Read Novel Full Chapter 372: Call of Death
Chapter 372: Chapter 372: Call of Death
Chapter 372 – Call of Death
Eyeless stood before the Fractured Land, swirling with power and a dreadful aura, her empty sockets fixed on it with an intensity far beyond reason.
To her right, on the ground, Hound was being properly healed by the other Crimson Daggers members who’d come with Eyeless, forming a wide ring around the entire Fractured Land.
No matter where Olympias might emerge from, she’d never be able to escape them.
Not with this many Crimson Daggers members surrounding it. Not with Eyeless herself, a Fourth Rank being, standing watch.
"It’s been over a day," Hound said, grimacing and grunting as people tended to his wounds. "Maybe that bitch is already dead in there, Eyeless."
"She’s not," Eyeless said with a cold smile. "I tried to enter the Fractured Land earlier, and I’m still probing it with my essence now. It won’t let me in. Which means this Fractured Land only allows one person inside, no one else. And since I can’t enter..."
"Then she isn’t dead yet," Hound growled, his ferocious, beastly eyes narrowing dangerously, before a predatory smirk spread across his face.
This was exactly what he’d been hoping for. If Olympias died like the whore she was, inside that Fractured Land, he’d never know peace again.
He needed her to pay for killing his hounds. He needed to look at her face, shred it with his claws, tear away her clothes, and inflict on her the worst fate imaginable.
Then, once he was done, he’d cut her into pieces and send the remains to her husband, as a bloody gift.
It would be marvelous.
And that was only one of the many fates Hound had already prepared for Olympias. He’d spent every moment since she’d entered the Fractured Land dreaming up new ways to break her.
’So hurry up, dear Olympias. Don’t die inside like some weak whore, and get out. Whatever you gain in there, you’ll never stand a chance against a Fourth Rank being. A Perfected Rank.’ His grin widened even further.
Eyeless, beside him, noticed the look on his face and was even more pleased. She needed Hound bloodthirsty for what she was about to do.
’Hatred told me not to touch Cassius,’ her sockets began to bleed, ’but Isolde Amaris isn’t Cassius Desdemona, is she?’
She let out a dark chuckle and waited. Patiently. She’d wait until she was absolutely certain Isolde was dead. And even then, she’d personally go in to claim the corpse herself.
However...
’Don’t die, Olympias.’
Her empty sockets bled even more, something dark churning inside her.
’I need your body tarnished and broken to make my Cassius come running to me.’
Her face flushed with ecstasy. She hugged herself, trembling, looking like she teetered right on the edge of an orgasm.
’Ah... don’t die, I beg you. Don’t die, Isolde Amaris!’
...
The air reeked of death, and death, and again...of death.
The world was dark and crimson, no light reaching through her nearly closed eyelids, her body feeling as if she were dragging a mountain behind her.
Her breathing was loud, though she couldn’t hear it. Her heart begged for rest, and she chose to be deaf to its pleas.
’Haha. So much death around me, I’m starting to think I’m already dead,’ Isolde thought, her mind half in shadow, dragging herself towards the tree using the bone of one of the undead she’d killed as a crutch.
She’d lost her left leg during the fight, one that had already dragged on for more than a day.
Only a few hours remained before the deadline, and the only thing Isolde feared now was bleeding out entirely, or losing consciousness before she reached the tree.
The agony tore at her mind so badly that she’d been tempted, many times, to simply give up mid-fight.
Isolde knew she’d only managed to kill these undead and ghosts because of her weapons, forged from Cristo Steel.
That steel could sever essence itself. And since the ghosts were made from condensed essence, laced with grief and mental power, she only needed to destroy the essence at their core to kill them.
Easier said than done, but Isolde was an assassin. She was fast, silent... and dangerously easy to forget.
She only needed one opening, and her opponent was dead.
But given the sheer number of enemies she’d faced, and the constant need to guard against the ghosts’ mind control, it had been the hardest battle of her life.
Every lapse in focus had left her with wounds she’d likely never fully heal, scars that would never fade.
Her leg had been severed mid-fight, and she’d very nearly died right then.
But after fighting so hard, so close to death, with such a burning need to survive, sometimes wonderful surprises emerged.
Isolde’s desperation had driven her to create a technique for pure essence manipulation, building herself a new leg out of essence alone.
It cost her an enormous amount of essence. To keep up, she’d downed dozens of Essence Restoration Potions, until her insides were a churning mess of poison, one that could cripple her if she didn’t expel it soon.
Isolde Amaris was truly at death’s edge. And worse, there were still undead left, chasing her relentlessly.
She stumbled, nearly collapsing, catching herself on her remaining leg. She groaned, coughing up blood.
Blood still dripping from her lips, Isolde turned her dazed, bloodied eyes and saw around six undead, limping and crawling towards her, hatred burning in their empty eyes.
She gritted her teeth and pushed her pace faster. She was close to the tree now. Finally.
At that point, the only thing keeping her moving was her goal, and her husband. The goal to be strong on her own, not a burden. The goal to become someone her husband could truly lean on.
And she’d never be that person if she let herself die here, among these rotting corpses.
