[Tree] Chapter 652: The Dark God's Gaze (Patreon)

Gorran felt a pang in his soul as the obsidian Monarch thrust his sword of flame into the water bubble enshrouding his airship. There was a loud hiss, followed by superheated steam flooding the deck and driving the crew away from the bow.

My shield won't hold him back for long, Gorran thought. A few seconds at most.

He paused his retreat as his spiritual sense warned him of something below.

"Wait—" he called out a moment too late. The deck behind him ruptured as a thick golden tendril punched through. A nearby elite yelled as he tried to slice the exposed monster, but a second golden tendril pierced the deck below him, picking the man up and slamming him down with a sickening crunch.

"Retreat to the stern!" the airship's captain hollered as more tendrils punched through, and the monster below turned the airship inside out.

"Captain, what is the status?!" Gorran yelled over the sound of hissing steam.

"Bad, Patriarch! Levitation formations destroyed and the hull has been fully breached!" The captain of the airship yelled. "We are going down!"

Gorran clenched his jaw as the world around him descended into chaos. Whether intentional or not, the Fire Monarch had put him in a terrible position by declaring that their leader wanted only him to survive. It drove a wedge between him and the crew and discouraged him from wasting centuries of Qi on a final stand, because if he stood with his doomed crew to the end, there was no guarantee the enemy would continue to show him mercy.

Fighting back could be a death sentence.

He exchanged a look with his cousin—a man who had stood beside him through it all—and saw pure terror in the hardened warrior's eyes. He hadn't looked so terrified even as Yun Zhilan fought Uldrenneth of the Great Trench.

Gorran only saw one way out of this mess.

He swallowed his pride and dropped the water bubble surrounding the ship. The heated water fell upon them all, drenching them from head to toe. Gorran fell to his knees and raised his arms in surrender as streaks of wet hair clung to his face.

"A wise choice," the obsidian Monarch said as he floated aboard through a haze of rising steam. He stepped down onto the deck before Gorran with a soft hiss, his molten feet burning the wood.

"Raise your head."

Gorran did as he was told, craning his neck to meet the man's eyes as the giant towered over him at two and a half meters tall. Though they weren't really eyes—more like twin suns of golden-orange flame. They hurt to look at, so he glanced down. Up close, his skin was strangely shiny, like volcanic glass polished to a mirror sheen. But it was cracked, and he saw literal magma pulsing slowly underneath, like a heartbeat. Hair made of fire drifted behind him in the wind, and when he smiled, a thin curl of smoke slipped out between his teeth.

The more Gorran looked, the less he thought of this person as a man and the more he believed it was a monster birthed from the belly of a volcano.

"Please," Gorran begged as everyone else on the deck knelt before the obsidian man. "We were lied to. The Ninth Wave Sect spread rumors that this was a treasure realm, and we foolishly came seeking riches." He bowed his head. "Forgive our greed. We did not mean to encroach on your lands."

The obsidian Monarch wordlessly stared down at him despite his humble plea.

Bastard, he's mocking me even after I surrendered! I'm a Patriarch of an 8th Layer sect, you know! Gorran clenched his jaw. But his cultivation is in the 7th stage. Far above mine.

Gorran kept his head down because this man's Qi was also so pure, like fire given human form. If they fought domain against domain, Gorran would run out of Qi far sooner. Not to mention the enemy was fielding far more Monarchs. It was a lost battle.

"I respect a warrior who knows when to swallow his pride to save his loyal men. Few would be willing to show such humility," the Monarch said after a tense silence. "However, the choice of sparing you and your men isn't mine to make."

He looked to the sky.

"My Lord will decide your fate."

Gorran followed his gaze, and a terrible dread settled deep into his bones.

Reality wailed as an unseen force seemed to tear open a wound. It wasn't a clean spatial tear like the black island had passed through earlier. Its edges crumbled, flaking away into nothing like ash in the wind, and within it, an infinite darkness swirled, seeming to devour even light itself. The air went uncomfortably still as if the world itself were holding its breath.

Then, from deep within the swirling desolation, something looked back.

At first, Gorran thought he was hallucinating. Then he saw the eye. Vast, unblinking, and utterly without warmth, staring down at him. Gorran felt it pierce his Monarch-level Qi as if it weren't there, then his skin, his bones, and finally his soul.

He flinched, yet didn't dare resist. He had felt the heavens' gaze before during his ascension, and it had somehow felt warmer than this, even as lightning scorched his skin. Under this gaze, Gorran felt less than an insect. He felt like a salted fish on a fishmonger's table, as if his fate wasn't his to decide.

Just what is that thing? Gorran wondered as he tried to peer deeper into the darkness.

"Gorran. W-We have angered a dark god," his cousin whispered secretly into his ear with Qi. "If the demons' wish is to bring suffering and death upon the world, a dark god wishes the same, but upon reality itself. Living under his rule isn't a mercy. It's a punishment! Cousin, you have to run. I'll buy you time and punch a hole through the containment. Save yourself—"

Gorran felt a wave of heat pass his face as the obsidian Monarch's sword tore through his kneeling cousin's neck, decapitating him and cauterizing the wound before a drop of blood could spill. His headless body toppled to the side with a thud that Gorran would remember for the rest of his life.

"Why?!" Gorran yelled angrily. "He had surrendered like the rest of us!"

