Two in one chapter
...
"So you're telling me you cleared the whole city of Nightmare Creatures, collected every Sleeper from the outer settlement, stormed the castle, fought the King, his lieutenants, and became a King yourself?"
Gilgamesh chewed the jerky, nodding his head at everything Sunny was saying.
"And all of this happened while we were sleeping?"
"Yup."
Sunny looked at him.
All three girls stared at him while he just continued eating the food.
Unfortunately, their stock of food was going to run out in just a few days, and he wasn't planning on eating any Nightmare Creatures anytime soon.
"So, do you want to stay here, or go to the castle? The rooms are much bigger there."
...
Being a King was a lot different than he thought. He had thought that he would have to provide justice, solve crimes being committed, but out of fear, no one had done anything.
There were some petty thefts going on which he had resolved, but nothing serious.
Gilgamesh did not have to watch over much of the logistics; most of it was already stable and didn't require any changes.
All in all, Gunlaug had done a pretty good job of maintaining a castle.
After their battle, his lieutenants had given up once they had seen their lord submitting and not retaliating, Gunlaug was probably resting in the infirmary right now.
On the topic of Gunlaug's defeat, he remembered something and opened up his Runes.
Aspect: [King of Heroes]
Aspect Rank: [???]
Aspect Abilities: [Gate of Babylon]
Aspect Legacy: [King's Treasures]
Focusing on his Aspect Legacy, Gilgamesh opened up its Runes.
King's Treasures Description: [The treasures of the great king of [UNKNOWN], [UNKNOWN] once lost, have somehow, someway, managed to have found their way into the hands of the Usurper, Wedge of Heaven.]
'This Usurper shit again, why does this shitty spell even call me that.'
Maybe it had something to do with him taking over the body of his predecessor?
King's Treasures Mastery level: [1/7]
First Relic: Claimed
Second Relic: Unearned
Third Relic: Unearned...
In total, there were seven relics that had come from his Aspect Legacy. And he already had one of them.
Closing the Aspect Legacy page, he instead went to the Memories page. While staring at the hundreds of Memories in his possession, he finally found what he was looking for.
Memory: [Wings of Anu]
Memory Rank: [???]
Memory Tier: [???]
Memory Type: [???]
Memory Description: [Taken directly from the treasury of the great king of [UNKNOWN], [UNKNOWN]. This [UNKNOWN] has somehow, someway, managed to fall into the hands of the Usurper, Wedge of Heaven.]
Memory Enchantments: [???], [???], [???].
Another useless description, though this time there was another [UNKNOWN], which if he wasn't wrong, most likely meant Noble Phantasm.
How was the Spell, or Weaver, able to get his hands on the Noble Phantasms from a different universe entirely?
It was quite interesting how it couldn't categorize the Memories from the other properly, though. Gilgamesh hadn't had the chance to test it out as of yet.
Looking outside at the nearby window, he walked towards it and opened it.
Sitting on the ledge, he looked down at the people going about their day.
Gilgamesh summoned the Memory and without thinking, he jumped.
Gilgamesh free-fell through the window towards the ground. With a grin, he finally started using the Memory.
One moment he was free-falling, and the other moment he was hundreds of meters up in the air.
"God damn, I didn't expect this to be this fast."
Falling through the wind with a smile, he flew through the air with his hair whipping back.
Gilgamesh performed a few loops and turns, along with other acrobatic maneuvers that he always wanted to attempt ever since he was a kid.
This was fun. Very fun.
Gilgamesh constantly flew back and forth through the air, with a smile on his face. Who knew flying could be this fun?
The winds flew past him as he stopped to look at the sun.
"What will happen if I start flying towards the Sun?"
Gilgamesh doubted that the heights would prove to be much of a challenge with his enhanced body, but still, he wouldn't be attempting to go to space anytime soon.
Wasn't that Sovereign, Asterion, on the moon? What was he even doing up there anyways? How did he even manage to reach there?
Gilgamesh had the sudden urge to shout Asterion's name into the sky and alert him.
Still, he wasn't stupid enough to do it for no reason.
Turning his gaze away from the Sun, he looked below himself at the ground.
"Oh fuck, where did the castle go?"
...
It hadn't been that hard to find the castle; he wasn't as far as he had expected.
Entering through the open window again, he put the [Wings of Anu] inside of [Gate of Babylon].
Even though the Memory had wings in its name, it didn't actually give him wings.
