༺: The Slanted Ceiling and the Mountain of Laughing Corpses – 1 ༻
At the bottom of the abyss, slightly sticky feeling water lapped around our ankles.
I vouch for this firsthand. Any skeptics are welcome to feel it themselves.
Yet even with such a profound discovery, the safety of the group was more important in the end. I chose to account for everyone first.
I cried into the consuming blackness.
“Everyone okay? Roll call! One!”
“Two!”
A nerve-wracked Callis was first to answer. True to her military roots, her body still hadn’t forgotten her training.
“Three!”
Next was the ever-humoring undying. After a brief pause, the regressor’s voice followed with a bit of delay.
“…I’m fine. So are Azzy, Nabi, and Tyr.”
I mean, really?
“Wow, you’d break the flow here? Talk about being dull, seriously! Why won’t you read the room?”
“But there’s no real need for that! Isn’t it enough to know everyone’s safe?!”
Going by that logic, there was no need to confirm since I could read human minds!
As for the beasts, well…
“W-woof…”
“Myahah…”
They were alive so it was all right. I knew Beast Kings wouldn’t fall off so easily.
I turned my attention to chiding the regressor.
“Am I not checking for some reassurance since we can’t see each other? Really now. The guy thinks we’re counting because we’re idiots.”
“Hold on, let me check… Fifth of the Seven Colored Eyes: Azure, Activate.”
A blue gleam flashed across the regressor’s eyes. I looked at her, unimpressed, as she selfishly enhanced her vision using that overpowered ability.
“Do you really have to say things like ‘Seven Colored Eyes, Activate’ out loud? Isn’t it too childish?”
“It helps me concentrate! What’s wrong with verbalizing it?!”
“I mean, for someone who can’t keep up with a simple roll call, you sure are good at uttering embarrassing phrases. Is this that syndrome eighth-graders are rumored to get? But you didn’t even go to secondary school.”
“Oi! I need to look around so pipe down!”
The regressor snapped angrily before glancing around with her depth-perceiving eyes. It was time to steal a little bit of her vision again.
Show me what you’re seeing.
Drawing from her mind, the first thing that came into view was Tantalus, overturned and slanting at an angle. The prison building was lodged below the slope, while we were hanging from our ropes upside down, touching the damp ground with our feet.
The ground we had been standing on moments ago had become the ceiling. Heaven and earth had literally reversed, the surreality of which made it seem as if we had stepped into an abstract painting.
The sight might suggest that Tantalus had hit the bottom of the abyss while tilting, but that didn’t explain the vast void we saw below moments ago.
In the first place, Tantalus wouldn’t have flipped upside-down if there had been a floor; it would’ve settled on a tilt. Clearly, something inexplicable had happened during the reversal. Perhaps the abyss was bottomless because this place could only be reached through inversion.
Once the regressor finished examining the easily discernible ceiling, she shifted her gaze down.
“…Huh?”
And she saw something.
From a distance, it resembled a vast mountain. While its slope was gentler than the inclined Tantalus, it was surely a mountain with peaks and ridges.
Nestled within the abyss was this sloping mountain, splashing water… and a peculiar sensation beneath our feet.
The Azure Eyes of depth perception wasn’t tailored for distinguishing minor features, but even so, what made up that mountain seemed out of place. Why did every visible rock… have five protrusions, resembling fingers and toes?
No, that wasn’t it. Those weren’t rocks. Nor were they protrusions that merely resembled digits.
They were…
“Awoooooo!”
Azzy howled. Leaping from the ground, she hastily dug her claws into the inverted ground of Tantalus, clinging to it like a bat. She barked fiercely, as if she didn’t want to be anywhere near the ground.
No one managed to respond to her cries, though. Everyone was overwhelmed by the sight before us.
“…So, it was blood. All of it…”
I didn’t need any expert insight to tell what it was. Before I knew it, my nose was filled with the stench of blood.
But should I really call this blood, or something else…?
“Callis, stay still. Something doesn’t feel right.”
Even the undying was disturbed, whispering words of caution.
Just then, the night lights turned on in place of the now-gone daytime light. The fractured section of the prison that had crashed far away emitted a subdued glow, the result of lights peppered throughout the structure. Simultaneously, the searchlights on the prison walls activated, seeking out escapees.
The yellow beams, unaware of the inverted landscape, faithfully hunted for any distant human silhouettes… They darted erratically. Almost frenziedly.
“Ahh…”
A gasp pierced the air. The glaring beams cutting through the darkness quivered like the eyes of someone terrified. They zig-zagged everywhere as if wanting to cover the entire mountain, moving without a clear direction.
Everywhere the lights touched, human forms appeared. Everywhere.
“This is the Overlord’s work, a massacre of 300,000… a towering pile of death, an ocean of blood.”
It was an atrocity made possible only through sheer numbers. 300,000 souls had been cast alive into a pit. 300,000!
The first victim would have faced instant death upon colliding against the ground. The next few, perhaps even up to the ten-thousandth, would probably have met the same fate due to the height of the fall.
But once enough bodies had piled, the depth of the pit would have lessened, with the mass of flesh softening subsequent falls. Who knew at which point this occurred? It was likely no one knew. I doubted even the Overlord, responsible for this horror, cared. The lives he dropped became irrelevant the instant they fell, after all.
