Chapter 2418: Hell (2)

Sylas had barely stepped through the portal when the obsidian beneath his feet began to tremble, the vibration spreading outward until loose fragments of black stone bounced across the ground. Waterfalls of lava spilled from cliffs in the distance while sulfur burned at the inside of his nose, and although the Hell around him looked much as he remembered it, there was something in the air that felt distinctly wrong.

The trembling continued to grow until the horizon itself seemed to move, and only then did Sylas realize that what he was looking at wasn’t part of the landscape. A sea of rats poured across the obsidian plains in such numbers that the ground vanished beneath them, their bodies ranging from the size of ordinary animals to enormous beasts large enough to blot out sections of the lava-lit horizon.

Sylas frowned as his Runeweaver Eyes activated, layer after layer of information unfolding across his vision while the swarm continued its charge. Their Tiers didn’t seem finite, and even with his eyes having improved so much, every time he thought he had reached the limit of one beast another layer of strength seemed to appear beneath it.

That alone would have been troublesome, but it wasn’t what caught Sylas’ attention most as the Greed Seed within him began to pulse. The rats were all radiating the same aura, an overwhelming Greed that sharpened the closer they came, and yet rather than recognizing Sylas as the representative of its Virtue, they became even more excited when they sensed him.

Their mouths opened wider, saliva spilling between yellowed teeth while their claws tore deep grooves into the obsidian. Sylas could feel their intent clearly enough to understand that they didn’t simply want to kill him, they wanted to devour the Greed within him and use it to perfect their own path.

Perhaps the distinction came from the origin of his Seed. Sylas’ Greed had been born from the original Scorpion, while these beasts obviously stood beneath the Rat, and if the paths were divided more deeply than he understood, then his Virtue might look like an opportunity they would never receive again.

Whatever the answer, Hell was in worse condition than Sylas expected.

Slithering Madness had reached out to him for help, but Sylas hadn’t imagined that the moment he arrived he would find an endless horde whose strength couldn’t even be properly measured. If this was what the outskirts looked like, he wasn’t entirely sure what Slithering Madness expected him to accomplish deeper inside.

Sylas’ Will shifted as the Void folded around his Greed Seed, hiding it beneath a layer of nothingness until even he could barely sense the aura anymore. The reaction from below was immediate, thousands of rats stumbling over one another as heads snapped from side to side, their earlier certainty vanishing the moment the thing they had been chasing disappeared.

Their confusion didn’t last long, though, as their noses twitched and their gazes returned to Sylas, Fanelei, and Cheri. Even without the Greed Seed attracting them, there were still three living bodies standing directly ahead. Fresh meat was more than enough reason to keep charging.

Sylas saw no reason to waste time fighting them.

The Genesis Forge Ore appeared in his palm as he poured his Will into it, allowing the principles of Hell Rune Creation buried within the material to resonate with the world around them. Space bent around Sylas and the two women as that resonance spread, and before the front line of rats could reach them, the three disappeared from where they stood.

They reappeared high above the swarm, though it wasn’t quite as simple as teleporting into the sky. Sylas had used the relationship between the Genesis Forge Ore and Hell itself to shift them into a nearby layer of space, leaving them visible from below while placing a separation between them that the beasts couldn’t easily cross.

Cheri released a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding as she looked down at the mass beneath them. She had tried to judge the rats through Will rather than the system, but that had somehow been worse. Every creature she focused on seemed exactly as strong as it needed to be to kill her.

She couldn’t understand how someone was supposed to fight an enemy like that when measuring it only caused the answer to change.

Before she could ask, the rats below lost interest in searching for them and began turning on one another instead. Teeth tore through throats and claws opened stomachs as the entire swarm collapsed into a feeding frenzy, their previous unity disappearing the instant their original prey became inaccessible.

Sylas watched the violence below without much reaction, but his eyes narrowed as he compared it to what he remembered of this place. Hell had always been chaotic, and when Fanelei had appeared here the first time, she had immediately tried to tear him apart under the influence of Madness, yet what he was seeing now felt different.

The violence had lost its substance.

Back then, Madness had warped Fanelei’s intent and amplified what was already inside her, but these rats seemed hollow in comparison, chasing hunger simply for the sake of hunger. Their Greed didn’t feel like a path they were following so much as a compulsion that had consumed everything else.

There was another problem Sylas couldn’t ignore.

Slithering Madness should have sensed him the moment he entered Hell, just as it had the first time, especially after being the one to call him here in the first place. Yet there had been no sign of those ancient eyes, no trace of that overwhelming Will, and no indication that Slithering Madness was even nearby.

If it hadn’t come to him, Sylas could only assume that it couldn’t.

**

Deep within a darkness that seemed to swallow even the red glow of Hell, a pair of yellow eyes slowly opened. There was no visible body surrounding them, only two narrow slits floating within the black before a jagged grin gradually appeared underneath.

"Slithering’s precious Sylas Grimblade has entered my domain, and this time there’s no one here to protect him." The grin widened until the darkness itself seemed to split around it. "I’ll play him to death."

**

Sylas felt the change before he saw it.

The layer of Void wrapped around the three of them trembled as something pressed against it from the outside, and when Sylas reinforced the structure, the pressure simply shifted and struck again from another direction. It wasn’t tearing through the Void with superior force so much as interfering with the principles keeping it stable, which meant whoever was acting understood exactly what they were looking at.

A second tremor spread through the layer, then a third, and the entire structure shattered before Sylas could trace the source.

The rats below stopped fighting almost as one, thousands upon thousands of blood-covered heads lifting toward the sky as their attention returned to the three exposed figures above them. At the same time, space around Sylas began to distort, and humanoid figures appeared one after another until every direction around them had been sealed.

They stood upright beneath dark armor, long tails curling behind them while narrow rat faces watched through jagged helms. Blackened weapons settled into their hands as the last of them appeared, surrounding Sylas, Fanelei, and Cheri from every side while the sea of rats below stared upward.