Chapter 14: Tributary

Chapter 14: Tributary

Because he was unsure what state Amon was currently in, Klein did not dare delay. Once his mental problems were preliminarily resolved, he immediately came to Calderón, preparing to take water from the River of Eternal Darkness.

And because this involved a sefirah, he could only divine and prophesy to a certain extent, vaguely seeing a few scenes. He could not make an accurate judgment.

After looking around, Klein raised his hand and summoned the historical void image of himself from a few minutes earlier, letting his main body return to Sefirah Castle.

His consciousness then shifted to the projection, giving it a substantial sense of existence.

Next, Klein grabbed into the void and drew out the historical projection of the Staff of the Stars.

To be honest, after he could use most Beyonder powers below Sequence 0 of the Apprentice pathway through Sefirah Castle, Klein no longer needed the Staff of the Stars, this Grade 0 Sealed Artifact, all that much. The wonders it possessed could basically be reproduced by him, and almost without negative effects.

However, he had always believed that an angel still needed a close-combat weapon, because no one knew when they might fall into a situation where active Beyonder abilities were ineffective.

In the mysticism world, this was absolutely possible. Whether through the rule restrictions of the Arbiter pathway or a certain degree of Beyonder ineffectiveness brought about by an Outer Deity, similar effects could be achieved.

In such a situation, grabbing a hard cane that possessed some passive effects and directly smashing an enemy’s head open was still an effective solution.

As an Angel King of the Seer pathway, making preparations in every regard was instinct!

After weighing the Staff of the Stars in his hand and pressing down the top hat on his head, Klein took the golden bird ornament from Sefirah Castle and pinned it to the pocket on the left side of his chest.

Then he took a step forward and entered Calderón City, which had once been the divine kingdom of Ancient Death—the Phoenix Ancestor, Gregrace.

The first thing that entered his eyes was an enormous pit whose bottom could not be seen. All sorts of strangely shaped buildings wound around the pit, descending ring after ring to form a majestic city beyond ordinary human comprehension.

Some of the buildings were solitary houses standing atop pale stone pillars. Some were long, rectangular, gigantic coffins with no windows, their doors opening from the roof. Some were directly grave pits, with stone tablets standing at the entrances. Others were built from all kinds of bones and appeared rather disorderly.

The closer one went to the bottom of the pit, the more intact the buildings became. The higher one went, the more collapsed structures there were, filled with decay and desolation washed over by time.

Klein only glanced at it once before a faint grayish-white fog appeared around him. He relied directly on the status of Sefirah Castle to resist Calderón’s rule that transformed all living beings into the dead.

Becoming one of the dead was not an overly negative influence to him. He simply disliked that cold, indifferent feeling.

“The grayish-white flood that rose earlier has all retreated…” Klein, wearing a top hat, a trench coat, and carrying a cane, nodded thoughtfully. With one step, he entered the depths of Calderón visible to the naked eye.

What he used this time was a Beyonder ability of the Marauder pathway: he directly stole the distance within his range of perception, thereby avoiding entanglement with the various dangerous monsters active in this mysterious city.

This was not because he feared them. Those monsters were the ones who should be afraid. If not for the fact that he did not wish to waste time, he would not have minded taking the opportunity to collect a batch of marionettes to make up for the losses caused by Utopia’s destruction.

Aside from that reason, Klein also carefully considered another point.

Calderón was a city of the dead, and at its deepest underground level, the River of Eternal Darkness was very likely flowing. Marionettes were, in essence, already dead. Once they approached the underground depths, mutations might occur.

As he advanced step by “step,” Klein discovered that he had been overthinking things a little.

The various monsters hidden in this strange city did not dare appear at all. The aura of Sefirah Castle caused their survival instinct to overcome their tendency toward madness and their habit of predation.

The deeper underground he went, the quieter his surroundings became. The strange buildings remained perfectly intact, yet they seemed to have been dead for many years. Even their aura had grown cold, gloomy, and rotten.

It feels like watching a black-and-white silent film. If I couldn’t hear my own “breathing” and “heartbeat,” I would suspect I’d gone deaf… Klein gave a light cough, using his inner muttering to resist the stillness of death.

He instinctively believed that once he adapted to this environment and his body and mind both became silent, then in a true sense, he would irreversibly die little by little.

The closer he came to the underground, the stronger this feeling became.

Continuously stealing distance, Klein advanced for a long time before finally seeing the bottom of the deep pit.

No—this was not the true bottom. It was only that a massive, deep-black palace blocked the path downward.

The palace was supported by giant pillars and inlaid with all sorts of bones and corpses of different body parts. In some places, it was even covered with bloody skins belonging to different races.

Klein stared at it for a few seconds. Without hesitation, he carried the Staff of the Stars through the open doors and entered the palace.

On both sides of the hall stood coffin after coffin of different shapes and colors. They rested quietly, as though even existence itself had been weathered away by death.