While strecting his body, Gilgamesh walked towards the door to go outside the room.
Just when he was going to turn the knob to open it, he paused.
Remembering something, he teleported out, across the castle towards the eastern part of the Dark City.
Standing at the top of the tower, he found what he was looking for. Not too far away, the remnant of a giant tower lay broken on its side, stretching far away into the distance.
The buildings that the tower had fallen on thousands of years ago were shattered and turned into dust.
This was the lighthouse where the entrance for the catacombs was.
Looking at it, Gilgamesh wanted to test himself against the undead of the catacombs.
The ancient lighthouse might have been proud and magnificent once. Perhaps it had even served as a symbol of the defiant will of the people of the ancient city, burning as a shining beacon in the eternal darkness of the cursed night. But it had fallen a long time ago just like the people that built it.
Gilgamesh couldn't help but think about what life would have been like here when the people still lived. The city, its structure and design, were flawlessly made. It was weird to imagine the normal people going through the streets when the population was still thriving.
Removing the thoughts about the ancient ruins of the city, he proceeded towards the lighthouse.
Pausing to look at it for a second, Gilgamesh stepped inside from a breach in the wall that he had found.
Even though it was fully dark inside, with the [Demigod] Attribute, he didn't have to worry about seeing in the dark.
Scanning the area around himself, he found what he was looking for: a tunnel leading towards the entrance of the Catacombs.
Walking through the tunnel, he finally found what he was looking for.
Right in front of him, the floor of the tunnel was broken, forming a narrow crevice. It was filled with darkness, leading deep down into the ground and then deeper still.
The tunnel was pretty deep; Gilgamesh had to seriously focus to actually see where it ended. Still, he doubted that it would actually cause him any trouble.
Without wasting any more time, he stepped inside the tunnel.
The feeling of dropping continuously for seconds was fun, and before he even realized it, his feet had landed on the ground, making a thunderous sound.
Gazing around the tunnel, Gilgamesh could see the weathered stones of the sides, clearly put there by human hands.
After checking for a few seconds he could tell that the coast was clear; he couldn't see any undead things even kilometers away.
So Gilgamesh started walking. Even though he didn't know where exactly he was going.
Gilgamesh was simply trusting [Golden Rule] to guide him in the correct direction even if he didn't know where exactly he was going.
Since none of the creatures had come close to attack him, Gilgamesh finally had the time to think about his Aspect Legacy.
Yesterday, when Gunlaug had kneeled and been 'conquered', his Aspect Legacy had revealed itself.
After that, multiple other people had been 'conquered' as well, almost a hundred, but he still had not earned the second relic.
Most likely, the first Relic had required only one person, and the second one would require around a thousand or so.
The number will probably go on increasing until he reached the final relic.
Not only that, but he wasn't entirely sure how the whole 'has been conquered' thing worked. At first, he had thought that it had something to do with beating people up until they recognized him as their King, but when the other people had been 'conquered' as well, he wasn't sure anymore.
Another thing he wasn't sure about was whether someone could be 'un-conquered'.
What did the conquering thing even mean, anyway? Were they going to be eternally loyal to him?
There was also the fact that he had gained two fragments for each Sleeper that he had conquered. In total, he had gained roughly another two hundred fragments from the whole ordeal.
While lost in thought, he saw a skeleton running towards him at full speed.
Grinning, he waited for the skeleton to come close to him, there was something he wanted to try.
When the undead skeleton was close enough, Gilgamesh kicked it to the ground.
Lifting his foot, he started crushing its bones to fine dust.
After a few minutes of continuous crushing, all that remained of the skeleton was fine dust.
"Hmm, let's see if you can reform now."
Gilgamesh stepped back, waiting for the skeleton to reform. After a few seconds, the fine dust started to move slowly, reforming its body.
He stared at it in astonishment.
"I didn't know your regeneration was this good."
Getting bored from watching it reform slowly, Gilgamesh kicked its dust across the whole tunnel and started walking in a random direction.
Perhaps the crushing of their kin finally awakened the other undead creatures, and all of a sudden, they started to emerge from out of the walls, the ground, and all the different routes.
"This is going to be fun."
Immediately dashing towards the skeletons, he started tearing them apart; bones flew into the air as his hands, legs, knees, and elbows moved with insane speeds.
Gilgamesh flew through their numbers, dismantling each and every one of them thoroughly. Unfortunately, they just kept on coming. At first, there were ten, then a hundred, and now he was surrounded by thousands, if not tens of thousands of them.
