Trash of the Count's Family Vol 2. Chapter 523: Sea of Despair (3)
Previously on Trash of the Count's Family...
“Oh dear.”
The hidden God of Death sprang to his feet.
He looked up at the sky.
The sky had gone quiet after the thunderous booms vanished.
“Department Head. What’s wrong?”
At Choi Jung Soo’s question, calling him by his work title, the God of Death, who had descended into the great general’s body, spoke with all expression gone from his face.
“Do you not feel it?”
It was the expression the God of Death wore when carrying out death.
Seeing it, Choi Jung Soo closed his mouth.
“......!”
Then, suddenly, he looked down at his own arm.
Goosebumps had risen all over his body.
“Department Head, what is happening?”
The God of Death did not answer his question.
Instead, he closed his eyes and said,
“Assistant Manager Choi. Team Leader Lee. Go save the people.”
Choi Jung Soo’s and Sui Khan’s expressions changed.
“I will hide properly.”
The God of Death spoke in a serious voice without a hint of playfulness.
“However, if it seems the two of you are going to die, I will step in. Know that.”
Then he closed his mouth.
“......”
“Let’s go.”
“Yes, Team Leader.”
Team Leader Sui Khan and Assistant Manager Choi Jung Soo immediately moved. The two, who had been hiding in a small forest owned by the great general on Island 1, quickly headed toward where the others were.
And the great general left alone—the God of Death—sat beneath a tree and murmured,
“I hear the screams of things that were once countless souls.”
He sent a message to the only one qualified to read his will.
Bzzzz—
And that message arrived quickly.
Bzzzz. Bzzzz.
Cale felt the mirror in his chest, the God of Death’s divine relic, vibrating, but he could not check the mirror.
—Human, what is that?!
He could not answer Raon’s urgent question from a short distance away either.
CRACK—
Something visible through the split body.
It was clearly a heart.
No.
“...That isn’t a heart.”
It only looked that way because it was wrapped in something slick. That was—
“Bone.”
A heart-shaped bone.
Drop.
Drop.
The slick things fell away, revealing the heart-shaped bone.
Countless unknown letters were carved into that bone.
It’s cold.
And right now, Cale was cold.
Goosebumps had risen over his entire body.
But the weather right now was warm.
This was a chill caused by something else.
Yet there was not even a single breeze, and he felt no cold air.
His body was simply reacting to something flowing out of that heart.
—Ugh, we have to avoid it!
The moment the Sound of the Wind cried out like a scream—
FLAP!
A fierce beating of wings was felt.
Cale could see the Bone Dragon flying toward him.
“Young master!”
Necromancer Mary, who had flown over so urgently that she did not even know the hood covering her face had come off.
Urgency and horror were visible on her face, which was full of black lines like spiderwebs.
“Please avoid it!”
All composure was gone from her voice.
It is ominous!
The instant Mary sensed that exposed bone, she felt the greatest ominousness she had ever felt in her life.
Death.
She felt something beyond that.
That was why,
“Mary!”
Despite Cale’s startled shout, she moved.
CRAAAAASH!
The Bone Dragon struck the second Emperor.
The enormous black Bone Dragon spread its wings and crashed right into the second Emperor.
“Hoho.”
The second Emperor’s low voice reached their ears.
It was a small voice, but it sounded as though it were right beside their ears.
“What a clever necromancer.”
Whoooo—
Cale, with wind hooked onto him, pulled Mary away from on top of the black Bone Dragon.
“Both of you are quick to notice.”
Through the gaps in the black Bone Dragon’s bones.
Cale got goosebumps at the second Emperor’s gaze, staring fixedly at him, observing him.
—Uuuuugh, the screams, my head hurts, my ears, my ears feel like they’re going to burst...! We have to run, run—
The Sound of the Wind was increasingly unable to endure the suffering and pain.
The thief, who had not lost spirit even while drowning in the sea.
It was the first time the thief had reacted like this.
“Young master, each of the letters on that bone is not a letter......!”
Mary spoke in a trembling voice.
She was not certain, but she judged that she had to say even the possibility.
“That is, it seems like something similar to a soul—”
At that moment.
Smile.
Cale saw the second Emperor smile.
Crack.
He saw her turn her own hand into something like a claw and rake it across her body.
Even without doing that, her body—her outer skin—was slowly melting down.
“Ah—”
And the bone was revealed.
Countless letters were densely carved into that bone.
All of that was souls?
The moment Cale predicted that thousands—no, tens of thousands or more—letters would be carved across every bone in her body, he could not suppress the horror.
“All of that is food?”
At Cale’s words, the second Emperor, with only her face remaining—
The woman who had created all this in less than thirty seconds looked at Cale.
“You know quite a lot.”
The second Emperor observed him to the very end.
However, there was someone who blocked her view.
Mary, who had been held in Cale’s arms.
She raised both hands and said,
“Gather.”
Clack. Clack.
Countless skeleton flying monsters all headed toward the second Emperor at once.
More precisely, they flew toward the black Bone Dragon enveloping the second Emperor.
