Only members who were already close to death were assigned to cleanse 'corruption'. That was an unbreakable rule within the African Department of Mysteries.
After all, when corruption could not be completely contained, those sent to eliminate it would inevitably become tainted themselves. As a result, everyone assigned to these missions was, in a sense, expendable.
Naturally, the department chose those whose lives were already approaching the inevitable end under corruption's descent.
They were silent sacrifices. They were heroes. Of that, there was no doubt.
The black-robed figure was carrying out the final duty of his final day alive. His movements were silent and efficient, like the workings of a perfectly crafted magical construct.
Beginning with the uppermost prison levels, the relatively "ordinary" cell blocks, he methodically worked his way downward.
Every empty cell, every bloodstained prison room, every dark corridor, and every possible hiding place, he examined them all using a unique method of detection that no one else could replicate: a fusion of magical perception and resonance with corruption itself.
Occasionally, he encountered one or two prisoners who had somehow survived the initial purge. Some had been driven insane by fear; others still struggled desperately to survive.
The black-robed figure showed neither pity nor hesitation. A light tap of his wand, or a silent ripple of magic, and every sign of life was extinguished forever.
His methods were swift and precise. Death came instantly, leaving no opportunity for a dying curse or a final message to escape.
Soon, he arrived at the underground junction hall where the final battle had taken place. The lingering corruption and Abyssal aura were strongest here.
He raised his wand and cast several powerful purification spells, but the results were negligible. The power of the Abyss was astonishingly stubborn, and ordinary purification magic simply could not eradicate it.
The black-robed figure remained silent for a moment. Then he reached into his robes and removed several small vials made of different materials.
Inside them were not holy water or blessed powder; instead, they contained far stranger substances: silver dust that shimmered with starlight, a black, viscous liquid that seemed somehow alive as it slowly writhed within its bottle, and finely ground unknown minerals that released an oddly refreshing fragrance.
"I have to do what must be done," the black-robed figure murmured to himself.
Carefully, and with extreme restraint, he sprinkled these materials over the places most heavily contaminated by darkness, especially over the remnants left behind by the prisoners who had sacrificed themselves, where even their ashes had taken on an ominous black hue.
When the silver dust landed upon the charred stone floor, faint sizzling sounds echoed, and the unnatural chill receded from a small area.
The black liquid behaved as though alive, flowing over the traces left behind by the Abyssal shadows, slowly swallowing and assimilating them. Meanwhile, the powdered minerals emitted strange vibrations that appeared to interfere with the lingering psychological effects of the corruption.
These substances were experimental creations. Over many years, they had been discovered or developed during research into resisting, or more accurately, pacifying, the corruption affecting both themselves and their surroundings.
They could not completely purify corruption, but they could suppress its activity to a certain degree, preventing it from spreading further or infecting those who came afterward.
The black-robed figure worked with painstaking care, overlooking nothing. Even a pinch of seemingly ordinary ash would receive treatment if it contained even the faintest abnormal fluctuation of energy.
The cleanup was slow and tedious, yet he displayed not the slightest impatience. Time passed in silence and labor.
At last, after completing his inspection of the level directly above the chamber where Saruman waited, he scattered one final pinch of silver dust over an almost imperceptible trace of lingering energy. Only then did he stop.
Now, throughout the entire underground prison, aside from himself and Saruman within the chamber, not a single living creature remained.
Every prisoner, whether guilty beyond redemption or innocent enough to have been caught in the chaos, had become either a cold corpse or meaningless dust.
Every magical trap and alarm system had been temporarily taken over or disabled. Every trace of corruption had been suppressed as thoroughly as possible. Nothing had been left to chance.
He stood at the stairway leading to the deepest chamber. For one final moment, he looked back upon the vast prison he himself had transformed into a land of death. There was no sense of accomplishment in those vertical pupils, only profound exhaustion and complete indifference.
"...It's time to see my teacher one last time."
Turning around, the black-robed figure descended the cold stone staircase one step at a time, his footsteps echoing clear and lonely through the empty passage.
The entrance to the chamber soon came into view. Beyond the door, he could feel Saruman's immense yet perfectly restrained magical presence. Like an anchor holding the world steady, it guarded the final secret.
"So... you've returned?" The blind old wizard, Saruman, still sat exactly where he had been, as though a thousand years had passed without changing his posture in the slightest.
