Chapter 648: The Rot Returns For Revenge
Chapter 648: The Rot Returns For Revenge
As Chiron lay on the ground, his blood staining the earth beneath him, his laughter rang out, sharp and hollow.
And then Tears began to streak down his battered face, mingling with the dirt and blood, unnoticed at first.
The laughter, so arrogant and defiant, slowly crumbled under the weight of something deeper, something rawer. The sound caught in his throat, his chuckles breaking into uneven sobs, and then finally into low, guttural wails.
These tears were not merely for the agony wracking his body. No, Chiron had endured pain before—pain far worse than this.
He had lost limbs, endured unspeakable torment, faced death time and time again. His resilience was a fortress, unyielding and unshakable. But this... this was different.
The tears spilled from a place far beyond his physical suffering, reaching into the depths of his soul. It was as if a dam had finally broken, releasing a torrent of emotions he had suppressed for years, emotions too heavy to bear.@@@@
Memories came rushing in like a flood, each one stabbing at his heart with a mixture of triumph and bitterness.
The pain from the day he woke up in this unforgiving bloody world.
He saw the faces of his clan, their ridicule etched into every sneer and every whispered insult.
He felt the sharp sting of his father’s betrayal, the blade of a man who should have protected him aiming to end his life instead.
His painful climb resurfaced—by hook or crook, clawing his way through the muck of his existence. He remembered the powers he had defied, the heavens themselves he had mocked and challenged.
He thought of his near-death experience with Knight Sheyi, the taunts he endured, the humiliation he swallowed whole, the sacrifices he made with a clenched jaw and bleeding hands.
Through the dense forest ahead, a figure emerged, dragging with it a trail of decay. The rot seemed alive, spreading outward with each step, wilting leaves and blackening the bark of trees. The air seemed to hiss in protest at his presence, and even the ground beneath him cracked and crumbled into ash-like dust.
The man’s bronze armor was a grotesque sight—once majestic, now corroded and pitted with festering sores, as if it too had been infected by his curse.
His flesh was worse. Pieces of it hung loosely from his body, a sickly green and gray, reeking of death. Bones occasionally jutted out where skin and muscle had rotted away entirely. His face was a horrifying canvas of ruin: one eye missing, leaving only a dark, oozing socket, while the other burned with a sickly yellow light.
This monstrosity was none other than Knight Sheyi, the proud crazy cultivator of the magicians.
But now, he was a grotesque shadow of his former self, cursed by Manu Madayaki to an eternity of rot.
Sheyi stopped a few paces from Chiron, standing amidst the putrid wake he had created. His gaze locked onto Chiron’s, and in the depths of those decayed eyes, Chiron saw recognition. Knight Sheyi let out a low, rasping chuckle.
"Well, well, Chiron," Sheyi hissed, his voice like the grinding of rusted metal. "You’re back. I must admit, I’m both surprised and... impressed."
He motioned toward Chiron with a decaying hand, blackened fingertips leaving trails of ash in the air. "You faced Manu Madayaki himself... and lived. Truly, you and I are no longer of the same league. It seems you’ve ascended far beyond what I could have imagined."
But then Sheyi’s voice darkened, and his yellow eye gleamed with malice. "However, don’t think I’ve forgotten what you did to me. This—" he gestured to his rotting form, the rancid air swirling around him like a cursed aura, "—is your fault. I once stood tall as a Knight of the Holy Church, a symbol of power and honor. And now? Now I’m this!"
He took a step closer, the ground beneath his feet hissing and dissolving into blackened sludge. "I’ve come for retribution, Chiron. And I will carve it from your flesh!"
His voice rose into a distorted roar, the rancid smell intensifying as his curse seemed to react to his fury.
Everything around him, even the faint moonlight, seemed to dim under his presence. Chiron’s breathing quickened, his body barely able to hold itself up....
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