Chapter 274

Chapter 274

The Curse Caster wore a tattered cloak patched together from the hides of unknown monsters.

He was a hunchback with a bent back, and his appearance was hideous enough to be horrifying.

His hair was a wild, disheveled mess because he had not washed for so long, and his pockmarked face, riddled with large holes, was caked with black grime.

Heavy dark circles had settled beneath his eyes, and his entire atmosphere was so gloomy that it looked as though a thick darkness had descended only upon him.

The Curse Caster’s name was Pantshi.

An Awakened who had returned from scouting was kneeling before Pantshi.

The Awakened’s face was filled with fear as he looked at Pantshi.

The Awakened was a Scavenger.

A raider who wandered the desert and survived by plundering.

He had always been the one taking from others.

Attacking and plundering villages where small groups of survivors barely scraped by was their way of survival.

The change in their lives had come ten days ago.

On a day when fog had hung unusually thick, the one who came to the Scavengers’ base was a man with a dark atmosphere—Pantshi.

They had laughed at the sudden stranger.

It was no different from prey walking into a beast’s cage on its own. But it did not take long for that thought to change.

Without warning, Pantshi scattered curses over them.

His companions, who had not been prepared, were struck by the curses and writhed.

Pantshi’s curses were vicious and terrifying.

Those struck by his curses felt every kind of pain.

Body parts rotting or melting away were merely the beginning.

They could not even die when they wished to.

That was because Pantshi’s curse clung tenaciously to the lives of those it struck. Because of that, they had to feel every kind of pain vividly until their breath stopped.

That was why the faces of those who died from Pantshi’s curses still held all the agony they had felt in life.

“Wh-Why are you doing this to us? We never harmed you.”

“Do you do Scavenger work because you have some reason? You just live that way because it’s convenient, don’t you?”

“What does that have to do with this......?”

“I live this way because it’s convenient for me too.”

That was how Pantshi answered the surviving Scavengers’ screams.

Pantshi engraved curses into the Scavengers he spared. He had made them into his puppets.

Because of that, the Scavengers had no choice but to obey Pantshi’s orders.

The moment they refused, a painful death would be waiting.

Like that, the Scavengers became Pantshi’s puppets and followed his commands.

Pantshi opened his mouth.

“I sent three of you, and only one came back alive.”

“They noticed the surveillance and attacked.”

“They must have sharp senses. To think they realized I had attached watchers to them.”

“They weren’t ordinary. The others were caught before they could escape.”

“Did you identify what kind of men they were?”

“Th-That...... I’m sorry.”

THUD!

The Awakened struck his head against the ground.

Pantshi had turned him and his companions into puppets in order to obtain information about Archelon. But because he had returned without gaining any information, he felt his life was in danger.

“Useless bastard!”

“Please spare me. Next time, I’ll definitely find out their information.”

“You expect me to trust a tail-tucked son of a bitch who ran away?”

“P-Please......”

“A bastard who could not carry out the first order will carry out the next one well?”

The corner of Pantshi’s mouth twisted upward.

It was a dry sneer.

The Awakened knew all too well what it meant.

The Awakened rose from his place and attacked Pantshi.

“You son of a bitch!”

SWISH—!

The dagger he always kept at his waist flew toward Pantshi’s throat.

Even as he stared directly at the incoming dagger, Pantshi did not move a single finger.

There was no need for him to move.

From behind Pantshi, a tentacle as thick as a person’s torso shot out and struck the dagger aside.

“Ahh!”

At the sight of the tentacle, a fear incomparable to anything before appeared on the Awakened’s face.

That was because it was the tentacle of the Chimera controlled by the Curse Caster Pantshi—the black sea anemone.

Pantshi turned and walked away as he said,

“Bessie, it won’t even be enough to send word to your liver, but eat him.”

SCHLURP—!

Before his words even ended, a tentacle wrapped around the Awakened and sucked out his bodily fluids.

The Awakened, drained dry by the enormous tentacle, shriveled like a mummy and died.

