Chapter 2549

2549 - Marid-2

"......!!!"

Caesar slowly raised his head, and the more he raised his face, the wider his mouth opened.

The white flame illuminated the place, revealing something that would have been better left hidden.

It was a giant.

At first Caesar thought it was a small hill, but its details—that hill standing on two legs—were far too many to overlook.

That hill, no, that giant... was nearly thirty meters tall, a height equal to a residential building of at least ten floors.

Its legs were thick and massive, wearing scattered pieces of worn-out beast hides piled layer upon layer.

Its torso was like the trunk of a tree thousands of years old, immovable, and from its shoulder emerged two massive arms that reached down to its knees. Each shoulder bore a hollowed rock serving as armor, and each of its enormous blue fingers looked like a lever used to move ships.

As for its face, it was shocking—icy blue, with a long beard made of hide and eyebrows like thorns of frost. Its eyes, with which it looked down at Caesar as though he were an ant, seemed to carry pearls, each one sufficient to freeze a planet on its own.

Taak.

Caesar took a step back automatically.

And the giant's eyes followed him.

"What...?!" Caesar opened his mouth, muttering.

He had fought a great deal, occupied thousands of planets, and seen countless numbers of mutated species, but he had never seen a giant of this size. This was against the laws of physics—a creature like this should have broken and collapsed before it could even stand. What spine could bear this weight, and what bone could support it?!

And also its aura... he could not sense any particular energy emanating from it, but that thing was undoubtedly powerful... very powerful.

Then Caesar took another step back.

[Calm down and minimize your movement, and do not say a word. It has spotted you and that's that. You will only hasten its attack on you.] Mortix's voice came in his ear.

[You despicable bastard!!] Caesar thought. [Did you bring me all this distance just to have me killed by that thing?!]

[That thing exists in great numbers in the inner planets of the Necrofortress, and you must get used to its presence. What you see now is one of the weakest of them, which is why I wanted you to start with it.]

Caesar calmed down a little. [What exactly is this thing?]

[It is a Marid.]

"....?!" Caesar opened his eyes wide and turned to look toward the face of the giant creature again, but not directly into its eyes. [A Marid? Like the ones we hear about in legends?]

[There is no smoke without fire, and here is its fire.] Mortix explained, [You may have heard one day about the person who found a lamp and out of it came a Marid granting wishes and making him a prince and so on... that is the smoke. The truth is that he did indeed find a Marid and it fulfilled a condition for him, and in return that Marid granted him one wish: destroying the kingdom that had oppressed him.]

Then he continued, [As for the truth, the Marid is a category of the jinn, the category that can incarnate in the material world, and the great Devils call them soldiers.]

[Soldiers? The jinn and devils have soldiers that can fight humans in the material world?] Caesar nearly took another step back as he remembered those fiery beings.

Mortix began speaking at a slower pace, [Yes, the Marid is usually a lower-ranking devil whom its superiors judge fit to be the link and executor of orders. Creating a single Marid requires an enormous number of sacrifices, and the devils complete these sacrifices through fools like me and like Qarun who are willing to carry them out in exchange for personal power.]

[...From the evil I see here, and what Qarun is doing... how many Marids are there exactly? And why are we alive?!] Caesar gritted his teeth. That thing is extremely dangerous!

Do you think what you see in the Fortress of Death is evil? Several cycles ago, specifically in the Era of the Transcendent Warden, the forces of evil spread terrifyingly—the Warden could not control them, so dozens of Marids of every kind were made, and they attacked the universe, spreading corruption throughout it, and he lost his cycle before the 100-million-year deadline had even ended.

...And in the previous cycle, and the one before it as well, evils spread and the making of Marids spread and their seeds spread until they destroyed two cycles and caused the universe to fall backward in ranking... I heard this from devils boasting—they want this universe to drop out of the ranking so it can be left to them, and for the All-Seeing God to stop interfering in their affairs.

...The unnamed universes that have no patron are their favorite pasture, and they are also the universes from which the most transcendents emerge because of them. The evils witnessed by the inhabitants of those universes are beyond your imagination, and they are alive only because the devils want to accumulate more of the sacrifices!

Caesar swallowed his saliva. [...If the lifespans of the jinn are not tied to the cycle, doesn't that mean every Marid made in every previous cycle... is still alive?]

Not exactly. After a devil crosses over and transforms into a Marid, it becomes part of the material world, and they are killed at the end of every cycle when the planets return to primordial chaos... But they are remade from the beginning of each cycle, and their seeds are left everywhere, so the Plague returns to gnaw at the bodies of universes once more. They are an incurable disease; all that can be done is to work on reducing their numbers.

At the beginning of our current cycle, the devils created a number of Marids of Gluttony, Destruction, and Hell because of my sacrifices, but they remained hidden because of Athena. However, after her negligence, the breaching of The Shell, and then her entry into slumber, their opportunity finally came. They gathered themselves in the Abyss of Destruction, then spread their seeds in a campaign aimed at ending the cycle and turning it into a farm for the remaining years.

"......" Caesar's eyes widened, "...wait..."

Baaaaang