{Chapter: 103: Monsters and Madmen}
Saya oversaw a small corner of the 11th floor—a region still the size of a small city.
There, millions of recently revived monsters snarled, fed, and bred under his eye.
He directed slaves—mute, magically shackled humanoids—to carry crates of enchanted meat and alchemical nutrient paste. The beasts consumed endlessly, preparing for the war to come.
The weakest among these creatures has already reached the peak of level two, while the strongest among them brushes the threshold of level three. As for level four... there is no such thing within this army. When a being reaches level four, even the ancient wizardcraft of blood and soul becomes unreliable. At that strength, barriers dissolve, restrictions shatter, and the very laws designed to bind them cease to hold. Such power exists beyond the threshold of safety. It becomes something... uncontrollable."
The words echoed in Saya's mind as he stood on the loading platform, staring numbly at the endless convoys of trucks trundling past, each one stacked with crates of tightly-sealed magical reagents, rations, and mysterious, humming contraptions built to sustain the army of beasts.
A few days ago, he never would have believed that he—a mere apprentice wizard from a coastal academy—would find himself in the center of something so vast and terrifying. He wasn't just watching history unfold. He was part of it.
Even now, as the monstrous army gathered in ranks behind him like an ocean of living nightmares, he could barely suppress the trembling in his legs. Just one of these beasts—just one—could obliterate him without even trying. The weakest among them, a scorpion-lion hybrid with a snake-headed tail and iron-spiked limbs, could probably kill him with a sneeze. Yet here they stood, millions strong, shoulder to shoulder, their collective aura so suffocating it distorted the air like heat rising from molten steel.
The robe he wore—an enchanted uniform issued specifically for aura resistance—was the only thing preventing him from fainting. It had been hastily tailored by a tired-looking woman from the Enchantment Division who barely spoke a word but infused the cloth with a quiet defiance. Without it, Saya doubted he could even walk into this field without dropping to his knees.
"I don't even know how I got this job," he muttered under his breath, wiping the sweat from his brow. "I'm a glorified notetaker, not a beastmaster…"
His thoughts wandered, inevitably, to his friend.
I wonder how Charles is holding up. Last I heard, he was assigned to monitor the revival of those ancient wizards. The ones that had been sealed away for tens of thousands of years. Lords, I hope they're not as terrifying as these monsters...
---
Far away, in an old ruined hall-turned-barracks now buzzing with life, the sound of shouting echoed through stone corridors.
"Take my punch, you little rat!"
BANG!
A white-haired man with bulging muscles and fists like anvils slammed his knuckles into the top of a shorter man's bald head. The impact resounded like a drumbeat, but the dwarf didn't even flinch. Not so much as a blink. Instead, he grinned—a toothy, unsettling grin full of mocking confidence.
"Hah! That's all you've got? You swing like a toddler learning to walk! Did you even eat this morning, old man?"
The muscular wizard's face turned crimson with rage. "You bastard! How dare you insult Kart-style Martial Arts? Do you know how many worlds I brought to their knees with this technique?"
"Pah! Kart-style? Sounds like a fancy way of saying 'swing and hope.' You're nothing compared to the might of my Elsla Flow Body Refinement Magic! Come at me again if you dare, fossil!"
"I'll break every bone in your stunted little body!"
"Try it, meathead!"
And with that, the two ancient wizards launched into a fresh brawl, fists flying like meteorites, curses echoing like thunderclaps, and the ground beneath them cracking with each heavy blow. They looked like old men arguing over a tavern debt—if tavern debts came with the power to level haven.
Around them, chaos reigned.
A wizened old man with two heads—one shouting "Stop!" and the other yelling "Keep going!"—ran in circles nearby, clearly failing at his job as a peacekeeper.
"You're all wizards!" one of his mouths shouted. "For the love of the arcane arts, stop trying to kill each other like brutes!"
But no one listened.
A tall man with three crystal eyes and a monocle roared, "Enough talk! Magic is for cowards! Real warriors settle it with their fists!"
"Yes! Hit him again!" someone yelled from a corner. "Use the left hook! That's the one that shattered that wyvern skull last night!"
"Who the hell stole my bread?!"
"Has anyone seen my pants? Or the girl chained to them?"
