Chapter 148: Marbas (1)
Noah slowly lowered his hands from his eyes. The blinding red light had disappeared. A moment ago, he had been standing inside a cave.
Now he was somewhere else.
A cold darkness surrounded him. The only source of light came from torches fixed to massive stone walls. Their flickering flames illuminated a huge chamber that looked nothing like the cave they had entered.
Noah remained still and carefully observed his surroundings.
Dark grey stone covered everything.
The floor and walls, all made up of gray material.
The enormous pillars standing in rows on both sides of the chamber. Each pillar was so tall that its top vanished into the darkness above. The ceiling itself couldn’t even be seen clearly.
The place felt ancient and important. It looked old, carved by people long time ago but now forgotten.
It looked like a throne room or maybe a temple. Or perhaps something that was both.
Behind him, Noah noticed a familiar pattern carved into the floor. The same circular design from the cave. His eyes narrowed.
’The teleportation circle brought us here.’
Before he could think further, he noticed something strange. None of his teammates were looking around. They were all staring in the same direction. Their faces were pale while looking there.
Some looked shocked. Others looked horrified. A bad feeling immediately formed inside Noah’s chest. Slowly, he turned toward whatever had captured everyone’s attention. The moment he saw it, his heart skipped a beat.
The chamber stretched far ahead. Scattered across the stone floor were students.
A lot of them more than fifteen. Some were lying motionless on the ground. Others were groaning in pain. A few were trying to stand but lacked the strength to do so.
Most of them wore academy uniforms. Noah recognized several faces. His expression darkened. They were students from his class. Damien was among them.
He sat against the floor with heavy breaths, his sword lying nearby. His face was covered in sweat and his clothes were damaged from battle. The members of his group were also injured. Arisha, Lyria, Zark, Leonard and Emma.
Even Kaelan’s group looked miserable. Whatever had happened here, it had not been a fight, It had been a massacre. Then Noah noticed the person standing before them.
He was a man. Shoulder-length amber hair framing a face with dark violet eyes that had vertical slits for pupils, exactly like a reptile’s. Two heavy curved horns rose from his head and swept backward. He was wearing a long dark coat, unbuttoned, hanging loose over whatever was beneath it.
Noah and others instantly recognize the being. He was a Demon.
Noah’s gaze moved at his hand and froze. The demon was holding someone.
He was a student. The boy was suspended in the air by his neck. His feet dangled helplessly. Noah recognized him after a second. The boy was Jeffer Einstein.
Jeffer’s face was pale.
His breathing was weak and uneven. His hands desperately gripped the demon’s wrist, trying to free himself. It wasn’t working. The demon casually raised his free hand.
Noah’s instincts screamed.
Something terrible was about to happen. Then it happened as the demon thrust his hand forward.
Straight into Jeffer’s chest. The sound echoed through the chamber.
A horrible wet sound.
"ARRRGHHH!"
Jeffer screamed.
His eyes widened in absolute terror.
He looked down at the chest. The demon’s arm was buried inside his chest. The realization hit him. And the horror on his face became even worse.
Then the demon pulled his hand back out. Blood splattered onto the floor. Something was clutched in his hand.
Noah couldn’t tell what it was. He didn’t want to. The light vanished from Jeffer’s eyes.
Just like that. One moment he was alive. The next moment he wasn’t. The demon released his grip.
Jeffer’s body hit the stone floor with a dull thud.
No emotion appeared on the demon’s face.
He glanced at the object in his hand before casually tossing it aside.
Then he spoke. "That’s three."
His tone sounded almost bored. Like someone counting completed chores. The entire chamber fell silent.
Noah clenched his empty fist.
Then his eyes moved to Noah’s group.
They swept across all six of them standing near the teleportation circle, and something in his expression shifted. there was not surprise exactly, more like mild inconvenience mixed with a faint resigned amusement.
"Ah. More arrivals." He exhaled through his nose. "I’m already tired from dealing with this many. Tch."
He clicked his tongue and rolled his shoulder once.
Marina took a step forward before anyone could stop her. "Who are you?" Her voice came out harder than Noah expected, considering what they had all just watched.
