The Last Circle-Chapter 9: Titan

Nameless wandered through the chasm for what he could've sworn felt like days, often wondering if there was an end, or if he was still making his way to the towering black structure.

Time was certainly convoluted in the realm of Hell. There was no day or night; no sun or moon. Nothing hinted at the passing of time. In fact, everything suggested otherwise.

Many a time he would search through the system for any bits of information, though nothing helped. Perhaps the information regarding hunger, thirst, or sleep no longer being a detriment was something of relevance, but even so, that could've been attributed to God's design of Hell.

Perhaps he'd never find the answers.

He could only tap the tip of his thumb with the other fingers to bring up four displays on the panel: The pinkie for his status menu, the ring finger for his inventory, the middle finger for the bestiary, and the index finger for a global ranking system, something he exclusively never used.

This time, however, he decided to entertain himself with it as he took some time to rest, sitting with his back pressed against the rough wall. It wasn't a comfortable spot, to say the least, but it worked.

'Let's see,' he stared at the rapidly fluctuating rank one spot. 'What exactly determines your spot on this ladder?'

While the screen was mostly empty, there were many, many, many names that he could scroll through on the left side of the screen, whereas on the right, a list of Fragments of Divinity was displayed.

He scoffed, shaking his head as his lips curled up. 'Why would you ever need a ranking system?'

He stared at the currently number one ranked soul:

[Name: Fragments of Divinity]

[Evangelos Galliadis: 1,396]

'Huh?' he squinted as he held a pensive gaze, furrowing his brows as he pursed his lips, watching as a new name quickly topped Evangelos. 'If the ranking system shows how many Fragments of Divinity you're holding, doesn't that just set a bounty on your head?'

That was a thought that he only came up with after learning about the consequences of death. In fact, it got him wondering:

'The system never said anything about the seeds being transferred... so should I just hold onto them until the last second?'

It was certainly a good idea... except, he quickly realized that at one point or another, it wasn't going to matter.

'I need one-million fragments if I want to get to the eighth level anyway.' He sighed internally, resting his chin on his steepled fingers. 'Then I'd be an attention...'

He frowned, putting his thoughts on hold as he scrolled through the leaderboard, spending several minutes looking for one name in particular.

The source of this c𝓸ntent is freewebnøvel.coɱ.

It really made him wonder just how many souls ended up in Hell with him, and it even scared him to think about it.

Billions, no—trillions of souls washed up in Hell, proven by the fact that he was still scrolling with no end in sight. In fact, he even gave up, seeing that he'd be spending the rest of eternity sitting with his eyes glued to the leaderboard, rather than trying to get out of Hell.

So he ended up dragging his mind over to another matter that he'd been wondering about:

'The system said that the Shard of Sin whispers... but what did that mean?'

For the past few days—or at least, that's what it felt like, whatever a day meant in Hell—since he saw that message, he struggled to decipher the meaning. Growing frustrated, he decided to take a walk... making sure to progress forward, of course.

As he walked, simply ignoring the fact that hellbound beasts laid far off to his right and left, he held his chin, recalling a part of the artifact's description.

'"Within the shard, faint whispers of an undulating sea of sins can be heard, a testament to its accursed and unholy birth..." Is that what the whisper meant? But what's the correlation?'

He shook his head, mindlessly stepping over corpses of the same red sprites he found earlier, along with severed limbs of the hellbound beasts. At the very least, he wasn't stepping into a drool watered floor now.

But lo and behold, a tumultuous roar would snap him out of his thoughts, forcing him to take notice of the vibrating surroundings. He covered his ears and clenched his jaw, but even that wasn't enough to make his ears stop feeling like they were bleeding.

'I'm going to go deaf at this rate!' he yelled internally, irritated by all the raucous he had to deal with when wandering the echo chamber.

The roar would go on for about thirty-seconds, and another thirty more for the echoes to die out. Nameless quickly darted his head around, check for any hostiles around, though he found nothing.

His heart felt like it was going to explode, and he was surprised he didn't outright die from the jump scare that was the yell. He gulped, for whatever roared that loud was easily worse than the hellbound beasts.

But what's worse was that he could hear faint sounds of sliding rocks, each new one coming in like a domino effect, sending light tremors through the ground.

'That can't be good.'

Indeed it was not, especially when he noticed that, through the slim gap between the rocks above, something was launched several hundreds of metres into the air, soaring into the sky before it was intercepted by the flying beast above.

"That wasn't a hellbound beast... right?" he stammered as his bemused face watched the avian beast peck through whatever it was that it caught.

More sliding rocks echoed their collapse, ground-shattering tremors followed, throwing him off his footing while small rocks shifted along the ground. It was heavily muffled, but he could tell, something was moving through the chasm; something big was down here.

But an interesting sight concerned him more so than the sounds and tremors that had him struggling to stand up.

Over the time he spent moving through the cavern, he came to slay other creatures and learn about them. One of those creatures was the red, flying sprites, which were called envoy imps. Those creatures, though small and not particularly strong, were incredibly problematic with their high-pitched dissonant whispers. He'd even go as far as to think more so than the hellbound beasts!

Those envoy imps typically stayed within the confines of the rock pillars, choosing to fly through the jagged passages rather than taking to the skies, and it was clear why they chose to do so:

'So why is it that they're now flying up there?'

He watched as a flock of the envoy imps chose to fly in the sky dominated by the hellbound beasts' predator, feeling a shiver run down his spine as he finally stood up, holding onto the jagged protrusions.

Although they'd disappeared long since he slayed his first hellbound beast, flickering figures appeared in the periphery of his vision again, teasing at his darting gaze as they always remained just out of sight.

What didn't remain out of sight, however, was a stampede of hellbound beasts far off ahead, but it was only a matter of time before they'd reach him.

"It's fine," he stammered, struggling to retrace his steps with the quaking ground, even when grabbing onto the wall. He chuckled to himself, feeling as though he were about to go insane. "They can't see me, so I just need to hide!"

But it wasn't fine. He had no idea how wide the stampede was, and even if he could get out of the way before they made it over, the question was just what creature was further up ahead that made the hellbound beasts run?

In fact, he now knew, for he could see it running chasing after them, toppling the pillars like dominos.

His eyes widened as he stared in horror, and the sight was certainly most deserving of it, for even the avian beast was making its way down.

"Oh my God." His heart dropped, his face went pale, and his voice became tremulous. "Is that thing real?"

Yes. The beast that possessed tens of flailing arms, crooked and coiling ivory horns, a bear-like body full of black fur, a stature of at least two hellbound beasts, and hundreds of eyes, was most certainly real.

It was none other than another hellbound beast, perhaps a Transgressor variant or worse, and it was heading straight in his direction.