"Who wants to go out and have sex?!"
"My kingdom's been gone for 40,000 years!"
"And the empire that turned it to ash was wiped out thirty-thousand years before that—by their own slaves in a sex cult!"
"That land has changed rulers 985 times! You want me to care?!"
"Shut up before I gag you with the same belt you begged me to choke you with!"
"I miss the old kinks—blood-warmed oil, cursed toys, bone restraints, priesthood breeding pits... back when a collar meant something!"
"You call that a dungeon? In my time, they screamed gratitude. Now they just swipe left."
"I once ruled over a harem that fed on guilt and climax. Now I can't even find a virgin who knows how to kneel properly."
"They moan in chains and call it prayer—guess the gods are getting kinkier."
"Shut up or I'll hit you again!"
In a dark corner of the hall, young Charles sat on a pile of empty crates, hugging a mug of cold tea that had long since gone stale. His face twitched with every new shout, every bizarre outburst, every sudden explosion of energy that cracked the stone walls or sent furniture flying across the room.
This... this wasn't what he had expected at all.
When the elders spoke of the Ancient Ones—wizards who had slumbered through millennia, who had battled gods and worlds in ages long forgotten—he imagined wise, majestic beings. Regal figures in robes of twilight, speaking in cryptic riddles and arcane tongues, filled with timeless grace and restrained power.
Instead… he got this.
'They were completely normal when they first woke up!' Charles thought with a strained grimace. 'Noble. Reserved. Calm. Some even thanked me for preserving the sanctity of their sealing chambers! But now, three days later, they've turned into this circus of lunatics!'
They brawled like animals in the halls, teeth cracking against bone, blood splashing across polished stone floors already stained by older, forgotten battles. Dice made from the knucklebones of fallen comrades clattered across tables.
They drank mushroom brew that rotted the gut and set the brain alight, laughing like lunatics as they vomited into sacred urns and pissed in holy fonts. One man lost an eye in a drinking contest and demanded another round while still bleeding. Another lit his own beard on fire just to outdo a bet, howling with joy as his skin melted from his jaw.
They fucked like demons in heat—on altars, in barracks, between the cracks of war machines—indulging in orgies that blurred lines between pain and pleasure. Some wore masks of bone and iron, others chanted eldritch prayers between thrusts. Kinks were no longer whispered but sung aloud like battle hymns—domination, branding, blood rites, magical bindings of pleasure and agony.
Pain was currency. No one asked permission. No one begged for forgiveness.
They laughed, cried, shouted, and danced.
They played instruments that no longer existed and sang songs from vanished continents, sometimes in harmony, often off-key. A few were clearly going senile. Others simply didn't care. These were beings who had lived through the rise and fall of civilizations, and now that they were awake, they indulged every desire as if trying to make up for lost time.
Charles glanced nervously at the center of the chaos, where the white-haired brute and the dwarf were now arm-wrestling atop a flipped table while people placed bets in the background.
He swallowed hard.
'Every single one of them… is at least level nine. That's the minimum qualification just to be here.'
While Charles himself was just a glorified clerk sent by the council to "observe and report," the people around him had once commanded entire legions of elementals, bent space-time, or dueled creatures on the moons of shattered realms. They were walking weapons, every one of them.
And yet...
"And yet," Charles murmured, almost laughing to himself, "I'm the only one who remembers to flush the toilet."
According to sealed records, the white-haired brawler had slumbered for over forty thousand years, once hailed as the 'Iron Fist of the Ninefold Armies.' The dwarf? He had fought in the last recorded World War over ninety thousand years ago, wielding spells that could tear apart continents.
These men—no, these relics—should have been revered, and perhaps feared.
But now?
Now they were eating pickled fish off the floor and screaming about which soup tasted more authentic while fucking women of all ages consent and r@p£ just some words to them.
Charles let out a long sigh and sank deeper into his chair.
"Maybe hundreds of years doesn't feel long when you've lived for tens of thousands... or maybe when you're that strong, even the concept of death starts to feel like a joke."
He looked at the room full of shouting, laughing, half-insane legends, and thought, If these are the foundations of the wizarding world, then the whole damn world must be built on madness.
*****
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