No matter how many skeletons Gilgamesh destroyed, five more took its place while the destroyed one started reforming immediately.
He was cooked.
Suddenly, he felt one of the filths actually manage to touch his armor.
Snarling, he turned back and kicked it towards its brothers and sisters; the skeleton flew through the air, its ribcage turned to fine dust as it knocked over several others near it.
"Alright, that's enough."
Immediately, all one hundred of his portals opened up everywhere: on the wall, on the ground, and up in the ceiling.
The thousands of skeletons that were ganging up on him fell through the portals, getting locked inside.
All the sounds of clattering bones stopped around him. Closing the portals, he locked the skeletons inside.
"You are my pet now."
Smirking at their fate, he started walking in a random direction as if none of that ever happened.
...
Soon enough, Gilgamesh was standing over a chasm where the catacombs had fallen down, with a flimsy bridge connecting the two sides.
The chasm was no less than forty meters across and stretched far into the distance to both left and right, like a dark border separating the world of the living from the world of the dead. A rickety rope bridge was drawn across it, connecting to a similar-looking tunnel at the other end of the abyssal chasm.
The rope bridge looked like a derelict of ancient times. It was flimsy, slippery, and rotten through and through.
Gilgamesh could have jumped across the Chasm or teleported himself across it entirely.
He didn't do either of those two things, however.
Instead, Gilgamesh just walked across it, pretending that he was a weak little Sleeper hoping that the bridge wouldn't fall.
"Man, being strong feels good."
Once he was across the bridge, he looked at the tunnel in front of him.
The tunnel he was currently in was somewhat different from the previous one. It looked more weathered and decrepit, with its walls and floor smoothed and uneven, as though eroded by something over the course of countless years. The tunnels were now strongly angled down.
With each minute, Gilgamesh was descending deeper and deeper underground.
Walking straight, it didn't take long for him to find what he was looking for: the main chamber of the catacombs.
The giant underground chamber was circular in shape and as immense as the grand hall of the Bright Castle.
Its walls were built out of the same grey stone slabs as the mighty walls of the Dark City, but unlike them, the walls of the chamber were covered with whispering streams of cold, nebulous black water.
In the center of it, a vast mountain of human bones rose from the ground, reaching almost halfway to the distant ceiling.
Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people must have perished to create it.
Gilgamesh shifted his gaze, only now noticing the veins of crimson coral growing from the harrowing hill of white bones, almost like muscle tissue of some colossal creature.
Following the coral pillars up, he finally saw that the dome of the immense chamber was broken, with pale sunlight streaming through the breach and falling on the ghastly visage below. A giant stone hand was reaching down through the broken dome, its palm open, as though trying to caress the mountain formed from the bones of those people who had once populated this dark, forsaken land.
The vast underground chamber was situated directly underneath the headless statue of the priest.
Ignoring all these things, Gilgamesh focused his attention on what he was here for: the Lord of the Dead.
The Lord of the Dead was slowly coming to its senses. The bones constituting its repulsive body moved and rippled, unfurling from within the white mass like giant, twisting limbs. It seemed to be slowly turning from a shapeless hill into some semblance of a creature.
Another twisting pillar suddenly shot from the mass of bones, blindly striking at the empty space behind the giant abomination.
What followed was a deafening noise of thousands of ancient bones scraping against weathered stone.
Gilgamesh was here not only to test himself against a fallen tyrant, but to also get the key from it.
Suddenly, one of its limbs shot out towards Gilgamesh, piercing the wall behind him as he dodged just in time.
Looking at the pillar, already moving towards him, Gilgamesh realized that he might have underestimated this abomination.
Ducking under the hand that flew towards his head, Gilgamesh finally saw what he was looking for: a weak golden glow emanated from a small, partially concealed object.
Another hand formed, joining the previous one in attacking him. Weaving through both of them, Gilgamesh still got nicked slightly at the edge of his armor and suddenly got an idea.
Dashing towards the key, he jumped above the limb, using it to run, and rolled when the other one came near him. Not long after, Gilgamesh snatched the key and stored it inside of [Gate of Babylon].
While jumping back to create distance between them, he opened a portal beneath the Lord of the Dead.
Without even realizing it, the Fallen Tyrant had fallen inside the portal and was locked in it.
"I finally have my own undead army now. Sung Jin Woo you're no longer the best aura farmer who is a Necromancer."