"No," the Fire Monarch said coldly, glaring at him. "He had set his soul to go supernova. So I granted him a quick death."

"A shame, really," a hundred overlapping voices boomed through Gorran's mind, making him double over and grip his head in pain. "But don't worry, Gorran from the realm above. While it's true my warrior cut down your cousin to prevent a tragedy, that doesn't mean this is the end of his story."

Gorran's head pounded, and he struggled to think.

Is this the dark god's voice? Wait, how does he know my name and that he was my cousin? That shouldn't be possible. His eyes widened as realization set in. Unless he was listening to us talking...

"The people of this realm call me the All-Seeing Eye," the overlapping voices continued. It sounded like he was talking from everywhere and nowhere at once. "I earned that name because nothing escapes my gaze. Now, let us reward your cousin's disobedience towards me with a lifetime of servitude."

Gorran felt something immense shift beneath the deck as the floorboards were pushed upward until finally giving way as a mass of heavenly glowing slime lurched onto the deck and toward the decapitated corpse.

"All yours, General," the flaming Monarch said, stepping aside.

A thin tendril shot out of the mass and speared Gorran's dead cousin through the chest.

"No! What are you doing?!" Gorran yelled.

The mass paid him no mind. It lifted the corpse into the air, and before Gorran's eyes, his cousin's body began to sag. Skin slid off bone. Bone softened and cracked into pieces. Within moments, nothing was left but a lump of goop dripping from the end of the tendril.

Gorran held back bile rising in his throat, yet he couldn't look away. What came next would be burned into his mind forever.

The goop stirred. It bulged and stretched upward into the vague outline of a man, with a head, shoulders, and one arm reaching out, as if someone were trying to drag himself free of the slime. The thing born from the goop writhed in apparent agony until it finally tore free as a deformed man with gray skin and empty eyes.

"What... are... my... orders...?" the thing wailed, one word at a time.

"Watch over your cousin as you did in life. But this time, pierce his heart should he think of harming my people or me," the dark god commanded, and the monsterfied version of his dear cousin lurched toward Gorran and threw its wet arm around his shoulder, making him shudder.

"C-Cousin?" Gorran whispered. "Are you in there?"

The thing's empty eyes simply stared at him in response.

Gorran was living a nightmare. This had to be a terrible dream induced by Uldrenneth's wandering mind. He glanced around. His elites either trembled in fear under the All-Seeing Eye's gaze or held back from throwing up at the sight of what his cousin had become. None dared to repeat his cousin's stunt to buy the rest of them time to escape.

"Magnus, escort them to Red Vine Peak for their indoctrination."

Wait, did he just say indoctrination?

The wound in the sky swallowed itself, relieving Gorran and his crew of the dark god's scrutiny. But the wet arm around his shoulder was a constant reminder that the nightmare was only just beginning.

"Come with me," Magnus commanded, leading Gorran and his slime guard to the bow, skirting the heavenly mass that now served as the ship's hull. Once they were there, Gorran stared over the edge and saw the massive fleet of airships getting closer. If not for the black rock island above them cradling the airship with gravity Qi, they would have dropped out of the sky already.

"What do you want with me?" Gorran asked. The fight had left his voice. He was utterly defeated.

"I wanted to give you some advice," Magnus said, glancing at him. The heat radiating off the man was sweltering. "I was like you once. I encroached on the All-Seeing Eye's land and met his wrath."

"Really?"

Magnus nodded. "My cultivation was stalled. The other families in the sect looked down on my family and me, forcing us to seek a new home." He chuckled. "We encountered the All-Seeing Eye's guardian instead. The fight... was as one-sided as this."

"A guardian..." Gorran muttered, trying to imagine what such a monster could look like. "How come you are still alive and trusted?"

"The title of dark god isn't unearned, but he also has a big heart. Bow your head, earn his trust, and rewards will find you." Magnus paused, and his face darkened. "I can't say if the same generosity will be extended to your men. But I will see what I can do."

"Why are you helping us?" Gorran asked.

"Because, despite your harsh words about us being lower realmers and monkeys, you have the heart of a noble warrior," he said, smiling. "In a world as dark and prideful as this, that's a hard trait to come by."

"Thank... you?" Gorran wasn't sure what to say. He'd surrendered only because it gave them the slightest chance, not out of some noble obligation.

Magnus searched his gaze. "I can still see the embers of defiance in your eyes."

Gorran shrank back. "No, no. I promise—"

"Don't worry," Magnus chuckled darkly. "Elysia will beat those hopes right out of your soul."

"Who is Elysia?" Gorran asked, and got a sudden bad feeling after uttering her name.

Magnus looked at him with pity. "Lovely girl, a little insane and far too devoted. But she means well... probably. You'll be fine the sooner you give up."

Gorran gulped as the enemy's giant flagship, shrouded in earth Qi, rose into view to escort them to Red Vine Peak. Magnus remained quiet from then on as they were slowly lowered toward the ground.

Or what Gorran had thought was the ground. But as they drew closer, he realized the giant golden desert below was actually a canopy of leaves.

They were above an impossibly large tree, and in the center of that expansive canopy he spotted an island of red-leaf trees poking through, topped with the largest demonic tree he had ever seen.

That must be where the leader is. Gorran stood a little taller and tried to settle his stomach. He knew that if he showed even a hint of weakness before a dark god and their servants, he was destined for a future like his cousin's.