Elden Lord of Cinders

Alice was analyzing another fragment.

It might sound strange at first. From past experience, it seemed like each region's Great Rune and Divine Tower could only unlock a single dungeon—but that wasn't actually the case.

To put it simply, the Great Rune was just a tool Alice used to open dungeons. The Divine Towers served as convenient workspaces, and the corpses of the Two Fingers could assist with the process. What really determined the number of dungeons was the fragments themselves.

Back in Stormveil, there had only been one dungeon because Alice had melted all the fragments Lloyd had collected there into a single large shard and used it to create one massive dungeon.

As for Caelid, they had collected quite a few fragments—Lloyd often came across monsters with fragments while mapping the area—but most of them were just slivers, nearly powerless and barely functional.

The fragments from that Judicator Giant, however, were different.

As Alice had said, those fragments were steeped in the aura of other worlds. Through that aura, they had developed a bizarre order of their own. Because of that, they existed independently and couldn't be fused with other fragments. In fact, in some sense, they weren't even fragments anymore—they were more like miniature, self-contained worlds.

But the one Alice was working on now was a true fragment.

And unlike any previous fragment, this one contained something far weightier than the City of Pus or the Crystal Academy. It was far more troublesome to deal with.

"Give me a hand."

Seeing Lloyd return, Alice didn't hesitate—she simply extended her hand.

Although he had no idea what was happening, Lloyd took it anyway.

Then—

In what felt like the blink of an eye, he snapped back to awareness to find a black rift had opened in front of him.

Unlike the gentle teleportation gates of the Multiverse Colosseum, or the warped sensation of space-time at the Crystal Academy, this rift felt more like a gash torn straight through the world itself. Inside it was nothing but pure malice and pain—no other essence or contamination.

A faint, ominous black aura seeped from it. Within the rift, vague shapes resembling eyes drifted and swirled—as if something hidden inside was watching the outside world through a gaze twisted by madness and malevolence.

"I'll stay here and make sure they don't get out."

Alice's voice, rarely so serious, carried a firm weight.

"The rest is up to you."

Lloyd thought for a moment, then nodded.

It's just a dungeon run, after all.

He reached out his hand.

And with the familiar, disorienting sensation of teleportation washing over him, Lloyd found himself on unfamiliar land once more.

It was Caelid.

But not the Caelid he had first explored—ravaged by Scarlet Rot. Nor was it the blossoming Caelid after the bloom of the Flower of Abundance.

This was a Caelid swallowed in darkness, where souls and humanity flowed like rivers, and the air echoed with whispers and wails—a place steeped in despair.

If Scarlet Rot tormented the living through physical decay and oozing wounds, urging them to seek a cure so they could keep on living—

Then the world Lloyd now stood in was one where even death could not be begged for.

Right before him lay a group of Redmane soldiers, groaning and tearing their own heads off.

Yet even with their heads removed and held in their hands, thick black pus of man still oozed from their eyes and mouths. That pus flowed like tendrils, wrapping back around their original bodies, keeping their souls and lives tethered.

Even their bodies had been torn apart, shattered into pieces—yet in each crack, that same humanity acted as glue. It kept them alive while preserving every ounce of their fragmented pain.

Lloyd stepped forward, raised his Poleblade, and ended their torment.

Only then did the world's information appear before him.

[Abyssal Contamination: Caelid]

[World Status: Complete Disorder]

[Special Area: Abyssal Contamination]

[Abyssal Contamination: Dark attribute damage greatly increased. Dark attribute spells and Incantations consume less FP.]

[Souls will be slowly eroded.]

After reading the pop-up, Lloyd froze.

He understood everything—except for the part about souls being slowly eroded.

He glanced at his status panel. There were no signs of any accumulating debuff.

He flipped through his buff bar. Still nothing strange.

So what the hell was this?

After fiddling with it for a while and still getting nowhere, Lloyd just gave up.

Never mind. Let's map the area first.

After giving up on figuring things out, Lloyd looked up and glanced around. It seemed like he was right at the point where Limgrave connected into Caelid.

...

