CHAPTER 141: WARNING DO NOT UNLOCK

At the Border of the Emerald Green Kingdom...

The air was thick with rot and malice, each breath a struggle against the acrid smoke that curled and drifted through the sky like ghostly serpents. The ground cracked underfoot, dry and blackened, soaked with the remnants of some unseen massacre. In the wind, there was a stench—burnt flesh, old blood, and something darker, like resentment made manifest.....sdfsdf

From time to time, the haze parted just enough to reveal grotesque silhouettes. Monsters born from smoke and sorrow staggered through the mists, their forms twisted and indistinct, but their eyes—if one could call them that—glowed with unspeakable pain. Eyes brimming with wrath, hatred, and despair. They howled not for vengeance, but because their souls had forgotten everything except suffering.

As one moved deeper into this cursed boundary, the scenery only worsened. The monsters grew larger, crueler, more malformed. Some had limbs that didn’t belong, others bore faces—dozens of them—etched into their bodies like tormented masks, forever screaming.

Yet no matter their shape, all of them shared one thing: an overwhelming aura of resentment. It seeped from their every pore, so thick it clung to the skin like filth, choking the spiritual energy from the air.

Then, with a thunderous roar—

Boom!

Three streaks of golden light tore through the sky, shattering the grim stillness. They descended like wrathful meteors, colliding with the earth in succession. The impact shook the land, displacing smoke and ash in a shockwave of divine brilliance.

When the smoke cleared, three figures emerged from the crater.

Darius—the inheritor of an ancient, noble bloodline, his armor etched with forgotten glyphs.

Felicia—the heir to the Sun God, her radiant aura struggling to hold back the darkness.

And finally, Rosary—the last representative of the fallen Federation, her robes tattered but her presence still dignified, like a candle refusing to die in the wind.

Rosary’s eyes widened as she took in the scene before her.

Her fists clenched, nails digging into her palms until they bled. Her entire body trembled—not from fear, but from the grief clawing at her heart.

Before her stood the shattered remains of what once was a bustling outpost—now nothing more than a graveyard of smog and spirits.

And those spirits... they weren’t monsters.

No, they had once been people. Human. Citizens of the Federation.

She could still see the outlines of their lives in the way the smoke twisted, in the silent sobs that escaped their mouths—mouths that no longer had flesh.

Each pair of eyes that locked with hers was a spear to her heart, each whisper of resentment a curse upon her soul.

They had trusted her. Believed in her protection. And now they wandered, soulless and corrupted.

"How... could this happen?" she whispered, her voice breaking under the weight of her guilt.

Darius, who had been silently assessing their surroundings, narrowed his eyes.

He heard her words, and though they grated against his pragmatic instincts, he said nothing.

Stupid woman.

That was his first thought. The cause was obvious to anyone with half a brain. The answer was clear, spelled in blood and darkness.

But despite the frustration simmering in his chest, Darius didn’t lash out.

He understood. To her, these weren’t just casualties—they were names, faces, lives. Her people. Her failure.

And deep down, even he found it hard to justify the sheer scale of what had happened.

Yes, the Undead Princess had been defeated. But at what cost?

A million lives? A million souls turned into these twisted abominations?

Even for someone like Darius, who had long walked the fine line between necessity and cruelty, the memory of the massacre turned his stomach.

He could still see it: an entire city erupting into gore—bodies bursting like ripened fruit, painting the sky in red mist. The ground quaking with the weight of their collective agony.

And behind it all, standing untouched, was the Venom Fang Overlord.

Ricky.

The one who orchestrated it all.

The terrifying thought gnawed at Darius’s mind:

If Ricky wanted, could he also be reduced to a smear of blood in the blink of an eye?

Would he even get a chance to react?

The mere thought sent an involuntary shiver down his spine.

Yet, while Darius was lost in the shadows of that memory, Felicia stood in stark contrast.

Her expression was blank. Unmoved. Her golden eyes reflected no sadness, no remorse—only serenity.

To her, Ricky’s actions weren’t cruel. They were just.

