abcnovels
Chapter 37 What Waits In These Depths
Chapter 37 What Waits In These Depths
[Deep within the bowels of the Obsidian Dungeon]
"...Sin. Sin. Sinner…"
A lanky man stood tall, dressed in all-black, neatly robes that resembled that of a priest, though inscribed on the surface of the black, a crimson-painted cross was etched down his chest.
Down his shoulders, snow-white hair reached down, long and obscuring his bony, pale complexion as he stared downwards with wide, maddened eyes.
"Please…stop…! I'll give you anything you want–j-just please…! Let me go..!"
On the ground, a man dressed in the all-white, unmistakable uniform of an [Equip] was soaked in blood of his own, attempting to crawl away across the sooty ground of the dungeon floor.
"Sinner, why is it that you beg? Have you no understanding of the punishment you've come to earn?" The maddened, thin man with snow-white hair said without any remorse.
"Please…! I don't know what you're talking about!"
The man drenched in blood shook his head, pleading with a stream of tears running down his cheeks. Both of his legs had been eviscerated, leaving him unable to walk as each time he crawled, he left a trail of fresh crimson.
The lanky, pale man was not alone; others stood in silence, obscured in their robes as they watched the scene.
Unalone, the brutality shown to the hazel-haired, terrified man was not left to just him; chained to the walls, the remains of others who must've met the same fate were on display.
"You've brought this world to ruin! Your hubris, your avarice, your idiocy–! God has cursed us all, and it's because of you, you, you–!" The man suddenly broke his composed madness, letting out as he lashed out at the blood-soaked man.
"I didn't do anything…! I didn't–!" The man swore, pleading as his back met a wall, sending him into a further panic.
Closer, the maddened, thin man stepped towards him with his dark, black boots stepping across the blood-slick, metal flooring.
"God has not deemed you to live. With this world, you shall fall. You're unworthy of his paradise," the man whispered to him as if speaking a prayer.
From beneath his long, dark robes, the pale man seeped in madness retrieved a long, jewel-embedded blade that was as thin as a rapier, baring a silver-and-red handle.
The man below was helpless while the crazed attacker loomed over him with the thin, needle-like weapon in his hand.
"Let us offer this life to God, and let it be cherished in the pits of Hell," the man prayed.
As he spoke such perplexing words, the silent onlookers, part of his cultist group, held their hands together in a quiet prayer as the needle-blade was raised.
"No, no, no…!"
Squelch.
In a geyser of crimson, blood spewed out as the crazed man with hollow, unblinking eyes repeatedly stabbed the blade downwards without flinching.
Squelch. Squelch. Squelch.
Soon, the crying pleas of the man were replaced only with the sound of the building pool of warm, fresh fluid of red beneath his limp body.
"Another soul has been cleansed. Heaven is safe," the man looked up towards the dark ceiling, unlit by even the azure lanterns within the chamber, as if seeing some seraphic sight above, reaching upwards, "It's beauty, it's isolation, it's exclusivity…it's purity–today, that perfection is maintained."
The hooded, silent underlings of the white-haired, lanky man retrieved the body plucked full of holes, strapping the limp wrists of the fallen man to the wall whilst the maddened leader cleansed his needle.
Shrouded in ambiguity, the chamber was decorated in rough, torn carpets, stained and dirtied with puddles of blood, old and new, dried and running, creating a rancid stench of fermenting bodies and arterial fluid.
As he wiped the length of his thin blade down with a rag, he looked upwards with a glint in his eye.
"More sinners are here," the man announced in a surprised, but almost delighted mutter as his lips curved into a grin, "let us prepare for them–I can smell it in the air; there are five who have walked into their judgment."