Last Born Of The Desdemona

Chapter 351: Chapter 351: I Didn’t Forget [750 GT Bonus Chapters 2/3]

Chapter 351 – I Didn’t Forget [750 GT Bonus Chapters 2/3]

Hound watched the Fractured Land swirl and swallow both Olympias and his two dead hounds, his eyes pulsing with anger and pain.

He gritted his teeth until the sound of them cracking boomed across the desolate surroundings, the gloomy, death-filled scent only adding to his darkening mood.

He took one shaky step forward and immediately fell onto the sand, red from the blood of the dead.

Hound’s face plunged deep into that sand, and he jerked his head back up immediately after. Yet the few seconds his head had remained there were enough for broken bones and pieces of rotten flesh to cling to his face.

His expression became even more beastly, more wrathful, as his teeth sharpened and grew.

"I will kill her." Hound hissed under his breath with deep hatred.

He grunted and pushed himself up into a sitting position, his breathing heavy. Looking at his state, he saw wounds all over his body, with one of his ears completely cut off and his lower lip split, now hanging grotesquely.

His left ankle was bleeding, and burn marks covered parts of his back.

Hound was a Third Rank, an Exalted being, but this was the first time he had ever struggled this much against a Second Rank.

It was unbelievable. His first mistake had been allowing his hounds to be killed by Olympias. Their deaths had taken away nearly 70% of his strength.

"These wounds won’t heal that easily." Hound said, inspecting his sorry state. "What kind of weapons was that bitch using? She was able to slash essence itself! Was that Cristo Steel?"

How could such rare material be in Olympias’s hands?

Strange things kept happening, and Hound didn’t like any of them.

He didn’t wish to die.

"That bitch took away my phone." He said, coughing blood, his lower lip still dangling, before looking at his storage Ring. "Most likely to stop me from contacting my Sect. However..."

He grinned monstrously, summoning another phone from his storage Ring.

"...I always have a spare."

Once Hound took it out, he paused for a moment, wondering who he should call between Anger, Smile, and Eyeless.

Anger was not even an option. If that angry dragon learned of his ’failed’ mission, Hound knew he would die.

Smile was eerie and unpredictable. He could laugh at you or kill you depending on his mood. Hound was not in a state to deal with that kind of unpredictability.

Only one remained.

Eyeless.

She was the most reasonable, yet undoubtedly the cruelest and slyest toward the enemies of the Sect.

Decision made, Hound called Eyeless while his eyes remained coldly fixed on the Fractured Land in front of him.

After a couple of seconds, Eyeless picked up the call.

"Failed or succeeded?" She said directly, her mood obviously sour from her tone.

Hound took a sharp breath. "Neither."

"What do you mean?"

"Olympias is inside the Tier 5 Fractured Land located in the Damned Village." He replied, breathing heavily. "She entered there with one foot already inside Vorn’s Gate."

"So she escaped you? With your two hounds?"

"She killed them." He growled.

"How strong?"

"Her power is troublesome. It’s hard to keep her presence in mind once she activates it. It feels like she disappears, which makes her difficult to deal with."

"But my power is quite the counter to hers, then." Eyeless responded, then took a few seconds before continuing. "So it’s confirmed? Isolde Amaris, Firstborn of the Amaris Household, wife of Cassius Desdemona, is Olympias of Fangs?"

"99.99% certain that she is."

Hound could almost envision Eyeless’s empty sockets bleeding with excitement.

"Wait there, Hound." She whispered with dark glee. "I am coming."

...

Meanwhile, inside the Fractured Land, Isolde found herself in a dark world.

The ground was an ankle-deep river of blood so rotten it had turned black, with severed limbs and heads, broken bones, and wandering eyeballs all floating on the blood-water like dead fish.

The stench was catastrophic, and Isolde’s head was blurry with exhaustion.

But she forced herself to remain focused and looked around, taking in the sight of a few shattered buildings with black smoke still billowing out of them.

Cries of pain from both children and adults echoed all around in the background, intensifying the dark atmosphere.

The sky was completely black, with nothing else in it: no moon, no sun, no stars.

Nothing at all.

Yet there was light shining over that dark world.

A faint, weak light that barely reached outward, but it existed.

And as Isolde followed the source, her eyes settled on a huge black and red Tree at the far end of the village.