Wait a second—was this entire dungeon actually the whole of Caelid?

The last one, the Crystal Academy dungeon, already felt larger than Limgrave due to all the overlapping timelines and warped space. But this? The entire region of Caelid, still in a state of complete disorder...

With that unsettling thought in mind, Lloyd drew his Poleblade and moved ahead. Before long, he encountered a group of figures resembling the soldier he'd killed earlier.

They carried their own heads in their hands, their bodies held together by strands of pus of man that clung like glue. The moment they saw Lloyd, they charged.

Their basic attacks were straightforward—just sluggish swings of straight swords. Their movements were slow, probably due to their incomplete bodies and fractured consciousness. But they had another melee trick.

Once they got close, the tentacles made of humanity would lift the heads they held, charging up briefly before slamming them down at Lloyd's position.

They'd smash the head five or six times, reducing it to pulp. Then a period of stagger would follow, during which the human glue slowly reassembled the shattered skull—ready to be used again as a hammer for the next strike.

And that was just their melee pattern.

At mid-to-long range, they used their heads like lanterns, spewing darkness. If the target stayed even farther away, after charging for a few seconds, they'd fire two or three homing soul projectiles from their bodies.

The whole thing felt incredibly abstract.

Their only real weakness was their sluggish movement. Whether it was the sword swings, the head slams, the darkness spray, or the soul shots—every move had a clear wind-up. Even the projectile speeds weren't as ridiculous as the Monstrous Crow's light cannon.

But the problem was, these were just the basic mobs.

After dealing with them, Lloyd, curious about their damage output, had intentionally taken a hit. Then he pulled out the healing talisman Seriel had dropped earlier and stood still while it restored him.

Once his HP was back to full, he checked his status screen again.

Still no abnormalities.

So what exactly did "souls will be slowly eroded" mean? Surely it wasn't just flavor text they forgot to implement?

As he pondered, the ominous black mist beneath his feet started to writhe—as if it were alive—creeping outward. Or rather, trying to escape. Even the parts that couldn't move were squirming inch by inch, like worms burrowing away.

After a while, still unable to make sense of the message, Lloyd started walking again.

He casually stomped a few of those fleeing wisps underfoot and moved forward—only to encounter even more bizarre monsters.

A pair of Redmane elite knights, both heads bound by strands of pus of man to a single body.

They moved with far more decisiveness and agility than the previous soldiers, and even had a move where they used their two heads like a double-ended blade, spinning them around like helicopter blades.

Once they spun themselves dizzy, they'd retract and unleash a wide spray of darkness all around.

Then there were the twisted remains of the original Monstrous Dogs—though whether they'd been disfigured by the Redmane knights or warped by the Abyssal Contamination was unclear.

Their front and back legs were completely gone. The corruption that had burrowed into their bodies had bloated them like giant grubs, causing them to writhe across the ground.

But the moment they spotted a human, they'd lurch forward with an even more abstract speed than before, twisting, bouncing, and lunging, their elongated heads snapping forward to bite.

If the Monstrous Dog is already this abstract, then there's no way the Monstrous Crow can fall behind.

At first glance, it might not seem any different, but once its health drops below half, its entire lower body bursts open in a pus-filled mess. It loses its legs, can't fly, and ends up crawling on the ground, writhing like a deranged beast, relentlessly pecking at you with only its upper body.

The good news? It dies on its own after a while.

The bad news? It can kill you ten times before that happens.

But even that wasn't the worst of it.

After some more exploring, Lloyd stumbled upon something truly bizarre.

A creature cobbled together with pus of man as glue, its torso stitched from human bodies, with the Monstrous Dog and the Big Crow fused into one grotesque abomination.

It could sprint, jump, and even spew out pus like a person. While it lunged around with the madness of a rabid dog, its attack range was absurdly wide.

And just to top it off—it exploded when it died.

There was one silver lining, though.

It could bleed.

That made the rest simple.

Lloyd picked up his Poleblade, landed two leaping strikes, then chained into a full combo using Elizabeth's Poleblade Ash of War.

