Chapter 122: The Prelude to the End Resounds Here

Doomed!

As if targeted by a venomous serpent, Amy Ulysses felt every hair on his body stand on end.

Then... faint whispers echoed deep within his soul, mingled with a madness darker than the blackest night. Merely hearing them caused the ancestral blood of order inherited from his forebears to surge uncontrollably. The primordial fire raging within him seemed to have encountered a natural enemy, erupting fiercely with a thunderous boom, expanding wildly beyond his control. His body blazed like a torch in the night.

Without a doubt, in that moment he was—

Unprecedentedly powerful!

So much so that for a fleeting instant, he felt omnipotent, as if a deity clutching the entire world in his palm.

Yet... there was no chance.

Even in his most arrogant moment, his heart held no confusion, no trace of haughty recklessness. On the contrary, his expression remained grim and somber throughout, silently ascending. The stronger he grew, the deeper his understanding of the ineffable entity lurking within the impenetrable darkness became—an understanding of its unimaginable might.

Like a blind man feeling an elephant, what he glimpsed was but the tip of the iceberg of its terrifying essence.

The true horror...

Had yet to reveal itself.

However—

Despite all this, burning his very life as fuel, he remained the weaker of the two.

And the gap was not slight.

Unbeknownst to him, invisible and intangible forces—imperceptible even—had seized him, imprisoning him mid-air. The entire space seemed to solidify like amber. Then, from the bottomless darkness below, tendrils as black as shadows writhed forth like spiders approaching a poisoned, dying prey. These tentacles slithered deliberately toward the boy’s position, spreading like octopus arms, gripping—not him exactly, but the very space he occupied—tightly, and began to drag him downward.

So there was indeed no escape.

Within the frozen space, Amy Ulysses narrowed his eyes.

He was not without the strength to fight. The newly born flame burning within him held a terrifying power even he struggled to fathom. Though untrained in its full mastery, through the Dagger of Dark Blood, through this ancestral sword that cleaved through darkness, he could vent this magnificent might dwelling in his small frame in a crude, direct manner—transforming it into a sword of ultimate destruction.

But after that strike, he would be left weakened.

After all, the newborn fire was not the eternal spark. Without that infinite ember, this flame—merely a reflection of the true fire—had its limits. Perhaps it would not falter against ordinary foes, but facing the ultimate evil slumbering beneath the abyss—an entity destined to one day consume all of Hemtica—its weakness became glaringly obvious. Though he could not calculate the astronomical limits of his power, as the bearer of the newborn fire and the High Priest of Hemtica, he instinctively knew.

He had but one chance.

After that strike, the energy accumulated over millennia within the newborn fire would be depleted, and silence might follow.

So, to shatter the frozen space and escape?

Sorry, there was no such luxury.

Within the amber-like stasis, the Radiant One weakly reached up to touch his nose, then forced a stiff smile, as if surrendering. On this journey toward encroaching darkness, he quietly awaited the passage of time.

Closer... closer... even closer!

Facing the abyssal dark at arm's length, Amy instinctively gripped his blazing sword of light, but after a brief hesitation, released it.

Not yet.

He comforted himself, listening to the strong, steady beat of his heart.

“Thump, thump, thump!”

In perfect sync with the ticking seconds, his heartbeat remained steady, until the laws of the mundane world shifted and bizarre beings emerged into reality. Only then did he exhale sharply.

Then he swung his sword.

Like a whale gulping water, the flames enveloping his body were instantly extinguished.

For a moment—

Amy Ulysses could not even sense the presence of the newborn fire!

But now was no time to worry about the future of Hemtica. The emptiness sucking away his strength and spirit nearly made him stagger, barely able to stand—so much so that he was certain if the spatial stasis had not yet fully dissipated, he would have been unable to swing that sword at all!

Fortunately, there are no “ifs” in life.

His sword of light and flame cut down, a torrent of radiance drowning everything at once.

Yet... it was not enough.

Far from enough.

The once-invincible longsword met its match for the first time. The brilliant sword light born of his strike collided with the lurking rock of the abyss like a raging river crashing into a stubborn boulder: no matter how fierce, how overwhelming the force, it could not budge it an inch, and instead was split in two.

So... give me strength, more strength!