Before Pantshi stood a cylindrical monster swaying countless tentacles.

It was the Chimera he controlled, the black sea anemone.

Pantshi reached out and stroked the black sea anemone’s body.

“Ohh! My beloved Bessie. Wait just a little longer. I’ll let you feast on that enormous turtle.”

Pantshi had given the black sea anemone the name Bessie.

In the language of France, a country that had perished over a hundred years ago, it meant “sacredness.”

Even the appearance of the black sea anemone, which filled most people with revulsion, seemed sacred to Pantshi. That was why he had given it the name Bessie.

He had obtained Bessie by chance.

As a Curse Caster, Pantshi was not welcomed in any survivor settlement. Even Scavengers rejected him because he was a Curse Caster.

It was not because of his class as a Curse Caster, but because of his grotesque appearance. His face was ugly enough to make people nauseous, and it made them reject him.

Because of that, he had no choice but to wander the desert alone.

If his Grade had been high, he would have scattered curses to his heart’s content upon the humans and Scavengers who rejected him. But at the time, his Grade had only been Grade E.

No matter how many curses a Grade E Curse Caster scattered, he could only make one or two people suffer.

Even that did not work against Awakened with strong resistance.

Pantshi vowed revenge against the Awakened who looked down on him, but reality was not easy.

Because of that, he wandered the desert alone for a long time.

His life changed in an unnamed canyon.

The canyon, which split the middle of the desert like a fissure, gave off an eerie energy from the moment one stepped inside.

If it had been an ordinary Awakened or an ordinary person, they would have felt fear the moment they set foot there and fled. But to Pantshi, a Curse Caster, that eerie energy felt rather warm and comforting.

As if possessed, he entered deep into the canyon.

It was like someone’s slaughterhouse.

Inside the canyon, countless monster carcasses were scattered everywhere.

Starting with Sandworms and Ghost Scorpions, countless monsters lay there dissected.

Pantshi gritted his teeth against his fear and went deeper inside.

The farther he entered, the more the carcasses of enormous monsters appeared.

The corpses of high-grade monsters were lined up in rows, monsters he would never have dared approach if they had been alive.

Pantshi moved to the innermost part of the canyon as if bewitched by something.

What he discovered there was the enormous black sea anemone, Bessie.

The moment Pantshi saw the repulsive black sea anemone, he fell in love.

He could tell because he too had suffered his entire life because of his ugly appearance. He knew he was the only one who would love that repulsive lifeform.

The black sea anemone was dying.

Its tentacles were flailing weakly, and its main body had no strength at all, sagging limply.

With all his strength, Pantshi dragged over monster carcasses scattered outside and brought them to the black sea anemone’s tentacles.

When the monster carcasses touched it, the tentacles reacted.

They instinctively began sucking in the monsters’ bodily fluids. After absorbing the bodily fluids, the black sea anemone regained a little vitality. But the carcasses of small monsters could not satisfy the amount the black sea anemone wanted.

Pantshi continued carrying the monster carcasses scattered throughout the canyon.

The monsters he dragged over with all his strength became nourishment for the black sea anemone.

Only after absorbing the bodily fluids of hundreds of small-class monsters could the black sea anemone move on its own.

The black sea anemone then began absorbing medium-sized monsters, which Pantshi could never have moved with his own strength.

Like that, the black sea anemone devoured every monster inside the canyon. From then on, the black sea anemone became Pantshi’s friend.

As if repaying the grace of being saved, it followed Pantshi.

Pantshi made a contract of the soul with the black sea anemone.

That was when he learned it.

He learned that the black sea anemone was not a naturally born lifeform.

The black sea anemone was a Chimera created by combining the countless carcasses sprawled throughout the canyon.

Someone had clearly captured countless monsters and brought them to the canyon in an attempt to create a Chimera.

The result of that was the black sea anemone with which Pantshi had made a contract of the soul.

Pantshi could not know who had created this dreadful result. Nor was he curious.