His empty eye sockets faced his returning student. Though he possessed no sight, the black-robed figure knew his teacher already understood everything that had happened above. "Is it finished?"
Saruman's voice remained calm and emotionless.
"...Yes," the black-robed figure answered with only a single syllable.
He stopped a short distance before his teacher. His black robes remained spotless, yet the lingering scent of blood and the aura of the Abyss seemed to have soaked permanently into his very soul.
The chamber fell silent once more. Only the nearly inaudible breathing of the two men remained, along with the faint blue magical glow lingering around Saruman's fingertips, trembling gently as though ready to illuminate another memory at any moment.
The chaos and slaughter above and the ancient stillness below formed a stark contrast.
The memories beyond the stone door, of 'R'lyeh' and the final outcome, began to unfold once again.
"I chose to show you the answer... because the Final Day is drawing near."
Saruman continued casting his Memory Magic. The immediate threat in reality had been resolved for the time being, yet the weight of history and the shadow hanging over the future still rested heavily upon the hearts of both master and disciple. The answer was finally beginning to reveal itself.
---
Saruman and Kag carried Lina into the portal. An overwhelming sensation of weightlessness seized them, making it feel as though they had crossed an endless void and countless ages of time.
The oppressive walls of the corridor vanished. In their place appeared a kaleidoscope of wildly spinning fragments of impossible colors, as though the Creator had overturned His palette, or as though they were staring through a lens into the maddened essence of the universe itself.
Incomprehensible noises roared beside their ears, sometimes sounding like the insane whispers of billions of people, sometimes resembling the silent echoes of dying stars shattering apart. Every sound clawed relentlessly at their sanity.
"Damn it! How far have we crossed?!" Saruman gripped his wand tightly, pouring every ounce of concentration into the protective spell shielding his mind.
Meanwhile, Kag clenched his teeth and held Lina even tighter against his back, trying to fuse her into his very bones while resisting the unimaginable horror of crossing dimensions.
No one knew how much time passed, perhaps only an instant within their consciousness, or perhaps an eternity long enough for civilizations to rise and fall countless times.
Then, suddenly, the tearing sensation disappeared, and solid ground returned beneath their feet. For the first time in what felt like forever, they could once again feel the firmness of earth beneath their boots.
The scenery around them gradually stabilized, like ripples fading from the surface of water.
"What... is this place?"
They stood within a world whose desolation and lifelessness defied language.
The sky was an eternal, oppressive color without a sun, moon, or stars; only an unknown, cold, uniform light illuminated everything from every direction at once. Its source could not be identified, nor could the passage of time be sensed.
Beneath them stretched cracked black stone that extended as far as the eye could see, as though the entire planet had been scorched and carbonized. The air was saturated with dust as thick as volcanic ash, mixed with the pungent smell of sulfur.
Even breathing made their lungs burn. There was no sign of life, no plants, no insects, not even the faintest breeze. Absolute silence wrapped around everything like a heavy burial shroud.
"W-We... we're back on the surface?" Kag looked around in disbelief, his voice hoarse from exhaustion and thirst.
Although the landscape before them resembled the edge of Hell itself, at least the suffocating confinement of the Infinite Corridor, along with the endless whispers and humming that haunted every corner, had completely vanished. The relief that washed over him was so overwhelming it almost made him collapse.
"Thank goodness..." Carefully, he lowered Lina onto a relatively flat slab of black stone, allowing her to lean against it. He rolled his aching shoulders, stiff from carrying her for so long. "It looks like fortune is finally on our side."
Saruman also let out a long, deep sigh, as though the breath carried away the darkness that had weighed upon his chest for so long.
His youthful face, already weathered by countless hardships, finally relaxed for the first time since entering the ruins. Looking around this dead world, he spoke with joyful disbelief.
"It really worked! Kag! We made it! We actually escaped that cursed place! We got out of that corridor no one could ever leave!"
For that brief moment, he even forgot that Lina still lay unconscious under the effects of the Stunning Spell and that the strange markings covering Kag's body had yet to disappear. Hope, like a flame suddenly ignited within darkness, drove back a portion of their despair.
"Let's save Lina!"
Without the slightest hesitation, Saruman immediately raised his wand.
Gathering his focus, he began chanting the coordinates for a long-distance Apparition spell, one that would return them to his magical tower on the western continent, a place protected by powerful wards and equipped with every comfort.
He had practiced this spell countless times; it was as familiar to him as breathing.
