novelnext Chapter 150: Who is your master?
Chapter 150: Who is your master?
Yuan gulped, a loud, distinct swallowing sound escaping his throat as his hands clenched so hard that his knuckles turned a stark, bloodless white.
His eyes darted frantically across the edge of the ink-black curtain, his posture rigid with an instinctual, defensive dread.
"What the... hell is that?" Yuan muttered, his voice dropping into a tense, ragged whisper that barely carried across the narrow space separating him from Noah’s shoulder.
As if answering his question, providing a horrific physical manifestation to match the disembodied malice echoing through the vault, the dark smoke in front of them suddenly parted.
The movement was fluid yet violent, the hyper-dense shroud of weaponized shadow mana rolling backward in thick, undulating waves like a heavy stage curtain being drawn aside by an invisible, predatory hand.
The putrid stench of decayed copper and old blood spiked instantly, forcing its way through the air as the central node of the room’s corruption finally laid itself bare.
A face made of dark smoke was revealed in the middle, its features shifting and coiling with a volatile, unnatural fidelity, with the rest of the shadow hovering thickly around it like a massive, undulating cloak of living ink.
The entity possessed no solid flesh, no biological symmetry, and no recognizable bone structure; it was a shifting, spectral countenance forged entirely from high-density, cordupted dark mana.
Its eyes were two hollow, burning chasms of a deep, malevolent violet that bled faint arcs of static electricity into the surrounding air, its very existence defying the traditional laws of physical projection.
The face opened, the smoky jaw dropping down with a sickening, liquid fluidness that stretched the boundaries of the dark fog, revealing a gaping maw filled with sharp fangs and chuckled loudly.
The teeth were jagged spikes of crystallized shadow energy, translucent and razor-sharp, glistening with a faint, oily residue that matched the corruption splattered across the stone floor blocks.
The sound of his laughter filled the room, a deep, grinding baritone that seemed to bypass their auditory nerves and vibrate directly inside their skulls, sending chills down Yuan and Varis’s spine once again.
It was a sound stripped entirely of human warmth, a mocking, triumphant declaration of absolute dominance that asserted its ownership over the subterranean slaughterhouse.
Their eyes remained widened in shock, their pupils contracted to tiny pinpricks under the brilliant light of Noah’s golden canopy, not understanding what they were supposed to be looking at.
They were veteran master-rank magi who had spent years cataloging threats, mapping dungeons, and studying the operational parameters of every known high grade mana beast within the kingdom’s borders.
Yet, their massive databases of magical theory offered absolutely no explanation for the anomaly floating just a few meters away from their positions.
They had never seen anything like this before and wondered if what was standing before them was a mana beast... or something else entirely.
This entity was a living paradox: a conscious, laughing intellect composed entirely of shadow, a phantom that seemed to be born directly from the collective trauma of the butchered children whose bones littered the floor.
Noah, on the other hand, was still able to maintain his cool, his posture remaining completely upright and unyielding.
His head remained perfectly level, his eyes focused on the strange dark face in front of him with a cold, clinical intensity that completely ignored the psychological warfare of the creature’s laughter.
Yuan and Varis glanced at him from the corners of their eyes, their gazes tracking the motionless, imposing silhouette of the masked figure standing right before the threshold of the dark fog.
They thought to himself, a profound wave of reverent awe and humility temporarily overtaking their immediate terror: ’How can Mr. White stay so composed in such a situation... as expected of an arch magus.’ they thought to thenslsves.
To them, his detached serenity was the ultimate proof of his high rank—a clear indication that whatever terrifying entity was floating in the darkness, it was nothing more than a minor, insignificant nuisance to a true master who commanded the absolute peak of the world’s destructive magical forces.
They assumed he had already analyzed the entity’s structural weaknesses, calculated its exact spell matrix, and formulated a dozen different ways to erase it from existence before they had even finished processing its laugh.
That alone made them feel stupid for being so scared of whatever was before them.
They were members of the adventurer network, men who held the safety of entire regional sectors in their hands, yet they were trembling like common academy freshmen next to an arch magus who hadn’t even bothered to unfold his arms.
A deep sense of professional pride and shame flared within their chests, burning away the paralyzing fog of their initial sensory whiplash.