Gilgamesh grinned; he couldn't wait to unleash an army of undead on top of someone's head.
Opening a portal towards the Dark City, he stepped in.
...
Looking at the Cathedral in front of him, Gilgamesh had to admit that it was pretty impressive.
It featured two prominent spires reaching towards the sky, with intricate stone carvings and black windows adorning its surface.
It was genuinely impressive considering that it was created thousands of years ago.
Most of the damage that could have been caused was stopped due to the Black Knight residing inside of it, deterring all the Nightmare Creatures from not only taking residence inside but also from fighting near it.
Summoning Ea from [Gate of Babylon], Gilgamesh stepped inside the Ruined Cathedral.
Once he was inside it, he looked around.
The grand hall of the majestic cathedral was drowned with a weird darkness that his eyes couldn't pierce through which was clinging to its walls and tall columns.
All of a sudden, a black obsidian sword rushed towards him, aiming to behead him immediately.
Having already seen the attack coming, Gilgamesh sidestepped out of the way and brought down Ea on the sword.
One slash.
One slash was all it took to defeat the current form of the Dark Knight.
The deep darkness located at the edges of the hall trembled and rushed towards the knight, but it was too late; Gilgamesh had already teleported both of them outside.
As the shards of the black blade rained on the streets of the Dark City, a shudder ran through the devil's body. The devil froze in a twisted pose, his hands powerlessly hanging down, his back bent.
The black steel of his armor was rusting. It was swiftly turning dull brown, its luster gone, its impregnable surface looking corroded and brittle.
It fell to the ground, trying to pick itself up from the ground to look at the statue of the Goddess inside of the Cathedral for one last time.
The red eyes of the knight dimmed further and further, until the fire in its eyes exploded with fury.
At the same time, Gilgamesh summoned [Stone Saint].
The black mist with the red fire dancing furiously in its eyes rushed towards him. Without waiting, Gilgamesh brought down [Sword of Rupture] on it, and the Echo threw its hands deep inside the Black Knight's mist.
[You have slain a fallen devil, Forsaken Knight.]
[Your treasury grows deeper.]
[You have received a Memory.]
Summoning the memory, he dumped it into the [Gate of Babylon].
Gilgamesh turned his attention towards Saint.
Grasped in the Stone Saint's fist was a strange, beautiful, and ominous gem. It was utterly black, as though suffused with impenetrable darkness. Deep within that black void, crimson flames burned with a menacing red glow. It was pulsating in a slow and bizarre rhythm, drowning everything around in dim red light. Painted by it, the Stone Saint seemed to be drenched in blood. The gem she held looked like a bloody, still-beating heart that she had torn out of someone's chest.
They both looked at each other, knowing what to do.
"Eat it."
At the same time, she took the soul of the Forsaken Knight and gulped it, at the same time, she disappeared back into his Soul Sea.
'Time to get the Weaver's Mask.'
Heading past the doors of the cathedral, Gilgamesh found what he was looking for: the doors leading towards the inner sanctum of the temple.
While stepping in, he immediately started scanning the room, trying to find the hidden lever. Not long after, he finally found what he was looking for.
Gilgamesh knew that the lever was broken and rusted after thousands of years of neglect, so he wasn't searching for it to open the door.
Instead, he was trying to find it to figure out where the hollow wall was exactly; his eyes couldn't pierce through walls after all.
When Gilgamesh reached the lever, he went to the walls near it and started tapping them.
After a few minutes, he finally found what he was looking for. The wall in front of him was hollow.
Clenching his fist, he struck the hollow wall, breaking it instantly. Clearing the dust that had flown out due to the destruction, he went a few steps back and looked at the corridor in front of him.
The whole corridor was enveloped in darkness, even with the sunlight streaming through the paned windows, trying to reach inside but failing.
With the stairs leading deep down underground, the area looked like a passage to hell.
Nevertheless, while waving the dust away, Gilgamesh stepped inside the corridor and started walking down the steps.
The hidden passage led him underground, twisting and turning through the mass of stone. Finally, after minutes of walking down the stairs, it finally ended.
Gilgamesh looked around with a curious expression; even after thousands of years, the place was unnaturally clean and well-kept.
Turning his gaze away from the walls, he finally looked in front of himself.
The first thing that Gilgamesh noticed was that the huge door in front of him was made from the same metal as the Forsaken Knight. It was the same exact dark, lusterless, impenetrable alloy that it had been made of.
