Chapter 221: 118. Big Eyes -3 (Part One)
**
The place Hans fell down to couldn’t be called a part of the castle anymore.
All the walls were now covered by the tough, sinewy ‘flesh’, while the windows and doors were all blocked off.
No light entered this space as access to the outside had been cut off. Hans pulled out a lantern from his luggage, applied oil, and lit it up.
The light cast from the lantern revealed countless corpses strewn about seemingly everywhere. All of them were victims murdered by the Big Eyes.
They were all currently covered by the tentacles, slowly and gradually melting away.
Hans became as pale as a sheet of paper at the gruesome sight.
‘This… this place is hell!’
He urgently looked around his vicinity.
The holy skeletons were still guarding him, but…
-Kkiii-aaaaaahk!
The countless walking dead leaping out from the darkness were gradually decreasing the number of holy skeletons one by one.
Hans confirmed one more time that the holy skeletons, despite their unsteady tottering, were still somehow eliminating the undead. He couldn’t help but swallow back his dry saliva.
It had already been fifteen minutes since he fell down here.
Even though this was literally inside the stomach of the Big Eyes, he was miraculously still alive.
‘I got lucky. The Big Eyes hasn’t tried to kill me just yet. But what’s the reason for that, I wonder?’
Hans turned his head around and stared at the tentacles currently filling up the passageways to his left and right.
This whole castle had been taken over by the Big Eyes. The demon was capable of freely manipulating the shape of its flesh, so it wouldn’t be all that surprising to see tentacles with fangs or sharp blades suddenly shoot out from the walls to slice Hans apart to death.
He shuddered and quickly shook his head at his own terrifying imagination.
-Ki-hihihihi!
The creepy cackle came to him from somewhere in the darkness.
Hans flinched nastily in shock and quickly focused his attention to his front.
The space there distorted for a moment and an eyeball popped up. At the same time, the tentacles on the walls began writhing and moving towards him.
In other words, the Big Eyes’ earnest hunting had finally begun.
“I bloody knew it, I shouldn’t have come!”
Hans held his head and screamed while hurriedly fleeing.
The holy skeletons tried to protect him by defending his rear, but their actions ultimately proved to be meaningless. They couldn’t withstand the tentacles’ barrage flying in from seemingly everywhere and got destroyed pretty quickly.
Hans turned around to flee to elsewhere, but a huge eyeball suddenly materialised right in front of him.
“…!”
He instinctively stopped making any and all movement. He even held his breath to the absolute best of his abilities.
Hans stood there frozen stiff like a statue, but the Big Eyes began studying him from various angles as if it had found something rather amusing to behold. In the meantime, tentacles were slowly creeping closer to Hans’s location.
The sharp fangs and blades as pointy as the stinger of a scorpion, were now aimed at Hans.
‘I’ll surely get killed at this rate! Oh, oh, dear Goddess Gaia, I beg of you, please send someone, anyone, to save me!’
He fervently prayed to the goddess, but he was hoping for something impossible here.
Unless you were either the summoner of the Big Eyes or someone connected to the summoning process, you’d inevitably end up as its ‘food’ if you failed to escape from a location the demon had taken over.
All the knights and magicians of Aihrance, as well as the servants and maids that used to work in the castle, should have been killed and devoured by now.
And the same fate was in store for him, too.
Cold sweat drops trickled down Hans’s face. He was rapidly reaching the limit of holding his breath.
In the end, he couldn’t endure it anymore and gasped out for air. And when he moved, the Big Eyes also reacted accordingly.
The tentacles instantly pounced on Hans.
“Get down!”
Hans heard a familiar voice and reflexively shielded his head before crouching on the ground.
A barrage of arrows of light flew in and blew apart the tentacles.
Hans raised his head and stared at the tattered tentacles tottering precariously before shifting his gaze away.
He saw a group of undead radiating an unmistakable sacred aura at the end of the corridor some distance away. The group consisted of holy skeletons equipped with all sorts of armaments, as well as Banshees aiming their bows in this direction.
And a blonde girl standing at the front of the holy undead was quickly dashing to where he was.
“Lady Alice!”
Hans recognised her and urgently called out her name.
Alice clanged the gauntlets equipped on her fists.
CLANG-!
More tentacles shot out from seemingly every direction her eyes could see, but Alice evaded them all using dexterous movements. She spun around gracefully and blew a tentacle apart with a roundhouse kick.
