Monster Evolution System: I became a Rat-Chapter 108: Truth of Heroes Nobody Knows

Far away, in the stretching darkness, a figure reigned supreme, its face masked by a dreadful smile. It watched the world from the height of its tower.

"Bring me the servants of the Mistress of Head," Gordon demanded of his servants.

One of them shriveled beyond human shape and rolled out of the room.

Gordon turned toward his other servant. In his hand was a bottle filled with haze, and inside it knelt a small caricature that looked exactly like Gordon.

He smirked and called out, "Throw that inferior copy into some dark place."

The other servant, this one grotesquely formed and foolish in appearance, quickly bowed and ran off as Gordon waved his hand.

"Coward," Gordon commented as his servant left.

As soon as the servants left, the hall stood empty. Gordon remained alone in his tower, his face turned toward the vast city beneath him.

Once, he had been a shepherd of the city. Now, he was its ruler. He looked down upon it with cold authority.

Just then, his intuition flared. Without turning, he spoke. "You are still alive?"

From the purple flames, a figure emerged. He looked battered and weak, his face covered with rot, his body slowly decaying.

"I need your help, Gordon," Josan said, his legs wobbling.

In response, Gordon began laughing like a maniac. He then produced a still-beating heart and showed it to Josan. "Eat this."

The heart was blackened, pus seeping from it. Clearly, it had already been tainted by Gordon’s aura.

Josan gritted his teeth, cursing inwardly.

Without delay, he prepared to flick his finger and conjure purple flames when Gordon called out again.

"Maysee will find you, wherever you hide. I do not believe you can remain inside that perpetual darkness, your false world, forever."

Gordon’s voice grew grimmer. "There is a way out of this city."

At last, Gordon turned to face Josan.

"To the outside world. I hear that even the selfish bastard king, Rosacer, managed to escape."

Upon hearing Rosacer’s name, Josan gritted his teeth. Without delay, he barked, "What do you want in return?"

Gordon smiled and tossed a parchment toward Josan. "Find the man named Lopis and bring him to the Mist City."

Josan was visibly shaken when he heard the name. He hesitated for a moment, then finally bent down and picked up the parchment from the ground.

Josan did not speak again.

The parchment trembled faintly in his hand, whether from the wind or from his own unsteady grip, he could not tell. Gordon had already turned away, as if the matter were finished, as if Josan’s struggle, his rot, his fading strength, were nothing more than a passing inconvenience.

Purple flames swallowed Josan’s figure.

And the tower once again contained the solitude of Gordon of Might.

Hovering in the night sky above the endless sea, purple-colored flames erupted.

The sea was merciless that night.

Waves rose like walls of black iron, crashing against jagged rocks beneath a sky stripped of stars. At the horizon, the whirlpool turned, vast and patient, as though the ocean itself had grown an eye and chosen to stare downward into its own abyss.

Josan stood at the cliff’s edge, cloak torn, skin sagging where the rot had claimed it. The salt air bit into his wounds. He did not flinch.

"So this is the door," he muttered.

The whirlpool was no natural storm. Its center spiraled too perfectly, its pull too deliberate. Even from miles away, he could feel it dragging at the marrow within his bones.

He stepped forward.

The rocks crumbled beneath his boots. The sea roared in triumph.

Josan fell.

The wind clawed at him first, then the spray, then the crushing cold of the ocean swallowed him whole. Darkness folded over his head as the current seized him, dragging him not merely downward, but inward.

The world became rotation.

Water twisted around him like a living throat. His body smashed against unseen debris. His lungs burned. Purple flames flickered weakly around his hands, extinguished almost instantly by the pressure.

Deeper.

The roar of the sea faded into something else. A low hum. A chant without words.

Josan’s descent slowed.

The water no longer felt like water. It thickened, turning viscous, then thin as mist. His boots touched stone.

He stumbled forward, coughing, yet no water left his mouth.

The whirlpool was gone.

Before him stretched a vast chamber carved from obsidian rock. The ceiling arched high above, lost in shadow. Seven colossal sarcophagi stood in a circle, each engraved with sigils.

He had direct landed into the room of the burial of the seven heroes.

Josan straightened slowly.

"The Tomb of the Seven Heroes," he whispered.

"Hero of Dawn, Lopis..." he whispered again, this time as if searching for the meaning behind the name he had uttered.

Each coffin radiated a different presence.

He took a step forward.

