Chapter 39. The Spire of Arkasia (2)

“…”

A massive gate, made of jet-black marble reminiscent of the deepest night, stood before us, blocking our path.

The ancient characters carved into the wall surface flickered faintly, repeatedly shining and then fading.

I tried to examine the characters closely, but the more I looked, the more they shifted into incomprehensible forms.

Arkan, who had been watching, chuckled and said,

“…Forbidden Words.”

Forbidden Words—ancient characters imbued with a soul-gnawing curse.

In other words, these strange characters carved into the gate were a seal created to protect the spire.

It wasn’t particularly surprising.

Great Labyrinths were usually sealed like this.

The Spire of Arkasia was probably designed so that one could only enter after reading all the Forbidden Words.

The problem was, the moment you properly read the Forbidden Words, you’d be cursed and your mind would be broken…

“Rudine.”

“Yeah?”

Of course, it meant nothing to me.

I brought Rudine along for this very reason.

Rudine was already tainted by the madness of the Heavenly Star of Slaughter.

A curse that broke one's mind wouldn’t work on her, whose mind was already completely broken.

“Go read it.”

“Okay.”

Upon hearing my instructions, Rudine walked to the gate and slowly began to read the inscribed characters.

At that moment.

*Rumble—!*

All the characters carved into the wall surface began to glow simultaneously.

The emitted light grew increasingly intense.

A suffocating pressure weighed down on me.

Soon after.

*Creak!*

With a loud rumble, a new Passage leading into the spire opened.

As the gate slowly opened, a chilling aura emanated from within.

“Eek…!”

Adina twitched her ears and hid behind Arkan.

Her trembling purple eyes shone brightly.

Seeing her Spirit Eye react so intensely, it seemed this spire itself was quite extraordinary.

“The traces?”

“…They lead that way.”

She pointed inside the spire with her fingertip.

Looking inside through the entrance, I saw corridors and staircases that defied the laws of geometry.

Structures that created optical illusions, as if the top and bottom were inverted, the inside becoming the outside.

Corridors that seemed to continue infinitely, like a Möbius strip.

As expected of a place where the ultimate reward was the Rune of Space; the gimmicks themselves were fittingly bizarre.

The moment I stepped beyond the entrance, the flow of air changed.

The atmosphere itself felt otherworldly.

I could intuitively feel that space was distorted in an impossible way.

At that moment, Rudine’s voice called out from behind me.

“Luke.”

“What?”

“Didn’t you say the Sacred Text was sealed in the spire’s underground?”

“I did.”

“But there are no stairs leading down.”

As Rudine said, there were only stairs leading upwards in the center of the spire.

No matter how much I looked around, it was the same.

There were no hidden passages or structures.

Only bizarre, spiral staircases leading upwards. T

here was no way Arkan would lie to me, and there was no way the records in the Forbidden Book were wrong.

That meant.

“That must be the ‘rule’ of this place.”

“…Rule?”

“Yeah, I told you earlier, didn’t I? A Territory isn’t subordinate to the world’s order.”

A space that imposed its own unique rules upon the world—that was the essence of a Territory.

The Forbidden Book clearly stated "underground," but in this space, the underground might not be the underground as we knew it.

A Territory wasn't a space where common sense applied.

I headed towards the stairs without hesitation.

“Follow me.”

A strange sensation enveloped me as I took my first step.

Every time we climbed the stairs, space distorted, warping our perception.

We reached the first floor after climbing the first spiral staircase.

“Rudine, watch out!”

Adina’s urgent cry rang out.

I looked back to see a bizarre sight unfolding.

The staircase we had just climbed began to fold slowly, like a large bookshelf closing.

The problem was that Rudine was standing right in the middle of the folding staircase.

“Rudine!”

I reached out, but it was too late.

The staircase folded completely, and the ground beneath her feet disappeared.

But contrary to my expectations, Rudine didn’t fall.

The staircase she had been standing on folded and became the ceiling, and Rudine was standing on the ceiling.

