Chapter 144

Chapter 144

When light passes through a prism, a continuous band of colors appears.

Spectrum Prison was a dungeon created using that same principle.

It divided each section with light split through a prism and activated different traps in each one.

Among them, it was a prison made from the seven lights of the visible spectrum.

That was why it was called Spectrum Prison, or Rainbow Prison.

Each light possessed its own unique wavelength, nature, and yearning.

Spectrum Prison was a dungeon that made use of those things.

Each zone of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet was thoroughly severed, and a space made not of reality but of light greeted intruders.

A space that transcended the phenomenal world. That was why this place was called a supernormal space.

The outermost red supernormal space constantly stimulated a human’s fear and anxiety, whispering until they destroyed themselves.

The space Zeon was trapped in now was that very red supernormal space.

Everything in sight was nothing but an unreal landscape drenched entirely in red.

A red supernormal space without boundaries or distinctions.

It felt as though he were floating all alone in a red universe under zero gravity.

“This is my first time seeing a trap like this.”

Zeon muttered as he looked around the inside.

The sensation of the red space, which seemed as though it could never exist in the world, was bizarre.

“Did he recreate a dungeon? To do that, the dungeon’s core would have to remain intact and supply mana stably.”

Zeon had conquered countless dungeons until now.

Among them had been dungeons that thoroughly denied human common sense.

Just like the Spectrum Prison he was trapped in now. That was why Zeon did not panic even in the face of a situation he had never experienced before.

“Where’s the sand?”

Zeon searched for his greatest weapon, sand.

But he could not sense any sand at all in the red space.

“It’s definitely completely cut off from the outside.”

If there had been even a tiny passage or hole, he would have sensed sand.

With that, it became certain that this place was a perfectly isolated space.

Zeon walked through the red supernormal space.

As if he were in zero gravity, he could not feel his own body weight at all. In fact, if he lost his balance even slightly, his body spun wildly.

If one were to swim through space, it would probably look like this.

The biggest problem was that no matter how hard he walked, he could not gain any speed.

Suddenly, anger rose in him.

A blaze of fury seethed up from deep within his heart.

The feeling that no matter how much he walked, he would never be able to escape this place made him even angrier.

“Why am I going through the trouble of walking like this? I could just break it instead......”

Zeon opened his subspace. Then a mountain of sand poured out.

SHHHHH!

Before he knew it, the sand beneath his feet had formed a sea.

“Sand Blaster!”

When Zeon swung his hand, dozens of streams of sand shot out in every direction. But not a single stream of sand managed to damage the red space.

“So you want to do this?”

Unable to suppress his anger, Zeon swung his hand.

WHOOSH, WHOOSH, WHOOSH!

Sand Blaster fired again and again.

If he had fired Sand Blaster this many times, he should have felt some kind of impact, but he felt nothing at all.

Only then did Zeon sense that something was strange.

His own state, with anger boiling over like this, was strange, and this space, which did not even budge before Sand Blaster, was strange as well.

Zeon was not the sort of person whose anger boiled over so easily.

Perhaps he had been like that when he was young, but during the eight years he had wandered the world, he had learned how to control his reason.

After that, he had never once lost his reason.

And yet he was unable to control his anger and was being swayed by emotion?

This was absolutely not a normal situation.

“Whew!”

Zeon exhaled and calmed his anger.

Then the things he had not been able to see until now came clearly into view.

He had thought it was merely a red space, but when he looked closely, it was trembling faintly as if it were breathing.

Each time it did, red energy was being inhaled through Zeon’s nose and mouth.

Zeon first cut off his breathing and protected his entire body with mana. Then he sensed a foreign energy inside his body.

It was the red energy that filled the space.

Without even realizing it, Zeon had inhaled a considerable amount of it.

The red energy had gathered especially heavily around his central nervous system. The red energy had taken hold of and stimulated his central nerves, which was why Zeon’s anger had exploded like that.

Zeon focused his mind and pushed the foreign energy out of his body.

“Hoo!”

Only then did his mind become much clearer, and he could assess his situation calmly.

