Chapter 630

Chapter 15 The Fire Cluster

Gulp, gloop…

The well-lit cellar was utterly silent, except for the sounds of me chewing and swallowing food.

I was truly famished.

Perhaps my body had gradually adapted to this feeling of emptiness during sleep, or perhaps my body hadn’t recovered its functions in such a long time that even my stomach only started to move just before waking up… Did everything I ate really go straight into my stomach?

In any case, when I was reading the notes earlier, I was very focused, completely immersed in my thoughts. I was so engrossed that I could momentarily forget the hunger, until I took the first bite of meat and felt the warmth spreading through my body. While talking with the little girl, my body began to heat up, and the hunger grew unbearable. It was as if every cell in my body craved food.

I started to blank out, focusing solely on eating, stuffing my mouth as fast as I could. Before the previous bite was swallowed, another was already in my mouth. The faster I ate, the more meat juice covered my face. The pieces of meat in the plate were quickly gone, but my little belly felt no different—just hungry, still hungry.

I smacked my lips, instinctively turning my gaze back to the plate. Looking at the beetles mixed in the broth, my right hand slowly reached out, then suddenly remembered something, and the movement froze.

Beetles…

Was I really going to eat these things?

No way…

I had never eaten anything like this before…

Fear…

But fear couldn’t overcome hunger. After hesitating for two seconds, I couldn’t hold back and grabbed one, holding it up close to examine it carefully.

Red beetles, with particularly vibrant colors…

Maybe because my hands were small, these beetles were almost as big as my palm. They looked like they had been roasted. The abdomens were somewhat flattened, but the heads and backs were still bright red. Six sharp legs, like knives, and longer curved horns on top—somewhat similar to stag beetles…

So, how should I eat this thing?

Should I peel off the shell, or start from the abdomen?

I was struggling…

With a worried look, I held the large beetle, touching its hard horns and legs, feeling a bit uneasy. After much hesitation, although I was starving and wanted to eat, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

…Maybe I shouldn’t eat this?

After all, the little girl will bring more meat soon…

But she won’t be here for a while…

I couldn’t bear it, wanting to keep eating…

But beetles… were quite strange…

However, the little girl said they were delicious.

The townspeople seemed to rarely indulge in them… These were reserved for guests, so they shouldn’t taste too bad.

Maybe…

I should try biting into it first?

“Gulp…”

I brought the beetle to my nose, sniffing it. There was no strange smell; it smelled like meat broth, somewhat fragrant.

“Gulp.”

I couldn’t help but swallow my saliva.

…Forget it.

When in doubt, just eat it!

“Ah—”

Making up my mind, my eyes instantly became resolute. My mouth opened wide, revealing a tiny fang, shining under the candlelight. I bit down viciously on the beetle’s abdomen.

“Ugh…”

The beetle meat was surprisingly chewy, and the first bite didn’t tear the entire abdomen. Panicking, I grabbed the head with both hands, gritting my teeth and pulling hard. With a “pfft,” I tore the part connecting the abdomen, the whole abdomen in my mouth, and swallowed it in large gulps, my cheeks bulging, my brows furrowed, closing my eyes to chew.

I chewed… I bit… Hmm… It was tough, like taffy… Oh no, oh no!

It burst!

The beetle meat burst in my mouth, thick juices spilling out and splattering onto the table, nearly white in color.

“Ugh! Ugh—”

Unable to hold back, I let out a groan, quickly closing my mouth. A peculiar taste surged straight to my brain, not what I imagined insect meat would taste like, though I didn’t know what insects tasted like. But this taste… was indeed fragrant.

But it was overwhelmingly rich!!!

It was like being forced to swallow melted butter. The intense richness combined with the psychological impact of eating bug meat made my stomach churn, and I couldn’t stop feeling nauseous.

This is terrible, I can’t eat this…

“Eww!”

I spat out all the liquid from the burst beetle meat onto the table, the milky white, viscous liquid mixed with unknown bits of meat, dripping along the edge of the table. I heaved again, turned my head, and spat out the contents of my mouth, “Pfft, pfft, pfft.” Looking at the half-eaten beetle shell in my hand, I shuddered, and with a clatter, threw it back into the plate.

Eating bugs…

Even if I was starving, I was just a normal girl… No, just a normal man. How could I possibly swallow everything?

This is too disgusting…

Instinctively, I reached for a handkerchief to wipe my mouth, but suddenly realized that I had given the handkerchief to Ryan. My old things were gone, the black leather box still in Angel’s hands…

There were important things inside that I needed to get back…

Shaking off the oil stains on my hands, I looked around but found no cloth to wipe them. So, I wiped them on my pants instead. This wasn’t my clothes anyway; I’d have the townsfolk bring me new ones later, including shoes…

I was barefoot.

Tilting my head to look at the door, realizing the little girl wouldn’t return for some time, I rubbed my stomach, frowning. To distract myself, I picked up the notebook again, flipping through it idly.

Come to think of it…

Would there be any strange changes in my appearance compared to before?

Although I had briefly checked earlier.

