SOTBW - 115

Kieron coldly scanned the slave before him. The slave, with limbs bound, trembled in fear.

The slave’s fear was understandable. In the dark and cold basement, rotting corpses were haphazardly piled up here and there, some so old they emanated a ghastly stench. The corpses were in a gruesome state: skulls cracked open, holes pierced through their bellies, rib cages exposed after the flesh of their chests had been completely removed.

He didn’t know what was happening in this place, but if so many people had died so horribly, the slave knew his own life might be in danger. He had only come to meet his new master. He was healthy and had never been sick, so he had hoped to be sold for a good price and work in a noble’s mansion, but he had ended up in such a place…

Overwhelmed by terror, the slave whimpered and hastily looked up at Kieron. Though he looked gaunt and somewhat sickly, the slave’s new master had a dignified and impressive appearance. His amethyst-like violet eyes, in particular, exuded an air of elegance. Kneeling, the slave, desperate to survive, kissed Kieron’s instep.

“M-Master, whatever, whatever you say. I will obey your orders.”

“Obey my orders?”

Kieron, who had been standing still, reacted to the slave’s words. He lifted the slave’s chin with his toe. The slave, desperate to live, forced a wide, obsequious smile.

“Can you really do anything?”

Kieron asked calmly in a monotone voice. He seemed to doubt the slave’s resolve.

“O-Of course. I will do anything, anything, anything…!”

“I’ve been experimenting on healthy humans, but they’ve all failed. Perhaps… it’s because their mental fortitude was weak.”

Kieron, lowering himself to the slave’s eye level, whispered in a gentle voice.

“If you show me meaningful results, I will grant you eternal life. An eternal life free from the pain of sickness and the suffering of sorrow.”

“…Excuse me?”

The slave asked, not understanding the meaning of his words. But Kieron didn’t explain further and gripped the slave’s firm jaw tightly. The pressure on his jawbone was immense. The slave stifled a groan and reluctantly opened his mouth.

Then, something emerged from Kieron’s mouth. The slave, who had been looking up at Kieron with his head slightly tilted back, quickly froze. Kieron, his mouth open impossibly wide, pulled out a Serith larva the size of a child’s fist.

“Aaaaaah!”

The slave screamed and thrashed. Kieron gently grasped the larva he had taken from his stomach and shoved it into the slave’s mouth. The slave desperately tried to chew the Serith that had landed on his tongue. Kieron then used magic to freeze the slave’s body in place.

“Endure it. If you bear this pain and withstand it, a new future will open for you.”

The slave trembled and resisted to the very end, but it was futile. The larva quickly slid down the slave’s throat and into his stomach.

Kieron snapped his fingers, and the slave’s stiff body relaxed. The slave screamed like a madman, writhing in agony and clawing at his chest with his fingernails. He vividly felt insects crawling inside him.

Kieron stood up and watched the slave. Soon, as the Serith began to devour his internal organs, the slave wailed and scratched his sternum so deeply that chunks of flesh were gouged out. He dug at his chest until it was covered in blood, like a rabbit digging a burrow to escape. His desperate attempts to pull out the Serith from his stomach were almost unbearable to watch.

But Kieron watched calmly. Before long, the spot where the slave knelt was soaked in blood. The slave, his eyes rolled back, let out a pained cry and then vomited blood. Staggering greatly, the slave collapsed face down onto the floor.

Kieron stared down at the slave and slowly bent his knee. There was no sound of breathing. Another failure.

With a listless expression, Kieron grabbed the slave’s hair and lifted his head. Blood poured like water from every orifice in his face. Kieron gritted his teeth and threw the slave’s head back onto the floor. The skull made a sickening thud, but it wasn’t enough to quell his anger, and he kicked the dead slave repeatedly as if he were kicking a ball. Kieron, panting from kicking the dead slave, finally screamed.

Burying his face between his arms, Kieron let out a long sigh.

“…Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

Kieron, raging and cursing repeatedly, covered his face with his blood-soaked hands as if blaming himself. He had failed this experiment over a thousand times. He had always carefully selected slaves for his experiments, but he had never obtained the result he desired.

Kieron grieved like a child, then looked down at the larva that had emerged from the slave’s torn back. The larva was ravenously devouring the dead slave.

Kieron stared blankly at the scene, then, trembling with rage, stomped on the larva, crushing it. He stomped on the Serith until the dead slave’s spine cracked, and only after his breathing became ragged did Kieron leave the place.

Kieron sat at his desk, writing in his journal with blood-soaked hands. He recorded the slave’s physical condition and how many minutes it took for the experiment to fail, then flipped through previous experiment logs to find any similar cases.

Kieron knew that Serith consumed humans. Even if you inserted a fluid into a human body, it was nothing more than providing fresh prey for it.

