Chapter 1214: Beneath the Titan’s Corpse

The creature was so enormous that the surrounding mountain range seemed almost decorative beside it. Its upper body had been partially exposed by ages of storms and glacial collapse, revealing a broad chest and shoulders whose proportions belonged to something creation had clearly designed before deciding moderation was a useful concept.

Its head rested against a broken ridge while it’s long frozen hair hung around its face in enormous ropes, each strand thicker than trees and hardened beneath layers of frost until they resembled pale roots spreading through the glacier.

Yet its features remained disturbingly recognizable beneath the ice; a broad nose, closed eyes and beard frozen into jagged sheets beneath its jaw.

The face alone could have housed neighborhoods.

Its torso disappeared beneath the glacier, though portions of one arm remained visible farther away, a colossal hand protruding from the frozen earth with fingers large enough that Phei could have comfortably constructed several houses across a single knuckle.

The Titan’s body was scarred but cracks in the ice either but actual scars.

Great wounds crossed its chest and shoulders beneath the frost, some broad enough to resemble valleys from where Phei stood. One ancient injury had split part of its ribs, leaving frozen bone exposed beneath translucent layers of blue-white ice— as if even in death the Titan still refused to fully surrender the story of how it had been killed.

Phei slowly looked toward what rested beside the corpse.

It was a sword.

His mind required several seconds to accept the scale of it.

The weapon lay diagonally across the frozen basin, half-buried beneath glaciers and debris; its blade stretched so far into the distance that the tip disappeared behind a mountain. The guard alone rose like an enormous fortress wall, while the hilt had been wrapped in some dark material still visible beneath immeasurable ages of frost.

Phei tried comparing the weapon to something familiar and only Infinity Chaos Hotel came immediately to mind but he immediately regretted the comparison.

The sword could probably have laid the entire hotel along half its length and still possessed room to spare.

Phei stared back at the Titan.

Then at the sword.

Then again at the Titan: "Oh, my beloved women and Chaos herself!"

Eira covered a laugh with one hand... Phei pointed toward the corpse.

"That is an actual fucking Titan not those stupid little things you made me fight!"

"Yes, Master."

"That thing is dead."

"Your observational talents continue to bloom and amaze me." Eira rolled her eyes.

Phei ignored her.

Something about the corpse disturbed him more than its sheer scale.

The wasteland had not just sculpted a humanoid figure from ice not was it an ancient formation that had carved this titan as some decorative guardian.

The ice had grown around it before mountains had accumulated beside and beyond it while glacier partially buried it. Which meant that somewhere in a forgotten age, something large enough to make mountains look irritatingly small had fallen here and died.

Phei’s gaze shifted toward Danton.

The Jörmungandr Prince did not even slow and there was no surprise cross his face. He gave the corpse barely more attention than one might give an old building passed every morning on the way to work.

Phei narrowed his eyes.

Either Danton had been here several times before...

’Or the ancient bastard simply has enough history with Titans that finding a frozen corpse the size of three mountains barely qualifies as interesting.’

Considering who Danton truly was, Phei strongly suspected the second possibility was closer to reality. The Jörmungandr Prince had probably seen his fair share of Titans.

Maybe fought them and maybe killed some.

Phei had absolutely no evidence for that final thought but he was also almost certain he was right.

Ahead, Danton finally stopped and the eleven Chained formed a loose crescent behind him.

Danton raised one hand.

Golden light flashed between his fingers.

A key appeared:

Phei immediately focused upon it.

It was surprisingly simple compared with everything surrounding them, forged from radiant gold and roughly the length of Danton’s palm with intricate lines that ran across its surface, forming the faint outline of six wings around a narrow central sigil.

The moment Danton curled his fingers around it, the key began shining.

Golden radiance spread through the blizzard.

The Titan answered and a groan rolled through the wasteland.

Phei’s expression changed.

The sound did not come from the corpse’s throat but beneath it and somewhere under the Titan’s enormous abdomen, the glacier began splitting apart.

Ancient ice withdrew in sections while great hidden mechanisms awakened beneath the frozen earth, each movement sending tremors through the entire basin— as if the dead Titan itself was still being forced to open its belly for thieves.

A line of golden light appeared, then another and spread outward until the outline of a colossal door became visible beneath the Titan’s underbelly.

The door opened inward and warm golden light spilled into the dead winter.

