Chapter 384

The knights of the famed swordsmanship family drew their blades.

“Master, please come with the hero!”

“We’ll hold this place down!”

Chris and Evan exchanged glances.

They were about to set off for the Glass Lake when a familiar voice reached them.

“I’m coming too.”

It was Lanya.

Chris’s eyes widened in surprise.

She looked completely different from the last time he saw her.

She had finally achieved her goal.

“Heh heh, do you finally see my greatness? For a genius like me, this is nothing. You should be even more impressed!”

Chris ignored her boastful words with a light scoff.

“Let’s go.”

---

The journey to Glass Lake was far from smooth.

The closer they got, the more severe the corruption became.

Demons blocked their path.

Ordinary demons no longer posed much of a threat, but the delay was frustrating.

“The corruption is getting stronger.”

Chris’s face grew tense.

“Can this be reversed?”

He didn’t know.

This was something that hadn’t happened in his previous life.

One thing troubled him.

“Why were these gates made as ruins like this?”

All the gates scattered across the continent shared a common trait.

No one could reach the end of the ruins.

“The deeper you go, the more insurmountable the obstacles become.”

Take the underground garden he had visited before, for example. The lower the floor, the stronger the guardians appeared, until finally, an unbeatable entity blocked the way.

Other ruins were similar.

Guardians or challenges that mortals could never overcome stood in the way.

“No matter what, we have to stop it.”

If they failed, it would mean the destruction of the world.

“This must be Glass Lake.”

Lanya’s voice was filled with awe.

The surface shimmered with a transparent, glass-like hue—no trace of blue.

“Something’s wrong.”

Unlike its usual calm, the surface churned ominously, like molten lava.

“We have to go in. Lanya, cast your life-sustaining magic on Evan and me.”

Though Chris and Evan could survive underwater for extended periods without magical aid, Glass Lake was different.

They had to be thoroughly prepared.

“The deeper we go, the stronger the water pressure becomes. Lanya, you’ll need to support us well.”

This was the challenge of Glass Lake.

Just five meters below the surface, the pressure was enough to crush most knights.

It only intensified the deeper they went, making it nearly impossible for even high-ranking knights to endure beyond ten meters.

“Over thirty meters, even the strongest seventh-rank knights struggle. Beyond forty meters, eighth-rank knights have a hard time. The deepest anyone’s ever gone is fifty meters, right?”

At fifty meters, even ninth-rank knights found the pressure unbearable.

The problem was, that wasn’t even the bottom of the lake.

The ninth-rank superhuman who explored it before said there was an even more distant floor.

“Let’s go down first. That’s the only way to find a solution.”

A brilliant light enveloped them—Lanya’s magic.

As they entered the lake, a harsh, metallic clanging echoed, as if striking rough iron.

[Christian, what’s that energy?]

[Yeah, it’s the instrument of Gehenna.]

From the lake’s depths, a sinister aura rose.

It was as if the lake’s bottom connected directly to Gehenna through the gate.

“Faintly, there’s also a heavenly aura mixed in.”

A sign that the boundaries between the three realms were breaking down.

“We have to hurry.”

Gritting his teeth, Chris pressed downward.

Ten meters, twenty meters, thirty meters.

The crushing pressure weighed heavily on them.

Though Lanya’s magic shielded them, it was becoming increasingly difficult to bear.

[My magic won’t hold for much longer beyond this point. We need to find a way to resolve this quickly.]

At over forty meters, Lanya’s complexion had grown pale.

This was the depth even the absolute state of eighth-rank was said to struggle with.

“Both of them have high enlightenment, but their vessels are only low eighth-rank. Going deeper will be tough.”

Chris’s expression darkened.

Suddenly, a chilling voice filled the water.

[Ah, what a delightful surprise.]

[!!]

It was Sherad!

Chris’s eyes widened.

‘Why is he here? Could it be… he’s become a demon of the Mystic Mage?’

Chris knew Sherad was alive.

But that he had become a demon of the Mystic Mage?

And not just any demon—the aura he gave off was that of a priest, an apostle-level being.

[How did you become an apostle of the Mystic Mage?]

[Heh heh, all thanks to you.]

Sherad licked his lips.

“After our last fight, I realized I couldn’t reach you with my own power anymore. Oh, the despair I felt then…”

His gaze flickered toward Chris.

“But I didn’t give up. I wanted to tear you apart with my own hands and hear your screams.”

“……”

“So I used the power of my gluttony on the demon I had contracted with. It was a gamble, but maybe because my feelings for you ran so deep, I succeeded. I became a demon, and an apostle of the Mystic Mage.”

It was madness.

To swallow the demon he had contracted with and become a demon himself.

“Oh, you have no idea how much I’ve missed you. Watching you approach from afar, I couldn’t contain my excitement.”

Chris frowned.