“…Huh?”

We all tilted our heads back and looked up at Rudine hanging from the ceiling.

To her, it seemed as if the ceiling was the floor.

Her hair, her clothes—everything hung towards the ceiling.

But to us, she looked like she was standing upside down.

“Ha, interesting.”

Arkan chuckled playfully, then suddenly took a step towards the wall. But her foot didn’t slip.

She walked along the wall as if walking on flat ground.

We were all in the same space, but the surface that served as the floor was different for each of us.

For me and Adina, it was the surface beneath our feet; for Rudine, the ceiling; and for Arkan, the wall.

“…This is crazy.”

All of the space was intertwined.

There was no distinction between up and down, inside and outside.

As if someone had deliberately torn and reattached the space.

This place didn’t just defy the laws of geometry.

As if multiple spaces were stitched together, every surface followed a different set of rules.

I immediately called out to Adina.

“Adina, the traces?”

“…Upwards.”

“Lead the way. I’ll follow.”

“Hiccup! Damn it… why am I… hiccup! In a place like this…”

Rudine on the ceiling, Arkan on the wall, and Adina and I on the floor.

Each of us walked along a different surface, ascending upwards.

After climbing for a while, we reached the seventh floor, where an even stranger sight unfolded.

Dozens of passages appeared before us.

All the passages looked identical, and we couldn’t distinguish which one was the real one.

“…That way.”

Adina pointed to one of the dozens of passages without hesitation.

As if it was the correct answer, the passage emitted black light and opened, and we stepped inside.

Every time we passed through a passage, a ringing echoed in my ears, and a sensation of tearing space enveloped me.

A strange feeling as if walking on the border between reality and unreality.

After walking for a while.

*Rumble—*

As soon as we passed through the end of the Passage, I stopped involuntarily.

Even Arkan, who had been following me, gasped with wide eyes.

The sight that unfolded before us… was a space beyond comprehension.

An endlessly continuing spiral abyss. But it was strange.

Looking up seemed like looking down, and looking down seemed like looking up, creating an optical illusion.

It looked as if everything was converging into a single point while simultaneously expanding infinitely.

‘Wait… there was a space like this in the original…’

A passage from my memory suddenly flashed through my mind like lightning.

The place where the world’s rules converge.

The place where the boundary between reality and fiction collapses.

A paradox where all existing spaces connect endlessly, yet ultimately converge into a single point.

“The Bottomless Pit…”

I muttered involuntarily.

As if all the spaces within the spire converged here, twisted geometric structures stretched endlessly, forming a spiral.

The bottom of the world, the abyss where all beings ultimately arrive.

The "underground" mentioned in the Forbidden Book referred to the Bottomless Pit.

And there, I finally found it.

A stone structure resembling an altar.

On top of it, a single ancient book shone brilliantly.

“…The Sacred Text.”

The Rune of Space.

I finally found it.

****

“……”

Arkan, having exited the Passage, was beyond dumbfounded; she was speechless.

From the moment they entered the spire to the moment they passed through the passage, every experience was pure chaos and the unknown.

And now, at this moment, even she couldn’t help but be awestruck.

“…Crazy.”

The Bottomless Pit.

A primordial Territory from a forgotten era, where space itself had evolved into strangeness.

It was a space that touched upon the edge of this world, or perhaps even deeper… the Outer Sea.

And right in front of her lay the Sacred Text she had been searching for. Arkan’s golden pupils narrowed.

At the moment her Insight Eye, which could see through the origin of all things, tried to penetrate the Sacred Text…

“Ugh—!”

Arkan involuntarily clutched her head and stopped her attempt to penetrate it.

Her instincts screamed a powerful warning—that it wasn’t something she should try to pry into.

She had lived for hundreds of years and seen countless things, but she had never felt such primal danger.

“Gasp… gasp…”

It was truly otherworldly.

The moment she realized this, the hairs on her body stood on end, and she felt herself trembling.

