black liquid—no, he was forcibly devouring the black liquid and the black mud sublimated from it.
That terrifying, ominous black mud was being forcefully drawn and devoured by Arno’s hollow Knight’s Heart, his absent Heart of Courage.
The Heart of Courage that existed between reality and illusion had long since disintegrated completely. Arno’s courage seemed to be replaced by a more terrifying determination. This ominousness didn’t come from anything else, not from the outside world, not from the black mud, but from Arno himself, who had abandoned courage.
His eyes were completely filled with black. Accompanied by powerful thump, thump, thump heartbeats, a heart-palpitating emotional power, a chilling will, a despairing creed emerged!
Boom!
The black mud exploded. Substantive dark red aura bloomed from the bottom of Arno’s heart, carrying a resolve. Arno, entwined in black mud and dark red aura, walked out.
Thousands of sinful existences killed and devoured by Alex, formerly kind and just beings transformed by Alex, had turned into terrifying shadow humanoids.
No, they should be called Black Mud Humanoids. Raising weapons from their past lives, carrying various negative emotions, they charged. Arno looked at the charging humanoids with disdain and spoke in an extremely dry voice:
“In the past, I never understood why people would fall, why one would gaze directly into the abyss. Now I understand. Sometimes virtue cannot defeat sin. The abyss descends regardless of our will.”
Alex stared at Arno, suspicion and uncertainty in his heart. He couldn’t understand the power in Arno, just as he couldn’t understand the existence of the Virtue Holy Light. He couldn’t comprehend this power that was as ominous as the Abyss and Hell, yet completely different.
“What exactly are you? Just a foolish mortal whose laughable convictions have vanished—why do you still obtain such terrifying power? Who favors you so much!”
Alex’s face was hideous; jealousy and confusion had covered his heart.
He recalled himself—a Divine Descendant who was incompetent, mocked by others, a disappointment to his kin.
His father sacrificed himself and his kin, hoping to buy a great future for his son, only to be judged by the Ancestor God. The curse descended, causing him to completely lose his divine blood.
He did everything he could to finally gain the favor of the Abyssal Archduke Dokebach, struggling through immense hardships to obtain his current power and status.
Yet this foolish mortal could obtain two different supernatural powers in succession, each capable of rivaling him. Alex was drowned in anger. He commanded thousands of Black Mud Humanoids to charge at Arno.
Arno looked around, speaking in a cold, disdainful tone:
“Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Greed, Gluttony, and Lust. These are the Seven Sins of Man. Alex, you have committed Pride, Envy, and Wrath. Yet sins of this degree cannot hurt me in the slightest. Because my sin is far above yours!”
Boom! Dark red aura, like black spots, spread out, instantly knocking down thousands of Black Mud Humanoids like a shockwave. Arno took a step forward. His hollow heart beat violently—thump, thump, thump—seemingly recounting something, or perhaps yearning for something.
Ace stared at Arno, watching strange runes emerging bit by bit in his heart. They were so pitch-black and ominous, carrying infinite sin. And they were inexplicably familiar, as if he had seen them before.
Ace’s memory suddenly flashed back to the first playthrough—the fleeting black shadow at Mt. Baal, the substantive hatred he saw before death!
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