Reincarnated into a Snow Griffin-Chapter 178

The air grows stale as we descend, the place was not made or meant to invite visitors, with no torches or clear path down below, uneven steps that seem older than the building above, something that I found hard to beat moments ago.

The silence is as still and heavy as the stale air, the buzzing in my ears creating an ominous presence as the stares curves down below, forcing us to bring our own source of light even if it gave away our presence, otherwise it would be completely pitch black.

The wet noise reaches us before the smell.

A slurping sound of tongue and teeth, a chewing noise that reverberated along the walls and ricocheted until it reached us.

Without wind to carry the odors the smell came almost at the end of the steps, but by the state up above and by the sounds so far the fleshy iron odor is not a surprise, even if as unpleasant as I had expected it to be.

The torchlight makes a visible red circle around us, but this is one of those few moments that I’m not thankful for my night owl vision as, turning around at the end of the staircase, I am hit with the full image of the chaos and carnage in front of me.

And it is ... a compilation of shocking sceneries that has me bewildered and stuck for a moment.

First and foremost what catches my eyes first is the massive horned demon beast on the floor, very similar not quite one that I saw at door of Hell`s Gate, such a unique creature could not be mistaken for anything else.

With only a quick glance I expected it to stand up and attack us as a Demon Lord would do and yet I noticed something next, as the seconds followed and no movement came from it, that the creature was tightly chained up to the stone floor beneath it, with no space to allow even the tiniest movements, the silver long and gracious chains going around his body and snout as well as some other thick and more crude chains that seemingly were added afterwards, going around all the rest from the fingers to the tip of the tail.

One job had been done clearly with more confidence and security than the other, the bronze thick chains seemed put out of despair and far after the silver ones, the ones truly holding the beast done, some sort of magic faintly pulsating from the glowing metal.

That gigantic creature being kept underground is obviously the first thing to cover my field of view, however soon after thinking that such a being wasn’t supposed to be the Demons Lord’s second form as Ethan told me it was portrayed in many frames he had seen and it was common knowledge among the demon, even used it to spread fear, it didn’t make sense to find him chain up like this.

To get even more confusing as I look around me I actually start to recognize some of the bodies laid around, and not only the state that I find them in is strange but the fact that they are here altogether makes me furrow my brow ever more.

And think just how mother is not going to find anything in her search for the lion as is right here at the side, his ugly muzzle easily recognizable even from this far, and even if etched with fear and white voidless eyes.

Questions upon questions surge as I see the body of someone that I was not expecting to be here at all, my former master is there, lying down, and as I wonder what the hell they are doing here another detail comes into view and is that, different from the bodies up above with blood and pieces of flesh dilacerated and open all over of mostly woman humans victims of the Demon Lords barbaric ways, down here there is blood but not flesh, an iron taste but something else within, and earthly hint to it.

"These... these are blood golems!" Ethan says, putting to words what I am seeing, what I cannot believe to be seeing, but indeed these people, those men... they are open up just like the bodies up above, but instead of bodies parts and flesh they are open up like a doll made of wax, the same skin color covering their insides and, beyond the blood sacks that seem to have dried down, there is no organic matter per say.

And I don’t know what it is more shocking, the fact that these two were not even alive to begin with, or the fact that they were here of all places, right now, and dead as much as they can be.

"What is going on..." I catch myself saying, and the sound of our voices in this underground tomb echoed far, and only then did I realize that the wet slurping sound had stopped altogether the moment it took us to scane our surroundings.

That’s when it comes to me, to question where the Demon Lord could possibly be I this mess?

There is not much to look at or many places to hide, so our eyes go straight to the gigantic beast before us.

And there he is, standing on the side of the neck of the creature, cleaning his mouth with the back of his hand, and for a moment I swear I see a completely different being overlap with the man, a disgusting zombified creature with bubbles of pus and rotten flesh growing like a ripe tomato all over its body, double the size just by all the tumors with thin skin and yellow liquid glued along the melting membrane.

It was too much to take at once, and yet such a strong image burrowed inside my mind even from the slip second it stayed over the man, retracting itself as if not being there from the beginning, making me question what I had seen had been an illusion or not, and if such now flawless skin could have harbored such disgusting image.

Still in shock with all of this we hear the man say in silence:

"Ah, what a thing, I was not expecting visitors, such a mess, I would have cleaned up a bit but... well, no matter, you will soon join the pile I supposed."

This is the first time that I put a face to the name, and truly see the one causer of all distress and chaos in our lives in front of me, takinf the Demon Lords features, Ethan’s father, in for the first time.

"Name is Gazeller Trevils, currently the holder of the thirteen Demon Lord title, now would you two kindly die for me?"