Rosh stood in the center of the vast, shadowy gothic hall, his starry void form pulsing with a faint, rhythmic glow. Though disappointment flickered in his chest at the realization that the ancient Overlord of Death was not the Doom Overseer he sought, his analytical mind quickly weighed the situation.
Finding a primordial entity of Garath’s caliber trapped on an isolated, floating landmass in the middle of Earth’s ocean was an extraordinary stroke of luck. An extra-dimensional sovereign of death was far too valuable an asset to leave rotting in isolation.
"I can help you get out of here," Rosh presented smoothly, his dual-toned voice echoing off the high stone pillars.
Garath paused on the steps of his bone throne. The yellowed skull tilted slightly, the crimson pinpricks of light in his hollow eye sockets flaring with cautious interest. He looked down at the starry silhouette standing before him, recalling the spatial authority Rosh’s father had once commanded.
After a long moment of deliberate silence, the skeletal lord gave a slow, measured nod. "Once, your father helped me carve out this domain... and now, you offer to break my chains. Very well. If you can grant me my freedom, I will grant two of your requests."
A faint, arrogant smile played across Rosh’s featureless visor. "That, I will keep in mind for when I need them."
Without wasting another second, Rosh raised his right hand. Tapping into his newly restored spatial authority, he sliced his talons through the ambient air. Reality tore open effortlessly, forming a tall, unstable dimensional gate that swirled with spatial mist.
Rosh had calibrated the exit coordinates to lead directly to the coast of the Eastern Continent—the location of the second massive dark mana reserve he had detected from the skyscraper. Taking Garath along would serve a dual purpose: it would free the ancient Overlord while providing Rosh with a powerful companion to investigate the remaining dark mana signature.
"Step through," Rosh instructed, gesturing toward the swirling threshold. "On the other side lies the main continent."
Garath adjusted his tattered dark coat and stepped down from the dais. His skeletal boots clicked against the stone floor as he approached the portal. But the very microsecond Garath’s bony foot crossed the outer threshold of the spatial gate, the air inside the hall violently inverted.
HUMMMMMM—!
The jagged edges of the spatial tear suddenly flared with blinding, white runic scripts that materialized out of thin air. The invisible barrier surrounding the island reacted with terrifying, predatory force. Instead of allowing passage, the dimensional tear began violently absorbing massive torrents of dark mana directly from Garath’s vessel and the ambient atmosphere.
"What—?!" Rosh’s eyes widened in genuine shock.
Before he could forcefully stabilize the spatial coordinates, the overwhelmed gate reached a catastrophic critical mass.
BOOOOOOM!
A deafening shockwave erupted through the hall, shattering the nearest stone pillars into powder as the spatial tear imploded into a blinding flash of white energy. Rosh was forced back a half-step by the kinetic backblast, his starry form flickering as the portal completely erased itself from existence.
Rosh’s fists clenched tightly at his sides, his teeth grinding in sheer, unadulterated frustration. He had inherited the absolute authority over space from a Primordial Overlord, yet an external force had just violently rejected his dimensional gate. He had never witnessed a spatial lock so absolute, so suffocating, that it prevented an entity from even entering a portal.
Garath halted his advance, shaking his skull in dry amusement. He turned his back on the dispersing mist and began walking casually back toward his throne of spines.
"Looks like you are of no help to me," the skeletal overlord chuckled, his voice rattling like dry pebbles in a metal tin.
Rosh turned his featureless head, his gaze locking onto the back of the retreating skeleton. "Who... who did you say put this barrier around your domain?"
Garath stopped at the base of the staircase, looking over his shoulder. "It was a human named Vincent," the Overlord replied plainly. "It has been around a hundred years since he bound this land... I can’t quite recall the exact timeframe."
"A hundred years?!" Rosh repeated, his voice laced with profound disbelief.
Humans were fragile, short-lived creatures whose biological vessels rarely survived past eight or nine decades, let alone a full century. Yet, for a spatial barrier to remain this dense, this impenetrable, and actively responsive after a hundred years meant only one thing: the human who cast it was still breathing.
Vincent... Rosh contemplated the name, his mind rapidly processing the impossibility.
