Chapter 234: Wrath

Rosh saw as Hide and his friend fell into the gate and were swallowed whole. The gate then manifested fully and became a large 3 - star Spot Dungeon gate.

He had wanted to make it so that not many people could go in and save Hide, but the lowest he could manage was a 5 person spot dungeon gate.

He adjusted his porcelain mask, a cold, mocking smirk playing across his hidden lips. He had done it. He had baited Hide Volter directly into the trap he and Garath had meticulously arranged. Hide was now in the Black Castle—Rosh had delivered his brother straight into the claws of Garath’s undead legion.

Inside that isolated, dark-mana domain, Garath’s servant would destroy Hide’s soul and hijack the boy’s physical vessel, allowing the ancient Overlord of Death to circumvent Vincent’s barrier and walk the earth once more.

Satisfied that this was finally dealt with, Rosh raised his taloned hand and sliced a jagged spatial gate into the air. He stepped through the threshold, leaving Earth behind to return to his home planet.

The transition ended, and Rosh’s boots touched the soil of Rilth.

The exact microsecond his feet pressed against the earth, the sky went unnaturally still.

A terrifying, bone-chilling sensation dropped from the heavens like a descending guillotine. The ambient dark mana in the atmosphere ceased its swirling motion, freezing in place. Every nerve ending in Rosh’s body screamed in agony as he felt an immense, omnipotent consciousness locking its gaze onto his very soul from high above the clouds.

It was her. The Ivory Goddess.

The divine entity was calling him.

A sudden, violent wave of dread flooded Rosh’s chest—a suffocating, paralyzing terror far worse than anything he had felt when standing before Commander Maddox. Maddox was a living calamity of physical force, but the entity reigning over Qrith was a true God whose will shaped the fundamental laws of existence.

Without daring to delay for a single heartbeat, Rosh opened a localized spatial path, descending into the subterranean abyss of Qrith.

He glided down the endless, pitch-black vertical chasm until his boots struck the immaculate, white marble floor of the hidden temple. The air here was not merely heavy; it was suffocatingly isolated, entirely divorced from the reality of the dying world above.

At the far end of the vast chamber, elevated upon a flight of white stone steps, rested the ivory throne.

Seated upon it was the Goddess. Her form was ethereal, breathtakingly beautiful, and bathed in an illusory, celestial radiance. Long, pristine white hair cascaded over her shoulders like liquid silk, while a shifting, semi-translucent veil obscured her divine features.

However, unlike her usual serene detachment, the space surrounding her was boiling with a violent, terrifying crimson aura.

The moment Rosh stepped into the hall, an invisible, crushing weight violently seized him.

BANG!

Rosh was forced down onto both knees, the marble floor groaning beneath the impact. In an instant, his senses were overwhelmed by a horrific sensory nightmare. He felt completely stripped of his defenses, bound tightly by searing, red-hot iron shackles that dug into his soul, while every single cell in his body burned as though submerged in molten lava. Such was the unbearable price of standing in the presence of an enraged deity.

"I told you not to kill Hide Volter," the Goddess spoke.

Her voice was calm on the surface.

Rosh, his forehead pressed against the freezing marble, slowly forced his head up, his expression a tangled mess of confusion, fear, and disbelief.

"Is... is he dead?" Rosh rasped out, his voice trembling so violently he could barely articulate the syllables. He genuinely did not know whether to feel relief or terror at the question.

"No..." The Goddess’s gaze narrowed behind her veil, the invisible atmospheric pressure multiplying ten-fold. "The likes of you could never kill that boy."

CRACK!

The stone beneath Rosh’s palms shattered as his shoulders were driven further down.

"You have made a fatal mistake," she continued, her tone dripping with frigid disdain. "You have only made him stronger! You fool. Why can you mindless beasts never do as you are commanded? I thought you would possess a shred of intellect, given that you carry human blood... but you are just as disappointingly blind as the rest."

Her words struck Rosh deeper than any physical blow.

A wave of crushing worthlessness washed over him, causing his core to violently contract. The son of a Primordial Overlord—the undisputed sovereign of the void—reduced to nothing more than a scolded, defective insect. His chest ached with such humiliating agony that hot tears of frustration pricked at the corners of his eyes.

In that agonizing clarity, a sudden realization struck him.

