Chapter 25: Master of Abyss

"Then God ordered his angels to bring the two most precious things in the city. The angel brought the dead swallow and the laden heart. God said that angel had chosen correctly."

Malo was tentatively listening.

Finally, he asked, "Why didn't the one receiving help from the Happy Prince and the Swallow protest against it?"

Seth smiled. "The Happy Prince wanted nothing more than to help the people of the town; he wouldn't have wished for them to rally against each other."

Malo, still unconvinced, replied, "But still, they should have."

Seth chuckled softly. "Yeah, they should have protected their kind helper, but they didn't."

..............

Distant thoughts murmured in his head, and he couldn't remember if they were real. But what was real was the being before him, the one that had hurt him, and he wanted to devour it.

A vibrating roar shook the cabin to its core. At the center, two abominations faced each other—one radiating hatred and malice, the other dazed, as if already dead but held by invisible strings. Then, suddenly, whatever had affected the second abomination vanished, and now it too was consumed by a darkness no one could comprehend.

A blade over two meters long emerged from the darkness, its edge poised to strike the abomination as his eyes lit up once more. Without hesitation, the wielder of the blade drove it toward the monstrous foe, whose tentacles shot forth from its body to confront the assailant. 

The two abominations clashed, one driving a blade straight into the heart of the tentacled monster, while the other lunged to tear him apart. Ghostly flames erupted from the blade, attempting to incinerate the monster's heart. Tentacles coiled around the armored knight demon, but they were scorched by black flames the moment they made contact. The vermillion rot sizzled and screamed as it burned away.

But before the tentacled beast could be consumed by the abysmal flames, something bit through the black exoskeleton of the knight demon from behind. The armor crunched like a piece of toast, bending under the force of the unknown assailant's bite.

It was a small, wiry man with bad teeth, and his timing was perfect; he caught the Knight demon off guard. The Knight demon cried out in pain, slapping the small man with his wings. Briggs was thrown to the ground but quickly got back on his feet. His mouth was aflame, but the fire was soon extinguished as he shut his mouth—it looked as though he had swallowed the abysmal flame.

"Ugh, tastes bad."

Through the shattered doorway of the advanced system, a woman in a supply corps uniform stepped into the cabin and locked eyes with the Knight Demon. For a brief moment, the normally stoic creature seemed stunned, as though it had forgotten its fury. Then, miraculously, the flaming tentacles extinguished their fire and coiled tighter around its attacker, squeezing the life out of him. The abysmal fire still burned in his heart as he clung to the faint hope of survival—or did he? 

The knight demon, believing itself immobile, unleashed a surge of abysmal flame from its core. The crater at the center of its chest glowed with a dark radiance, slowly engulfing the cabin as it moved towards its captor. Yet, no one was there—the creature had severed its own tentacles and transformed into a black-clad woman with white hair, adorned in garments of relics. She activated something miraculous, surviving the brutal battle. The machine responded to her biometrics, and somewhere far away, a door opened—Site 0, Room 0.

Captain Silia kept running when a notification flashed on her datapad, and her face contorted in horror. She had abandoned her duty, and now, because of her, a monster had been released.

A thin, pale boy stepped out of Room 0. As he took his first step, the remaining guards collapsed to the ground, twisting and transforming into grotesque monsters. Their joints bent at unnatural angles, their skin peeled away, replaced by thick, blackened organic metal. Their cores began to form craters, faintly glowing with a dark radiance. But as soon as the craters appeared, the chaos energy within them revolted, and every one of them perished.

The pale boy stood outside his room, gazing at the lifeless bodies scattered across the ground. A sad expression crept across his face.

"Such a shame."

Through the veil of mist, a figure stepped forward—thin, barefoot, and deathly pale. The fog clung to his skin like a second layer of flesh, trailing off his shoulders in delicate, coiling tendrils.

His eyes were hollow, reflective like broken mirrors—and yet, he saw.

Across the fractured ground, the newly escaped boy turned, sensing the presence before seeing it. They locked no eyes, for one had none, and the other had never truly needed them.

Both raised a hand—twin gestures, perfect in synchronicity.

And then, without a sound, the pale boy unraveled. His body came apart like smoke inhaled by the wind, drawn into the other like ink into water. A faint crackle echoed—a shimmer of light, like glass flexing but not breaking—as the union completed.

The void-eyed boy staggered once, then straightened. His sockets, once empty and crusted with dried blood, filled with something new—not flesh, not glass, but darkness that moved when he blinked. Something alive.

He drew in a breath, slow and full, as if tasting existence for the first time.

And then, slowly… a smile crept across his face.

..............

Orion was whole again, his voice now soft as he spoke. 

"Rigel, Bellatrix, and Saiph, return now."

In Silia's cabin, the black lady reverted to her male form. Briggs and Martha evaded the abysmal flame, disappearing into an all-consuming darkness. Ben, restored to his human self, jumped through the shattered wall in a desperate attempt to escape the knight demon, only to be engulfed by the same darkness.

When Ben opened his eyes, he saw a pale boy with long white hair resting just past his shoulders. Beside him were Briggs and Martha. Briggs, surrounded by an abundance of lifeless bodies, gazed with devoted eyes. Martha also stared at the pale boy with devotion. Ben turned to look at his master and, with a soft voice, said:

"Welcome back, Master."