“This red energy stimulates the emotions of living beings and draws out hostility. Once they’re consumed by hostility, they lose their reason, struggle wildly, and collapse from exhaustion. Fresh. No wonder I didn’t notice.”

Zeon thought this space was quite creative.

It was only because Zeon was rational that he had realized what was wrong with him. If it had been someone else, they would have been consumed by hostility and gone berserk.

Damian had never intended to suppress Zeon by force from the beginning.

He knew very well that Zeon possessed the ability to control sand, and he had understood that if Zeon moved in earnest, he could not be stopped.

That was why he had recreated this kind of dungeon.

To make Zeon go berserk on his own and collapse from exhaustion.

But Zeon was far colder and more rational than Damian had imagined, and he knew how to examine a situation.

“This red space is a supernormal space isolated from reality. Escaping by walking is impossible. In the end, I have to smash the space itself apart.”

He had confirmed that Sand Blaster alone could not damage it.

He needed a Skill far stronger and more destructive than that.

As it happened, Zeon possessed such a Skill.

RUMBLE—!

The sand beneath Zeon’s feet began to spin and rise.

A sandstorm had formed around him.

Damian had thought that since there was no sand in the supernormal space, he would be able to seal Zeon’s ability to some extent. But he had never realized that Zeon carried his subspace filled with sand.

ROOOOAR—!

The sandstorm quickly grew.

As an enormous amount of sand spun, fierce winds arose.

The sandstorm shook the red supernormal space, which had been isolated from reality, to its very foundations.

The red supernormal space trembled violently. But though it seemed on the verge of breaking, it stubbornly endured.

That meant the inside of this supernormal space was that vast.

There was not enough sand to completely shatter the supernormal space.

But Zeon had a power that could make up for the shortage of sand.

“It’s been a long time since I brought this out. Exion!”

At that instant, black energy radiated from his entire body.

It was Exion, the finest grains of sand in the world, which he had stored inside every pore.

Exion was powerful on its own, but it had the property of multiplying its power when added to sand.

Zeon poured Exion into the sandstorm raging through the supernormal space. Then the power of the sandstorm grew even stronger.

RUMBLE, RUMBLE, RUMBLE—!

Before the might of the tremendous sandstorm, the supernormal space shook violently.

Zeon made the sandstorm whirl even more fiercely. Then cracking sounds erupted from all over.

CRACK, CRACK! CRACK!

The cracking sounds grew worse, and fissures appeared throughout the supernormal space.

Through the fissures, the outside space became visible.

A vast desert filled with sand entered Zeon’s sight.

A smile appeared at the corner of Zeon’s mouth.

“Good!”

Zeon drew in the sand outside.

As if a tidal wave had risen, the desert sand surged through the fissures like waves and filled the supernormal space.

With an enormous quantity of sand added to it, the sandstorm swelled to a size incomparable to before.

Before that tremendous force, the supernormal space was torn to shreds.

CRAAAACK—!

With a tremendous cracking sound, the red energy that had surrounded Zeon vanished without a trace.

As the supernormal space itself was destroyed, it scattered without leaving anything behind.

“Whew!”

Only then did Zeon let out a breath and shake his head.

Because he had used a powerful force all at once, a sense of exhaustion had come over him. However, he soon gathered himself and looked around.

At that instant, a deep furrow formed between his brows.

The situation around him was far too gruesome.

Corpses with severed arms and legs, and bodies with their intestines spilling out, lay scattered everywhere.

Among them were corpses that appeared to have killed one another.

Since so many different groups had attacked, it was not strange for them to kill one another.

The problem was that the two people who had killed each other were wearing the same clothing.

They were clearly Awakened from the same organization.

Under normal circumstances, there was no reason for comrades to kill one another.

“So this isn’t a normal situation.”

He himself had been trapped in the red supernormal space and had suffered almost to the point of death.

The red energy had stimulated his hostility and driven him berserk.

If so, the energies of the other colors must also possess the power to stimulate different human emotions.

Zeon examined the condition of the corpses.

“The wounds have already dried. That means quite some time has passed. Does time flow differently inside the supernormal space than it does in reality?”

