Chapter 274
The curse sorcerer wore a ragged cloak stitched together from the hides of unknown magical beasts.
He was a hunchback with a grotesque appearance so horrifying it was hard to even look at him.
Having gone unwashed for ages, his hair was a tangled mess, and his pockmarked face, riddled with huge holes, was caked with black grime.
Dark circles hung heavily beneath his eyes, and his entire presence was so gloomy that it looked as if thick darkness itself had settled only around him.
The curse sorcerer’s name was Pantsy.
Kneeling before Pantsy was an awakened one who had just returned from scouting.
The awakened one’s face was filled with terror as he looked at Pantsy.
The awakened one was a scavenger.
A raider who wandered the desert, surviving through plunder.
He had always been the one taking from others.
Their way of survival was to raid villages where small groups of survivors struggled to stay alive.
That life changed ten days ago.
On a day when an unusually thick fog blanketed the land, a man with a dark aura arrived at the scavengers’ hideout.
His name was Pantsy.
They mocked the sudden stranger.
To them, it was no different from prey voluntarily walking into a predator’s den. But it did not take long for that thinking to change.
Pantsy immediately cast curses upon them.
Companions who failed to prepare in time collapsed writhing in agony.
Pantsy’s curses were vicious and terrifying.
Anyone struck by his curses experienced every imaginable kind of suffering.
Their flesh rotting away or melting apart was merely the beginning.
Even death was denied to them.
Pantsy’s curses tenaciously clung to their lives, forcing them to vividly experience endless agony until their final breath.
That was why the faces of those who died under Pantsy’s curses still retained the pain they had suffered while alive.
"W-Why are you doing this to us? We never harmed you."
"Do you scavengers have some grand reason for living like this? No. You do it simply because it’s convenient for you."
"What does that have to do with this…?"
"I live this way because it’s convenient for me too."
That was Pantsy’s reply to the surviving scavengers’ desperate cries.
Pantsy branded curses into the scavengers he spared, turning them into his puppets.
Because of that, the scavengers had no choice but to obey his commands.
The moment they refused, a painful death awaited them.
And so the scavengers became Pantsy’s puppets and followed his orders.
Pantsy opened his mouth.
“You sent three men, yet only one managed to crawl back alive.”
“They noticed we were watching them and attacked us.”
“So they’re sharp enough to detect spies.”
“They weren’t ordinary opponents. The others were caught before they could even escape.”
“Did you at least figure out who they were?”
“T-That… I’m sorry.”
Bang!
The awakened one slammed his forehead against the ground.
Pantsy had turned him and the others into puppets to gather information about Arkelon. But since he had returned empty-handed, he felt his life hanging by a thread.
“Useless trash!”
“Please spare me. Next time I’ll definitely uncover their information.”
“You expect me to trust a dog that ran away with its tail tucked between its legs?”
“P-Please…”
“A fool who can’t even carry out his first order thinks he can do better with the next?”
Pantsy’s lips twisted upward.
It was a dry, cruel sneer.
The awakened one knew all too well what it meant.
He suddenly sprang up and attacked Pantsy.
“You son of a bitch!”
Swoosh!
The dagger he always carried at his waist flew toward Pantsy’s throat.
Even while staring directly at the incoming dagger, Pantsy did not move a single finger.
There was no need for him to act.
A tentacle the size of a human torso burst out from behind Pantsy and smacked the dagger aside.
“Ahhh!”
The awakened one’s face filled with a terror incomparable to anything he had shown before.
It was the tentacle of the Black Sea Anemone — the chimera controlled by the curse sorcerer Pantsy.
Pantsy turned and walked away as he spoke.
“Bessie, it won’t even be enough to wet your appetite, but eat him anyway.”
Shluurp!
Before his words had even finished, the tentacle wrapped around the awakened one and sucked out his bodily fluids.
Drained completely dry by the massive tentacle, the awakened one shriveled like a mummy before dying.
Standing before Pantsy was a cylindrical magical beast waving enormous tentacles through the air.
