Ke-style law enforcement officers

Chapter 335 A Frail Soul

The battle that took place just minutes ago seems like a lifetime ago.

Milo looked down at his hands. No more blood was seeping from the cracks in his broken skin. The only real sensation he felt here was the excruciating pain signals transmitted to his brain from these wounds.

……

"How did you do that?"

Nero turned around and saw Milo.

His face looked many times older than when Milo had seen him two days earlier, with wrinkles crowding his face like dried tree bark.

His eyes were filled with confusion and bewilderment.

Clearly, Nero did not know why he was in a kneeling position.

He might not even remember what he's done these past few days.

……

"Dream Guide".

Milo slumped to the ground, exhausted, trying desperately to cough up the blood from the bottom of his throat. But this was the Dream World, and his physical pain was derived from his state in the real world. Coughing until he died was useless.

"As long as I can find the source of your inner fear, I can temporarily enter your world of consciousness..."

"So you've always known what I'm afraid of, right?"

Nero gave a wry smile.

His story of fighting his way out of Icom alone might sound like a heroic feat to those in the know, but Milo knew very well that that night was not only Morgot's nightmare, but also Nero's nightmare for more than twenty years.

So much so that, throughout those long years, he never dared to set foot in Iqum again.

But he could never let go of his homeland.

This led to the tragedy of Karl, at least that's what Nero himself believed.

……

Nero stared blankly at Kai hanging on the wall.

The mycelium spreading from Kai's body was constantly eroding this space, and as he spoke with Milo, Kai's figure became increasingly blurred.

Nero's eyes were filled with reluctance and frustration, and his tone was full of helplessness and exhaustion.

“I shouldn’t have let you bring her back from Iqm. I thought it was God giving me a chance to atone for my sins…”

"Understandable."

Milo continued to cough up blood.

However, not a drop of blood foam came out of his mouth.

He looked at the old man in front of him with a complicated expression:

“You killed all your relatives, there is no reason to abandon your only blood relative in that desolate mountain.”

“But all of this was planned by someone else. It had no intention of letting Ikm go, nor of letting any member of our race go. Kay was its last host, and I was the last worshipper. It has always been in my mind, never leaving…”

Nero's body trembled uncontrollably.

He didn't even have the courage to look Kai in the eye.

Milo sighed.

The Great Old Ones, the Outer Gods.

Their methods of manipulating humans have always been so uncreative: constantly weakening a human's sanity and crushing their will—a trick the Outer Gods have never failed to pull off.

No matter how powerful a soul may be, under the torment of countless years, it will one day be reborn as one of their playthings.

Since the massacre of the Ickum clan twenty-four years ago, the nightmare has haunted Nero. He seems to have survived, but this is just an illusion. The truth is that the projection of Yog-Sothoth has been following him all along, never leaving him for a moment.

Everything Nero did was a futile struggle for it.

It is waiting for the right moment, and when everything is ready, it only needs to gently manipulate the fine threads that are already firmly nailed to this soul to put the plan into practice.

It's even possible that Karl's death was part of its calculations.

In order to crush the old man's soul, the only way is to show him the death of his closest loved one, thus hastening the arrival of that day.

Perhaps it is true, as the raven said, that the weak human soul is simply no match for the seduction of evil gods.

……

“Sometimes I wonder why, after experiencing such things, I never once thought of ending my own life, and even on many occasions when I was on the front lines of investigation, I was always able to survive from seemingly hopeless situations.” Nero looked down at his aged hands and fell into self-doubt.

"Perhaps it has nothing to do with my will; it simply prevents me from dying."

……

"Hey, I'm not here to discuss these things with you."

Milo wiped the blood from his face and tapped the wooden floor, trying to get Nero's attention:

"Help me out? Help me save that child. No matter what that image in your head is all about, we're the ones who rescued Kai from Icam, right?"

"If you don't wake up soon, it's really over."

"Kay will be torn to pieces, and she will give birth to new Outer God offspring."

"You haven't done any of the things you promised her, you old geezer. Damn it, that young girl brings you vegetable soup and pastries every day, and you're just going to throw her away to that shitty alien god?"

"Cheer up, old man! Think of old Moggot of Galeid!"

"Damn it, I can only kill you during the dream-inducing stage... cough cough..."

Milo was using his persuasive skills, but before he could finish speaking, he started coughing violently again.

In the real world, he and Monquia were already suspended above the fog wall by afterimages, and a terrifying distorting force field was intensifying wildly, about to crush their bodies.

