Published at 20th of October 2026 8:55 am

Chapter 2459: Nightmare

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Silence~

The place was nothing more than a vast, barren desert of death and sand, stretching outward beneath the oppressive sky without any visible trace of life to break its desolate appearance.

It was impossible to tell whether the sand here was naturally dark gray or merely appeared that way beneath the dense clouds covering the sky overhead, nor could anyone determine whether the atmosphere itself was naturally this heavy and nearly impossible to breathe, or whether that suffocating quality was simply caused by the abundance of gases and fine dust constantly rising from the countless corpses scattered throughout the area... It was even impossible to know with certainty whether the substance covering the ground was truly sand at all, or merely the accumulated remains of countless things that had decomposed and broken down over an immeasurable number of years until there was no longer any way to distinguish one from the other.

Amid that suffocating and gloomy atmosphere, if someone narrowed their eyes and focused their vision carefully enough through the darkness, they would eventually notice something moving in the distance... They would see a human wearing nothing more than a black shirt and shorts rushing forward at a steady run with an unusually calm expression on his face, trampling directly over the scattered remains of corpses in his path and crushing skulls beneath the soles of his feet without slowing down, as though running through such a place and stepping over the dead were nothing more than a form of ordinary exercise!

<I didn’t know you were this good at concealment...> Mortex’s voice echoed inside Caesar’s head with clear surprise. <Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve been a military commander who doesn’t undertake espionage or assassination missions, and whenever a battle begins, you’re always standing in the most conspicuous spot on the entire battlefield where practically everyone can see you... Seeing you like this now is actually impressive!>

"Before I became a military commander, I was a hunter and a cook." Caesar chuckled casually as he continued moving forward.

When he was still a child, he had been sent into the Inner Beast Region practically every single day on all sorts of strange missions, such as bringing back a particular kind of egg for dinner or fetching the wing of a specific bird for lunch. If he hadn’t learned basic survival skills such as concealment during those days, then there was no way he would have managed to survive all the way until today...

...And of course, at this moment he was also wearing a ring capable of swallowing his aura along with every sound his body produced as he moved, while another ring caused spiritual sense to instinctively avoid him, providing an additional layer of assistance to his own concealment abilities.

<Alright... slow down now.> Mortex’s voice appeared once again inside Caesar’s head, this time directing him more carefully. <Approach that hill cautiously. You’ll find what we’re looking for directly behind it.>

"Hmm?" Caesar was visibly puzzled by the warning, because no matter how carefully he sensed his surroundings, he couldn’t feel the slightest hint of danger, nor could he detect anything particularly strange waiting ahead of him... This was completely inconsistent with the ominous scene he had gradually been constructing inside his head ever since Mortex warned him not to make any sound or release any aura.

Nevertheless, Caesar obeyed and slowed his pace, then began climbing the sandy hill on all fours, moving carefully and distributing his weight cautiously so as not to cause the loose ground beneath him to collapse, his movements becoming slower and slower the closer he came to the summit... Then he finally stopped just before exposing himself... and raised only his eyes above the top of the hill, keeping them narrowed with a mixture of excitement and caution as he looked toward whatever Mortex had brought him here to see.

Then, slowly, those narrowed eyes began to open wider, first with unmistakable shock, and then with genuine horror at the sight that entered them.

Before him appeared an enormous circular array carved directly and deeply into the ground, its lines so deep and wide that they resembled defensive trenches rather than ordinary inscriptions, but those trench-like grooves weren’t empty. Instead, they were filled almost completely with viscous blood so unnaturally thick that it looked solid enough to walk upon, and across the surface of that blood floated large numbers of small skulls, some clearly visible while others were partly submerged beneath the dark liquid, while whatever remained completely hidden farther below was undoubtedly far greater.

The enormous array itself consisted of several overlapping circles surrounding one another in precise layers, every one of them carved into the ground in exactly the same deep manner, while between each circle and the next were countless small, densely packed symbols stretching around the entire circumference without interruption.

At the very center of everything was a huge five-pointed star with sharp tips, from which numerous thin lines of inscriptions branched outward in different directions until they connected with the distant edges of the array, making it appear as though the entire enormous circular structure had been constructed specifically around that five-pointed star at its heart.

And directly in the exact center of that star, suspended above everything surrounding it, was a person.

He was suspended motionlessly in midair, his arms stretched and pulled upward while his legs were drawn tightly downward, as though every limb had been bound and pulled apart by invisible ropes that couldn’t be seen no matter how closely one looked. His hair was pulled backward and his head raised toward the dark sky above, exposing the full length of his neck and leaving him in an utterly vulnerable position... Yet despite the strangeness of his posture and the enormous bloody array beneath him, none of that was what drew the most attention.