Some would’ve rolled down the corpse mountain, still alive, while others became pinned beneath the newly fallen before they could react. They might have suffered, broken, twisted limbs and cracked heads. Some might have met unimaginably grim ends amidst it all.
The pit must have resonated with cries of terror and despair. Resentment, rage, curses, and pleas, all directed at the one condemning them to their fate.
The numbers grew, the dead and the dying amassing one after another. But when the count reached 300,000, the corpse mountain became more than a mere accumulation of bodies. It was indeed a pile of bodies on the outside, but that was only a superficial view.
The mound of bodies heaped upon one another exerted pressure proportionate to its height. Unlike the ones on the surface, the dead smothered beneath were rendered unrecognizable. The blood sieved through their flesh and attire pooled to birth a new fountain of water, forming a shallow sea. But its waters were more akin to bodily fluid than blood. Such an affront to humanity could only result from an atrocity of this magnitude, marking the massacre of 300,000.
No wonder the sound was light compared to blood.
“So, that is how it was…”
Suddenly, the roving, zig-zagging searchlights halted, having detected something. Instantly, every beam converged on what seemed to be the most “human” form.
Five beams of light shone upon a single point above the macabre corpse mountain.
Within the abyss, this dimension separated from the entire world, untouched by vermin or decay… a woman knelt atop this tragic legacy spanning 1,300 years, timelessly preserved.
The woman’s palms lay on her knees, head bowed as though atoning for a terrible sin and mourning all of the dead. Her stance echoed that of Mother Earth’s gravemen.
With a dark staff resting across her palms, she wore a loose-fitting priestly robe similar to the Earth Sage, and six rings adorned her right wrist. Her long raven-black hair flowed freely and even retained a slight sheen, perhaps kept neat by the absence of wind.
The corpse looked every bit like a taoist of Mother Earth—aside from the crucifix impaling her torso.
“A crucifix? Why is Sanctum’s symbol here?”
Tyr instinctively frowned upon recognizing the emblem of her nemesis.
What was a crucifix doing in the abyss, the hell of Mother Earth? And why was it impaled through a woman at the peak of this grave?
The Earth Sage provided the answer.
“In days past, our Gaian Order had a Grandmaster. Records say she was the first to wield earth magic, and was the guide of all our disciples.”
Splish, splish. While the rest of us stood frozen, the Earth Sage treaded forward alone amidst the engulfing darkness, the echo of blood marking her every step.
“When the Overlord summoned gravediggers to bury 300,000 bodies, most who answered the call were riff-raff, seeking quick wealth at the expense of Mother Earth’s name. They were cheap, lowly rabble, no better than carrion birds hovering over the deceased… save for some. To stop this desecration by imposters, the Grandmaster herself intervened with the help of her allies.”
Thanks to a handful of devoted Gaian disciples, the misdeeds of the majority were overshadowed. Things were the same back then, not just in the present.
The Gaian Order had flourished most during the age when the Dharma King and Overlord clashed. Though there were many imposters, a good number of genuine gravemen remained. They worked harder than the unworthy, offering solace to victims of war.
This was how the Gaian faith was preserved in those times.
The Overlord, however, harbored a profound distaste for the Gaian burial rites. So much so that he wished to uproot the faith entirely.
“When I journeyed to Mother Earth’s temple, nestled within a cave in the heart of the highest mountain, I discovered that all traces of the Grandmaster were lost since that point in time.”
If the Overlord’s intent was to gather the unworthy and denounce their degeneracy, he shouldn’t have executed those gravemen. Exposing their greed in exploiting the dead in front of the world was the means by which he could’ve redirected public fury toward his massacre.
Yet the Overlord chose to kill all the gravemen instead. It wouldn’t be wrong to say this was because he was a tyrant who couldn’t control his temper, but it would be more reasonable to think there was a different reason.
For example, what if somebody among the diggers had refused to loot the dead? Or exhibited nobility beyond any reproach?
“However, it is impossible for a group of mere vultures to dig a pit massive enough to accommodate 300,000 bodies, and in only three days. With all humility, I know this better than any other.”
The enormity of the task, the limited number of gravemen, and the pressing deadline fueled speculations that the Overlord had conscripted his own soldiers for the job.
But what if that wasn’t the case?
“The Grandmaster stepped in. Those vultures may have flocked eagerly, lured by the stench of rot, but she was quicker to prepare a grave for the captives. She single-handed interred every soul. In doing so, the Overlord found himself facing the consequences of his actions.
“And unable to achieve his goal.. the Overlord cruelly murdered the Grandmaster and the other gravemen. As he could no longer deflect the blame, the vagrant gravediggers became living testimonials to his vile deeds.”
This was the secret history of the abyss, as discovered by the Earth Sage. She had never questioned its truth until now. Few in the world were as deeply connected to the Gaian faith as she was, after all.
“But it appears we were mistaken. The Overlord did not kill the Grandmaster.”
Yet here, in the abyss, the Grandmaster appeared. With a crucifix stabbed through her back to boot. Given the then-insignificant status of the Celestial Order—they weren’t even considered a target for political maneuvering—the scene before us pointed to one conclusion.
“It was the minions of the Sky God who killed her and erased all history. Those cowardly seers who sided with the Dharma King to hasten the Overlord’s downfall. They were responsible… for our ruin, and the death and humiliation of the Grandmaster.”
While that mountain of corpses might have been the Overlord’s creation, the abyss and the crucified Grandmaster were the work of Sanctum.
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