Even if this legendary human pioneer had somehow cheated death and survived for over a century, his physical body and core would undoubtedly be withered, exhausted, and beyond helpless by now. An ancient human on the brink of natural decay could not possibly maintain a god-tier barrier if a direct assault was brought to his doorstep.
A cruel, confident smirk spread across Rosh’s face. The solution was remarkably simple: find this ancient human named Vincent, slaughter him, and the barrier binding Garath would instantly collapse into nothingness.
"You have my word..." Rosh declared, his voice carrying the immovable weight of a sovereign vow. "I will help you get out of here."
Garath turned his skeletal head back toward Rosh, a raspy, dry laugh echoing from his hollow ribcage. "You seem quite confident for someone whose gate just exploded. I like that."
"I will crush the human who bound you," Rosh continued, his starry form surging with cold, dark mana. "But in exchange, you will have to promise me that you will follow my lead in the war that is to come."
Garath’s burning red eye-lights narrowed into sharp, crimson specks. "A war? What kind of war?"
"I cannot divulge the specifics, as I am strictly forbidden by higher decree," Rosh answered coldly, referencing the divine restrictions binding the Rulers. "But know this... we, the Overlords of Rilth, are preparing to launch an all-out, apocalyptic war upon Earth. The preparations are in their final phase."
The Overlord of Death went quiet. He stood upon the bone steps, his mind weighing the staggering revelation. A full-scale invasion of Earth meant endless slaughter, uncounted souls, and a torrential harvest of death—the ultimate feast for his domain.
"I will follow you..." Garath announced, his voice echoing with absolute finality, "...if you can break these chains and free me."
Over the next two hours, Rosh refused to yield. Driven by his pride as the Ruler of Space, he subjected the barrier to a relentless series of spatial experiments. He attempted to fold the dimensional fabric around Garath’s core, tried phasing the skeleton through sub-spatial layers, and attempted to anchor a micro-gate directly inside Garath’s ribcage. But no matter how complex his spatial equations were, Vincent’s ancient white-mana barrier repelled every single attempt, violently purging Rosh’s dark energy the moment it touched the perimeter.
Recognizing that brute-forcing the barrier from the inside was impossible without first eliminating the caster, Rosh finally halted his efforts. Agitated and brimming with cold irritation, he turned away from the skeletal throne.
"Wait for my return," Rosh grunted.
With a sharp, aggressive flick of his wrist, he tore open a fresh spatial rift—this one targeted exclusively for his own single transport—and stepped through the dark threshold, leaving Garath alone in his gothic tomb.
The suffocating cold of the gothic hall evaporated, replaced instantly by the sharp, salty tang of sea spray and the howling gust of an open ocean breeze.
Rosh stepped out of the spatial tear, his boots coming down onto the jagged, windswept rock of a high cliff along the coast of the Eastern Continent. He stood at the absolute edge of the precipice, looking out over the vast, turbulent expanse of water that stretched endlessly toward the horizon.
Turning his back on the sea, Rosh stepped into the dense, ancient forest blanketing the coastal mountain range. He closed his eyes, extending his sensory perception to pinpoint the exact location of the second massive dark mana reserve he had detected earlier.
He swept his gaze across the towering trees, the mossy boulders, and the shadowed ravines. To his initial annoyance, the surface of the coastline was dead quiet. There were no roars of feral Calamity beasts, no visible dimensional tears, and not a single trace of corrupted mist lingering in the air.
Frown. Rosh narrowed his eyes. His initial sweep had definitely locked onto an extraordinarily dense concentration of dark energy in this exact geographic sector.
Refining his technique, Rosh channeled a concentrated thread of spatial mana directly through his core. He projected his perception downward, driving his senses deep into the geological strata of the earth beneath his boots. He pushed past the topsoil, past the bedrock, and down into the subterranean depths of the continent.
Suddenly, his perception struck an impenetrable, artificial vault miles beneath the earth.
Rosh’s eyes snapped open, a sharp, dangerous glint flashing in his gaze. The massive, suffocating reservoir of dark mana was not roaming the surface of the Eastern Continent... it was locked deep underground!
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