Karnak, Monarch of Death-Chapter 107: The House of Flesh (1)

The beams of the house were dusted with white sugar, and towering chocolate columns stood in perfect rows. The door was made of a well-baked cookie, and the chandelier hanging from the ceiling was a piece of sparkling crystalline sugar candy.

Walls over ten meters high were constructed from loaves of bread and pastries stacked like bricks, forming an enormous structure that could only be described as a house of sweets. Or perhaps, given its sheer scale, it was more appropriate to call it a castle or a mansion.

Dangling in the vast hall, with its colorful candies and confections, were dozens of cages suspended in midair. Inside each cage, a person was imprisoned.

What an utterly bizarre sight, thought Alius, trapped in one of the cages. He sighed heavily. What’s the point of all this?

Alius was no stranger to the bizarre experiments of necromancers. Yet, was it really necessary to create a bizarre place seemingly straight out of a children's fairytale? Still, there was one silver lining.

At least the missing people are alive.

From his cage, Alius scanned the other cages. Each held a single captive, most of whom were the missing Swindler border guards. In the distance, he spotted the members of the Brigade of Purification—Leocolt, Lestane, and Stronoff—also confined. Even Felix, the inquisitor of Saisha who had vanished earlier, was unharmed and caged.

Not a single person was dead. It seemed like a stroke of extraordinary luck, but Alius knew better. He knew that the witch had deliberately kept them alive.

After capturing her prey, she had imprisoned them in these cages and brought an assortment of food—candies, cookies, biscuits, sweet creams, and sugary desserts.

Then she’d cackled and proclaimed, "Kehehe! I’ll fatten you all up nicely before devouring you!"

Naturally, Alius refused to eat. Who could eat after hearing that? Even if she hadn’t said it outright, he wouldn’t have dared to touch the food. A house made of sweets may sound delightful in children’s stories, but in reality, standing before such a place was nothing short of terrifying.

But that resolve was only possible for the second wave of captives, who had been imprisoned for just a day. Those who had been held for nearly a week had no choice but to eat. Feeding time was fast approaching once more.

The chocolate doors creaked open, and in marched cats walking on two legs, wearing boots, and carrying trays piled with confections and juice.

"Meow!"

"Mew-mew!"

With astounding agility, the cats leapt into the air, reaching the suspended cages with ease. Balancing deftly on their hind legs, they pushed the food into the cages with their forepaws. Objectively, it was a cute scene to behold, but no one could laugh. When something that shouldn’t be cute was, it only amplified the dread.

"Ugh..."

"Argh..."

The captured border guards, including the captain and Felix, were already stuffing their faces with the sweets, their expressions vacant and zombie-like.

Chomp! Chomp chomp chomp!

No amount of shouting could stop them. Though Alius screamed at the top of his lungs, his voice didn’t carry beyond his cage. None of their voices did. In silence, the prisoners gorged themselves, their bodies growing plump and soft. Even after only a few days, their transformation was horrifying. What was possibly in the sweets to make them gain weight so quickly?

I must never eat this food.

But Alius couldn’t help but wonder. Could he continue to hold out? For now, he was neither starving nor parched, having been captured only a day ago. But as time wore on, could he truly resist? Could he avoid becoming like them?

From another cage further away, Leocolt began saying something.

Though his words were inaudible, Alius could clearly see Leocolt striking at the cage with his hands wrapped in blazing red aura. Alius clicked his tongue.

It would be unwise to waste energy on something like this...

Sure enough, Leocolt’s blows didn’t leave even a scratch on the cage. It wasn’t the first time they had tried. Neither his aura, Stronoff’s magic, nor Alius’ divine spells had any effect.

This cage must be designed to be destroyed only from the outside.

In that case, the only hope was for someone to come and rescue them. Thankfully, Alius had left behind a trail. By carefully breaking pieces off his holy insignia, he had imbued fragments with divine energy and scattered them as a guide.

Karnak will figure something out.

In truth, the strength of Leocolt’s group wasn’t far off from Karnak’s. Both had sixth-circle advanced mages and high-level red-tier aura users. Yet somehow, Karnak and Varos exuded a strange reliability that made it easy to believe they could escape even the direst situations.

The real issue is time.

The trail Alius had left couldn’t be found through magic or aura. Only a divine caster could detect it. While this made it easier to leave the marks discreetly, it also meant they had to wait for a senior inquisitor from a nearby church to track them down.

It’ll take at least three or four days.

Until then, no matter how thirsty or hungry he became, he had to endure.

Agitated, Alius kicked at the tray of food in front of him. "I’m not eating! Never!"

The sweets and juice tumbled to the floor of the massive hall below, scattering crumbs everywhere. Down below, the boot-wearing cats scurried to clean up the mess, hissing in frustration.

"Meow!"

"Meoow!"

***

Deep within the mist-laden forest, Serati suddenly frowned. "This fog is definitely not natural."

As an aura user, she could instinctively sense the cardinal directions. Yet since stepping into this fog, her spatial awareness had been completely scrambled.

Karnak shrugged. "That just means we’re on the right track."

For another thirty minutes, they followed the faint traces left behind. Finally, through the dense mist, the blurry outline of a small hut began to emerge.

Varos muttered with relief, "Oh, there it is."

As they approached, the structure’s details became clearer. The expressions on Karnak and Varos’ faces grew increasingly perplexed as they grew closer.

Yes, it was a hut, but—

"What the hell is that?"

"Am I seeing things right now? Why does that even exist?"

It was a quaint little house made entirely of sweets. The roof was frosted with cream, the windows framed by candy canes, and the walls and pillars constructed of baked goods. Even the chimney resembled a slice of layered cake. It was definitely charming and whimsical, but also unrealistic. It was a scene plucked straight out of a dream, or rather, a fairytale.