The demon looked at her. Then he smiled. The smile was slow and gave a small, elegant bow that looked completely absurd given everything surrounding it.
"My name is Marbas."
He straightened back up and let the name sit in the air for a moment like he was used to it meaning something.
Noah had stopped paying attention to the demon’s face. His eyes had drifted past him to the far wall of the chamber, drawn there by something he hadn’t clocked immediately in the chaos of the first few seconds.
Carved into the stone of the back wall was an eye.
A single eye with a vertical slit pupil, just like Marbas’s own eyes but rendered in stone on a scale that made the pillars look modest. It dominated the entire wall.
There was something about looking at it directly that made Noah want to look away. Not because it was disgusting but because it produced a feeling he couldn’t name. Something old and heavy and deeply unpleasant sitting at the base of his chest.
He pulled his eyes away from it and focused.
Marbas was speaking again.
"I want to keep this simple." His voice was easy, "I need you all alive. Mostly." His eyes moved briefly to the body on the floor without any particular emotion.
"I’ve already killed three. I’d prefer not to make it more than that, so I’m asking you kindly to stay where you are and not do anything that makes me have to hurt more of you. What’s coming will be worth watching, at least."
The words landed across the chamber.
Noah bent down slowly and closed his fingers around the shaft of his spear where it had fallen from his hand during the teleportation. He straightened back up without making it look like a threat. Beside him he heard the quiet sounds of the others readying themselves.
Ken’s hand moving to the hilt of his sword still in its scabbard, Mary’s grip tightening on her wand behind them, the faint crackle of lightning mana moving across Ophelia’s blade as she brought it up.
Ryan brought his shield forward.
Marbas watched all of this with the calm expression of someone watching children pick up sticks.
It was Ophelia who spoke next. "Why are you doing this? We haven’t done anything to you."
Marbas tilted his head slightly. "No, you haven’t. This isn’t personal." He sounded almost apologetic about it in the way that made it clear he wasn’t remotely apologetic. "We needed humans. You were in the forest. That’s the entirety of your involvement in this." He spread one hand in a casual shrug. "Curse your timing not me."
His eyes moved across the room once more. "Don’t try to fight me. You’ll lose. Every person in this room already tried and they’re all on the floor. Just wait."
Noah looked at Damien again.
Damien met his eyes across the chamber. His breathing had steadied slightly, and the look on his face had moved past pain and into the particular focused expression of someone thinking hard about a very bad situation.
The other students who were conscious enough were watching Marbas with fear they were doing various jobs of concealing.
Noah ran the situation through his head.
Marbas had taken down more than twenty students. Including Damien, Kaelan, and everyone else who had been here before his group arrived. Apparently without taking serious damage himself. That wasn’t a gap in skill. That was a wall.
Fighting him directly wasn’t an option right now.
Which meant stalling was.
Noah took one step forward.
"Hey." His voice came out calm and level. "Marbas."
The demon looked at him with mild interest.
"Are you using us for a sacrifice?" Noah asked. "For some kind of ritual offering?"
The smile that crossed Marbas’s face was wide and genuine in a way that was worse.
"You caught on fast," he said, sounding almost impressed. "Yes. That’s exactly it. You’re being offered to our Lord." He paused, then tilted his head slightly.
"Though God might not be the right word. He isn’t a god. Not exactly." His eyes carried something close to reverence as he said the next part. "But to us, he is."
Noah kept his expression neutral while his thoughts moved fast underneath it.
’Not a god. But worshipped like one. Powerful enough that demons were performing human sacrifices in hidden chambers beneath forests to reach him.’ Noah thought.
The game had two categories of supreme beings. Eternal Gods on one side. Eternal Monarchs on the other.
’If Marbas was saying his Lord wasn’t a god...then an Eternal Monarch.’
That was the only thing that fit.
’But which one? The game had several Monarchs and Noah didn’t have anything close to enough information to narrow it down from what he’d heard so far.’
He filed the question away.
Right now what mattered more was buying time and figuring out how to get everyone in this room out of it.
He looked at Marbas.
’Monarch of what, exactly?’ He wondered.
