Every mural was rendered in a single color, reminiscent of a monochromatic ink-wash painting. However, instead of black, they utilized varying shades of red.
Crimson, scarlet, bright red, blood-red, dark red, rust-red... The artist's skill was not high; they lacked any grasp of perspective or formal technique, and many scenes were little more than childish scribbles. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, these crude images were capable of making one's skin crawl, evoking a primal, deep-seated terror.
The paintings appeared to record a history or a myth in the style of a sequence, but the causality was utterly chaotic. It was as if the artist lacked any concept of logic or chronological order; everything happened and ended simultaneously. Only someone with an extraordinary level of sensory perception could resonate with the artist's mind and grasp the underlying meaning.
The ancestors of Mt. Gelmir had once endured a brutal war. Two tribes were depicted: one in deep red and the other in a lighter red. The light-red figures far outnumbered the dark-red ones, wielding spears and shields as they drove the dark-red tribe from the basin into the rugged mountains, surrounding them on all sides.
A tall, dark-red figure stood at a cave entrance, waving for the others to follow him into the depths. Some followed him inside; those who remained outside were slaughtered by the light-red tribe, and the cave entrance was sealed.
The perspective then shifted underground. The tall leader led his people through the dark, arduous trek deeper into the cavern. In the shadows, massive, scaled silhouettes flickered in and out of view—giant serpents monitoring them from places the tiny figures could not see.
Eventually, the people discovered their watchers in the dark and scattered in terror. Only the tall leader did not flee. Instead, he walked toward the serpents. The snakes coiled around him, ushering him toward the deepest reaches of the cave.
There, the leader stood before an impossibly massive serpent. The mural did not depict the creature's entire body, showing only the silhouette of half a head while the rest remained shrouded in darkness. Yet, even that half-head was hundreds of times larger than the leader himself.
The leader walked toward the serpent's maw, spreading his arms as he was devoured. In the next frame, the Great Serpent reopened its mouth, and within it stood a figure so red it was almost black. This figure possessed a long, distorted neck that lunged forward unnaturally, and its head appeared to have taken on a serpentine shape. Slender forelimbs protruded from a scaled upper body.
This grotesque, long-necked entity found the hiding dark-red survivors, followed by a sea of serpents. All the people knelt before the hybrid and the snakes, prostrating themselves in a symbol of absolute submission.
Next, the long-necked being led the serpents to break through the cave entrance. They emerged from the mountain, driving countless terrifying, scale-covered creatures to attack the light-red tribe, devouring them all.
"Rykard has seen these paintings," Raven said.
"What?"
"Don't you see? The oil paintings in the corridors of Volcano Manor drew inspiration from these murals—no, they are evolving toward them. These murals are something beyond abstract art; they are the result of turning the very essence of things into symbols. These murals are actually..."
He didn't finish his sentence.
These murals were, in fact, a prayerbook.
Raven manifested a Carian Slicer and carved out a finger-thick piece of rock from the painting. Behind the stone under the blade, the blood-colored pigment remained clearly visible. The dye had seeped deep into the rock itself; no wonder the images hadn't worn away with the passage of time.
He fell silent for a moment, then suddenly extinguished his Starlight magic, choosing not to look at the remaining murals.
"We have no more time to waste," Raven said, continuing through the darkness with Lansang.
the cavern's downward slope extended far further than expected.
Just as Raven began to worry that they wouldn't make it back to the Manor before dawn, they stepped into a remarkably wide, horizontal tunnel. The walls of this tunnel were smooth and level, possessing a perfectly regular circular contour. It didn't look like a natural formation, yet Raven could find no traces of manual carving.
Red light filtered in from the end of the tunnel. When Raven stepped out, the red glow was so intense that he could feel it penetrating his eyelids even with his eyes closed. For a moment, he found it difficult to look.
It took several seconds for him to adjust to the light.
Before him lay a vast lake of magma. It stretched out beyond the horizon, its surface rising and falling as bubbles churned and burst, creating a continuous, echoing rumble. Large clusters of Flame Slugs floated on the surface, their colors blending almost perfectly with the molten rock.
A choking, sulfur-scented wind blew against Raven's face. He looked up at the red and black clouds floating above the magma lake. Lightning occasionally flashed within the clouds, illuminating the edges of the granite dome above and revealing glimpses of its massive shadows.
Raven couldn't judge exactly how wide the cavern was, as the shores stretched out into the distance until they were lost in the thick, drifting haze. The height was equally difficult to determine; the granite dome sat like an inverted bowl, and Raven wouldn't have been surprised if the peak was several kilometers high.
Deep within the smoke and haze, a shadow as massive as a mountain range was faintly visible—it was the shape of a coiled Great Serpent.
"That... that couldn't be the Immortal Great Serpent, could it?" Lansang asked in shock.
Raven was startled at first, but after a closer look, he felt a sense of relief. "That's a shed skin. However, if the skin is that enormous, the actual serpent might be even harder to deal with than I imagined. Wait... is that someone underneath the skin?"
Lansang cast a Darkness incantation, and the two of them carefully sneaked forward, using the jagged rocks on the shore as cover while avoiding the Flame Slugs along the way.
By the time they were within a few hundred meters of the skin, not a single Flame Slug could be seen. It was as if an invisible line existed on the ground that they dared not cross.
The muffled sobs and heavy breathing of women drifted from the distance.
Raven looked toward three figures sitting against the shed skin and realized they were unusually tall—nearly half the size of the Trolls in the knightly orders. He drew the Sword of Night and Flame and cautiously approached. When he saw their faces, he froze in surprise.
"Wolf-Sleeping Maidens? First-generation Albinaurics?"
They had long, silver-white hair, and their facial features were remarkably similar to Loretta's, though their bodies were significantly larger. They were wrapped in filthy black cloth. According to Loretta, she was already the tallest among her kin—a fact she was often teased for—but the size of these three maidens far exceeded hers.
"Are you the Wolf-Sleeping Maidens?" Raven asked. "Why are you here?"
They didn't answer. They simply leaned against the serpent's skin, occasionally tilting their heads to bite off a small piece of it, chewing with great effort as if it were tough rubber. They seemed so consumed by this act that they didn't notice Raven and Lansang at all—or perhaps, they were simply incapable of noticing anything in the outside world.
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Elden Ring: The Unborn One's Journey Through Elden Ring(135 Chapter - Ongoing)
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