“Then I suppose I will have to see the result later.”
Leaving those words behind, the second Emperor closed her eyes.
Even her face melted away, leaving only bone.
At the same time,
“!”
Cale’s body began to tremble.
And the Sound of the Wind cried out desperately.
—Make them run!
Cale obeyed.
“Raon! Run!”
He released Mary from his arms.
—I understand, human! I will be right back!
Raon fled with On, Hong, and Mary.
Even as Mary grew distant, she delivered one more sentence to Cale.
“It must not burst! That horrible aura must not flow out!”
A horrible aura that could neither be seen nor heard.
Mary felt it vividly.
If that body, if those bones are completely destroyed......!
The soul prison.
If that broke, the souls inside would come out into the world.
But those souls were not ordinary.
Damn it!
Cale immediately realized what those souls were.
Hoho. They were food, but I suppose I must use them here.
The food the second Emperor had spoken of.
The Absolute God......!
The child who would become the Absolute God.
She must have called the souls prepared for that existence food.
The Absolute God eats souls too!
That bastard ate souls too.
But he did not eat ordinary souls.
The scene Chief Secretary Kang Geunmok of the Transparent Blood family had seen when he faced the child who would become the Absolute God roughly fifty years ago.
The words he had spoken about it.
All seven pits were contained in that child’s shadow. There were many souls inside those pits as well. In truth, I could not even properly grasp the number.
Joy, anger, sorrow, fear, love, hatred, desire.
The seven emotions.
I simply felt it. Each one of those pits was like a single world. Yes.
Each of them felt like one world.
Seven pits, each containing one of those emotions.
In the end, what remained for the souls inside those pits was one single emotion. The true emotion left to souls eternally forced to experience only one emotion.
Despair.
Kang Geunmok had said he saw only despair even inside the pit of joy and the pit of love.
That child held those seven worlds in its shadow and kept them beneath its feet.
It looked like a god of hell, standing alone while stepping on hell itself.
The things trapped inside the second Emperor’s soul prison had been called “food.”
Clack!
Clack!
The skeleton monsters covered the black Bone Dragon.
But through a tiny gap—
Cale saw the second Emperor’s jaw, now nothing but bone, move.
Click.
He could not hear what she said.
But it felt as though he could hear it.
Goodbye.
It felt like she said that.
“Damn it!”
A rough curse slipped out of Cale’s mouth in frustration without him realizing it.
He could practically see what was about to unfold before his eyes.
CRACK!
The bone broke.
The letters split.
“No. We have to stop it.”
Mary, while fleeing, somehow made the skeleton monsters cover the black Bone Dragon.
But—
CRACK.
There was no way to stop the second Emperor’s bones from breaking inside.
“They are not reaching.”
The black threads extending from the black Bone Dragon.
Those threads that controlled bone could not reach the second Emperor’s bones no matter how hard Mary tried.
Sssst—
They broke apart before they could touch.
“Ah.”
This was the first time Mary had felt such helplessness against bones.
But she did not have time to sink into that helplessness. Her breathing quickened as she thought of what would soon happen.
“Ah. It broke.”
The bones, the letters, broke.
The prison collapsed.
The prison door opened.
The souls escaped.
“They are not souls.”
But those were not souls as Mary knew them.
They were not ordinary souls.
Kiiiiiiiii—
Aaaaaaah—
Horrible shrieks began spreading across the sky.
A clear sky.
Strange screams spread in every direction over the sky where the sun had risen.
“Hah.”
“Mm!”
Raon and Hong, who had been fleeing with her, shuddered and sucked in a breath.
Mary looked down at her arm.
Black thread-like veins bulged up on that arm.
Goosebumps covered it.
It was instinctive revulsion.
Yesterday.
It was different from the power of death that had covered Island 1 and the Oceanic Alliance’s sea.
This was the revulsion one experienced when facing something that must never be faced.
Kiiiiiiiii—
“Ugh!”
At Hong’s groan, Mary quickly covered On’s and Hong’s ears.
“It is no use.”
Souls could not be touched.
There was no way to block souls.
CRACK.
The second Emperor’s bones shattered into fine pieces.
Drop. Drop.
The bones, broken small like grains of sand, fell downward.
Mary’s black Bone Dragon.
The skeleton monsters.
They could not stop even those grains of sand.
Nor could they stop the souls that had escaped the prison.
“...Thousands, no, tens of thousands.”
Just how many letters, how many prisons, had there been?
Tens of thousands of souls escaped the prison all at once and spread outward through the gaps in Mary’s heap of bones.
Kiiiiiiiii—
Aaaaaaaah—
Wailing could be heard.
Now, the sounds of things that could neither be seen nor touched could be heard clearly.
CLATTER—
At that moment, a stream of water headed toward Mary’s heap of bones.
The water became an enormous sphere, trying to envelop Mary’s bones and the second Emperor’s bones that were crumbling down like sand.
“Young master!”
She could see Cale trying to do something.
Bzzzz!
And Cale was not doing only that.
