As he chatted with Ranni, he walked deeper, feeling himself slowly descending underground. Besides the whistling of the sea wind, he heard nothing else. Crushed stones were still scattered everywhere, and the whistling wind made it even more eerie, but Throne wasn't apprehensive. As long as there weren't a few Astel, Naturalborn of the Void hiding below, what was there to fear?
No matter how strange it was, he'd just cut it down with his sword. Throne wasn't scared, but he was very confused. Even Ranni couldn't analyze anything, occasionally picking up two stones to examine, finding no clues, and then tossing them aside. After continuing for another ten minutes, he suddenly stopped, his brows tightly furrowed.
"No, I've been walking in circles. This cursed place is strange."
In a corner a few meters away, he had clearly seen a broken stone foot several times already. With Throne's observational skills, he could even remember the direction of the cracks on it; there was no way he could be mistaken.
"It makes no sense. There are no forks in the road here, so how could I get lost? Ranni, do you sense any magic barriers or anything like that?"
Ranni hesitated for a moment, then replied, "I'm not good at that, and I don't feel my consciousness being distorted."
He should have brought Melina; her perception was the keenest. Throne took a deep breath, slowly backed away, and followed the path he came from.
After another ten minutes, he stopped again, his expression grim as he looked to the side. The greyish-white statue leg still lay quietly in the corner, and this time, he had been walking backward. Starlight. He simply tossed aside his torch, letting the magical radiance illuminate the surroundings. The sea wind from behind him persisted, while the darkness ahead was deep and endless.
Lost. The sensation of the sea breeze rustling through his hair was incredibly real, and the path stretched into darkness. But Throne knew this was clearly some invisible labyrinth; no matter which way he walked, he couldn't get out or leave.
"A very clever technique, making one wonder if it's a prayer or magic."
Throne remained calm. It was the same old saying: as long as no demigods jumped out to beat him up, there was no need to fear such an illusion. Besides, there were many strange skills in The Lands Between. Just like the entrance to the Ainsel River back then, without Melina, ordinary people wouldn't even notice it. What the Raya Lucaria Academy could do, others could do even better.
"It seems this cave is indeed strange. We can't go forward, and we can't retreat."
Ranni also became serious, gritting her teeth and asking, "Should I notify Melina?"
No matter how many disagreements there were normally, Ranni wouldn't act childish when it came to serious matters. Throne thought for a moment, then slowly shook his head.
"No need. They should be almost done talking up there, and they should have already noticed my disappearance."
He placed his left hand on his sword. He had always been indifferent to things like mental erosion or consciousness manipulation. As a believer in the 'Brute Force Solves All' doctrine—
Clang!! With a flick of his thumb, the sword light flashed and vanished, striking out at the empty space ahead.
A full-force sword strike caused a deafening shriek in the air. This 'buzzing' sound echoed within the cave, and sword qi dispersed in all directions like a myriad of small knives. Everything seemed unchanged; the deep cave still had no end. But Throne, with his sharp eyes, clearly saw the rock wall within a few meters twist for an instant. So that's it, a sub-space like a spirit-calling ring?
Throne smiled. There was never anything indescribable in the world; if there was, it just meant not enough force was applied! Magic gathered in his left hand, forming ripples that made the 'buzzing' sound even more intense. Soon, six Stars of Ruin, the size of washbasins, condensed. Legendary magic, Stars of Ruin!
The cave blazed with azure light, bright as midday, before the energy surged forward in a deafening magical explosion. Boom—rumble—
Like a bomb detonated in a confined space, the ground heaved, and shattered stones rained down from above. Throne stood unmoving, absorbing the earth-shaking tremor. Is this enough? If not, I can remove the magic threshold and unleash twelve Stars of Ruin.
If that still doesn't work, Ranni and I can summon a Dark Moon together. If this cave can trap one demigod, I'll bring two. If we still can't escape, then I'll have to admit you're something else. Throne counted silently to three, then felt the violent tremors subside. He slid his sword back into its sheath.
"See? We're out."
Ranni lifted her head and peered ahead.
The deep cave was gone. Before them stood a stone archway flanked by two broken statues. They had thick beards, clutching stone tablets, with roots sprouting from the crevices of their robes. On closer inspection, their left legs were long and shapely, arguably more perfect than Millicent's.
Throne tilted his head to look beneath the robes. Dense roots obscured the critical areas, but the image was clear enough to judge. The upper body resembled a kind old man, while the lower body was that of a beautiful maiden. He'd seen this thing before in the Ainsel River. Back then, he'd been too focused on reaching Nokstella to examine it properly.
Seeing it again now, he marveled at its grandeur but couldn't shake the questions flooding his mind.
"Why is this thing everywhere?"
