Global Gods : Skill-Resonance Awakened

Chapter 347: Ch 347 : The Price of Freedom

The silence of the abyss under the Palace of the God Emperor Cosmos was not a true silence. It was a heavy, suffocating weight, a physical entity that pressed against the lungs and muffled the soul.

For a billion years... that was the sentence handed down to Mongo and Kairos. A span of time so vast it rendered the concept of "existence" a cruel joke.

"So... you are saying there is a way? We can actually escape this prison?"

Mongo’s voice cracked, cutting through the stagnant air like a rusted blade. He hung from the ceiling, his limbs bound by the Sealing Dao, chains of shimmering law that fed on his very essence.

"You heard me correctly, little god," a voice drifted from the deepest recesses of the lightless cavern. It was a sound like grinding stones, deep as a trench and cold as the void.

"The cosmic tides have shifted. Belial and the Emperor Cosmos are currently locked in a stalemate, tearing at one another in the furthest reaches of the Void. Not even a shadow of the Emperor remains here; his clones, that Adam... they have all been drawn into the conflagration."

Kairos turned his head, his neck popping with the effort. Even after several days in this hell, the sight of the speaker made his soul shiver.

In the far corner, tucked behind bars made up of the same metal that restricted the use of any power, sat Edgar.

Two glowing red sockets served as his eyes, burning with a hateful, ancient intelligence. Where a mouth should have been, there were only jagged red lines etched into his skin.... a permanent, gory grin that never moved when he spoke.

"The Emperor is gone, yes," a different voice rasped. It belonged to one of the elder Demon Gods, his form withered and his divinity flickering like a dying candle.

"But look at us, Edgar. These chains are forged from the Sealing Dao itself. They don’t just bind our bodies; they silence our power. You are also trapped in the same cage. How do we escape a prison that has no exit?"

The Sealing Dao was a cruel law. It had been used by Sunny to ensure that the prisoners could not even speak without agonizing effort.

For Mongo and Kairos, the restriction hadn’t been placed... not out of mercy, but out of a psychological cruelty.

Sunny knew that the more they spoke now, the more they would realize the futility of their words over the next few centuries. Silence was a mercy they weren’t allowed.

However, among the thousands of prisoners, a few ancient horrors like Edgar possessed enough raw, demonic malice to bypass these low-level restriction.

"Chains are only as strong as the reality that supports them," Edgar said, a low chuckle vibrating in his chest. "And reality... is about to change."

He tilted his head back, his throat bulging. With a wet, sickening sound, he spat something into his palm. It was a small, oily pearl, so black it seemed to pull the dim light of the prison into itself.

Kairos’s breath hitched. Mongo, suspended in his chains, jerked so violently the metal shrieked.

"The Pearl of Calamity?" Mongo gasped, hope flaring in his eyes. He thought of his own God Space, the comforting darkness where his slaves waited to worship him. "How do you have it? Is such a treasure... common among your kind?"

"Common?" Edgar’s red sockets flared. "Hardly. There is but one true Pearl in the entirety of the Demonic Realm. This?" He held it up. "This is a shadow. A clone. A fragment of the original’s catastrophe."

Edgar rarely deigned to speak to lesser beings, but today his mood was macabrely light. He owed this opportunity to the chaos Kairos and Mongo had inadvertently helped sow.

"The pearl that Lom gave you two back then... that was a clone as well," Edgar explained, his fingers tracing the smooth, cold surface of the artifact.

"The real Pearl remains in his grasp. And the reason he sacrificed your companion... the reason your friend had to die... was simple. The pearl needed Energy."

"What do you mean?" Kairos asked, his voice trembling.

"To clone a Pearl of Calamity requires a catalyst," Edgar whispered. "A spark of divinity. It requires a sacrifice, and not just any soul will do. It must be a God. Your friend’s death was the fuel required to ignite this little beauty. He wasn’t murdered out of spite; he was harvested."

The revelation hit Kairos like a physical blow. His mind, already frayed by imprisonment, struggled to piece together the web of manipulation.

"Then... the mission? Gathering information on Cosmos?" Kairos stammered. "Was that all just a ruse? Was the real goal always to liberate these thousands of Demon Gods?"

Edgar laughed, a dry, hacking sound that echoed off the damp walls. "Who can say? Perhaps the information was the goal, and our rescue is merely a side-effect. Or perhaps we are the main prize, and the information was the bait. In the schemes of the that schemer, even the pieces on the board don’t know which game they are playing."

Edgar closed his eyes... or the sockets where eyes should be and began to chant. "Now, we wait. Our power is suppressed, so we cannot signal him. We can only be liberated when he chooses to unlock the pearl from the outside."

Seconds stretched into minutes. The tension in the room grew so thick it was palpable. Then, the pearl began to throb. A deep, rhythmic crimson light pulsed from its core, casting long, dancing shadows of the cage bars against the walls.

Edgar’s grin widened, but then he frowned. The light stabilized, but the prison remained intact.

"Come now, Lom," Edgar muttered to the air. "Use the pearl. I will save every one of them. They will be your legion. Your blade against the foes that wait in your future. Don’t you want your army?"

He paused, as if listening to a voice only he could hear.

A look of realization or perhaps feigned forgetfulness crossed his horrific face.

"Ah, I nearly forgot the deal," Edgar said, his voice turning smooth and cold. "The gates will open, but there is a toll. Every prisoner who wishes to walk out of this abyss must first pledge their soul to the Demon God Lom. You must vow, upon your very divinity, to never defy his word."

The cavern went silent. For a Demon God, loyalty was a fluid concept, but a vow was absolute. Yet, as they looked at the cold stone and the chains that drained their lives, the choice was simple. They were tired of being pawns for lords who sent them on suicide missions only to abandon them in the Emperor’s basement.

"I pledge!" a voice cried out from the darkness.

"And I!" another followed.

One by one, the thousands of imprisoned demons shouted their fealty.

The air grew heavy with the weight of thousands of binding contracts. Kairos and Mongo looked at each other. A billion years of torment, or eternal service to a rising Demon God?

"I vow it," Kairos whispered.

"I am his to command," Mongo groaned.

As the final vow was uttered, the Pearl of Calamity began to spin. It hovered in the center of Edgar’s cell, rotating with increasing velocity until it was nothing but a blur of shadow and crimson.

With every rotation, a sphere of distorted space expanded outward. It passed through the bars, through the chains, and through the bodies of the prisoners.

Suddenly, the heavy pressure of the Sealing Dao evaporated. The law of the Emperor was being overwritten by a localized reality.

"You may break your toys now," a new voice echoed from the heart of the pearl. It was Lom’s voice, projected through the artifact. "Within this sphere, no law holds sway but mine."

Edgar didn’t wait. He reached out, his long, spindly fingers gripping the bars of his cage. With a terrifying display of raw strength, he peeled the metal back like wet parchment, creating a gap wide enough to stroll through.

Across the cavern, the sound of breaking metal was like a symphony of thunder. Thousands of Demon Gods tore their chains from the walls, their suppressed power returning in a violent surge of dark energy.

Kairos and Mongo were the last to stand, their legs shaky as they stepped out of the shadows of their cells.

They were no longer just prisoners.

They were a ghost army, a legion of the damned, slipping through the cracks of the Emperor’s palace and into the deep, swirling currents of the void.