Phei blinked. "Of course they built the entrance underneath a dead Titan. Real subtle."

(IMAGE)

Eira’s small hand landed upon his shoulder.

Consort appeared beside them without sound.

"The Heavenchild Entrance Key," Eira whispered. "As the keepers of the Coffer, only their key may open the first door."

Phei looked at her. "Only the key?"

"Yes."

His expression became judgmental. "That’s reckless."

Eira’s lips twitched.

"If it were mine, I’d require the key and my blood at minimum. Probably Soul Energy too. Maybe a password? Before adding another door behind the first door just to punish optimism."

Eira chuckled softly. "You would be a very irritating treasury keeper, Master."

"I would be an alive treasury keeper."

The golden entrance remained open.

Danton entered first and the Chained followed.

Eira waited until the last of them disappeared beneath the Titan before space around herself, Phei and Consort softened.

"Come."

The three vanished.

Phei felt the world turn once and then warmth touched his skin.

He opened his eyes.

His breath stopped.

For nearly the past hour, True Void Sense had allowed him to perceive farther and farther through the Dead Winter Realm. The endless ice acted almost like an extension of his awareness, carrying subtle disturbances across impossible distances while the Void between matter opened pathways for his perception.

Yet there had been one place his senses could never enter apart from the BEYOND.

This place!

He had brushed against it once while following Danton but his perception had struck something and rebounded immediately.

Phei had tried again when Danton approached the Titan.

Same result.

It had felt less like a barrier and more like attempting to look into a completely separate world whose laws simply refused to acknowledge observation from outside.

Now Phei understood why.

A new world existed beneath the ice.

The first thing he saw was the tree:?

It rose from an immense valley beneath a ceiling that could barely be called underground. The cavern stretched so far upward and outward that it resembled its own night sky, dark and boundless, covered in thousands upon thousands of blue-white lights.

Yes, at the center of this world stood a tree large enough to challenge every definition Phei had ever attached to the word.

Its trunk rose wider than towers, dark bark twisting upward in enormous braided columns before dividing into branches vast enough to carry cities. Those branches spread across the cavern ceiling until they became a celestial canopy, each one threaded with countless blue-white lights that resembled stars growing directly from living wood.

Some lights drifted between the branches, others pulsed beneath translucent veins running through the bark. Great clusters of luminous growth hung overhead like frozen galaxies, turning the entire cavern into a night heaven built beneath the deadest winter on Earth.

The light reflected from a broad river running beneath the tree.

Ancient stone bridges crossed that river in graceful arcs, their rails dotted with tiny golden lamps that looked painfully small beneath the scale of everything around them. Dark green vegetation clung to the cavern walls and gathered around the roots, somehow flourishing directly beneath a wasteland capable of killing Saints through exposure.

Phei stared.

The contrast was almost offensive.

Above them waited a dead realm where winter sharpened itself against mountains.

Below it lived this.

Warmth, water.

Greenery.

Light.

An entire hidden world untouched by the frozen apocalypse sitting directly over its head.

Even his True Void Sense struggled to touch here.

The moment Phei attempted spreading his awareness beyond the cavern, something within the tree answered. His perception reached toward its enormous trunk and simply curved away, redirected so gently that he almost missed what had happened.

Phei’s eyes narrowed.

’Interesting. Very interesting.’

Danton and the eleven Chained had already entered.

The Jörmungandr Prince stepped toward the edge of the stone bridge between the inside world and the tree.

He jumped.

Phei’s eyes followed him.

Golden fire gathered faintly beneath Danton’s feet as he descended through the immense cavern before leveling out effortlessly in midair. He flew toward the gigantic roots far below, coat shifting behind him while the Chained followed through their own methods.

Phei watched him.

His expression became mildly sour.

He would be lying if he claimed he did not envy the bastard flying.

True Void Steps had become ridiculous after their evolution. Phei could surrender his position to the Void, remain outside ordinary space for brief periods, reappear almost wherever his perception allowed and make conventional movement look painfully outdated.

But flying?

Actually hovering in the sky indefinitely and moving wherever he pleased without continually surrendering and reclaiming his position?

No.

Apparently the mighty Cosmic Dragon remained burdened by gravity like a taxpayer.

Phei sighed: "One day."

Eira looked toward him.

"What, Master?"

Phei watched Danton continue flying toward the base of the impossible luminous tree.

"I’m learning how to fly."