CHAPTER 159: THIS IS WHERE GOD DIED (3).

Something enormous occupied the ravine floor, its mass taking up nearly the entire space.

It was covered by the colorful mushrooms and fungi, which served as a blanket that obscured its true form from his vision.

At first, Nero’s brain refused to process what he was looking at. The shapes were all wrong and didn’t fit into anything he could seem had formed naturally.

It was too large and too strange to fit into any category he understood. It looked like a hillside that had collapsed in on itself, or perhaps a rock formation that had been twisted by some tremendous force.

Or maybe even a vestige of the past. Some construct created by the ancient people...

His gaze traversed through the bottom of the ravine that glowed slightly from all the floating bioluminescent spores and fungi.

That was when his eyes took notice of something as they widened.

"Is that..."

Indeed.

Nero saw a skull.

A very large one at that, much larger than any house, and even the Church back at Gor.

It was partially buried in the moss and fungus, but the shape was unmistakable. A cranium the size of a small building, eye sockets large enough to crawl inside, teeth like standing stones jutting from a jaw that could have swallowed entire rivers.

It was simply enormous.

Far more enormous than his mind could comprehend or explain.

His mind went blank with shock.

"Oracle," he whispered, his voice barely audible even to himself. "What the hell am I looking at?"

The response came immediately, without the need to enter the subconscious space as the Oracle clearly recognized the significance of what he’d found.

{It would bode well for the Heretic to be cautious. You stand before the corpse of an original Grigori, one of the True Watchers who fell from grace and the heavens}.

Nero was silent for a moment.

Then he exclaimed, "What in the Seven Hells?!"

Truly, it was rather shocking. Perhaps even borderline terrifying.

On a random escapade, he had come into contact with the corpse of a god. Of an original Gryghori.

Could there be anything stranger, scarier and more exciting as this?!

Surely not!

In his fear and excitement , Nero’s gaze ran over the enormous skeleton. With him being able to identify the skull, he could very well see the other parts.

Compared to the skull, the other parts of this titanic... being were even larger.

Compared to this, the Godtree that had once hosted the soul of Sariel seemed minute in comparison.

"A being that once served as a bridge between humanity and the divine, now reduced to carrion for fungi. Could there be anything more ironic?" He muttered to himself.

Then he shook his head.

’Still, I have to be cautious.’ He said, remembering the words of the Oracle. It was paramount he exercised caution. The corpse of a Gryghori means there were most likely somethings that could kill him instantly in a mere breath.

Of course, he was already surrounded by those things. Probably.

But it was even more terrifying when linked to the original corruption...

He took several steps back away from the gargantuan corpse.

His mind spun rampantly.

"What would the remnants of a Gryghori be doing out here in the open? Why is it dead? Weren’t they all sealed away?"

He pursed his lips. There were certainly plenty things he was missing for sure, so he held onto the thought for now. After All, jumping to conclusions would be counterintuitive.

If this really was the corpse of an actual, genuine Grigori, one of the original fallen angels that had corrupted themselves through humanity’s worship, the same type of being as Sariel and Orion, the angels whose actions had shaped the entire world’s current state...

Then this island was definitely not as simple as he had originally thought.

All of a sudden, a pang of fear gripped his heart.

If there was an Abomination that had perhaps fed on the body of the Gryghori and it was still around... Wouldn’t that be bad?

The air seemed to become stale and stuffy all of a sudden.

Every shadow and flickering spire suddenly looked like a threat.

Nero closed his eyes and took in a deep breath,

"Calm down. I’m getting myself worked up for nothing."

Obviously, if there was something here stronger than he was, it would have pounced on him a long time ago.

He turned his gaze back to the Divine corpse.

Although it was very, very dead, Nero could sense the tremendous amount of power radiating off of the corpse.

He froze then shook his head,

’Absolutely not...’

He definitely couldn’t place his gaze with Heretic Eyes onto the archaic bones. If he did that, there was no telling what the consequences would look like.

At the very least, he would have his eyes gouged out and his brain turned into mush.

And so, he decided, after some contemplating, not to move forward until he got some answers.

"Which one?" Nero asked, his curiosity overriding his sense of self-preservation. "Which Grigori is this?"

Although the question seemed unimportant, there was a reason for it.

He knew that the origins of the gods, or the Gryghori, were usually tied to their effects on the world. Or rather the effects the humans perceived.

With Sariel, it was the Gryghori’s effect on nature and on life. With Orion, the Gryghori was willed into being by the observations of the stars hanging in the firmament.

Both gods also had effects on the humans who’s hope and desires had brought about their being.

However, to what degree? He had no idea.

He looked around at all the floating spores and the floral fungi.

’Could it be that these things were created from its power?’ Nero began to think.

However, such thoughts were immediately shut down by the Oracle.

{It is impossible to know. When a Grigori dies, it releases the majority of its accumulated essence back into the world. This discharge does not necessarily transform the surrounding area according to the specific nature of the divinity the Grigori cultivated during its existence. With that being said, it is indeed that way in some cases so it is impossible to truly gauge based on the environmental aftereffects. Due to this, the being’s identity becomes obscured by its own final act of corruption}.