Holding the divine relic mirror in his hand, he tried somehow to stop them.
Bzzzz—bzzzz—
His silver shield rose.
The shield’s two wings spread, following after the water toward the bones.
And that was not all.
RUMBLE—
The ground shook.
The island shook.
Ah. Stone.
Mary realized Cale was even drawing in stone to create a massive tomb in the sky.
Water.
Wood.
Earth.
The three tried to bury the bones and souls.
It was then.
“Hahahaha!”
A clear laugh rang out.
She turned her head.
Wind the Wanderer.
They had forgotten him in the urgent situation.
He intended to carry out the second Emperor’s final order.
Click.
The order the second Emperor had given with a jaw made only of bone.
The sea.
SHAAAAAA—
A massive wind headed toward the bones where water, wood, and earth were rushing.
Faster than any other part of nature was wind.
“Mm!”
Cale’s wind immediately headed toward Wind.
CRAAAAASH!
But even amid the thunderous boom, Wind’s wind did not stop.
The one who possessed a Transparent-grade individuality of wind and served as the second Emperor’s close aide.
He had never yet gone all out.
And now, he revealed part of that full power.
SHAAAAAA—
The wind seeped into the gaps in Mary’s heap of bones.
“Ah, no!”
Mary’s words were useless.
The moment Wind aimed his finger at the bone heap as if firing a gun.
The moment water, wood, and earth followed and covered the bone heap.
Wind the Wanderer’s mouth opened.
“Bang.”
And the wind exploded.
CRAAAAAAAAAASH—
With a thunderous boom on a different level from before, the wind raged.
Mary’s bones endured.
So did the water, the wood, and the earth.
However,
“Order complete.”
A gap was created.
Kiiiiiiii—
Aaaaaaah—
The souls escaped the bone heap.
Whoooo—
And they did so riding the fierce wind.
They went far away, in every direction—east, west, south, and north.
“For reference, beings of the natural world cannot block souls. My wind is a little different, though.”
Wind the Wanderer smiled and said that to Cale as he fled on the wind.
What he said was true.
SHAAAAAA—
The things carried on the wind passed through the water, the shield, and the stones that struck afterward.
As if they truly were not things of this world, they passed through like ghosts.
“Because those are not normal souls.”
With those words as his last, Wind rapidly grew distant.
Even as he moved away, he looked at Cale with contempt.
I cannot know my lord’s will, but—
How dare they let his lord’s body be broken?
He could not tolerate it.
“......”
Cale looked at the wind spreading in every direction, and at the invisible souls contained within it.
Kiiiiiiii—
Aaaaaaah—
The shrieks covered more and more of the sky, and tens of thousands of souls headed downward.
He could tell the direction they were heading by the wind.
East, west, south, and north.
The sea surrounding Island 1.
They were probably headed for that sea.
Screaming souls.
Souls screaming without a single exception.
Looking at them, Cale withdrew the shield, water, and rocks.
“I know.”
Cale knew too.
He could not block those souls with these three things or with Mary’s heap of bones.
Those souls could only be contained inside the second Emperor’s soul prison.
Bzzzz.
He looked at the mirror vibrating faintly.
The earlier messages filled the mirror as well.
<Those are no longer souls. You must not mistake them for souls.> <Purify them.> <Then they will be erased.>
The answer sent by the God of Death.
Those were nothing, so purify them and erase them.
<They are beings with only ‘sorrow’ remaining.>
<In truth, they cannot be called souls. They are merely pitiful things that were once something, now sunk in the ‘despair of sorrow.’>
<Only the erasure of their existence will give them peace.>
Tens of thousands of things that had once been people.
<Cale Henituse.> <Do not hesitate.> <Do not pity them.>
Purification.
Cale had a way to purify.
And an extremely powerful force at that.
Dead mana or anything else, whatever powerful thing it was, he had ultimately purified it. Burning without end.
—......
But neither the Fire of Destruction, the stingy old man, nor Cale could easily speak.
Bzzzz.
The God of Death sent a message.
<Can you hear the screams of those sorrows that are neither souls nor anything else?>
<They are in hell right now.>
<They must be taken out of hell. That is something even I, death, cannot do.>
<Only an end will give those beings peace.>
Bzzzz.
<Please.>
“Damn it.”
The seven hells said to have been created by the Absolute God.
Only today did Cale truly feel what those pits of hell were.
Cale closed his eyes and opened them.
Kiiiiiiiii—
Aaaaaaaah—
Food that had once been tens of thousands of souls, despairing while seized by sorrow.
That food struck the sea, and despair swallowed the sea as hell began to unfold.
—Cale. I’m going to burn every last one of those hunter bastards down to the soul! I will! Absolutely! No matter what! I especially won’t let the second Emperor get away with this! How can this even happen?! This is worse than those damn alchemists! To turn them into things that aren’t even souls, to make erasure the only answer!
At the voice of the Fire of Destruction, the stingy old man, Cale opened his mouth.
“Let’s purify them.”
Cale’s dark brown eyes, looking down at the blue sea, were blazing like a massive fire.