“Cut the disgusting talk. So the gate still hasn’t opened?”

Sherad didn’t deny it.

“No. This isn’t something that can be finished in one go. Even though I sacrificed two sacred beings, the offering is still insufficient.”

Sherad gave Chris a sinister smile.

“Christian, you’ll make a perfect final offering.”

Chris caught on to the Mystic Mage’s scheme.

‘So this was their plan all along—to lure me here as a vessel.’

Since using him as a vessel was no longer possible, they intended to use him as the offering to open the gate.

“Well, no worries. Killing you here will solve everything.”

“Heh heh, that’s my Christian. Just the way I like it. Oh, how long I’ve awaited this moment.”

At that moment, a rough voice cut through the tension.

“Shut up.”

It was Evan.

His anger flared as he drew his sword.

“How dare you, you perverted bastard, threaten Christian! I’ll kill you.”

Sherad’s cold gaze turned to Evan.

“We were having a touching reunion, and you dare interrupt?”

Though Sherad had been obsessed with Evan in his past life, he barely acknowledged him now.

“Get lost.”

A brilliant flash.

A crackling sound.

The moment Evan’s sword shone, a miracle happened.

The instrument’s attack split in two, and a blade of light struck Sherad.

[!!]

Sherad flinched.

“How? How is this possible?”

Sherad’s current power was lower ninth-rank.

He was at the same level as the priest Chris had fought recently, but far from equal.

If priests were typical lower ninth-rank, apostles were at the very edge of that rank.

Just as there’s a huge difference between those at the top and bottom of eighth-rank, the same applied to ninth-rank.

Yet Evan’s sword, not even ninth-rank yet, nullified Sherad’s attack.

It meant the sword held a profound significance.

“I’m here too. Die, pervert!”

A radiant domain blossomed around Lanya.

The Phase Regulator.

Her newly acquired dominion.

The power to freely manipulate the phase—the source of white magic.

With this ability, she could wield high-level white magic as easily as moving her limbs, and amplify its power far beyond normal spells.

“Take this, pervert! This is the power of a genius mage!”

High-level water, lightning, and spatial white magic erupted simultaneously.

Evan moved in tandem.

Swordmaster.

The unity of sword and spirit.

Light, speed, and weight combined.

A single strike imbued with the power to cut and destroy anything.

Sherad defended with his instrument, but it was far from unscathed.

His neat hair was disheveled.

He chuckled darkly and licked his lips grotesquely.

“Heh heh, this is an unexpected pleasure. To see these vermin put up such a fight. Though, it won’t change the outcome.”

A surge of even stronger instruments extended outward.

“Such a shame. You two would have made delicious prey if you’d matured a bit more. But not yet.”

Evan and Lanya frowned.

He was right.

Though their enlightenment was high enough to threaten ninth-rank beings, their vessels were still low eighth-rank.

Their vessels couldn’t fully manifest their enlightenment.

At that moment, Christian stepped forward.

“Is that so? Things change when I’m here.”

He stretched out his hand.

Darkness spread around him.

The Throne of Creation Descending.

“Trying to strengthen them with your power? It won’t change the limits…”

Sherad’s mocking smile froze.

This was no ordinary creation descent.

Chris produced an artifact.

“The Vampire Ring.”

A legendary relic!

A top-tier artifact capable of absorbing the surrounding energy and harnessing it as its own.

‘Because the water of this Glass Lake is a concentrated reservoir of energy.’

It contained enough power to suppress even an 8-star Absolute Realm.

Even absorbing just a fraction of it meant an immense amount of energy.

‘Of course, it’s not the kind of water that can be absorbed easily.’

But Chris had his throne.

A throne that allowed him to rule everything beneath his feet.

The throne’s authority controlled the energy within the Glass Lake’s water, and the Vampiric Ring directly absorbed that energy, channeling it to Evan and Lanya.

[!!]

Evan and Lanya’s eyes snapped open, electrified by the surging power.

[Leave it to me. That pervert’s neck is my responsibility!]

[I hate perverts too, so I’m joining you in taking him down!!]

Flash!

Like a loose rein, fierce swords and magic erupted in a wild storm.

Sherard faltered for a moment, then burst into a booming laugh.

[Ahahaha!! Excellent!! Ah, this is even more thrilling than I expected. It’s been so long since my heart raced like this!!]

Shhhhk.

The instruments around them began to consume the space, reshaping it into a chilling realm.

Sherard’s Genesis Descent.

The ‘Hell of Being Devoured.’

A power that reduced every being within its range to mere prey.

[!!]

Lanya and Evan’s eyes turned bloodshot, veins bulging with strain.

The energy they had gathered started to be sucked into Sherard.

But that wasn’t all.

‘My limbs…?’

It felt as if they were bound tight, like prey caught in a spider’s web, unable to move.