With iron will, fire flickered erratically in the young man’s dark eyes. Resolute beyond measure, he squeezed every last possibility from his bloodline. His blood boiled fiercely. Was it an illusion? Momentarily, he heard the crisp sound of shackles breaking somewhere in the distance, then—like a vast ocean—the overwhelming power surged forth with his heartbeat, poured entirely into his blazing sword of light.

Then, the piercing sword light no longer fractured. The dense darkness gradually receded beneath the sword’s pressure.

Fine, almost imperceptible cracks of dark crimson appeared in the battle and finally reached a critical threshold.

“Crack, crack, crack.”

Like eggs dropping to the earth, the dense darkness shattered violently.

Then, engulfed by light and heat...

It melted away completely.

At that moment—

The ultimate beast, long slumbering beneath Hemtica and destined to one day bury the entire city, unveiled its mysterious veil.

What met his eyes was green—dense, inky green, nauseating green!

No, to call it merely green was ignorant and narrow.

The spectrum his retinas perceived far exceeded human comprehension and acceptance. Visually, it was an ambiguous color both green and not green. Describing it simply as dark green was possible, yet something felt omitted, something off—an eerie distortion.

As for its form...

That defied acceptance altogether.

If color was already difficult to describe in human language, its exact shape rendered description meaningless.

Because—

What he saw was nothing but a viscous, rotting, writhing green hell.

Endless.

Yes, endless—even with the Radiant One’s eyesight, its end was nowhere in sight. What he glimpsed was but a tiny fraction of this vast world. Like the first humans looking up at the ancient sky, the stars, the mysterious and unknowable cosmic void, all he could feel was dread.

Could such a magnificent existence truly be defeated?

Though such thoughts flickered in his mind, they were instantly crushed in infancy by the youth himself.

His sword needed no hesitation, no doubt.

Onward, unstoppable!

“Ahhhhhhhhhh—”

A primal, meaningless roar escaped his lips. The ferocity within him was fully unleashed, power gushing ceaselessly from his veins, brutally channeled into the sword.

The sword light surged!

The sword pressure roared!

Amy swung the longsword as if wielding the eternal sun in the sky, as if brandishing the vast Milky Way descending from the heavens.

Even the empty void trembled!

Naturally, the nameless entity sealed beneath Hemtica awakened in a half-dream, half-wake state. The nauseating green sea writhed like primordial chaos, tentacles growing madly like thick hair above a human’s head, intertwining layer upon layer to meet this unprecedentedly radiant sword light.

Forward, forward, forward!

The youth stepped, step by step, pressing onward!

Then he stomped his foot.

As if crashing against a bronze wall, his unstoppable momentum abruptly halted.

Gritting his teeth, gritting his teeth, gritting his teeth—

Amy Ulysses harbored no extraneous thoughts, just bit down in defiance, letting blood trickle from the corner of his mouth, the flames in his pupils blazing fiercely.

Not enough. Still not enough. Far from enough!

His burning fervor clamored, madly demanding strength from his nearly exhausted body.

Naturally, there was no answer.

The stalemate persisted.

In the void lacking any reference, the youth lost all sense of time’s passage. Even as his consciousness blurred in the prolonged standstill, his indomitable spirit never dimmed. The fire reflected in his dark eyes still blazed fiercely.

Only now, unlike before, the fire was not orange—but a foreign silver-white.

The Fire of Anna.

The name of the flame surfaced faintly in his mind, but it was meaningless.

Because—

No matter what kind of power it was, as long as it could defeat his enemy, it was enough!

This newfound strength became the last straw to break the camel’s back. The scales of victory slowly tipped toward the Radiant One’s hope. One by one, the tentacles were severed like steel bars cut by a chainsaw, emitting grating sounds as they were sliced, layers of defense breached.

Until, finally, the cold sword light tore through all obstacles and struck directly upon the green body.

Then, the entire void began to sway!

A roar!

Invisible sound waves shook the entire world. The indescribable behemoth arched its spine in pain. Countless tentacles surged.

In a daze, Amy seemed to see a gigantic octopus head bound tightly by several chains, roaring and shrieking at him.

Then—

To hell with this!

He shouted loudly in silence.

The silver-white sword light descended. The world was bathed in a wash of gray-white.

Before seeing the result, the exhausted youth lost consciousness.

Falling, falling... into the endless abyss.

Then slipping into a dream.

Into the dreamlike eternal slumber of Cthulhu once more.