But he felt he could understand why they had abandoned the black sea anemone and left.

The black sea anemone was incomplete.

Because it had been stitched together from too many monsters, it consumed energy uselessly, and its interior was unstable, so it had to be supplied with food endlessly. If it was not given food, it would collapse from within on its own.

Perhaps the being who had gone to the trouble of making the black sea anemone had judged it useless and abandoned it.

But Pantshi was different.

To him, who had wandered the desert alone all his life, the black sea anemone was the only friend who had shared its heart with him.

He could not abandon or dispose of the black sea anemone simply because it was incomplete. That was why he made a contract with that incomplete soul.

After contracting with the black sea anemone, Pantshi’s life changed one hundred eighty degrees.

Even the giant monsters that had once terrified him were no longer his enemies.

The sight of giant monsters dying after losing all their bodily fluids to the black sea anemone’s outstretched tentacles amplified his pleasure.

It gave him the pleasure of having defeated giant monsters with his own power.

Each time the black sea anemone defeated a monster, his Grade rose.

In that way, he became a Grade A Curse Caster.

A Grade A Curse Caster was extremely rare.

On top of that, a Curse Caster who controlled a Chimera like the black sea anemone was even rarer. Pantshi was probably the only one.

From then on, Pantshi plundered everything he encountered.

Monster or human, it did not matter. He stole from them and killed them.

He threw every human who had persecuted him to the black sea anemone as nourishment.

If his Grade continued rising like this, it seemed that he would no longer have any equal in the desert.

Not even the being who had created the black sea anemone.

He wanted to show that being who had created the black sea anemone.

I made the Chimera you abandoned this magnificent.

You failed, but I succeeded.

But he soon realized how great a miscalculation that had been.

At some point, the black sea anemone and he no longer grew.

Perhaps because it had reached its limit, the black sea anemone slowly began collapsing from within.

To stabilize the black sea anemone, special food was necessary.

A sturdy trait that could stop the internal collapse.

That was why he chose Archelon.

If the black sea anemone could absorb the traits of Archelon, which was called a mobile fortress, Pantshi thought it could evolve one stage further.

That was why he had attacked Archelon.

Archelon shook off the black sea anemone’s attack and fled to Steel Fortress.

During the process of attacking Archelon, the black sea anemone also suffered considerable physical collapse, so Pantshi could not invade Steel Fortress.

He and the black sea anemone had only one chance left.

“We unfortunately missed it last time, but this time we will never let it go. Let us go, Bessie!”

Pantshi left the Scavenger den with the black sea anemone.

In the place they left behind, only corpses drained of every last drop of bodily fluid remained.

---

Lee Jung-ho frowned at the scene visible in the distance.

He prided himself on having experienced every kind of thing. But even he had never seen the scene unfolding before his eyes.

It was clearly broad daylight.

The sunlight was beating down more fiercely than ever, to the point that it made his skin ache. Yet the horizon visible far away was pitch-black, as if it had been carved out with a knife.

As if night had come only to that place.

Pabilsa’s voice trembled beside Lee Jung-ho.

“That place...... is definitely where Moby Dick’s nest is.”

“Was it like that then too?”

“No. It was scenery no different from anywhere else.”

“And yet it changed like that precisely when we came.”

Lee Jung-ho’s voice sank low.

That was because his instincts had sensed danger.

The black domain stretched over a vast area.

He could not even guess what would happen if they stepped into that black land.

No matter how strong he was, Lee Jung-ho was still human.

He could not help feeling fear toward an unknown existence he had never experienced before.

“What on earth is that......?”

“It is Domainization.”

At that moment, Zeon’s answer came from behind them.

“Domainization?”

“It is an authority that only high-ranking monsters of Grade S or above can unfold. It forcibly transforms an area into an environment favorable for their own activity.”

Zeon’s voice was low and subdued.

Humanity had already experienced an authority similar to that.

Terraforming.

The authority of Crasias, which had driven Earth to the brink of destruction through its backlash.