Chapter 108

Chapter 108

Karnak stood in front of the candy house, leaving behind the corpses of the shattered monsters.

“Well, whatever happens, I guess we should go inside first?” Serati asked, eyeing the half-open door.

“Shall I go in first?”

“No, not there.”

Shaking his head, he snapped his fingers.

Boom!

With a tremendous explosion, one side of the wall collapsed with a loud crash.

Rather than using the perfectly fine door, he deliberately created a hole in the wall.

Looking through the newly made passage into the house, Karnak grinned.

“When dealing with necromancy, the irrational becomes rational.”

Upon entering, they found themselves in a long hallway.

Like the outside, it was a hallway made of colorful candy. The candy-shaped lanterns hanging from the ceiling emitted light, making the space quite bright.

At first glance, nothing seemed too out of the ordinary.

But Serati was utterly shocked.

“Oh my gosh, what is this...?”

Indeed, it was a long hallway.

The candy house was no bigger than a small hunter’s cabin. How could there be such a long corridor inside?

In fact, the size was comparable to the corridors of a decent castle. The height was several meters, and the width far exceeded the actual size of the candy house.

“This is impossible. How can the inside of that tiny house be this big...?”

Unlike the trembling Serati, Karnak and Baros seemed indifferent.

“Why are you so surprised?”

“It’s just a common space distortion.”

With the two so nonchalant, Serati began to calm down a little, though she shot them a glare.

“...It may be common for you two, but it’s the first time I’ve seen something this bizarre.”

“If you understand how it works, it’s not all that amazing.”

As they walked down the hallway, Karnak pointed with his finger.

“The hallway doesn’t actually exist inside the candy house we saw.”

The candy house was just the entrance.

Though they thought they’d broken through the wall and entered, they had actually passed through a dimensional gate.

The moment they stepped into the corridor, they were in a completely different space, separate from the candy house.

“So this is an entirely different dimension?”

“Yep. Just a part of normal hell.”

“Oh, I see.”

Serati paused for a moment.

‘...But isn’t hell, by definition, not exactly normal?’

Surprisingly, the fact that they were in hell didn’t shock her much.

She had already seen windows (?) showing the landscape of hell, met demons from hell, and even worn armor forged there. She felt somewhat accustomed to hearing about hell at this point.

‘Though this isn’t something I wanted to get used to.’

Meanwhile, Karnak was looking around the hallway with great interest.

“The energy here feels somewhat familiar...”

He had traveled through many different hells. Even if the surroundings were decorated with candy, he couldn’t miss the faint traces of demonic energy seeping out.

“What do you think this place originally was, Baros?”

Baros, who had also wandered through hell with him, offered his thoughts.

“It doesn’t seem like a major hell like Gehenna or Tartarus, does it? The demonic energy there is much thicker.”

“This place feels more stuffy and restless, so maybe somewhere between Parphas and Jilong? Who ruled that area again?”

“I believe it’s the domain of the demon count Rota-Boodun.”

“He’s dead, though.”

“In this timeline, he should still be alive. It was during the time when the young master had just become the Death King and was forcibly using him, and then Lord Laven killed him.”

“Ah, that’s right.”

As they continued walking down the corridor, cautiously scanning their surroundings, they heard a faint flapping sound in the distance.

It was like the sound of dozens of birds flying towards them.

The noise grew louder, and soon, a group of shadows appeared from around the bend in the corridor, screeching as they came into view.

“Screeeeech!”

“Eeeeek!”

Baros blinked in surprise.

“Huh? Monkeys?”

Dozens of winged monkeys were flying through the corridor.

Serati drew her sword and asked, “Are there monsters like that in hell?”

Baros, who was also preparing for battle, responded, “They look a bit like gargoyles, but they are not like that.”

Except for the wings, they were just ordinary monkeys. They carried long spears in their hands, and their eyes glowed a fierce red, making them look vicious, but aside from that, they didn’t deviate much from the appearance of typical monkeys.

“Winged monkeys, huh...” Karnak asked, staring at the creatures.

“Is there a fairy tale like this, Serati?”

The rabbits coming toward them were holding colorful eggs in their front paws.

“What’s the connection between rabbits and eggs, Serati?”

“I have no idea, either.”

As the swarm of rabbits approached, they glared at Karnak’s group and started to cry out.

“Bunny!”

“Bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny!”

Feeling betrayed, Serati protested, “Hey! Where’s the ‘hop hop’? What happened to that?”

“What a weird thing to nitpick about,” Baros grumbled, his expression just as unimpressed.

The situation, though not serious, was irritating enough to drain their energy.

“Still, we can’t ignore them...”

“We’ll just have to fight them, yes.”

As the rabbits transformed into slimy monsters, Baros and Serati began cutting them down again.

Watching them, Karnak remained calm, deep in thought.

“It doesn’t quite feel like hell, but...”

In a certain sense, it was very much like hell—because reality itself was distorted.

“The important question is why and how it got distorted...”

Once again, the monsters were easily wiped out. However, Serati and Baros didn’t look as relaxed as before.

“They’re not much on their own, but...”

“If they keep coming like this, it’s going to get tiring, young master.”

“Then let’s take a break.”

“Where, though? There’s nowhere to rest,” Serati questioned, looking around.

Karnak raised both hands, and darkness began to flow between his fingers.

“I’ll make a place to rest now.”

***

Karnak had roughly figured out the structure of the place.

“It’s a variation of the Infinite Corridor.”

However, it wasn’t the result of highly advanced necromancy.

Instead of casting a necromantic barrier, someone had used overwhelming power to crudely tear a hole in the dimension, forcibly linking it to a part of hell.

That’s why it took some time to understand the structure.

While high-level spells are more difficult to break, for Karnak, who had once been the Death King, most spells weren’t that complicated. In fact, this brute-force method was harder to decipher.

Without a ritual or spell involved, he had to personally examine the flow of the space itself.

As Karnak worked his magic, his hands moved in intricate patterns.

“Erase the false distortion and return it to its true warped form...”

His ten fingers tapped the air as if playing an invisible instrument.

“Evil to evil, ash to ash, dust to dust.”

With each movement, waves of darkness rippled outward, layering and shaking the space. The ceiling, floor, and walls trembled.

“Even death follows order, so let this twisted hell return to its right path.”

The candy hallway began to fade.

Serati’s face stiffened in shock.

‘What...?!’

The chocolate patterns on the ceiling disappeared, revealing bones wrapped in pulsating veins.

The bread-like walls shifted and transformed into writhing chunks of flesh.

Instead of glittering candy chandeliers, strange, burning blue tentacles twisted eerily.

Even the floor was now a carpet of countless interwoven human bones.

“Ugh...”

Serati took a step back, looking around in horror.

The once whimsical candy house had turned into a gruesome, blood-red house of flesh.

Everything was grotesque, terrifying, and bizarre.

“What... what is this?”

Baros and Karnak answered casually, as if it were nothing out of the ordinary.

“What do you mean?”

“This is the real form of this place.”

Both of them acted like they knew all along.

Despite her shock, Serati understood in hindsight.

‘No wonder those two, who go crazy for sweets, didn’t even glance at the candy...’

Karnak and Baros settled down and took a seat.

“Alright, let’s rest for a bit.”

Frowning, Serati glanced down the hallway.

“Can we really relax here?”

Another group of winged monkeys was flying toward them, closing the distance rapidly. They would be here in a matter of seconds—at least, that’s how it appeared.

“It’s fine,” Karnak assured her, pointing at the monkeys.

They weren’t able to get any closer. No matter how much they flapped their wings and flew, they stayed in the same spot.

“It’ll take them at least a month to get from there to here.”