So, with every ounce of determination she had left, Isolde finally reached the tree’s edge.
The instant she stepped inside, it felt as if she’d passed through some invisible barrier.
She paused, glancing back, and saw the undead slamming into something in front of them.
They couldn’t follow her any further.
Isolde nearly collapsed in relief, but held on. She turned and finally saw the tree in full.
It was enormous, its bark so black it would have vanished entirely into the surrounding darkness if not for the faint red, vein-like lines threading across its trunk.
Those lines pulsed like something alive.
The tree bristled with dried branches that stretched overhead like the fingers of dozens of shriveled, bloodless corpses, blotting out the sky.
Yet the tree bore a single fruit.
A fruit that served as the source of light for this entire damned village. It was white, stark against the black and red around it, shaped like a newborn’s head. Looking closer, Isolde could make out the faint outline of a face across its surface.
She didn’t need anyone to tell her this was what she needed to destroy: the Budding Consciousness of the Tree of the Underworld.
’Kill...?’ Isolde thought, and just then her right leg gave out beneath her, and she collapsed to the ground.
The impact drove the breath from her lungs, sending her into a fit of coughing, blood spattering, her mind blurring further.
Even her arms trembled with exhaustion, bleeding, covered in wounds already crawling with flies that buzzed relentlessly.
The flies began circling her, their buzzing growing louder.
Isolde recalled that the god beast of the Church of Death was a special breed of fly, and that the Herald of Death — the King himself — held power tied to flies.
And now here she was, surrounded by these crimson, weathered flies.
Isolde let out a cold chuckle, feeling her life slipping through her grasp like water through a cracked bucket.
She was dying.
Her heart was slowing, her mind shutting down, her body refusing to move any further.
She’d spilled so much blood she wouldn’t be surprised to find herself entirely drained.
Isolde was utterly spent, after days of being hunted and another full day of fighting the dead.
’Ah... ah...’
[Mother of Assassins watches you with indifference.]
Isolde’s vision went dark. She could no longer see, blood finally pooling thick enough over her eyes to blind her completely.
Yet, even with death closing in so fast, so inevitably, Isolde knew she simply couldn’t give up now.
Not with the tree only a few steps away.
She couldn’t, for herself, because she owed herself this much. For her husband, because she’d promised him a proper wedding one day.
For her sister, because she wanted her forgiveness, and a real relationship at last.
For her mother, because she loved her, despite everything.
And finally... for the people who’d put her in this state, because now it was her duty to send them off to the god they worshipped so devoutly.
With every one of these reasons burning inside her, Isolde screamed at the top of her lungs, a sound like a lone wolf calling desperately for its pack, as if the scream itself could somehow give her strength.
Then she crawled towards the tree.
She dragged herself forward, over and over, leaving a trail of blood behind her, her nails shattering and peeling away.
Her teeth ground together so hard they began to crack.
But she kept going.
Just as her husband had, during the Entrance Test.
She kept crawling, dragging herself forward, blacking out twice along the way, until finally, she reached the tree.
By the time she got there, she was barely breathing. Her state was an absolute nightmare — flies swarming around her, buzzing like some deathly song — and anyone looking at her would have assumed she was already dead.
But not yet.
Now she needed to bring down the fruit. But how, in her current state?
She didn’t think too hard about it. She couldn’t, anyway.
She slammed her head against the tree.
BANG!
Her eyes rolled back instantly, going blank. Isolde had lost consciousness.
And yet...
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Her body didn’t stop. It didn’t dare. Because at this point, stopping meant death, in the most absolute sense.
So it kept slamming against the tree, again and again, until her forehead split open...and still it went on.
[Mother of Assassins is grinning at you.]
This continued until she’d struck the tree 33 times, and the fruit finally broke loose, falling right beside her.
Thud!
Isolde Amaris finally stopped hitting the tree. But just as her body had known and feared...
She collapsed, her face landing on the fruit as it hit the ground, cracking it open.
She lay there, unmoving, flies buzzing around her with deathly delight, blanketing her like a dead in a shroud.
Which she was.
Isolde Amaris was dead.
The air in the Damned Fractured Land went still. The undead stared at her body, something like a smile spreading across their bony, nightmarish faces.
They began to laugh, or perhaps cry, it was hard to tell in the eerie, wordless sound of their deathly cries.
Then, suddenly, the tree shook.
The undead froze, turning back to the body, and that was when they noticed something.
With Isolde’s face resting on the fruit, a piece of the Budding Consciousness of the Tree of the Underworld — the fruit itself — had been unconsciously drawn into her freshly dead body.
And because of that...
BADUM!!
...Isolde’s body convulsed, as if struck from within.
A voice, ancient and deathly, feminine and weary, suddenly echoed across the entire Fractured Land, as the remainder of the fruit was absorbed into her.
[The Budding Consciousness of the Tree of the Underworld has found a suitable partner.]
[Analyzing partner.]
DING!
[Name: Isolde Amaris
Age: Believed to be 21 years old
Aspect: Sound of the Grave
Title: Soundless Slayer, Daughter of the Mother of Assassins (hidden title)
Race: True Soulblade.]
—End of Chapter 372—