This wasn’t simple fear, but an instinctive rejection from life itself.

And behind the Sacred Text…

A giant orb of darkness floated.

*Crack—*

A tiny crack appeared on the surface of the orb.

The crack grew larger and spread across the entire round surface.

And then.

*Crackle—!*

The orb shattered.

At the same time, a serpent appeared, biting its own tail. It split into two, then four, then eight… endlessly multiplying and devouring itself.

The infinitely repeating cycle of self-consumption drew an ever-larger circle, filling the void.

Within the endless cycle of multiplication and destruction, it began to distort.

Countless eyes flashed between the serpent's scales, and in the center, a bizarre pattern, resembling an inverted tree of life, moved dynamically.

A being that embodied chaos itself, as if realizing the image of Qliphoth.

An alien being from the Outer Sea, slumbering at the bottom of the world.

A being that embodied primordial chaos, an absolute being for whom even the laws of the world were meaningless.

“…An Outer God.”

The Outer God, Ouroboros.

Or rather, a fragment of it.

‘Dangerous.’

For the first time, she felt genuine danger.

This was a monster that even she, a Great Lord, couldn’t easily handle.

“6th Lord, we have to retreat.”

She spoke. But.

Step. Step.

Luke Richter was slowly walking forward.

He walked towards the altar where the Sacred Text lay, as if taking a stroll.

“Stop! That’s…”

But he didn’t stop.

Luke, standing before the altar, slowly lifted the Sacred Text.

At that moment.

“I absorb Karma.”

He muttered something, then…

[Pilgrim burdened with great Karma, state your purpose for visiting this Holy Ground.]

A bizarre voice, beyond description, pierced her eardrums and resonated in her brain.

“I enforce an offering.”

[The offering?]

“Yphrasia’s Monstrosity.”

[State the price of the offering.]

“I demand the Authority of the Territory.”

The moment his last words ended, the Ring of Yphrasia on Luke's finger turned to ash and scattered into the air.

A moment later, everything around them was dyed in pitch black.

Countless stars, densely embroidered in the void, moved as if they had a will of their own, forming the shape of a tree.

*Creak—!*

The Sacred Text glowed, and the Rune inscription was engraved below Luke's left eye.

‘What is…’

Arkan was speechless.

A massive golden torrent gushed out from the Sacred Text and was absorbed into his body.

It was a sight as if the fundamental laws of the world were dwelling within a human body.

And then, he muttered something.

“Territory.”

A blue light emanated from the tattoo engraved below Luke’s left eye.

The surrounding space began to distort.

Cracks appeared in reality, like a shattered mirror, and scenes from other dimensions were reflected within those gaps.

The cracks spread, consuming reality.

Centered around Luke, the space of the Bottomless Pit transformed into another dimension.

The endless abyss transformed into a pure white space.

“Ignition.”

The tattoo below his right eye also emitted a blue light.

The two lights resonated with each other, drawing a bizarrely shaped, giant clockwork in the void.

*Rumble!*

A tremendous roar erupted, and the clockwork’s hour and minute hands began to rotate in reverse.

Time flowed backward, consuming space. Ouroboros’s infinite multiplication rewound, returning to its origin.

“Void.”

Luke reached out his hand.

A golden haze erupted from his fingertips, enveloping the clockwork, and the surrounding space began to fold.

“Severance.”

In an instant, a giant fissure was drawn across the pure white Territory.

It wasn’t a simple line, but an absolute severance that divided space-time itself.

Like a giant blade cleaving the world in half.

*Screech—!!*

The fissure, which had pierced through Ouroboros’s form, slowly began to widen.

What was visible within the gap was absolute nothingness.

True nothingness where time, space, and existence did not exist.

“…What is this.”

The endlessly widening fissure stretched to the very edge of the Bottomless Pit.

The Territory itself was split in two, completely separating Ouroboros’s form, and then…

*Roar—!!*

Through the giant fissure that cleaved the pitch-black abyss…

The cross-section of the world revealed itself.