There were no leaves on the Tree. Only one thing that looked like a fruit.

Isolde instantly knew that this was the fruit she was supposed to find. Finally.

Just at that moment, however, the System chimed.

DING!

[You have entered the Fractured Land: The Damned.]

[Level: Tier 5.]

[Description: The people of this once beautiful village refuse to die and enter the Gate of Death. They cling to this world with hatred beyond anything known and hate any living or non-living creature entering their domain to reach their Tree.

You have entered their domain.]

[Conditions of Success: Kill the Dead, reach the Budding Tree of the Underworld, and destroy its budding consciousness before it is fully born and a path to the Underworld opens in the waking world.]

[You have 2 days.]

Isolde read the System panels calmly, and by the time she was done, the surroundings began to change.

Ghost-like creatures emerged, made of red and black essence, all taking the forms of humans.

At the same time, creatures made entirely of bones erupted from beneath the water, scraps of flesh still clinging relentlessly to them, their hollow eyes fixed on her.

In a matter of seconds, Isolde Amaris was surrounded on all sides by both undead and ghosts.

They didn’t approach, however.

Instead, they remained where they had emerged, as if their goal was to bar her from reaching the Tree the System called the Budding Tree of the Underworld.

[Mother of Assassins is watching you with intense eyes.]

Isolde ignored the panel.

She lowered her head and looked at her body.

She was completely drained, and her vision was slowly becoming blurry.

It had been days since she slept, days since she had eaten properly, days since she had kept fighting that bastard while trying to reach this Village.

It was hell, and she didn’t remember how many times she had almost died beneath the jaws of those hounds.

But she made it. Finally.

’At what cost?’ Isolde then shook her head, grinning. ’It doesn’t matter.’

"I see that you are welcoming enough not to attack until I do, right?" She said, then sat down in the stinking river of blood.

The undead and ghosts didn’t move, still watching her with hollow eyes, waiting.

Isolde’s bloodied grin deepened.

She took out five Tier 5 Healing Potions from her space ring and numerous bandages.

Under normal circumstances, three Healing Potions were the maximum one could ingest. Anything more and one risked poisoning.

But Isolde was used to poison as an assassin. So she opened all five and drank them one by one without hesitation.

Afterward, she took the bandages and began wrapping her hands and legs. There was also a deep, bleeding wound on her right shoulder. She bandaged that too.

The process took quite some time, and by the time she was done, much of her body was wrapped in bandages.

She flexed her body to see if she could move correctly. Satisfied, Isolde finally took out the phone she had stolen from Hound.

Under the watchful eyes of the dead, Isolde removed the small runic crystal that served as the connector for calls and replaced it with the spare one she had from the Fangs.

She turned on the phone and was relieved to see that there was still enough Net to send a message.

Remembering her husband’s number, she typed it into the phone.

As it was a Crimson Dagger phone and a runic crystal number from the Fangs, there was an enormous risk of it being dangerous for him.

So Isolde decided to send only a simple message her husband would understand.

"My husband," she said, as if talking to the dead around her, "must be really worried at this point."

Isolde could have asked for help or any number of other things.

But she, more than anyone, knew what her husband dealt with every day.

If she couldn’t help him, she would not burden him.

So she sent him a simple message:

"> <September 1st. Did you forget? I didn’t.>

After the message was sent, Isolde destroyed both the phone and the runic crystal.

She lifted her head, looked at the timer she had been given, then lowered her gaze toward the two dead hounds.

Without hesitation, she grabbed their limbs and ripped them from their bodies, blood splashing across her face and body.

She didn’t even blink an eye.

Next, using her daggers, Isolde peeled away the fur and skin, leaving only the red, pulsing meat.

She didn’t have fire or even a way to produce one. So Isolde did the only thing she could: she ate the flesh of those hounds completely raw.

And she did so while looking at the undead around her.

"I am happy Cassius will never see me like this." She said, gulping down the disgusting meat. "I am afraid he would stop loving me."

After she was done, her stamina and essence somewhat restored, Isolde stored the remaining meat of the hounds and stood back up.

Her cold purple eyes swept across her surroundings, and then she spat the hound’s intestines into the river of blood beneath her.

"Disgusting. Ah...yes...let’s be quick." She muttered, taking her stance. "I have bastards to kill and a husband to see."

—End of Chapter 351—