Chapter 3

For a thousand years, I reduced my own existence to nothing but a living lock-core.

I had made a vow, and I knew the bottom line perfectly well: if I ever strayed more than thirty miles from the bronze Sealing Pillar, the Abyss would completely collapse. The demons breeding in the earth's core would swallow the entire surface world within three days. That was the reason why, five hundred years ago, I walked to the edge of the plains only to swallow my humiliation and turn back.

But right now, looking at those three bloodstained pieces of scrap iron on the ground, I suddenly felt that this so-called "grand scheme" was utterly fucking meaningless.

Even if the sky fell, it would be what those blue-blooded bastards brought upon themselves.

I turned around, facing the bronze pillar that had stood for a millennium. Without a shred of hesitation, I raised my hand, shaped my fingers like a blade, and slashed violently at the empty air.

Crack—

Some invisible, adamantine tether was forcefully severed from within my body.

It was the lock connecting my Core of Chaos to the Sealing Pillar. The moment it snapped, the earth let out a violent, mournful wail. The black rocks surrounding the bronze pillar cracked and splintered. The dark-red abyssal rift, which had been suppressed to near-death, began expanding frantically like a torn wound. From the depths of the earth's core, the ecstatic roars of millions of high-tier demons flooded upward.

"Three days," I said, not even batting an eyelid as I listened to the shrieks beneath my feet. "In three days, even if I have to slaughter the entire surface world dry, I will come back and stuff you all back down here. Until then, whoever dares to crawl up to catch the wind, I will exterminate their entire breeding line."

The roaring from the depths abruptly halted in a bizarre silence, morphing into a low, wary whimper of pure dread.

I ignored the commotion behind me. Turning my head, I grabbed Evelyn by the shoulder with one hand, and hoisted the terrified, paralyzed merchant up with the other.

"Close your eyes. Clench your teeth."

The Power of Chaos instantly enveloped us.

A thousand years of sediment had long since untethered my power from the constraints of mortal space.

Taking them with me, I stamped through the void with a single step, walking straight out of the Ashen Plains.

A thousand miles away.

The ancestral land of House Carroll.

When the howling of the sandstorm faded from our ears, we were already standing on the territory that had once belonged to House Carroll.

Scorched earth, ruins, and the lingering stench of blood.

The main estate, which had been magnificent enough five hundred years ago, was entirely leveled. They had dug three feet deep into the foundations. Dark red, severed limbs were mixed into the crushed rubble.

We stopped near the central square, not far from the ruins.

It was brightly lit.

Three hundred heavy cavalrymen of the Silver Shield Knights had locked down the square flawlessly.

Kneeling before a gallows in the center of the square were dozens of people drenched in blood. Old folks, crippled veteran guards... judging from their clothes, these were the loyal servants and vassal commoners who had tried to resist or beg for mercy during the extermination of House Carroll.

A nobleman wearing a red cape sat on horseback right in the middle of the square, impatiently tapping his saddle with a riding crop.

It was Lord Margrave, the man who had led the total slaughter of the Carroll family.

"Gouge out the eyes of these peasants," Margrave ordered out of sheer boredom. "That little leftover of the Carroll family couldn't have run far. Hang all the corpses around the borders of the territory. We'll wait for her to come back and collect the bodies."

Evelyn's hand locked into a death grip on her sword hilt. Her eyes turned completely red.

I let go of her, hefted the dark-red battleaxe, and walked straight out of the shadows.

The rough soles of my boots stepped onto the bloodstained bluestone pavement. Instantly, three hundred heavy cavalrymen snapped their heads toward me, their lances lowering in perfect unison to aim directly at my chest.

Margrave frowned, looking down his nose at me—an old man dressed in a torn burlap surcoat, dragging a rusted axe. "Where did this beggar come from? Beat him to death. Don't dirty my eyes."

I stopped ten paces away from his horse.

"You slaughtered people you shouldn't have slaughtered," I said, raising my heavy eyelids to look at him.

Margrave froze for a second, then burst into a sneering laugh. "Ah, a hound of the Carroll house. Knights, crush him."

