The World Is Mine For The Taking-Chapter 1293 - 197 - The Fall Of Milham Kingdom - Part 2 (8)

Gaspard's POV

I stood there quietly, watching as the Prince was carefully laid down at the very center of the ritual circle.

The stone floor beneath him had been carved with intricate symbols, lines twisting and spiraling into each other like veins spreading across the ground. When I looked at it from above, the entire formation almost resembled a living thing. A massive web of ancient runes, all connected in ways that only someone who had studied forbidden rituals for decades could properly understand.

It was… familiar.

Uncomfortably familiar, in fact.

The ritual circle looked almost identical to the immortality ritual we had performed long ago. Back then, the goal had been simple. We wanted to defy death itself. To step beyond the fragile limits that bound ordinary humans.

Of course, that ritual had ended in failure.

This time, however, the objective was different. Instead of trying to force immortality upon someone, we were attempting something arguably far more insane.

We were trying to grant him the power of a Great One.

According to the oldest historical records, the Great Ones were the beings who originally gifted abilities to humanity. Every power that people used in this world could ultimately be traced back to them in some form. They were the source. The origin. The terrifying ancestors of all supernatural abilities.

Though the stories never quite agreed on what exactly happened to them.

Some records claimed the Great Ones had vanished. Others insisted they had died long ago.

Then there were the stranger theories.

One account suggested that when the Great Ones died, their mana did not disappear. Instead, it scattered across the world like invisible dust. Their power drifted through the atmosphere, flowing through the air itself until fragments of it eventually found their way into humans.

It sounded absurd at first.

But at the same time, it explained a lot.

Many modern abilities were eerily similar to those attributed to the Great Ones in ancient legends.

And the Prince standing before us was one of the most obvious examples.

His power strongly resembled the ability of the Great Red. That particular Great One was said to wield flames so intense that they could burn entire continents. There were even regions in the world today where the ground remained permanently scorched, places where the air shimmered with unbearable heat.

People believed those lands were the remnants of the Great Red's power.

And the Prince carried a flame frighteningly close to that same legend.

After a few minutes passed, the heavy doors of the ritual chamber slowly creaked open.

Then the prisoners began pouring in.

At first, it was just a handful.

Then dozens.

Then hundreds.

Soon the chamber was filled with a sea of chained bodies.

Every single one of them had their eyes covered with thick blindfolds. Their arms were bound behind their backs, their legs shackled together with long iron chains that linked them to the prisoners beside them. The sound of metal clanking echoed throughout the massive underground hall as they were forced forward.

The noise alone was enough to give anyone a headache.

"These are criminals who were sentenced to death by the Emperor," Moriarty said casually beside me. "He sent them to us so we could use them for the ritual."

I blinked slowly and looked over the enormous crowd. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

"There are… this many?" I asked.

Because honestly, I had not been expecting this scale.

There were tens of thousands of them.

Maybe more.

From where I stood, the prisoners stretched so far across the chamber that they almost looked like a moving ocean of black cloth and rusted chains. It was honestly a bit ridiculous.

My first thought was simple.

How the hell did he move this many people without anyone noticing?

Moving even a few hundred prisoners should have caused massive commotion across the kingdom. Yet here they were. Thousands upon thousands of them standing quietly inside this underground chamber like it was the most normal thing in the world.

Then I remembered who I was dealing with.

Right.

Portals.

Moriarty could open portals.

When you had an ability that let you casually rip open space itself, transportation problems stopped being problems.

Still, another question lingered in my mind.

Just how many criminals did the Emperor even have locked up?

Looking at the sheer number of prisoners before us, it almost seemed like it was approaching a hundred thousand people. Maybe that was an exaggeration. Maybe not.

Either way, it was a lot.

"Well, these people were going to kill each other in the colosseum anyway," Moriarty continued, shrugging slightly. "So I asked the Emperor to hand them over instead. Using them here seemed more productive."

I stared at the prisoners again.

Well.

I could not argue with that logic.

Morally questionable? Absolutely.

Efficient? Also yes.

I slowly exhaled and glanced back toward the ritual circle.

The Prince lay motionless at the center, completely unaware of the sheer number of lives that were about to be sacrificed for his sake.

"Alright then," I muttered under my breath.

I rolled my shoulders slightly before stepping forward.

"Guess it's time for me to officially start."

Technically speaking, I was the one who had performed this ritual before. Back during the whole immortality experiment. Though that had happened so long ago that it almost felt like a different lifetime.

Truthfully, I had no idea how well this would work.

The last time we attempted something like this, the ritual failed spectacularly.

Which meant there was always the possibility that the entire method was flawed from the start.

But well…

We were already here.

Thousands of prisoners had already been gathered.

Turning back now would just be awkward.

So I began the ritual.

Three days passed.

Three long, exhausting days.

The ritual circle glowed continuously during that time, its runes pulsing with dim red light that illuminated the underground chamber like a dying heartbeat.

By the end of the third day, the result finally appeared.

Every single prisoner had collapsed.

Their bodies were scattered across the ritual grounds like discarded puppets. Thousands upon thousands of lifeless shells lay across the stone floor, their souls completely drained.

Because that was the key requirement for this ritual.

Lifeforce.

Lifeforce was something entirely different from mana or aura.

Mana could be trained.

Aura could be strengthened.

But lifeforce was the raw essence of existence itself. The fundamental energy that made living beings alive.

If someone possessed an overwhelming amount of lifeforce, they could theoretically live forever.

And if someone somehow learned how to properly control it… well.

They would probably become the most terrifying person in the world.

Right now, all of that energy was being channeled directly into the ritual circle.

The purpose was simple.

We were trying to awaken the soul of a Great One that was supposedly sleeping within the Prince.

Since his fire abilities strongly resembled the legendary flames of the Great Red, it was reasonable to assume he might be the closest thing to a compatible vessel.

And honestly, we needed that power.

Because our enemy was said to be the vessel of Lilith.

The Great Black.

Charging headfirst into a fight against something like that without preparation would basically be suicide.

According to Moriarty, that monster was absurdly powerful.

So if we wanted any chance at survival, the Prince had to reach that same level.

And right now, I was doing everything I could to make that happen.

As the lifeforce gathered in the ritual circle, the air itself began to distort. The energy moved like a violent storm, swirling and compressing toward the center where the Prince lay.

Then suddenly, he screamed.

A raw, painful scream tore through the chamber.

His body jerked violently as if invisible hands were twisting his muscles from the inside. Veins bulged beneath his skin while his entire body convulsed uncontrollably.

Something inside him was waking up.

Moriarty and I simply stood there.

Watching and waiting.

***

Leon's POV

Suddenly, I felt it.

A strange sensation rushed through my body without warning.

It felt like an enormous wave of energy had just washed over the world itself.

My head instantly turned toward the direction where it came from.

But the moment I tried to focus on it…

It disappeared.

Just like that.

"...Wasn't that...?"

I narrowed my eyes slightly.

Because I knew that feeling.

I had felt it before.

It happened during my fight against Sesillian.

That moment had been a turning point for me. The moment I realized that we were not the top of the food chain in the entire universe.

Not even close.

We were just small parts of a much larger system. Tiny cogs turning inside a massive machine.

There were beings far beyond our understanding.

Creatures that did not belong to our plane of existence.

And the pressure I felt just now…

It was the exact same sensation.

The same suffocating presence I experienced when the Great Darkness appeared.

The unmistakable pressure of a Great One.