A necessary sacrifice.

The lives of a million for the defeat of the Undead Princess? That was a bargain any strategist would make.

No, to Felicia, it wasn’t a tragedy. It was divine retribution. A purification by poison and death.

Still... even she wasn’t immune to the horror of how it had happened.

She recalled the moment when hundreds of thousands exploded at once—the sound, the stench, the way blood rained from the sky as if the heavens themselves were weeping.

Even her soul, aligned with the Sun God’s divine will, had trembled in that moment.

Without realizing it, her lips began to move.

A low murmur—an old Sun God prayer—escaped her mouth, the divine words anchoring her against the echoes of that nightmare.

Then, a calm yet resolute voice broke the silence.

Darius.

"We better hurry," he said, voice firm, piercing the oppressive air like a blade. "The situation is worsening. From what I’ve seen, Stage 2 resentment monsters have already begun manifesting."

His eyes, sharp and cold, swept across the corrupted landscape.

"It won’t be long before Stage 3 appear. If we’re caught here unprepared, we’ll be adding our names to the smoke."

Felicia nodded, her hands now glowing with holy light. The warmth of her Sun God aura flickered, attempting to push back the suffocating cold of the cursed land.

Darius continued, voice grim.

"If Felicia fails to purify all this resentment, we’ll have no choice but to seal this entire region. Turn it into a forbidden zone."

He paused.

"For the good of everyone."

No one argued.

Because deep inside, they all knew—

The dead were already lost.

But if they didn’t act now, the living would follow.

Rosary was fully aware of the implications. She understood them logically—strategically, even—but her heart stubbornly refused to accept them.

That side of her, the one shaped by memories of laughter and warmth, could not forgive what had happened.

She wanted to point a trembling finger toward the Venom Fang Overlord and scream.

To demand answers.

To curse him for every mangled corpse and every hollow-eyed wraith now roaming these lands.

"How could he let this happen?"

Her voice cracked in her throat, but the words echoed silently in her mind.

"If the sacrifice was a must, then why didn’t he offer his own life? Why not bear the burden himself and save all these innocents?"

Even as those thoughts poisoned her soul, beside her, Felicia had dropped to one knee, her palms pressed together, her golden hair catching the faintest shimmer of the tainted air.

She had begun to chant in a calm, reverent tone. Her voice was clear—firm, yet soothing—like a priestess untouched by the chaos around her.

"Oh great Sun Lord,

You are the only one who gives birth to life on the land.

Life prospers because of you, and perishes in the shadow of your displeasure.

Show your divine light to these lost lands."

As her final words rang out like the toll of a sacred bell, the very air around her quivered. The dim, rancid miasma trembled as if cowering before a greater presence.

Then, like a tidal wave of dawn, a mighty spiritual field burst forth from her body.

It expanded outward, golden and pure, enveloping everything within hundreds of meters. The oppressive gloom shattered like cracked glass. The light didn’t simply illuminate—it cleansed.

The moment the golden radiance touched them, the monsters of resentment shrieked, a piercing, guttural sound filled with torment. Their forms, twisted and soaked in hate, began to unravel.

One by one, they dissolved into smoke, wailing as they vanished—like souls finally freed from the agony of lingering between life and death.

Darius stood behind them, arms crossed, his expression unreadable.

But deep down, a surge of relief rippled through his chest.

Though his face betrayed none of it, his clenched jaw relaxed ever so slightly.

This cursed zone... this festering blight born from madness and massacre... had become a thorn in his side.

Whether he admitted it or not, this land was now his home.

He had no intention of letting it fall into ruin again.

Not after the Undead Incursion.

Not after everything they had endured.

Sure, the heavy lifting had been done by the Venom Fang Overlord, in his own terrifying and merciless way.

But it didn’t make the aftermath any less exhausting.

The people, the land, the power dynamics—everything had been flipped upside down.

And the worst part?

The threat posed by his father still loomed over him like a guillotine, silent but ever-present.

He didn’t want to face another catastrophe while that shadow hung above his head.