He finally understood why his subconscious spatial tether had dragged him to his mother’s burned apartment in Area 17 when fleeing Commander Maddox days ago. It wasn’t just panic; his deeper instincts had been desperately shielding him, actively steering him away from Rilth because his soul knew the terrifying wrath waiting for him beneath Qrith.

’I am going to die today...’ Rosh thought, his body shaking uncontrollably against the floor. ’She is going to unmake me.’

Yet, the divine beings of the higher realms were capricious, incomprehensible entities.

In the very next fraction of a second, the suffocating, boiling rage in the air vanished completely. The red-hot shackles binding his soul dissolved into mist, and the room returned to an eerie, serene silence.

The Ivory Goddess leaned back against the high rest of her ivory throne, folding her slender hands across her lap as if the outburst had never occurred.

"However... you still have a chance to rectify your failure," she murmured softly, her voice returning to its melodic, ethereal cadence. "I cannot simply dispose of you yet. Your authority remains necessary for the convergence."

Rosh drew in a ragged, gasping breath of air, keeping his head low. "Tell me... what must I do?"

"Go to Estopia," the Goddess commanded, her words echoing through the vast chamber. "Two B-Rank Calamity Lords are currently locked in a brutal territorial struggle for sovereignty over that sector. You are to eliminate one of them immediately. Once the beast has fallen, open a gate tethering that territory to the human mainland."

She leaned forward slightly, her veiled gaze piercing through him. "Do not interfere further. Hide Volter will enter this gate of his own accord."

"As... as your will commands," Rosh choked out, bowing until his nose grazed the stone.

The pressure lifted entirely, granting him permission to leave. Rosh scrambled to his feet and vanished into the shadows of the vertical tunnel, fleeing the temple as fast as his spatial mana could carry him.

Hours later, Rosh materialized at the jagged perimeter of Estopia.

The landscape before him was one of the most bizarre, unnatural territories on the entire surface of Rilth. Unlike the areas that defined the rest of the planet, Estopia possessed remnants of ancient, alien architecture—decaying steel girders, shattered paved roads, and large skyscrapers.

Estopia had originally been a massive country belonging to Earth. Centuries ago, it had been violently torn from human reality and dragged across the dimensions into Rilth as a grand experiment.

Standing on the high ridge overlooking the human plains, Rosh felt a strange, humbling awe wash over him.

Even with his inherited authority over the spatial void, Rosh could barely manipulat tears or transport small pieces of land. The sheer, unfathomable scale of power required to sever an entire continental landmass from Earth and anchor it permanently to Rilth was completely beyond his comprehension.

What kind of monster was his father. Rosh thought, his jaw tightening as he stared at the sprawling horizon.

He turned his focus back to the Goddess’s instructions.

At first, Rosh had wondered how she could possibly be so confident that Hide would walk straight into the gate. The answer seemed obvious: she was a literal deity, and deities possessed cosmic omniscience. Yet, a tiny, rebellious seed of doubt crept into the back of Rosh’s mind. ’Does she truly see all outcomes... or is she simply calculating probabilities?’

Regardless of her foresight, the underlying truth behind the restrictions was now crystal clear to him.

The higher powers desperately wanted Hide Volter dead. However, they could not strike him down directly with divine authority. Hide was shielded by an ancient, dormant power. An entity so terrifying that even the Ivory Goddess feared waking it prematurely, or she told. To bypass this protection, Hide had to die an "organic" death inside the meat grinder of the gates, rather than direct divine intervention.

Rosh expanded his spatial perception across the land.

Deep within the human cities which looked like a result of an apocalypse. There were two strong sources of power, the B-Rank Calamity Lords who had been clashing in a vicious war for dominance.

Their fights overtime had managed to kill most of the normal beasts living here and even create small hills that made the buildings on this land hang at weird angles. This place looked funny, and it even had a large amusement parts, an old and rusty one.

’Time to tip the scales,’ Rosh thought coldly.

After he was done with one of the calamity lords, he left the other one as the new lord. She was a little girl, but her powers were terrifying for even Rosh.

He opened a new gate that connected only half of Estopia, to make it look less intimidating. he stood at the edge of the portal, a dark, venomous grin spreading across his face.

Hide Volter might have survived the Black Castle, and he might have grown slightly stronger. But a newly awakened human could never survive the onslaught of an apex B-Rank Calamity Lord on its home territory.

The stage for his brother’s execution was officially set.