Despite that, as soon as Kieron settled in Noctis, he had continued this experiment.

“...Mahilen, that damn bastard succeeded... How? What trick did he use? Did he use a spell I don’t know? No, he’s too proud... He thinks he’s superior to humans... Yeah, he would never, never use a spell like that... He couldn’t have…”

At first, he had wasted a magic stone experimenting with two kinds of magic on human bodies. One to numb their senses so they wouldn’t feel pain, and the other to enable rapid regeneration when Serith fed on their flesh. But not a single human had withstood the experiment.

So, he shifted from magic to rituals. Though most humans had forgotten the rituals left behind by Aron, Kieron still remembered a few useful ones.

Rituals required immense divine power, but there were also ones that could be used by anyone, even with little divine energy. Most people were born with very weak divine power, but since Kieron had none, he used rituals that anyone could perform. Among them, the most manageable and easiest to control was a ritual that maximized healing effects by using the person’s life force.

The person who had the ritual etched onto their body, of course, would not live long. In the past, when humanity fought against Serith, it had been important to endure as long as possible, so such paradoxical rituals had developed.

But even that ritual didn’t achieve what Kieron desired. No matter how many times the wounds regenerated, it only served to fatten Serith, and the humans, realizing they had become hosts for monsters, either went mad or committed suicide.

Kieron retraced his steps to find where it all went wrong, but couldn’t find an answer. Had the research been wrong from the start? If it was a flawed experiment, Mahilen should have failed as well. The fact that Mahilen succeeded meant that somewhere, there had to be a way.

Mahilen had succeeded in placing Serith inside a human body. But not like Kieron had done, simply making humans into hosts for Serith. He had merged the two into one being, a single existence.

How did he do it? Mahilen had his magic sealed long ago and couldn’t use spells. If he forced out any magic, his body would suffer the agony of decaying. Could it be that Aron secretly created a ritual and taught it to Mahilen? Or did he have multiple magic stones? Had he really kept those stones for thousands of years without using them?

That couldn’t be true. Mahilen had followed Emaydis every time she was reborn, using sacred relics. Sacred relics were special objects that could convert magic into divine power. He must have used the sacred relics Aron created to track Emaydis’ fate.

Kieron, at the end of his rope, clutched his head and began to sob. He had to find a way. If he could insert Serith into a human body, if he could merge the two distinct beings into one...

Sobbing, Kieron muttered in a painful voice.

“...Master, I’m sorry... I’m sorry... For thousands of years, we have suffered, yet the traitors who deceived us are now acting as heroes, claiming to save the world... Please forgive me... Please forgive me, for I could not bring you back...”

At that moment, Kieron’s left arm tore apart like a rag and fell to the ground. Spiderweb-like threads stretched between the torn arm and his torso. Kieron stopped crying, picked up the fallen arm, and reattached it to his body. He needed to find a fresh limb soon. He might as well change his torso and move his residence...

Wiping his eyes, Kieron wrote down in his journal any spells he thought could be useful. There were only a few magic stones left. If only he had Serith, it would be possible to create new magic stones, but the problem was that when he extracted magical power from them, the “original” would suffer.

All Serith are connected as one. The original Serith split itself into separate entities, so the millions of monsters scattered throughout the world could essentially be seen as one body. Extracting magical power from Serith was like draining its life force. Therefore, it was natural that every time a magic stone was made, the pain of having its heart ripped out alive was felt.

Having written in the journal, Kieron slumped in his chair and gazed at the low ceiling.

“Master…”

Closing his eyes, Kieron quietly shed tears. He clenched his teeth, trying not to cry, but the more he tried to calm his heart, the more his anger rose. If he was destined to continue being miserable, then they too should suffer. He would never let them be happy.

“…Mahilen.”

Kieron’s voice was filled with hatred. Unable to control his anger, lumps began to rise across his back. Kieron clenched his eyes shut, trying to control his emotions, but the thoughts of Mahilen and his sister were enough to make his rage uncontrollable.

In the end, Kieron collapsed from his chair, screaming in agony as he clutched his body. His back tore open, and from his sides emerged four long legs. A sharp tail sprouted from the end of his spine. Curling his body, Kieron gasped for air, then gritted his teeth and tore off the protruding body parts.

Having torn off parts of his own body, Kieron staggered towards the pile of corpses. With unfocused eyes, he scanned the bodies before stopping in front of a slave who had just died. Kieron, breathing irregularly, stared blankly at the gaping hole in the slave’s back, then suddenly recoiled in disgust. He was revolted by the thought that, for a moment, he had wanted to consume that.

Kieron looked down at the stagnant pool of blood with disgust, his shoes soaked through, before hastily fleeing the underground lab. His complexion, as pale as a dead person’s, grew even more as he hurried up the spiral staircase.