The door behind him, if there ever had been one, was gone. Only solid stone remained.

A grinding noise echoed through the chamber.

One of the sarcophagi shifted.

Dust fell from its lid.

Josan’s fingers twitched, purple embers crawling weakly along his skin.

"So even in death," he said hoarsely, "you refuse to rest."

The hum in the chamber grew louder.

Then, from within one of the stone coffins, something knocked.

Once.

Twice. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

And the tomb, long sealed, answered.

"You called me..." Hero Lopis awakened from the sarcophagus.

"Why?"

A man churning with light emerged, brilliance enough to engulf the entire tomb in its radiance. Yet the glow dimmed the very next second, fading as quickly as it had flared. What remained was an old, scrawny man, as the light retreated back into the sarcophagus behind him.

Josan could not comprehend how the hero had awakened. Still, keeping his wits intact, he spoke, "I am Josan of the Infinite, and a former member of the Men in Black."

As Josan spoke, the light was nearly gone, and he could now see the hero much better.

He paused abruptly when he finally saw the hero clearly.

Hero Lopis looked grotesquely rotten, as if he were a lich dragged back into motion. His skin clung to bone, his eyes sunken and dim. Josan began to doubt whether the figure standing before him could still be called a hero.

Lopis stared at him without blinking.

The silence inside the tomb thickened, pressing against Josan’s ears like deep water. Dust drifted slowly between them. The other six sarcophagi remained still, yet their presence weighed upon the chamber like judgment.

"You reek of Dark Messiah," Lopis said at last.

His voice was dry, as though dragged across stone for centuries.

And if Josan guessed right, there was hatred hidden in them.

Josan’s jaw tightened as he began to spoke, his voice turned solemn. "I did not come for work of My Lord."

"No," Lopis replied. "You came because you need me."

A shameless pride evident in his voice, but Josan kept his head still.

Josan stepped forward, boots scraping against the obsidian floor. "Elizabeth is still alive."

For the first time, something flickered in the hollow pits of Lopis’ eyes.

Josan continued, measuring each word carefully. "She’s also looking for you. She searches for answers. For the truth behind the city. Behind the past."

A low hum pulsed through the chamber.

Lopis’ withered fingers twitched. "Do not speak of her lightly."

"I would not dare," Josan replied. "The Mist City is moving again. She is now one of its Lords."

"I see..."

There was a faint smile on Lopis’s face.

At that, the tomb trembled faintly.

The other sarcophagi exhaled a cold breath.

Lopis’ head tilted slightly. "She is a Queen now?"

"Yes, she governs the Southern Sector," Josan said. "And perhaps will soon the entire Mist City."

A brittle sound escaped Lopis’ throat. It might have been laughter once. "What I am is a corpse bound to a promise."

Josan extended his hand. Purple embers flickered weakly across his palm. "Then fulfill it. Come back with me. The sea has opened. The path remains unstable, but it will not stay so for long."

"The whirlpool," Lopis murmured.

"Yes."

Silence returned.

Josan’s legs trembled, whether from rot or from the pressure within the tomb he did not know. "Elizabeth will die if the city collapses inward. The Seven were meant to guard its foundation. You abandoned it."

At that, Lopis’ eyes sharpened.

"I was sealed," he corrected softly.

The broken heart inside Lopis vibrated.

"Then unseal yourself," Josan pressed. "Come back. Stand once more. Even if only as a shadow of what you were."

The light within Lopis flickered again, faint but defiant. It crawled along his cracked skin like veins of dawn struggling through night.

"You ask a dead man to return to war," Lopis said.

"I ask a hero to return to his city."

The words lingered.

Lopis sighed inwardly, as a regretful expression shadowed his face.

One of the other sarcophagi cracked along its lid.

Lopis slowly stepped down from his stone coffin. His feet touched the floor without sound.

"If I leave," he said quietly, "the others will begin to wake."

Another crack echoed.

Josan did not look away. "Then let them."

For a long moment, nothing moved.

Then Lopis reached back into the sarcophagus. The light that had retreated surged once more, though dimmer now, gathering around his frail frame like a dying sunrise.

"Very well," he said.

The whirlpool’s distant roar began to echo faintly within the tomb.

Josan allowed himself a thin breath.

Behind them, stone split.

"The returned heroes might not be the same as they once were..." Lopis muttered.

Josan did not react as he guided Lopis out.

When they reached the lake that connected to the whirlpool, he said, "Then the world had better be kind to them."