It was the Black Sea Anemone, the chimera he controlled.
Pantsy reached out and stroked the Black Sea Anemone’s body.
“Oh, my lovely Bessie. Just wait a little longer. I’ll let you devour that gigantic turtle soon enough.”
Pantsy had given the Black Sea Anemone the name Bessie.
In the language of a nation called France, which had fallen over a hundred years ago, it meant “sacred.”
Even the revolting appearance of the Black Sea Anemone, which disgusted most people, seemed sacred to Pantsy.
That was why he named it Bessie.
Obtaining Bessie had been pure coincidence.
As a curse sorcerer, Pantsy was unwelcome in every survivor settlement. Even scavengers rejected him.
It was not because of his class as a curse sorcerer, but because of his hideous appearance. His nauseating ugliness instinctively drove people away.
That was why he had no choice but to wander the desert alone.
Had his rank been higher, he would have freely spread curses upon the humans and scavengers who rejected him. But at the time, his rank had only been E-grade.
No matter how many curses an E-grade curse sorcerer cast, at best he could only painfully torment one or two people.
Against awakened ones with strong resistance or endurance, even that was ineffective.
Pantsy swore revenge against the awakened ones who mocked him, but reality was harsh.
And so he wandered the desert alone for a very long time.
His life changed in a nameless canyon.
The canyon, split through the middle of the desert like a crack in the earth, radiated an eerie aura from the very moment one stepped inside.
Ordinary awakened ones or civilians would have felt fear and fled the instant they entered, but to Pantsy, a curse sorcerer, the sinister energy instead felt comforting.
As if entranced, he ventured deep into the canyon.
It looked like someone’s slaughterhouse.
Countless corpses of magical beasts were scattered throughout the canyon.
Sandworms, Ghost Scorpions, and numerous other magical beasts lay dissected across the ground.
Pantsy suppressed his fear and ventured even deeper inside.
The farther he went, the larger the magical beast corpses became.
The area was littered with high-grade magical beast carcasses that Pantsy would never have dared approach had they still been alive.
As if possessed by something, Pantsy continued toward the deepest part of the canyon.
And there he found it — the gigantic Black Sea Anemone, Bessie.
The moment he saw the disgusting Black Sea Anemone, Pantsy fell in love.
Having suffered his entire life because of his own hideous appearance, he instinctively understood.
There was no one in this world who could love such a revolting creature except him.
The Black Sea Anemone was dying.
Its tentacles weakly writhed in the air, while its main body drooped limply without any strength.
Pantsy gathered all his strength and dragged magical beast corpses from outside, placing them before the Black Sea Anemone’s tentacles.
The moment the corpses touched them, the tentacles reacted.
Instinctively, they began absorbing the magical beasts’ bodily fluids.
After absorbing the fluids, the Black Sea Anemone regained a small amount of vitality.
But the corpses of tiny magical beasts were nowhere near enough to satisfy it.
Pantsy continuously carried more corpses from throughout the canyon.
Every magical beast he dragged over with all his might became nourishment for the Black Sea Anemone.
Only after absorbing the fluids of hundreds of small magical beasts did the Black Sea Anemone finally become capable of moving on its own.
Then the Black Sea Anemone began absorbing medium-sized magical beasts that Pantsy could never have moved by himself.
In that way, the Black Sea Anemone devoured every magical beast within the canyon.
From that moment on, the Black Sea Anemone became Pantsy’s companion.
As though repaying him for saving its life, it followed Pantsy faithfully.
Pantsy formed a soul contract with the Black Sea Anemone.
That was when he learned the truth.
The Black Sea Anemone was not a naturally born lifeform.
It was a chimera created by combining the countless corpses scattered throughout the canyon.
Someone had clearly captured numerous magical beasts and experimented on creating chimeras within the canyon.
The result of that experiment was the Black Sea Anemone with whom Pantsy formed his soul contract.
Pantsy did not know who had created such a horrifying monstrosity.
Nor did he care.
But he thought he understood why they had abandoned the Black Sea Anemone.
