Child of Destiny

Chapter 2231: Desolation

...

Shin flew as fast as he could, trying to reach his destination as fast as possible.

Earlier, he could still exchange messages with Alucard and Diablo right after he entered the isolated region. But he had now lost contact with both.

He was not sure about Diablo’s situation since he was supposed to be finding a way to destroy the main altar himself, but he had a feeling that something big had happened at the Oath City, given that he suddenly lost contact with Alucard when they were in the most intense battle and the most crucial moment.

Fortunately, he could still see that they were still online. That could only mean that only the communication method was banned, but they were not trapped or dead yet.

"Given the lore of the game-... messages are no different from long-distance or great-distance telepathy that the NPCs use," he mumbled as he flew across the sky along with the [Wings of Nephilim] ability attached to his inheritance sword.

It was consuming quite a lot of concentration, but he was not too worried about it since it was not as demanding as when he was in the Awakened Continent.

Moreover, it was the only thing that he was using, so it was rather relaxing.

Swoosh!

It did not take that long for Shin to reach his destination.

What greeted him was much different from what he had anticipated.

There were no wars—no battles, no sieges, not even the sounds of scattered skirmishes. No clashing steel, no explosions, no desperate cries for help—not even the supposed countless corpses of the demonic monsters littering the ground. The battlefield he had prepared himself to witness simply did not exist.

Stranger still, he could not find any trace of the reinforcements that should have arrived long before him. There were no marching armies, no camps, no discarded equipment, not even footprints left by thousands of soldiers. It was as though they had vanished from existence without leaving behind a single clue.

Instead, there was only silence.

An absolute, suffocating silence.

The kind that swallowed every sound and made the world feel abandoned.

Before him stood the city.

Or rather... what remained of it.

Towering walls that once stood proudly around the settlement had collapsed into mountains of shattered stone. Entire districts had been reduced to rubble, their buildings crushed into broken skeletons of wood and brick. Burn marks stained nearly every structure still left standing, while jagged cracks ran through streets that had been torn apart by unimaginable force.

Countless craters scarred the ground, some large enough to swallow entire houses. Broken wagons lay overturned beneath piles of debris, and shattered weapons were scattered everywhere, half-buried beneath dust and ash. Here and there, torn banners fluttered weakly in the wind, their faded insignias barely recognizable beneath dried blood and soot.

A thick haze lingered over the ruined city, carrying the scent of burnt timber, scorched earth, and death. Even the wind seemed reluctant to pass through the desolation, leaving behind a stillness so unnatural that it felt as though time itself had stopped.

There were no screams, no footsteps.

Only a city that looked as though it had endured the wrath of countless armies... and lost.

"What’s happening...?" Shin muttered, his brows knitting together so tightly that deep creases formed across his forehead.

His gaze immediately swept toward the battlefield—or rather... where the battlefield was supposed to be.

Everyone had stopped moving.

The players, NPC soldiers, and NPC civilians alike stood frozen in place, their eyes fixed upon the heavens.

It was not the stillness of discipline or fear. It was as if an invisible force had stolen control of their bodies, leaving them with no choice but to witness what was unfolding before them.

Above the ruined city, countless streams of crimson light flowed through the sky like rivers of blood. They twisted and intertwined, stretching across the horizon before converging toward a single point in the distance.

Every second, more crimson streams joined the torrent.

The light seemed endless.

It was as though the lives of countless beings had been reduced to scarlet energy; all being drawn toward the same destination.

Shin instinctively followed the direction of the crimson rivers.

At first, he thought he was looking at an unusually dark mountain. But the longer he stared, the more his pupils contracted.

"What... is that...?" His voice trembled despite himself.

That wasn’t a mountain.

It was a gate.

A colossal black gate stood at the center of the surrounding mountain ranges, so unimaginably enormous that every nearby peak appeared insignificant beside it. It pierced the heavens like a monument erected by an ancient god, its shadow stretching across the land below.

Its surface was carved with countless unfamiliar symbols that pulsed with a sinister crimson glow, while ancient black chains—each thicker than castle walls—coiled tightly around the gate as though trying to restrain something imprisoned beyond it. The chains extended downward into the earth itself, disappearing beneath the mountains as if anchoring the gate to the very foundation of the world.

However, despite those restraints, the gate was slowly trying to open itself—or whatever was behind it.

A narrow crack was trying to form between its colossal doors.

From within that crack seeped an endless darkness. It wasn’t merely an absence of light. It was something alive.

The darkness poured onto the land like liquid ink, staining everything it touched. The earth beneath the gate had already turned pitch black, stripped of every trace of life. Trees had withered into lifeless husks, rivers had become stagnant pools of black sludge, and even the stones had lost their natural color, as though existence itself had been corrupted.

The corruption continued to spread, slowly and relentlessly.

It crept across valleys, climbed mountainsides, and crawled over shattered roads like a living plague. Wherever it passed, the world seemed to decay, the very fabric of reality twisting beneath its influence.

It was neither corrupted mana nor demonic energy that Shin knew within the game. It seemed to be something even more terrifying.

The crimson rivers flowing through the sky disappeared into the crack of the gate, feeding whatever lay beyond it.

Shin’s heart skipped a beat. Every instinct in his body screamed the same warning— "Do not approach it."

"If it is not corruption nor demonification, then what was it?" Shin frowned quite deeply, trying to figure out what it was.

It was only then that he remembered something from his ongoing quest.

"Is it the same energy as the one in the Abyss Brink that Sir Longinus mentioned?" mumbled Shin before shaking his head.

(Reference Chapter 1399)

"No. It can’t be. If it is concerned with that energy as well, then we, the selected few for the God-Slaying Army, will also be summoned," he mumbled, understanding this point.

In the end, he stopped thinking about it and prepared to save the others, who seemed to be trapped by something within the city.

He was preparing to make his move when two streams of light suddenly appeared before him and blocked his path.

Swoosh! Swoosh!

Halting his tracks, he looked at the two in confusion.

The two standing before him were his two most experienced elementals under his command, Solus and Hanzo.

Before he could even ask, Solus immediately said. "You must not go there, My Liege."

Hanzo then followed. "Brat, that place is shrouded in a powerful pocket realm."

"Pocket Realm?" he asked in confusion.

Hanzo then explained. "There is a powerful mental imprint coming from that ’thing’ you are looking at. It is so powerful that it can project a tiny fraction of itself into this world, trying to find ways to fully free itself from the ’prison’ that is trapping it."

He then pointed toward the city and the people, who were standing blankly in place, and continued. "Those people over there are currently doing their hardest to fight that tiny fraction of that being, preventing it from taking the ’key’ buried underneath the city."

"Isn’t it more reasonable for me to lend them a hand if that was the case?" asked Shin in confusion.

"You can lend them a hand, but you will also be trapped like them until that monster snaps the key or the gate is destroyed," answered Hanzo before continuing. "But you being here is much more helpful than joining them in that ’place’."

"So what do you want me to do?" asked Shin, understanding that the two might have had some plans for appearing before him.

"It is to destroy that gate, My Liege," answered Solus with a confident tone.

The corner of Shin’s mouth could not help but twitch when he heard about this. He then turned toward the giant gate in the distance, which was constantly emitting a terrifying energy that could devour and influence anything around, before turning back at the two.

"Are you messing with me?" he could not help but let those words escape his mouth, seemingly trying to scold the two for assigning him an impossible task.

......