Ainsel River, somewhere in Liurnia, the Lake of Rot. If he recalled correctly, the Mohgwyn Dynasty had it too. And judging by the traces, this place wasn't newly built—the cave had merely connected to this ancient ruin.
"The Giant Stone Elder. I don't know its origin either. I heard the Mudmen Priests say it was their former god, but their civilization has long since crumbled. They couldn't tell me what it truly was," Ranni explained. Lately, she'd been devouring books in the Grand Library, spending every waking moment reading.
"A god from the Age of Stars and Moon, like the God of Rot?"
"Even earlier than that. But I've scoured the entire Grand Library and found not a single word about it."
Throne pinched his chin, lost in thought. After a long pause, he finally muttered, "This doesn't add up. The Uhl Dynasty existed before the Erdtree. Even if they forgot, the Nox, who were buried alongside them, wouldn't have."
Ranni fell silent. The Mudmen weren't wiped out, and these stone statues were scattered across The Lands Between. Surely some scholars would have recorded them. If writings existed, the Grand Library would have them.
"Perhaps someone deliberately erased him because the secret was too great—greater than Marika."
"That's the only explanation. Only the Greater Will could've done that."
Throne gazed at the stone statue with a hint of reverence, always finding its appearance peculiar. It encompassed male, female, old, and young. The stone tablet it held resembled a swaddling cloth, and the murals beneath its feet were round and plump, like a furnace or the sun.
The most striking feature was the roots, seemingly growing from the stone tablet it cradled, their ends perfectly aligning with the circles in the murals. He wasn't an archaeologist. After pondering for a long time without reaching a conclusion, he gave up.
"Don't overthink it. We'll find out once we go in. Someone will know."
Throne brushed aside these troublesome thoughts, gripped his longsword, and stepped through the stone archway. But as soon as he crossed the threshold, he froze. His brows furrowed, and a faint twitch flickered at the corner of his eye. Damn it, what is this? The ground was littered with corpses.
To be precise, Throne didn't even know what kind of creatures these corpses belonged to. They looked human, but some had horns, and their bodies were covered in snake-like scales. Getting a little closer, they became even more indescribably grotesque. These didn't seem like Misbegotten, because Misbegotten at least had a human form.
But some of these had heads on their butts, some had butts on their chests, their features twisted, like defective products molded by a mischievous child out of clay. Throne straightened his back, scanning the area. Hundreds, even thousands, of dense corpses displayed every conceivable characteristic. Omen, Misbegotten, humans, Demi-Humans, Bat Ghouls, Sea Squids, Poison Flowers...
He felt as if he had entered a species museum of The Lands Between. After observing for a while longer, he noticed that the heads of these creatures seemed to face in a pattern, like a concentric circle, bowing towards the center.
"What kind of cult ritual is this? Count Hero made such a grand display for this?"
Throne couldn't understand, finding it even stranger than the Frenzied Flame. No matter how mad the latter was, its goals and ideals could at least be described. It was nothing more than burning everything, turning everything into chaos, and making all one. But what was this? Brilliant starlight. Throne didn't dare to venture further rashly. He simply made the magical light even brighter, and then discovered it was a huge cavern.
As he had thought, the dense corpses indeed formed a concentric circle, and at the center—
"Dung Eater?"
Throne's eyes twitched. He hadn't expected to encounter the perverted killer he had defeated last night here. But he would never mistake that ugly armor. The Dung Eater was tied to a high-backed chair, head bowed, as if unconscious, his chest ripped open. This sight seemed familiar to Throne.
He... was gestating? Throne instinctively wanted to see what was inside the chest when he heard clapping from above.
"This won't do, Elder Sir."
Throne immediately looked up and saw another cave in the dome. A person stood at the entrance, dressed in a luxurious purple robe with brilliant golden hair. Wasn't it Count Hero?
This figure at the pinnacle of the Golden Nobles looked down at him, shaking his head elegantly.
"Your curiosity is a bit too strong, Sir. We didn't investigate the secrets of the Mohgwyn Dynasty, yet you betrayed your commission to investigate us."
Throne felt no shame for being caught red-handed, not even bothering to answer. He just shouted, "Does Morgott know you're conducting this evil ritual?"
"Evil? You truly understand nothing, Sir. This is true grace. When the light of the Erdtree can no longer protect us, we naturally must seek new blessings."
These words sounded like a riddle, but it was fine to tell them to an 'ally.' Throne half-understood, feeling that he had guessed some things correctly, but not entirely.
The nobles' thoughts were simple: they just wanted to survive in this terrible era and had found some path to experiment with. After all, as high-ranking nobles of Leyndell, they should know more than Ranni. This thing is a blessing? Whose blessing? Throne stared at the twisted corpses all over the ground, slowly gripping his sword hilt.
"Whatever this power is, I want it."