What truly captured the eye was the simple and horrifying fact that he was completely conscious; his eyes were filled with pure, unmistakable terror, while his mouth remained stretched wide open in a prolonged scream that seemed to have continued without interruption, a scream that produced absolutely no sound, with no way of knowing how long he had already been screaming after his vocal cords had apparently been torn apart from the effort.

And around that suspended person, following paths surrounding him within the enormous array, revolved several strange, transparent, fiery creatures.

".....!" Caesar stopped breathing entirely the moment he spotted those strange things, the instant his senses truly registered their presence and what they were.

They weren’t ghosts like those he had seen throughout the city or anywhere else before. They didn’t possess the familiar translucent green bodies of those ghosts, nor did they have recognizable faces, traces of torture, or visible marks showing where or how they had been killed, and at the same time, they couldn’t truly be described as possessing physical bodies either.

They were creatures with unstable, constantly shifting forms, seemingly made entirely from drifting tongues of transparent flame that moved endlessly within the boundaries of their bodies... if those strange forms could even be called bodies in the first place, as Caesar could clearly see the other side of the enormous array directly through them. Yet whenever one of those creatures moved, it left a faint glow lingering behind it in the air for a brief moment, while its extremities occasionally dissolved into thin strands of transparent fire that seemed to burn through space itself for an instant before gathering together once again and returning to their previous form.

Those strange creatures continued revolving around the person suspended at the center of the array along regular circular paths, maintaining their continuous movement around him as they sometimes approached until they nearly touched his body before retreating once again, while thin, glowing threads extended outward from their transparent fiery forms and connected directly to the enormous star beneath him.

Then—

Hum One of the fiery creatures suddenly entered the human’s body and completely disappeared inside him.

"........!!!!" The bound human’s already terrified eyes widened even further as his pupils rolled backward until they almost vanished from sight, and then blood suddenly began pouring from him in horrifying quantities; his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears all began bleeding profusely at once, before even the pores covering his skin opened and thick blood started seeping out through them, dripping continuously onto the center of the circle beneath him in a sight that sent chills down the spine. In one instant, his entire body had turned completely red beneath the blood covering him, and in the next, all the blood within his body was drained away until his flesh shriveled and he became something resembling a completely dried corpse... yet despite everything happening to him, the strangest thing was that his silent scream never stopped.

Poof

One of the fiery creatures approached and touched the back of his neck once again.

His body, which had only moments ago been completely drained of all its blood and other bodily fluids until it had shriveled into something resembling a mummy, immediately began recovering before Caesar’s eyes. His dried body gradually swelled back toward its normal state, while all the blood that had spilled across the ground flowed toward the star beneath him and was absorbed into it, until his body had completely recovered and he once again appeared no different from an ordinary human.

...Then the exact same process repeated itself.

With every touch upon the body of that human bound helplessly in midair, his physical condition recovered once again, but at the same time, Caesar could clearly see his entire body convulsing violently and his soundless scream growing even more intense with every single touch... while his eyes, with frightening speed, gradually began losing every remaining trace of intelligence they had once contained.

Those terrified, pleading eyes were no longer the eyes of a human thinking about how he might escape from his current situation, nor were they the eyes of someone desperately trying to find some method of negotiating with his tormentors or reducing the pain he was suffering, as should have been the instinctive reaction of any human still capable of thinking clearly... They had become closer to the eyes of a pig or horse being tortured, an animal no longer capable of thinking beyond what it was currently experiencing; he simply wanted the torment to end... he wanted to die.

And from the condition of his body and the changes rapidly appearing in his eyes, it was obvious that he was getting very close to finally achieving that desperate wish, but...

With every touch from those transparent fiery creatures, and with every violent convulsion that tore through his suspended body, life was breathed back into him once again and dragged him away from the edge of death, pulling him exactly one step backward every time he came close enough to finally reach it.

Only one step.

".....!!!" Caesar’s lips began trembling involuntarily as he remained hidden behind the sandy hill, staring at that nightmarish sight unfolding before his eyes.

<Don’t you dare move.> Mortex immediately warned him, his words stopping Caesar before he could make any unnecessary movement. <You don’t want those standing at the edges of the array to see you.>

"....?" Caesar quickly shifted his gaze away from the horrifying scene at the center and toward the outer edge of the enormous array.

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