Just when he was going to walk forward, towards the gates, a strange thought entered his mind: the torches looked very strange.
They seemed to be producing light, but it was pale and ghostly.
There was no heat that came with it, too.
But that was not the thing that Gilgamesh was concerned about, no.
It was the shadows that they were casting; they were completely frozen, not moving an inch.
Fire never cast shadows.
Gilgamesh felt a chill go up his spine, almost as if someone was watching him. Turning around, he stared at the blank wall suspiciously.
Even with his enhanced eyes, he couldn't see anything out of the ordinary.
'I don't like this place one bit, not one bit.'
Turning away from the wall, Gilgamesh looked at the monolithic black door.
Walking up to it, he looked at the small keyhole located at its center. The key that he had grabbed from the Fallen Tyrant fell into his hands from [Gate of Babylon].
Before Gilgamesh could insert the key inside, he felt like someone or more likely something watching him again.
Instantly, Ea fell into his hands, rotating with such violence that it could tear through the fabric of reality itself.
It hadn't rotated this fast since the day when he had brought it to the real world for the first time.
Immediately raising the [Sword of Rupture], he slashed at the empty space in front of him.
Weirdly enough, Gilgamesh felt like Ea missed something by an inch.
Staring closely at the space in front of him warily with a frown, he unleashed the full power of [Demigod].
He saw something, somewhere; it was difficult to describe, as if he had just stared into a different dimension entirely, completely dissimilar to their own.
Something shifted in the space itself, and Gilgamesh winced, closing his eyes immediately and rubbing his forehead.
Leashing the power of [Demigod] Attribute, he opened his eyes and stared at the same spot.
Dismissing Ea, who had eased its vibrations, he turned back towards the door.
For now, Gilgamesh couldn't do anything until that creature decided to do something; he simply had no way to find it.
Clenching the key again, he inserted it inside the keyhole and twisted.
The door was pushed inside by him, and he finally laid his eyes on the room before him. Behind the door, a small room was carved into the rock. And in it, a corpse in a dark mantle was chained to the floor inside a circle.
The mask was made out of black lacquered wood and carved to resemble the face of a ferocious demon. Its teeth were bared, with four fangs protruding from its mouth. The mask was crowned with three twisted horns. Inside the black chasms of its eyes, there was nothing but utter darkness.
"Pretty cool."
The mask was indeed pretty cool; Weaver sure knew how to aura farm, as expected of a Daemon.
The ghostly torches swayed gently even though there was no wind.
Gilgamesh moved towards the skeleton.
The corpse was kneeling on the floor of the small cell, its hand chained to the floor.
There was a circle carved into the stone around it, with countless symbols that Gilgamesh could not understand surrounding it. However, the circle was broken. In the thousands of years since the fall of the Dark City, the floor of the dungeon cell had cracked, with several fractures running straight through the intricate engraving. Whatever the circle was meant to contain had either perished or escaped a long time ago. Now, the only thing that remained was a withered corpse.
Coming closer, Gilgamesh took another look at the person who had been imprisoned and died under the ruined cathedral. Wasn't this the body of some do High Priest or something? How did someone with such a overpowered mask even get trapped in such a place?
Ignoring that, he moved his hand towards the mask.
Once his hand was close enough, Gilgamesh pulled the mask off the face of the dead prisoner.
Just a moment after his fingers touched the sleek surface of the polished wood, the mask suddenly disintegrated into a swarm of countless white sparks.
Acting like water, the stream of light flowed toward Gilgamesh's chest and entered in his body, disappearing into the Soul Sea.
The voice of the Spell thundered suddenly, louder than it had ever been before.
[You have received a Memory.]
Then, at the same time, the skeleton fell apart, turning into fine dust.
Gilgamesh stared at the place where the bones had just been while rubbing his chin.
Suddenly, he noticed some unreadable runes located to the left of the circle.
Even though he couldn't read it, Gilgamesh remembered that it was supposed to say something like 'Hail Weaver'.
Weirdly enough, the runes didn't cause him a headache like they had with the original Sunny; Gilgamesh could look at them just fine without any sort of reaction.
"Ah, finally, I can leave this shitty place."
With a smile on his face at the task done, Gilgamesh felt like a detective who had solved a murder mystery.
Stretching his back, Gilgamesh opened a portal above the ground. The only thing wrong, however, was that,
He couldn't open one at all.
...
Word Count: 4416.