The five heavy cavalrymen at the very front dug their spurs violently into their horses' flanks. Five warhorses, each draped in two hundred pounds of heavy armor, neighed and charged directly at me like a soaring wall of steel, carrying enough momentum to crush anything in their path.

I didn't dodge. Nor did I raise the battleaxe in my hand.

I merely lifted my left hand, spread my five fingers slightly, palm facing down. Then, with casual indifference, I pressed down by a single inch.

No magical light effects. No energy fluctuations.

BOOM—CRACK!

A sickening, deafening crunch exploded across the square. The five charging cavalrymen, along with their horses, were violently smashed into the ground by a terrifying, invisible, and ultimate gravitational force, stopping less than three feet away from me!

The hard stone pavement instantly collapsed by half a meter. In a fraction of a second, both men and horses were compressed into an unrecognizable paste of flesh by the colossal gravity of Chaos. They didn't even have time to scream before they were embedded into the bottom of the crater. Blood rapidly spider-webbed across the cracks in the pavement, pooling everywhere.

A wild gust of wind swept through the square. The entire area fell into deathly silence.

Margrave's sneer froze on his face. His riding crop slipped from his hand and hit the ground with a clack. He looked at the pit of blood, then back at me. His Adam's apple bobbed with immense difficulty as all the color drained from his face.

The remaining two-hundred-plus elites were struck by absolute, overwhelming terror. Their horses backed up nervously, completely shattering their tight formation.

I dusted off a non-existent speck of dirt from my cuff. "Your turn."

"M-Monster!" Margrave shrieked. Completely abandoning any thought of resistance, he shrank backward in despair. "Block him! Everyone, charge!"

I lifted my battleaxe and took a step forward. Right at that moment, Margrave desperately pulled a black runestone the size of a fist from his breast pocket and crushed it.

A twisted sphere of black light instantly enveloped him. There were no spatial ripples whatsoever. In less than a second, Margrave and his horse vanished into thin air.

I stopped in my tracks, my brows knitting heavily together.

The scent of that teleportation... was wrong.

That wasn't any known magic from the Three-Race Alliance. It carried a cold, dead, putrid stench that entirely violated the fundamental laws of this world. This disgusting sensation didn't belong to the Abyss, nor did it belong to the surface. It belonged to the Outer Realm.

How could a second-rate nobleman possess something from the Beyond?

More importantly, it was blatantly obvious this artifact was specifically prepared to save his life in case he encountered an absolutely insurmountable enemy.

I turned my head and looked at the devastated ruins of House Carroll. If this was all just a standard political purge, why were they dare to be so thorough? Why push Evelyn toward the Ashen Plains like they were herding ducks? And why would a useless noble on a simple execution errand carry a divine, life-saving artifact from the Outer Realm?

Because this was a trap.

Someone had used the one hundred and thirty-seven lives of the family I built as bait, absolutely certain that the moment this bloodline was driven to my face, I would tear up the treaty and abandon the Sealing Pillar.

"A-Ancestor..."

The young merchant, who had been hiding in the back without daring to make a sound, suddenly collapsed onto the ground, scrambling backward. He pointed furiously at the hilltops on the outskirts of the territory, his voice shaking like a leaf.

I followed his trembling finger.

I hadn't noticed when it happened, but the mountains surrounding the Carroll territory were now blazing with countless torches, illuminating the horizon.

Lances stood like forests; war banners blotted out the sky.

This wasn't some local garrison. This was the direct, elite main force of the High Council of the Alliance.

Heavy footmen, behemoth riders, arcane magic chariots... An army of tens of thousands had formed an iron bucket around this territory a thousand miles away, trapping us perfectly in the center.

The merchant stared at the Commander's banner fluttering in the distance, his face pale as ghost. "Sending an urgent message from the plains, then mobilizing and assembling an army of a hundred thousand troops at the Carroll territory would take at least half a month. But you just brought us here... and they've already set up an entire siege line."

He swallowed a mouthful of blood-laced saliva. "They’re not here to hunt us down. They’ve been waiting for you all along."