Overlord Tamer: All My Pet Monsters Have God Potential

Chapter 210: Encounter With Eldritch Being

Day two started with a corridor that sloped steadily downward, the black stone walls giving way to something rougher, older, veined with dull red light that pulsed faintly like a heartbeat.

"Feels different down here," Jibril said, running a hand along the wall before pulling it back sharply. "Warm."

"Getting closer to something," John said, feeling the pressure in the air thicken with every step. "Stay ready."

They found the source an hour later, a wide circular chamber dominated by a colossus of fused stone and molten cracks, easily four times the height of the guardians they’d faced so far. It uncoiled from its resting position the moment they entered, red light flaring across its joints.

"Titanmaw Colossus," John muttered, Inspect scrolling information across his vision. "Boss-tier. This one’s going to hurt."

It didn’t wait for them to finish preparing.

The colossus swung one massive arm in a wide arc, and Terravax planted himself directly in its path, shell braced, roots anchoring into the stone floor. The impact still sent cracks spidering out beneath his feet, but he held.

"Good boy," John called, already moving. "Rexion, high ground!"

Rexion banked upward, jaws wreathed in condensed flame, diving to rake a molten gash across the colossus’s shoulder while Levi’s void-mist threads lashed low, trying to bind its legs.

The colossus shrugged Levi’s bindings apart like they were nothing.

"It’s stronger than the others," Azelis said, weaving Shadow Ink through her fingers. "Try this."

Her darkness merged with the natural cracks running through the colossus’s stone hide, and for a moment its movements stuttered, confused by the sudden overlay disrupting its internal structure.

That was all the opening Yuna needed.

Wraithbound Convergence split her presence in an instant, Emberlune mirroring her perfectly, and both struck the same weakened joint from two different angles simultaneously.

The colossus staggered.

John closed the gap in that same heartbeat, Feralsteel claws extended, driving straight through the crack Azelis had exposed and into the molten core pulsing beneath the stone.

The colossus let out a groan that shook the entire chamber before collapsing into a mountain of inert rubble, red light fading from every crack until nothing remained but cooling stone.

Where its core had been, a jagged, softly glowing chunk of ore sat waiting, dense and heavy even from a distance.

John picked it up, feeling its weight settle unnaturally in his palm.

"Titancore Duskstone," he said, watching threads of dull red light swirl beneath its surface. "Pure defense-type Eldritch Material. This alone could anchor an entire gear’s foundation."

"That’s ours?" Jibril asked, eyes wide.

"That’s ours." John grinned, tucking it away carefully. "One down."

*

They pushed deeper after resting briefly, and it was Noctelith who noticed the anomaly first, coiling tighter around John’s leg and refusing to move past a particular stretch of wall that looked, to everyone else, identical to the rest of the corridor.

"What is it?" John asked, crouching beside the serpent.

Noctelith’s presence pulsed once, a wordless nudge toward the wall itself.

John pressed his palm against the stone, letting a thread of Voidspace unravel outward, and the wall dissolved into mist, revealing a narrow passage that hadn’t existed a moment ago.

"A hidden area," Azelis breathed. "The Labyrinth doesn’t usually just open up like this."

"Chuthulos mentioned something about this," John said, already stepping through. "Rare pockets where his relatives sometimes settle. Come on."

The passage opened into a small, quiet chamber entirely unlike the rest of the Labyrinth, soft violet light drifting like dust motes through still air, shelves upon shelves of strange, folded parchment lining every wall.

At the center of the room floated a small, birdlike figure made of shifting starlight, its wings unfolding and refolding endlessly as it hovered over a massive, ever-changing map suspended in the air.

"Visitors," the figure said, voice layered and soft, like several voices speaking in careful unison. "It has been a long while since anyone found their way here."

"You’re one of Chuthulos’s siblings," John said, not quite a question.

"Nyxareth," the figure said, turning to regard him with eyes like tiny collapsing stars. "Cartographer of the Abyss. I chart what changes so it does not become entirely lost, though few ever bother to ask why the walls move the way they do."

"I’d ask," John said. "But I’m guessing you’re lonely down here more than anything."

Nyxareth’s wings stilled for a moment.

"Perceptive," they said. "Chuthulos speaks of you sometimes, when the boundaries between our domains grow thin enough to hear each other. Brother John, is it. The one building something new."

"Something like that." John crossed his arms. "You scavenge dead worlds too, like Xhalthuun?"

"No. Xhalthuun collects what worlds leave behind. I preserve what a place forgets about itself." Nyxareth gestured to the shifting map. "This Labyrinth remembers nothing on its own. I remember for it. Every path, every hidden chamber, every boss that has ever fallen within these walls."

"That’s useful," John said carefully. "Very useful. So, partnership? Same as Xhalthuun."

Nyxareth’s light dimmed slightly, the many overlapping voices in their tone quieting into something heavier.

"It is not so simple this time, Brother John." The map above them flickered, and a section of it, previously dark and unmarked, bled into view, a jagged, unstable pocket sealed off from the rest of the Labyrinth entirely. "I was not always incomplete. Long ago, before this Labyrinth was even finished, a piece of me was taken. Sealed away in a vault my own domain cannot reach."

"Taken by what?" Azelis asked.

"By something that should not still exist," Nyxareth said quietly. "A remnant. A fragment of something far older than this Labyrinth, left behind from a war between forces you have not yet learned the names of. It calls itself nothing anymore. I call it Vaelkyrn."

The map’s dark section pulsed once, and John felt the faintest echo of pressure even through the projection, distant but unmistakably wrong.

"How strong?" he asked, already knowing he wasn’t going to like the answer.

"Strong enough that I cannot approach it myself," Nyxareth said. "By the measures your kind uses, comparable to a fifth-stage Calamity powerhouse. Perhaps more, within its own domain."

Silence settled over the group.

"That’s..." Jibril started, then stopped.

"Suicide," Azelis finished flatly. "John, that’s not a fight. That’s a massacre waiting to happen."

"I’m not asking you to fight it for glory," Nyxareth said, turning fully toward John now. "I am asking because the relic it holds, the Cartographer’s Anchor, is the piece of myself that lets me do more than simply watch. Without it, I remain what I am now. A witness. With it, I become something considerably more useful to you than a set of shortcuts."

John was quiet for a long moment, weighing the words carefully.

"If we go in," he said slowly, "what are the actual rules? Every place like this has rules."

"The vault feeds on stillness," Nyxareth said. "Vaelkyrn’s true strength is not raw power, though it has plenty of that too. It is dread. Hesitation. The moment you freeze, even for a heartbeat, it grows stronger, drawing directly from whatever fear roots you in place. Keep moving. Keep striking. Never let it see you stop."

"And if we die in there?" Yuna asked quietly.

"Then you die," Nyxareth said, with no attempt to soften it. "I cannot promise your safety. I can only promise that if you succeed, what I offer afterward will be worth the risk many times over."

John looked around at the others, feeling the weight of the decision settle over all of them at once.