The incantation flowed smoothly from his lips. Immense magical power surged through his body and into his wand as he pointed it toward empty space, attempting to tear open reality and establish a stable passage home.
But when the magic poured forth, it vanished like a stone sinking into the sea. Not the slightest spatial ripple appeared. The twisting of space, the folding of light, everything he expected failed to manifest.
He remained standing exactly where he was upon the charred black stone, surrounded by unchanging silence.
"...Huh?" The smile on Saruman's face instantly froze like ice cracking apart, and a flash of astonishment crossed his eyes. Unwilling to accept it, he tried again.
This time, he poured even more magical power into the spell, and the crystal atop his wand shone with dazzling brilliance from the overload.
The result remained exactly the same: nothing. Not even the slightest response. The long-distance teleportation spell had completely failed in this bizarre place.
"What's going on? Teleportation magic... isn't working?"
There was an unmistakable tremor in Saruman's voice. The flame of hope that had just been rekindled was instantly doused with ice-cold water.
Kag quickly recovered from his brief euphoria, a warrior's instincts taking over immediately.
His hand tightened around the hilt of the greatsword slung across his back as his sharp eyes swept across every inch of the seemingly tranquil but deeply unsettling landscape. His muscles tensed once more.
"Maybe... we haven't actually left the influence of those ruins yet," he spoke in a low voice, trying to arrive at a reasonable explanation. "This region may still be affected by an even stronger, invisible force. Just as the corridor disrupted our sense of direction... this place is disrupting spatial magic."
It was a perfectly reasonable theory.
"That's certainly possible."
Saruman frowned, forcing himself to think calmly. Kag's reasoning made sense; the bizarre nature and overwhelming power of the Cthulhu Ruins had already surpassed anything they had previously imagined.
Its influence was unlikely to have been limited to the underground corridor alone. This desolate world that appeared to be the surface might still be part of the ruins, perhaps even the outer edge of its true core.
"You're right." He looked toward the endless wasteland beneath the dim yellow sky. "We can't stay here waiting to die. If we keep moving... once we leave the central area of interference, magic may begin functioning normally again."
The two exchanged a glance, and within each other's eyes, they saw their determination gathering once more. Their hope had suffered a blow, but it had not been extinguished.
They hoisted the unconscious Lina onto their backs again. After adjusting their equipment, they began making their way across the endless rocky wasteland, one difficult step after another.
The black stone beneath their feet was hard and razor-sharp, demanding constant caution. The air was saturated with dust and sulfur, invading every breath and leaving their throats burning.
As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but endless black rock beneath a dull yellow sky.
No water, no vegetation, no trace of life, not even a single stone of a different color. It was as though this world had died at the very moment of creation and had remained dead ever since.
They walked for a very long time, so long that Saruman repeatedly had to cast magic to relieve Kag's exhaustion and to maintain Lina's basic life functions. The passage of time became impossible to judge.
Only the endlessly repeating black rocks beneath their feet and the horizon that never seemed to draw closer marked their journey.
Just as Kag's strength was once again approaching its limit and Saruman realized that his magical power was recovering far more slowly than he was spending it, a blurry silhouette gradually emerged upon the distant horizon. It grew clearer and larger. It was the outline of a city.
But the moment they recognized its appearance, both men stopped breathing as a freezing terror rose from the deepest level of their understanding.
An invisible, crushing pressure radiated from the city, far more terrifying than the whispers inside the corridor. It was the tangible oppression of something absolutely ancient, absolutely alien, and absolutely insane.
Without realizing it, they slowed their pace and approached cautiously. Near the city's edge stood an enormous stone monument. It had been split apart by some unimaginable force and now leaned at an angle from the scorched earth.
"Damn..." Suppressing both the overwhelming mental discomfort and the instinctive warning rising from the depths of his soul, Saruman drew a deep breath.
He stepped forward. Gathering everything he knew about linguistics, symbolism, and mysticism, he prepared to decipher even the simplest mark carved into the monument. Perhaps it would reveal the name of this place, its history, or some clue that could lead them home.
And then,
"'Avada Kedavra!'"
A voice, a voice utterly out of place amid the absolute silence of this dead world, a voice that did not belong to the ancient madness surrounding them, pierced their ears like an icy needle.
It was 'Ian Prince'.
(End Of This Chapter)
You can read ahead up to 110 chapters on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/darkshadow6395