My back hadn’t grown wings, and my head hadn’t sprouted horns. Under the candlelight, I could faintly see the strands of hair by my temples, their color unchanged, as dark as ink.

Black.

I had no idea what kind of appearance the devil in the little girl’s mouth had. Perhaps I was still recovering at that time. I wasn’t sure what I looked like after being blown up, maybe I was very ugly, sticky and disgusting, just like the worm flesh I had spat out earlier… Ugh, I shouldn’t think about it.

Anyway, now my body feels a bit stiff and uncoordinated, but there isn’t anything particularly strange about it. There shouldn’t be much change. I don’t seem to have grown taller, of course, and I definitely didn’t grow four arms and four legs… Ah, if only I could grow a bit taller…

And then there’s my chest…

Thinking of this, a strange expectation suddenly arose in my heart. When I roughly checked my clothes earlier, I seemed to remember… it bulged by just a little?

Is that true?

Would there really be any changes?!

I quickly wiped my hands on my body and reached for my small chest, imagining a plump, swollen soft flesh, a full lump that couldn’t be held in one hand. If it were like that, I would— I would—

Hmph.

There wasn’t a plump lump. Compared to before, I didn’t feel any bigger at all.

So boring…

Whatever, whatever…

Let it be however it wants to be.

I felt somewhat disheartened as I flipped through the pages of the book in my hand, but I actually couldn’t focus. The hunger gnawed at my attention, making my thoughts increasingly scattered. The subsequent content was only briefly glanced over. From the records, the main focus was on Elina’s next series of plans. Later on, as the number of successful sacrifices increased over time, people like Veysemir emerged.

Elina did not write down the specific method of sacrifice.

This time, Theresia went to the Eastern Continent without the church’s knowledge to avoid arousing suspicion. She did not waste time and returned immediately after the sacrifice was completed, back to the royal city of Eizenberg. It was after this that a series of events occurred at the Kataroloma Orphanage.

I deliberately flipped to the back of my notes, hoping to find more detailed information about the blood ritual at the orphanage, but Elina’s records indeed did not contain much more. She only mentioned the results they had deduced earlier in the Eastern Continent.

Perhaps she obtained some information from the spirit essence. Elina was very certain that the entrance to the Dragon Homeland was in Woodward Forest. However, Theresia seemed to be half-doubtful. She believed that the entrance to the Dragon Homeland would not be found so easily and that there was a high possibility that it had already been permanently buried in the dust of history under the church’s operation.

But it was undeniable that the divine body was sealed there. To open the seal of the Dragon Homeland, according to Elina, it must be with the power left behind by the ancient deity’s remains.

Ancient deities.

I remembered they were the original deities.

When I was in the Dragon Homeland, I swallowed that blood bead and saw a bizarre illusion, heard the divine oracle that seemed to come from the horizon, and the dragon’s mournful roar, those ancient and bleak words that questioned the Gideon clan.

“Why do you imprison my race…”

“Why do you slaughter my race…”

“Why do you deceive my race…”

Those petrified dragons were imprisoned in a dark space because of a lie, deceived, slaughtered, and used as vessels for sealing. The entity that deceived them and did all of this was the so-called ancient deity.

At least, it was the one leading these events.

And Elina and Theresia clearly understood these roots by then. They knew far more than I imagined. Because of this, they reached a consensus; one in the West, one in the East, they privately conspired through secret letters, beginning to search for various possibilities to open the Dragon Homeland.

“I told Theresia that only the remains of the ancient deity possessed the power to break the seal of the Dragon Homeland,” Theresia only thought for two seconds before telling me that she had a target. And her target was the divine relic ‘Boswell’ in the royal city. She judged that the source of that power was part of an ancient deity’s vertebrae…

After reading this sentence, I was stunned for a long time.

Boswell…

The eggshell of the royal city back then.

I had seen that blackened vertebra. Theresia had transferred the medium within the vertebra, concentrating it into the blood bead later. To send the blood bead out of the royal city, she risked her life, using her own life to divert all attention.

Divine relics…

That thing was not dragon bone, but the remains of a deity.

Holy Church, Angel…

How much else have you deceived me…

However, you will never be able to deceive me again…

Although many details are still vague, the church has always been using the remains of the deity, even its flesh and blood, to obtain greater power. So-called faith power… and that clinic, everything I experienced there, is closely related to this.

Those hypocritical shamans, who talked about gratitude, secretly defiled the deities, forcibly seized divine powers for their own use, and even imprisoned the deities, possibly for thousands of years, driving them to utter madness, ultimately leading to the descent of the abyss… Everything started because of this.

This is the truth. I already know it.

No wonder someone split from the church, no wonder Elina wrote such words in her notes, no wonder the Gate of Truth hates saints so much.

Angel…

You locked the Fertile Mother God in the underground of the Holy City.

How did you do it…

Such a terrifying existence…

Just a hollow shell, barely a tenth of its power restored, yet it was already such a despair-inducing existence…

Holy Church…

You are a group of…

More terrifying than deities.