They summoned all form of bravery they had, their muscles locking into aggressive, offensive angles as they squared their shoulders and adjusted their footing against the bone-strewn floor tiles, facing the strange face with a renewed, unyielding resolve.
The strange shadow face wasn’t focused on them though, ignoring the shifting postures and the flare of master-rank mana radiating from the two seasoned adventurers at Noah’s flanks.
Instead, its burning, malevolent violet gaze was locked entirely on Noah, who was also staring back at it with an unyielding, rigid intensity.
The two entities remained frozen in a silent, high-stakes standoff across the narrow threshold where the golden-yellow perimeter of the protective canopy collided with the thick, roiling mass of weaponized dark fog.
It was like sparks were flying between them, a tangible, suffocating friction building up in the microscopic space between Noah’s matte-black cat mask and the shifting smoky features of the spectral anomaly.
The air itself grew increasingly dense, vibrating with a low, sub-audible frequency that made the dust particles and the loose fragments of bone on the floorboards rattle erratically.
Even Yuan and Varis could feel it, their skin prickling with an instinctual, animalistic dread as they stood trapped between the two opposing forces.
They realized with absolute clarity that these were two beings far stronger than both of them combined—monolithic entities operating on a plane of magical fidelity that reduced their own master-level capabilities to mere parlor tricks.
To step into the crossfire of such a confrontation would mean instantaneous annihilation, and all they could do was watch the silent war of wills unfold.
Though it seemed like Noah was staring at the strange face with the detached, clinical absolute confidence of the legendary Mr. White, his internal mind was more occupied with the system’s message blinking in his field of vision.
[Eye of Truth Scan failed!]
[Target protected by an entity stronger than Host!]
Noah’s pupils contracted sharply behind the absolute concealment of his black cat mask, a cold, sharp jolt of genuine alarm slicing through his chest.
’Protected by an entity? What entity is that? Do they know about Eye of Truth... or how much more stronger than I are they?’ he thought, his mind spinning in a frenzy.
For the Eye of Truth to be completely repelled, to be locked out by a defensive counter-matrix woven into the shadow face’s existence, meant he wasn’t just dealing with a rogue syndicate of local dark magi.
Many questions were running through his mind, each one more troubling than the last, completely disrupting the calm margin of his thoughts.
After reaching the arch magus rank through completing the system quests, he should already be at the peak of magic of this current time.
Yet, the system’s message explicitly implied that there was another person stronger than him—far stronger, in fact, that Eye of Truth had no use on his subject.
The cold text didn’t just suggest a slight edge in raw mana volume; it declared a fundamental tier disparity.
It meant that hidden somewhere in the dark corners of the continent, perhaps steering the very organization that turned children into shadow monsters and manufactured the horned supervisors, was an entity that made the legendary arch magus rank look entirely incomplete.
Noah took a deep breath, calming down his mind so as to reduce the growing panic .
He couldn’t afford to let a single shred of his internal confusion leak into his physical posture.
Yuan and Varis were relying entirely on his perceived omnipotence to maintain their own bravery, and the slightest tremor in his composure would collapse their operational line.
He had to play the part of the unbothered god, extracting whatever answers he could through sheer psychological dominance.
He turned his attention back to the shadow face, his posture straightening as he allowed a tiny, calculated wisp of freezing frost to curl around the knuckles of his left hand, matching the brilliant, pulsing light of the golden mana glove on his right.
The violet arcs of static electricity bleeding from the creature’s smoky jaws continued to crackle, but Noah didn’t flinch.
He spoke, his voice dropping into that cold, empty, and utterly unyielding baritone that cut through the grinding laughter of the vault like an iron blade.
"Dark face..." Noah said, the words echoing with a detached, authoritative resonance that demanded absolute submission. "...who is your master?"
The question hung heavily in the putrid air of the dark room, a direct challenge to the supreme entity hiding behind the veil of the roiling smoke shroud.
Behind his mask, Noah’s golden-tinted Mana’s Vision flared to its absolute limits, tracking every microscopic ripple in the creature’s smoky features, desperately seeking a single clue, a stray thread of residual energy, or a physical reaction that could point him toward the truth of the creature standing above them.