After finishing it off, a Site of Grace appeared before him. Upon activating it, a message popped up saying summoning was now available.

Lloyd froze for a moment.

Huh? Already a quarter of the way through?

He opened the map to double-check. Forget a quarter—he hadn't even covered one-twentieth of Caelid yet.

This dungeon...

After a moment of thought, Lloyd shook his head and activated the golden summoning sign on the ground.

[Spirit 'The Fell Omen' Morgott has been summoned]

"Why do you keep summoning me for—What the hell?!"

As soon as he opened his eyes, Morgott was ready to ask why Lloyd kept calling him, but the moment he took in his surroundings, he let out a sharp curse.

Right after, the lantern in his hand echoed his sentiment.

"What the hell is this thing?!"

Lloyd followed the voice and looked over, spotting Godrick's head inside the lantern.

The head noticed Lloyd's gaze and gave a few trembling shakes.

"I'm not hostile right now, look at me—I'm like this, completely harmless..."

Lloyd glanced at him, then at Morgott.

"How did you bring him here?"

Morgott didn't answer. Instead, he raised the lantern. As power surged into it, three golden throwing knives instantly formed and shot off into the distance.

A second later, another three flew out—three volleys in total.

The speed, density, and size of these golden knives were all far beyond anything Lloyd had seen before.

He blinked, turning to Morgott.

Just as he opened his mouth, Morgott had already anticipated him.

"No."

Caught red-handed, Lloyd showed no shame at all. Instead, he defended himself with mock indignation.

"Hey, why are you being so stingy? Let me mess around with it a bit—it's not like anything bad'll happen…"

Morgott stood firm. "Still no."

"Tch."

Lloyd clicked his tongue and turned to look at Godrick's head inside the lantern.

"Look at you now—don't you think you're way better than that dragon head? You're hopeless. You couldn't even manage a shrimp head…"

"I can't beat a lobster," Godrick said honestly.

Lloyd: "..."

Well, fair enough.

While Lloyd and Godrick traded jabs, Morgott scanned the area around them. His frown deepened, and the headache pounding in his skull only got worse.

"So," he asked, "mind explaining what the hell is going on here?"

"Didn't you just say you'd already taken care of Caelid and Radahn? Then why does this place…"

"This isn't Caelid," Lloyd said, shaking his head. "Think of it like this—it's as if a layer of reality has been laid over Caelid. The monsters, the map, even the world itself, everything's been newly created."

"I see…"

Morgott seemed to relax a little after hearing that.

But then—

"If we screw this up, it could end up crashing into Caelid. Maybe even other places."

Hiss—

The breath he'd just let out was immediately sucked back in.

"Then what do we do?"

"What else can we do?" Lloyd shrugged, then gestured toward the monsters wandering around them.

"You think they'll listen to reason?"

"I think it's worth a try," Godrick chimed in from the lantern—only to be silenced by a sharp glare from Morgott.

Morgott pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a long sigh.

"So it's the same as last time at the academy?"

"Pretty much."

"What about the others?"

Never in his life did Morgott imagine he'd one day want to team up with the rebels.

But this thing... this thing was just too terrifying. Compared to it, the rebels were nothing. Hell, even dragging the Frenzied Flame into this would seem more acceptable.

At least Frenzied Flame only wanted to end it all. This thing made you wish you were dead—and kept you alive anyway.

...

"My kin, you really know how to cause a scene…"

After another Site of Grace, Chaos was summoned and took a look around, a hint of awe in her voice.

This time, even Old Margit had no words for her.

Because, well...

Sometimes you need contrast to see what true evil looks like.

If you said Frenzied Flame wanted to destroy everyone, Old Margit would be firmly against it.

But if the choice was between that and turning the world into this?

He'd take Frenzied Flame in a heartbeat.

So this time, Old Margit didn't even bother to complain about Chaos showing up.

As the three of them pressed forward...

A new monster appeared in their path.

A dragon, corrupted by the Abyss, its body flowing with the darkness of humanity.

A health bar appeared.

The name followed.

[Step into the Abyss]

[Ekzykes]

...

[Upto 20 chapters ahead for now]

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