"A house made of sweets..." Serati’s voice was tinged with disbelief. "It’s like something straight out of a storybook."

Karnak and Varos exchanged puzzled glances before turning to her.

"You recognize it, Serati?"

"Houses like that exist in stories?"

Serati was the one surprised this time. "What? You don’t know about it?"

The tale of the witch living in a house of sweets was a common children’s story, told across the entire continent.

"Surely your parents told you about it when you were little?"

The two men answered without hesitation.

"We never received that much love from our parents."

"I spent my childhood by the young master's side, enduring the same scoldings."

"Besides, I killed my father with my own hands."

"And I helped."

For a moment, Serati was at a loss for words. It had been a simple, casual comment, but the response she received was anything but lighthearted.

"Ah, no, I didn’t mean it like that..."

Karnak and Varos smirked as they walked past her.

"You react just like everyone else, Serati. People always freeze up when they hear that."

"It was great for throwing the Martial Kings off their game."

Serati shook her head and sighed. "Was that a lie?"

"We really did grow up getting scolded."

"So no, we honestly don’t know what this is."

The group cautiously approached the house made of sweets. It wasn’t particularly large. It was only about the size of a small hunter’s cabin, certainly not big enough to hold the dozens of missing people.

Varos glanced around. "Where do you think Alius and the others are?"

"No idea..."

Karnak, who had been examining the house carefully, suddenly spoke. "Serati, this candy witch story. Is it famous?"

"Huh? Well, most kids in the Seven Kingdoms probably know it."

"What about the empire?"

"It originally came from the empire, so I’d say most kids there know it too."

"So, it’s a story that’s spread across the entire continent?"

"Yes, but... why does that matter?"

Pointing at the candy house, Karnak’s expression turned serious. "Why does this match the story so closely?"

Serati tilted her head in confusion. "Isn’t that just how necromancy works?"

From what she had seen, necromancy was always bizarre and unnatural. A house made of candy didn’t seem any stranger than the other horrors she’d encountered. If there were witches, why not a candy house to go with them?

But Karnak didn’t seem convinced. "Necromancy has its rules, too. They just tend to clash with conventional logic. Do you remember the necromantic domain that Straph summoned?"

Serati scoffed bitterly. "How could I forget?"

That domain had cost her both arms, and she had joined this strange group of people in a desperate bid to regain them. It had been a turning point in her life.

"The tendrils, the walls of flesh, everything about it was grotesque... ugh."

"Exactly. It was grotesque." Karnak nodded. "But necromancers don’t summon hideous tendrils and flesh monstrosities because they think they’re pretty."

While some practitioners might eventually develop a twisted fondness for such sights after years of exposure, most didn’t summon them out of preference.

"What they summon is simply a portion of hell, which is imbued with power."

The reason necromancy often involved grotesque and horrifying elements was simple: those were the easiest to summon and the most potent. In other words, such techniques weren't chosen for the sake of summoning grotesque and horrifying beings.

"It's the same reason why most demons summoned by necromancers are ugly."

They were simply stronger and easier to summon.

"If beautiful demons were powerful and easy to summon, every necromancer would summon only them," Karnak added with a dry smirk.

He spread his arms toward the candy house. "But this? What’s the point of recreating a scene from a children’s story? Why would someone waste their power to do something like this?"

From a necromancer's perspective, the candy house was an absurdity, an irrational construct devoid of practical purpose.

"There’s definitely something going on here..." Karnak muttered, narrowing his eyes.

At that moment, the door of the candy house slowly creaked open.

Serati instinctively reached for her sword, startled. But her tension quickly eased. What emerged from the open door were two black cats.

"Oh my, how adorable," Serati said, smiling warmly.

Karnak and Varos tilted their heads, clearly puzzled.

"Adorable?"

"Probably not," Varos added dryly.

"What?"

Without warning, the cats’ bodies began to swell at an alarming rate, their forms rapidly twisting and expanding.

"Greeeaaah!"

"Cack-cack-cack-cack!"

The once-cute cats disappeared, replaced by two grotesque, gelatinous monsters towering over two meters tall.

Serati recoiled in horror, unsheathing her sword once more. "Kyah! What the hell are those?"

Varos chuckled as he casually stepped forward. "What do you think? Just your run-of-the-mill gatekeeping monsters."

There wasn’t even a need for swords. Varos enveloped his hands in a glowing red aura of aura and lunged at the gelatinous creatures, piercing both of them simultaneously. The monsters’ bodies swelled grotesquely, light spilling from the numerous punctures across their gooey forms.

And then—

Boom!

Varos pulled back, shaking his hands clean of the mess, a satisfied grin on his face.

"Ah, I love being awakened in aura. It’s just so convenient."

Serati blinked in disbelief, struggling to process what she had just witnessed. "What exactly did you just do?"

"Nothing special," Varos replied nonchalantly, as if his feat had been trivial. "I just injected aura through my hands, puffed them up like blowfish, and then spiked it outward like a porcupine. Simple. Want me to teach you later?"

The way he manipulated aura with such effortless precision was already far beyond her capabilities. But taking it a step further and transforming it into spikes and detonating it? What made it even more unbelievable was that not a single fragment of the obliterated monsters had touched Karnak’s group. The explosion had been perfectly controlled, with its force and debris directed entirely away from them.

Right. I forgot that this guy’s an actual monster, Serati thought. She had forgotten after being with him in his aura-less state.

"I think I’ll just stick to practicing what I know," she said, her tone noticeably more respectful.