The Adventures of an Overpowered Knight in Another World Chapter 583- Eight Heavenly King: Astaroth

The slaves could no longer brush off the boy's tales. Those lurking horrors in the shadows. The murmurs, the silhouettes—every detail the boy described proved accurate.

Something truly lurked here, hunting them all.

Alarms exploded across Level Two. Shrill sirens and crimson flares echoed and flashed everywhere.

Waves of armored guards and knights surged down from Level One to confront the disturbance.

Yet, the moment they plunged into the gloom, they vanished forever.

Folks kept disappearing without a single sign.

Humans have always dreaded the unknown, and in a shadowy realm like Level Two, that fear deepened intensely.

Terror gripped them tightly, and panic began rippling through every corner.

.

Deep in Level Two's communal area, only a few slaves huddled together—a handful of adults, shivering children, and the boy.

One burly adult with sunken eyes balled his fists.

"We can’t stay here. If we do, we’ll become those things."

By this point, all had witnessed them.

Crimson gazes, ghostly pale forms shrouded in dark mist. They shuffled ceaselessly through the blackness like mindless cadavers, stripped of all reason.

Without fail, every guard or slave who ventured into the shadows transformed into one of those horrors.

"Keep running. Don’t look at those corpses and especially don’t listen to the whispering darkness."

The boy fleeing alongside the survivors halted abruptly.

"They’re not corpses, they are called walkers," he insisted.

The man shot him a hostile glare. The boy unnerved them far too much.

All these bizarre events had begun right after he shared those tales.

For good or ill, as others morphed into walkers around them, the boy stayed fully human.

"What?"

"Their souls are still being hollowed out. Which is why they are still incomplete vessels."

The boy clarified, eyeing the far-off walkers with eager fascination.

This chilled the rest to the bone.

"Listen to me, boy. If you want to survive, if you don’t want to become one of those things, you need to tell us what you know."

Belief in the boy's words was no longer the issue. He alone had emerged unscathed after facing the darkness's monsters.

The boy cocked his head, scanning the terrified expressions around him.

"Don’t worry, I know a way out of Level Two."

The boy grinned. It sent shivers through everyone.

Though a cold dread crept down their backs, none dared object.

They trailed after him.

The boy guided them past Level Two's factories, deserted guard stations, and barracks—all abandoned now.

The former guards there had long since twisted into walkers.

Fortune smiled on them; no encounters marred their path so far.

Fate twisted in strange patterns. These slaves, doomed to Level Two, never dreamed of escaping alive.

But the raging chaos opened a path from this nightmare.

Soon, they arrived at a massive elevator buried in the garrison's depths.

No slave had ever laid eyes on such a device.

Still, years toiling in the factories taught them instinctively: this contraption ferried guards in and out.

Normally, slaves stayed miles from any garrison.

Level Two's chaos shattered all norms.

The exit!

They had discovered the way out at last.

Tears streamed down adult faces. Some burst into manic laughter.

They lived—they were rescued.

Escaping this cursed Hollow Earth meant freedom once more.

Clutching that hope, they advanced to the platform.

Suddenly, the boy among them froze and flashed a sinister smile.

"It’s time." His words boomed, yet pierced each ear distinctly.

"What do you mean, it’s time?"

The survivors whirled toward him. His smile had always creeped them out, but now it carried an extra edge.

Something profoundly disturbing.

"It’s time for the Walkers to finish becoming what they’re meant to be."

With those words, the air shifted dramatically.

Gusts died away, gear whirs silenced, sirens faded—plunging all into oppressive stillness.

"Ahhhh."

A child suddenly screamed.

Her cry drew every gaze to where she pointed.

From the shadows, a hazy figure materialized.

Pale complexion, blood-red eyes, shrouded in dark haze like a flowing cloak. The entity that stepped forth was unmistakably a walker.

This scene shouldn't have been so alarming at first. But when a second walker appeared behind the initial one, followed by more and more, everything changed dramatically.

Out of tunnels they surged, from deserted barracks, slipping via the shadows of towering pillars.

Ten... a hundred... a thousand... ten thousand... and the horde kept swelling...

Walkers started swarming into the garrison.

Beholding them pour from every corner, overwhelming all sight, filled hearts with terror, astonishment, and icy dread.

Whether a blessing or curse, the garrison held a commanding vantage over Level Two's vast cavern floor.

Thus, envisioning tens of thousands of walkers rising from the shadows below was all too vivid.

All the slain, all the vanished. Every fallen slave, even charred remains.

All of them gathered here now.

Survivors staggered back, gripped by ancient terror in their chests. Then, mingled with dread, came the demon's alluring murmurs.

"Now, it's time for them to awaken and complete their form."

With the boy's words, the vast sea of swaying heads down below came alive. They started altering; or rather, the walkers began their metamorphosis.

Before the survivors' eyes wide with horror, the walkers' flesh split open, bones thrust from their frames, muscles swelled grotesquely into malformed abominations.

Certain ones sprouted extra limbs amid slick, ripping noises. Others shed all trace of humanity as exposed tendons hardened into chitin shells, reptilian scales, or plated armor.

A handful crumpled inward first, then burst outward into colossal, twisted forms sewn together by inky haze tentacles.

"W-What is happening?"

Clueless about the horror unfolding, survivors watched as if a living nightmare materialized before them.

Any knight there would have recognized it instantly.

These were the very foes they clashed with on the front lines.

To put it simply, the walkers morphed into... demons.

The sight of their change drew a merry laugh from the boy.

Yet his voice soon deepened into a grave rumble, clashing with his boyish look.

"I guess this appearance has run out of its use."

Those words echoed, unleashing yet another ghastly display.

Right before the survivors, the boy's frame began to shatter. His skin fractured, spurting blood in crimson arcs.

Like a moth shattering its cocoon, a new form tore free from the boy's human husk.

Ink-dark skin cloaked the emerging horror, its eyes boasting black sclera and crimson irises blazing like double eclipses. Paired curved horns punched through his skull with a revolting crunch, coiling gracefully rearward.

A tail whipped out behind, its end forking into a serrated spike.

As this entity manifested, the faint glow of the underworld grew even murkier.

Ubiquitous mana recoiled, as though fleeing the dark haze enshrouding the creature.

More than that, an immense, despotic pressure bore down, bowing even the newborn demons' heads.

By pure instinct, they knew this one reigned supreme over them all.

A ruling class!

Even the human survivors crumpled to their knees, eyes averted, crushed by overwhelming fear from just glimpsing the figure.

New Valdonian Calendar, Year 126.

The Eighth Heavenly King, Astaroth, made his appearance.

The boy had vanished.

Astaroth now stood in his stead, face calm and nearly tender, marred only by a sly hint of mirth at his lips.

His gaze rose, slicing through Level One toward the kingdom overhead.

"So this is the kingdom that fed me."

Astaroth grinned and drew in a long, invigorating breath.

"For over a hundred years, I had been sealed in these lands. Without a body, my aether had no hope of recovering and could only dissipate with the years. That is before this kingdom decided to establish itself here and use this space for its benefit... Kukuku"