As Klein entered, faint sounds suddenly came from inside the coffins, like rusted joints opening one after another.

The grayish-white fog around Klein thickened slightly, and all the coffins abruptly fell silent.

Ignoring these things, Klein stepped to the deepest part of the hall. There, a grayish-white stone staircase led downward, and at the entrance stood a huge stone stele.

Atop the stele stood a slender giant bird sculpture that seemed to be forged from bronze. On its wings were all kinds of pale symbols.

Beneath the bronze bird sculpture, on the surface of the stele, words originating from the Language of the Dead looked like simplified birds in various shapes or snakes coiled into different forms. Together, they formed two lines with ambiguous meaning:

“Even gods cannot escape;

“Even death shall be imprisoned.”

Is this warning all living beings who come to Calderón not to go down these stairs? Do they lead directly to the River of Eternal Darkness? Klein’s thoughts stirred, and he carefully interpreted the words on the stele.

In his view, it seemed to be saying that even a Sequence 0 true god, once close to the River of Eternal Darkness, would sink there and be unable to break free. Even death itself would be imprisoned by this sefirah, by this abstract river. Though it would no longer fade away, it also could not be released.

Looking at it this way, just like the Chaos Sea, without the protection of a sefirah, merely approaching the River of Eternal Darkness would cause terrifying mutations… Klein withdrew his gaze, adjusted the golden bird ornament pinned to his chest pocket, passed around the stele topped with the bronze sculpture, and descended the grayish-white staircase step by step.

He no longer stole distance, to avoid plunging directly into danger.

In the dark, lightless, deathly cold environment, the golden bird ornament on Klein’s chest released a pale radiance, illuminating only a tiny area. It was like a small boat of life struggling to endure amid the tide of death.

After he had descended for an unknown length of time, the aura of Sefirah Castle around him reflexively expanded, becoming extremely dense, like a grayish-white cocoon.

At the same time, Klein tilted his head slightly and heard a faint, illusory splashing sound.

This seemed to indicate that deep underground, not far from his current location, a subterranean river was slowly flowing.

The next second, Klein lowered his head and looked at his feet.

At some unknown point, a dark, insubstantial current had surged there.

No light could exist upon its surface.

“This is somewhat different from what I saw last time…” Klein frowned slightly.

When he had previously come to Calderón to hunt a Spirit World Plunderer, he had triggered a change, causing large amounts of grayish-white illusory tidewater to surge up from the bottom of the deep pit.

The colors of the two sightings were completely different.

Just as thoughts flashed through Klein’s mind, at the bottom of the stone staircase, where the dark tide surged from, thin grayish-white fog spread upward. It merged with the illusory water, swelling into grayish-white “light” water that leaned more toward mist.

After the current reached Klein’s feet, it quietly withdrew, as though it were undergoing periodic rise and fall.

This thin grayish-white fog feels a little familiar… Klein’s expression immediately turned grave.

After pausing for several seconds, he continued downward.

This time, the rising illusory tide submerged him, making his body become light and weightless, causing his emotions to swiftly grow cold and his thoughts to gradually decay.

Were it not for the protective aura of Sefirah Castle around him, Klein suspected that he would passively and irresistibly merge into the tide.

Next, the grayish-white “cocoon” rose and fell in the current. As the tide ebbed, it slowly reached the end of the staircase.

Beyond the end was a stretch of void. Within the void flowed a straight, broad, illusory, colorless, dark river.

The river was so blurry that it was hard to see clearly, because around it hung a thin grayish-white fog like a barrier.

“As expected…” Klein could not help murmuring when he saw this.

He was not unfamiliar with this fog at all. He had once seen it behind that door in the ruins of Bansy, at the easternmost edge of the Forsaken Land of the Gods, and beneath Sefirah Castle!

Unlike other places, however, a portion of the River of Eternal Darkness’s water had penetrated the grayish-white fog and fused with it to a certain extent, turning now deep-dark, now pale.

This portion of river water continuously surged upward and fell back down again, like a tributary rushing through a false darkness.

On both sides of the tributary stood massive, pale stone pillars one after another. They seemed to be supporting something, preventing it from collapsing.

At this moment, between these stone pillars, along the edge of the tributary, countless somewhat blurry and translucent figures walked back and forth, pacing slowly yet without pause.

Among them, the most eye-catching was a bewildered figure that would sometimes walk into the depths of the tributary and sometimes turn back, yet could never break free from the river.

It was enormous, roughly the size of the surrounding stone pillars. It was draped in a deep black robe, and its profile had already grown old.

Suddenly, it turned its head and looked toward Klein.

Its face had obvious Southern Continent features, but one rotten mark after another had already spread across it, and white feathers stained with pale-yellow grease had grown from its flesh.

Klein knew Him.

He was Mr. Azik’s father, the Fourth Epoch Death:

The Underworld Emperor, Salinger.