It was incomplete.
Because it had been crudely stitched together from too many magical beasts, it consumed an absurd amount of energy, and its internal structure was unstable, requiring a constant supply of food.
Without a continuous supply of nourishment, it would collapse from within.
Perhaps that was why even its creator deemed it useless and discarded it.
But Pantsy was different.
To a man who had wandered the desert alone his entire life, the Black Sea Anemone was the only friend who had ever shared his heart.
He could not abandon or dispose of it simply because it was incomplete.
And so he contracted with that imperfect soul.
After forming the contract with the Black Sea Anemone, his life changed completely.
Even gigantic magical beasts that once terrified him were no longer his enemies.
Watching the Black Sea Anemone’s tentacles drain massive magical beasts dry filled him with exhilaration.
It felt as though he himself had defeated those enormous creatures.
Every time the Black Sea Anemone killed another magical beast, Pantsy’s rank rose.
That was how he became an A-grade curse sorcerer.
A-grade curse sorcerers were exceedingly rare.
And a curse sorcerer who controlled a chimera like the Black Sea Anemone was even rarer.
Pantsy was probably the only one.
From then on, Pantsy plundered everything in his path.
Whether magical beasts or humans, he robbed and killed without discrimination.
Every human who had oppressed him was fed to the Black Sea Anemone as nourishment.
At this rate, if his rank kept rising, it felt like there would soon be no one in the desert capable of opposing him.
Even the very being that had created the Black Sea Anemone.
He wanted to show its creator.
Look at how magnificent I made the chimera you abandoned.
You failed, but I succeeded.
But he soon realized how foolish that belief was.
At some point, both he and the Black Sea Anemone stopped growing stronger.
As though it had reached its limit, the Black Sea Anemone slowly began collapsing from the inside.
To stabilize it, a special kind of prey was necessary.
Something possessing an incredibly sturdy attribute capable of halting the internal collapse.
That was why he chose Arkelon.
If the Black Sea Anemone could absorb the traits of Arkelon, known as the Moving Fortress, then perhaps it could evolve to the next stage.
That was the reason he attacked Arkelon.
Arkelon repelled the Black Sea Anemone’s assault and escaped to the Steel Fortress.
During the attack, the Black Sea Anemone itself had suffered severe bodily collapse, preventing it from pursuing them into the Steel Fortress.
For Pantsy and the Black Sea Anemone, only one chance remained.
“Last time you slipped away by pure luck, but this time I won’t let you escape. Let’s go, Bessie!”
Pantsy left the scavenger hideout alongside the Black Sea Anemone.
Only shriveled corpses drained of every last drop of bodily fluid remained behind.
Lee Jeongho frowned at the distant sight.
He considered himself someone who had experienced all kinds of horrors.
Yet even for him, the scene before his eyes was something entirely new.
It was broad daylight.
The sunlight blazed more fiercely than ever, enough to make skin sting from the heat.
Yet the distant horizon alone was pitch black, as though someone had carved it out with a blade.
As if night existed only there.
The voice of Pabilsa, standing beside Lee Jeongho, trembled.
“That place… that’s definitely where the Land Whale’s nest is located.”
“Was it like that before?”
“No. It looked no different from anywhere else.”
“And it just happened to change exactly when we arrived.”
Lee Jeongho’s voice sank heavily.
His instincts were warning him of danger.
The blackened region spread across an enormous area.
There was no way to even guess what might happen if they stepped into that black land.
No matter how strong he was, Lee Jeongho was still human.
He could not help but fear an unknown existence he had never encountered before.
“What the hell is that…?”
“It’s territorialization.”
At that moment, Zeon’s voice answered from behind them.
“Territorialization?”
“A power that only high-grade magical beasts above S-rank can wield. It forcibly transforms the surrounding area into an environment suitable for itself.”
Zeon’s voice was grim.
Humanity had already experienced a similar power once before.
Terraforming.
The authority of Krasias — the power whose backlash had pushed Earth to the brink of destruction.