Zeon’s face hardened.

As far as he had felt, the time he had spent inside the supernormal space had only been about three or four hours. But the corpse he was touching now looked as though it had died at least a day ago.

It was clear that each supernormal space had time flowing differently from reality.

Zeon sighed and looked at the fortress.

As if confirming his guess, the fortress had been destroyed to a degree incomparable to what it had been a moment ago.

Truly, more than a day had passed outside.

“Damian, what were you thinking, making this so big?”

With a faint sigh, Zeon walked into the fortress.

Six more lights still awaited him.

---

CRAAAACK—!

With a sound like shattering glass, fissures appeared in midair, and a group emerged.

The ones who appeared, wounded and exhausted, were the elves who had been charging toward the fortress with such momentum.

“To think they would do something like this. I will never forgive this, humans!”

The elf who ground her teeth was Mariel, the Captain of the Thorn Tree Attack Force.

The Thorn Tree Attack Force and the elves, who had been rushing toward the fortress with fierce momentum, had been trapped by the Spectrum Prison that had suddenly appeared.

The place they had been trapped in was the blue supernormal space.

The sky, the ground, everything was blue.

The fresh sensation, as if they had arrived in Kurayan, which they had only ever heard about, made the elves tremble.

Most of the elves had been born and raised in Neo Seoul.

All they had ever seen was the barren desert and the sight of an advanced city.

Naturally, they had never even seen a green meadow.

To them, the blue supernormal space reminded them of Kurayan, the homeland they had never once seen.

Some elves were so overwhelmed that they shed tears of joy.

Mariel’s heart was also shaken more than a little.

For the first time, she understood how much abundance a world filled with blue could bring to the heart.

Only then did she feel she understood why the Elf Queen, Serian, longed for Kurayan so deeply.

Elves were meant to grow up in such an abundant environment.

That was why they had crossed over to Earth.

But because of the side effects of Terraforming, Earth had become barren, and they had never been given the chance to experience green land.

That made her even more furious.

Because all the sacrifices they had made to come here had come to nothing.

“If we can just get our hands on the Spirit King’s Crown, we can create a new home for the elves again. Instead of living filthy lives mixed in with humans, we’ll be able to establish a paradise just for elves.”

Mariel hated humans.

More precisely, she hated the humans who rejected elves.

She also hated the fact that they had to live wedged into a city built by humans, like tenants. That was why she disliked Serian, who had decided to live together with humans.

That was the reason she followed Eli, the second-in-command.

Mariel hardened her resolve and urged the elves on.

“We must get out of this place quickly. All of you, hurry.”

But the elves let her order go in one ear and out the other.

The blue space had enchanted their hearts.

They did not want to leave this blue supernormal space. That was why Mariel’s order felt like nothing more than nagging.

Only then did Mariel realize that something was wrong.

Just as Zeon had felt intense hostility in the red space, this blue space gave the elves peace and oblivion.

It would have been better to fight enemies or monsters.

Inside Spectrum Prison, the enemy was none other than oneself.

The elves forgot the reason they had to fight and grew indolent in the comfort the blue space gave them.

That was the terrifying thing about Spectrum Prison.

The seven lights each emitted a different wavelength, and those wavelengths affected the human mind.

What was truly terrifying was that even when their minds were being eroded like this, the people themselves could not sense it.

To wake the elves whose minds had been eroded, extreme shock therapy was necessary.

DRIP, DRIP!

Red blood flowed down Mariel’s sword.

It was the blood of elves.

To wake the elves whose minds had been eroded by the blue supernormal space, she had used an extreme measure.

She had killed several of her subordinates as an example.

The elves, including the Thorn Tree Attack Force, were all like her own sisters and brothers.

Killing them wounded Mariel’s heart as well. Even so, she had no choice.

Escaping the blue supernormal space alone was impossible.

In the end, the elves who had come to their senses through shock therapy pooled their strength and were able to escape Spectrum Prison.

Mariel stared at the fortress with bloodshot eyes.

“You wicked humans. To use such a filthy trick. I will never forgive you.”