Count Hero sighed softly, seemingly unsurprised. "I've long heard of your greed. Coincidentally, I had no intention of letting you return."
To see this secret foretold the other party's death, because it could never be exposed. If this exploration leaked out, it would be as evil as the Frenzied Flame. Moreover—
"Though your power has little to do with this, it is also a precious material. Let it become food with Margit, and make this grace come even faster!"
As soon as he finished speaking, Throne, who had been a hundred meters away, instantly appeared before him and drew his sword decisively. Whoosh—
A crimson flash arced through the air. The Count shattered like spun glass, shards scattering.
Throne watched without surprise. He'd known it was a mirror clone all along. His brow furrowed as he gazed downward. The ritual had begun. A strange energy pulsed through the air—ancient, intricate, twisted, yet laced with a thread of benevolence. It felt like the origin of all things, the source from which life itself had sprung. This sensation... it's older than the Erdtree.
Ranni murmured softly, her voice tinged with resignation. Throne was a magnet for chaos, stumbling into disasters even when he meant only to pass by. Throne's own connection to the energy was deeper, more visceral. The scent of the Crucible Knight's essence mingled with the stench of the Great Serpent he'd recently consumed. The serpent stirred within him, its cry almost joyful, like a wanderer reunited with a long-lost mother.
Putting aside the Dung Eater's curses and malice, this energy carried Throne's thoughts back to something primordial, something that had faded into history's dust long before the Erdtree rose to dominance—the crucible of life. In the ancient past, before the Erdtree towered over Leyndell, life had already thrived in The Lands Between.
The earliest forms of life were undifferentiated, fracturing into distinct races over eons. Among them, the Omen stood as the highest manifestation—their tumors and coiled horns not curses, but marks of supreme favor, the fusion of a hundred races into one. Like the Crucible Knight's hundred-faced power, it was raw, untainted strength.
Life begat death, savagery, and civilization. This was the true beginning, the purest expression of grace before the Erdtree declared it a curse. Figures like Morgott and Mohg had once been the Crucible's most cherished.
But times changed. The Crucible's favored children were driven to the sewers, forced to live as parasites, unseen by the sun. Without The Shattering, they would have remained there still. The irony was thick, but this was the reality shaped by centuries of history.
The history of The Lands Between could be divided into eras: now, the Erdtree Dynasty; before that, the Age of Stars and Moon; and before even that, the Dragons' reign. But the crucible of life predated them all. That was the true ancient age. No wonder the Crucible Knights' names followed a pattern. They, like Godfrey, were relics of the Erdtree's earliest days.
"If I'm not mistaken," Throne said, hanging one-handed from the rock wall, his expression inscrutable, "the Erdtree is rooted in the crucible of life—or rather, the crucible was the Erdtree's initial stage."
Shabriri's words echoed in his mind: The Greater Will's greatest mistake was dividing life that was once whole.
The Frenzied Flame sought to burn it all, to return everything to primordial chaos. Whether the Erdtree had stolen the crucible's power and used it as soil to take root no longer mattered. The Golden Nobles had somehow reawakened it.
This was unexpected. When the Tarnished arrived, the crucible's power had been all but extinct, glimpsed only in Crucible Knights and ancient Erdtree incantations. To Throne, it was alien, unfamiliar, with no reference points to guide him. So he waited, silent, observing the changes unfolding in the cavern's depths.
The dense corpses liquefied into dark red sludge, reminiscent of the Omen's burning curses. Closer inspection revealed muscles, bones, skin, and hair swirling within the muck, a grotesque amalgamation. Throne realized these weren't corpses at all. They were dormant, awakened now by some unseen force.
The writhing mass of stolen lives surged inward, a grotesque tide converging on its epicenter—the Dung Eater bound spread-eagled to his throne-like chair, wrists lashed tight behind the carved backrest.
"They're consuming him?!"
Ranni's voice cracked through the observation chamber. Her true form in the Grand Library jerked upright, scattering scrolls.
Throne's deadpan correction cut through her horror: "Assimilation. Not consumption."
"But why him?"
Below them, the Dung Eater's convulsing body drank in the screaming tide. Throne's mirrored eyes showed no reflection as he answered, "He disembowels victims to sow curses. Yet his own flesh proves the most fertile soil of all."
Ranni shuddered. The Age of Despair unfurling before them stank of perverse sanctity.
Throne's stillness lied. The Lands Between had long since veered off its ordained path, but this—this was no mere deviation. An entire Ending had mutated in its cradle.
But this was not a bad thing for the Dung Eater, because whether it was the Age of Despair, the Age of the Concealed, or the Age of Perfect Order, the Tarnished who could mend the Great Runes could not become Elden Lord on their own; they could only await the choice of the one who mended the elden ring.