Meanwhile, the world of Dream Guide is being eroded inch by inch by the mycelium spreading from Kai's body, and is on the verge of collapse.

"Chichi..."

At the edge of chaos, Milo saw a blurry figure squeezing in.

This time, Milo was able to make out the outline of the afterimage.

Its physique and clothing were remarkably similar to Nero's, except that its pupils seemed to be filled with a foamy substance...

The afterimage seemed to have noticed that Milo had awakened Nero in the Dream World.

It is now destroying this world of consciousness, trying to expel Milo.

……

Buzz! ! ! !

Everything within sight crumbled.

Milo was pushed out.

When he opened his eyes again, the pain was magnified dozens of times. He was hanging on the fog wall.

The same goes for Monqueya.

Countless pieces of floorboards were embedded in their bodies, and fungal hyphae had spread to their feet, waiting to erode their bodies.

Milo's eyes were obscured by a bloody mist.

His breathing was suppressed, and even his consciousness and thoughts were suppressed to the point of being unable to function.

Directly in front of them, an afterimage hovered in mid-air, ignoring the two of them.

"Be buried with me, you blasphemers. Your bones will be the first stepping stone for my arrival in this world. It is your honor."

……

Monqueya was nearly in despair.

He stared coldly at the afterimage, his pale face devoid of any color and showing no fear whatsoever.

He had done everything he could. He called out the other's real name and stood to the end as a challenger, living up to the will his teacher had instilled in him. Monquia had no regrets.

But Milo is far from giving up.

Although blood had filled his eyes, he still saw a familiar figure standing up inside the fog wall.

"Raven got the vast majority of things right, except for one thing... cough cough..."

"The human soul is indeed weak, but this time he still withstood the temptation of the Outer Gods..."

……

Within the fog walls where light is distorted and force fields are collapsing.

Nero no longer maintained the posture of a worshipper.

He stood up, facing the afterimage.

Although the years had diminished his upright stature, the moment he drew the long-sealed sword from his cane as he faced the afterimage, he seemed to become once again the young man who had fought his way out of the desolate mountains of Ikham more than twenty years ago.

The afterimage also noticed Nero's actions.

It shocked him more than anyone else.

Because it knew very well that it was a soul it had crushed, a soul that should have been the most faithful worshipper...

...

The ceremony ended the moment Nero rose.

He was the last pilgrim remaining in the world.

All the final faith that Sothos carried came from Nero.

That was the source of his power and the driving force behind the ritual.

……

However, this is the law enforcement headquarters.

An elderly law enforcement inspector, a physically and mentally exhausted old man, finally stood up at the last moment to face his nightmare.

It was a being that even the Church trembled before, yet Nero, a mere human, drew his staff and sword against it.

He lacked the powerful soul of a visionary.

Unlike Milo, he doesn't possess an inhuman physique.

But in the end, he did not become a servant of evil as the raven had predicted.

Instead, they fought back with their last ounce of strength.

Even though the price he would pay for doing so would be his life.

……

The staff-sword severed the mycelium.

It also severed the medium through which Sothos continuously projected his power into this world, namely Nero himself.

He announced his return, and ended his life as quickly as possible.

The blood-stained staff-sword slipped from his hand, its sharp blade embedded at a sharp angle into the floor.

……

Nero is dead.

As his life came to an end, the mycelium that had spread from Kai's body began to wither.

The strange bulge in her abdomen emitted a sharp roar, but it was eventually smoothed out by an invisible force.

Within the wall of mist, the lingering shadow roared in resentment.

It could neither understand nor forgive why a soul it had kept in captivity for decades would become the key to its defeat at the last moment.

The power projected from another world began to dry up.

Its form gradually dissipated.

But it is far from reaching the point of collapse.

It entered a state of rage.

The entire world inside the fog wall began to tremble violently.

……

Milo and Monquia broke free from the pull of gravity and landed on their own.

"You controlled his suicide?" Monquia picked up the scythe and glanced at Milo.

Milo shook his head:

"It was his own choice."

……

"Its offspring have already died in the womb, and the remaining afterimage will soon dissipate, but not too quickly."

Monquia, gripping the broken scythe, asked Milo:

"Are you prepared to commit a serious crime?"

"As if I had a choice." Milo shook the blood off his hands, clenched his fist again, and made a cracking sound.

At this moment, the enraged afterimage ahead had already locked its gaze on Milo.

"You destroyed my incarnation, then become my incarnation! Sinner who drank the blood of the Lord's Supper!! I accept your body!!!"

(End of this chapter)