She thrust her hand out, grabbed another tentacle, and roughly ripped it off from its base.
She then proceeded to grab the huge eyeball floating in the air above, squeezing it hard until it burst apart with a loud pop.
Bits of flesh splattered onto her face, but she didn’t even mind it. She instead picked up Hans like a piece of luggage and placed him on her shoulders.
He was deeply impressed by her ‘manly’ figure and couldn’t help but say, “Oh, my goodness! How did you even find me, Lady Alice? Indeed, gods have to be real! They actually answered my prayers! Wait, could it be that Lady Alice is secretly an angel sent by Goddess Gaia herself?”
“Now isn’t the time to be impressed!”
Alice urgently dashed back towards the holy skeleton legion that had set up a defensive formation over yonder. The tentacles gave chase, but the light arrows from the Banshees accurately shot them down.
She ducked and evaded the storm of tentacles in a truly electrifying manner.
Hans, who was up on her shoulder, cried out towards her, “Where is his highness right now?”
“…He’s acting as bait at the moment!”
“Excuse me?”
Hans blankly stared for a bit before finally realising what she meant by that.
Being stuck inside the belly of the Big Eyes meant that, even if you were a dragon, you’d still get exhausted from the endless battles and get devoured in the end.
That’s because of the countless tentacles shooting out from practically everywhere, plus the demon’s near-infinite regenerative capability.
As such, surviving would be too difficult no matter the type of army you brought along, as long as you were stuck inside the demon.
However, the Big Eyes had a tendency to focus its attacks on the individual it deemed to be ‘the most threatening existence’ currently inside its body.
That should be the likely reason why Hans had been mostly left alone until now.
Alice continued on, “His highness will attract the Big Eyes’ attention as much as possible.”
“I-in that case, where is his highness…?”
Alice finally managed to join up with the legion of holy undead and placed Hans back on his feet.
“He’s searching for the monster’s main body right now.”
**
The Necromancers of Nemesis had been overflowing with confidence.
They knew all about the characteristics of the Big Eyes, so they firmly believed that the warp gate they had created through so much effort would remain undisturbed no matter who or what attacked it.
Unfortunately for them, that was nothing more than their empty hopes at the end of the day.
“But why?! How come…?!”
“Oh, our dear Necromancer King! Why are you attacking us like this?!”
These Necromancers had fallen into a deep pit of despair.
Those who dared to raise their voice got pulverised into bloody meat by the formless blades.
They couldn’t even leave behind intact corpses.
The absurdly enormous clump of divinity proceeded to completely grind them to fine specks of blood-drenched dust.
The narrow passageway exploded spectacularly and the debris of the wrecked building tumbled down noisily.
“Lord Amon!”
“Please come to your senses! Please!”
This was a one-sided massacre.
The Necromancers of Nemesis begged and pleaded.
They begged their master from the past, Necromancer King Amon.
The existence kitted out in bone armour stood tall as whitish breath leaked out from beneath the mountain goat’s skull. While resting the greatsword made out of bones on his shoulder, he shot a sharp glare at the Necromancers standing before him.
The Necromancers stared back at this ‘Necromancer King’, and began shaking their heads in confusion.
Something… something was off here.
That being was not Necromancer King Amon.
The appearance and powers on display certainly were similar, but there was simply no way that Amon possessed such a pure, clean aura like this individual.
Rather than the trace of death wherever he walked, ripples of holy water were spreading out.
And then, holy undead continued to rush out from that pool of holy water.
That was definitely a different type of power from Amon’s.
Even though all of the gathered Necromancers recognised this fact, they couldn’t bring themselves to mount any form of resistance.
“Aren’t you going to fight back now?”
The ‘Necromancer King’ extended his left hand that didn’t hold anything. However, chains made out of bones that were connected to a bone dagger suddenly materialised there.
“Jeron, Jiid.”
Those were the names of the very first people to be turned into holy ghosts, the assassins from Lome Kingdom dispatched by Derian Victoria.
Their souls were engraved into the bone dagger. On top of that, Divine Aura and divinity were also injected into it.
[Assimilation percentage has been generated.]
[Assimilation percentage: 60%]
He then flicked his left hand. The bone dagger flew out and the bone chains attached to it stretched tautly.
Bang-!
(TL: Happy new year! Fingers crossed that 2021 will be better than 2020!)
(TL: Also, only one chapter today.)
