He stood frozen in place like a mummy with its internal organs eviscerated and wrapped in cloth.
"Who are you?!"
...
Niracek's hoarse howl did not receive any reply, and his voice was still the only one echoing in the cold room.
The cold kept invading through the cracks in the door, taking away the little heat in the house.
Niracek's eyes widened, almost popping out of his eyes.
But he still didn't see anything.
There was no other living thing in this room, only himself.
He stretched out his withered and bloody right index finger, trying to touch the darkness in the room.
"Are you responding to me, noble ancestors?"
The answer to his question was still an unspeakable silence, and the room was so quiet that he could hear his own heartbeat clearly.
After a while, Nilasek's originally hopeful eyes gradually dimmed, and he staggered back to the wall, preparing to continue his unfinished "painting".
Just when he was about to start "writing", the voice sounded from the depths of his mind again.
This time, he heard clearly.
"Submit...be loyal to me, and your tribe will be saved from destruction!"
"who is it?!"
Niracek turned around like crazy, his face ferocious and crazy.
A pale spiritual light surged from his body, burning like a flame on the surface of his robe!
"Answer me! Who are you!?"
"I am the desire of your heart...your pain, your struggle, all your suffering."
The voice in my mind answered calmly, like a terrifying murmur coming from the deepest part of the abyss.
"I know you..."
This sound was like the fiercest ice wind outside the temple, and also like the voice of the dead blowing from the underworld.
It has a chanting tone, immersing itself into Nilasek's thoughts little by little.
"no no!!"
The barbarian elder held his head in pain, and his body fell to the ground exhausted as if his bones had been removed.
"Stop resisting...I'm right next to you, I...am you..."
"You... lied! Lie!!!"
Boom!!
Niracek suddenly stood up, and huge necromancy mana poured out of his body like a rushing river. The entire temple was shaken by the impact of this huge force, and the surrounding walls began to shake violently, as if the next moment
It's about to collapse.
"Look at yourself...look at the walls around you...you know what you want, that your people need you to save them."
"I don't need you...no need!
Stop it! Get out of here! Get away!!!”
Niracek screamed almost hoarsely, and the violent energy turbulence instantly extinguished the only light source in the room, the weak oil lamp on the stone wall.
The entire hut instantly fell into a dead and cold darkness.
"Can't see the future..."
"hopeless......"
"Destruction is coming..."
"Everything you hold dear will be destroyed..."
The ghostly whispers became clearer in the darkness. Niracek covered his ears desperately, but he could not stop the sound from pouring into his heart.
Soon, he began to have hallucinations, and the figures of other sacrificed elders appeared in front of him...
"Nilasek! We trust you so much and entrust the burden of the tribe to you, how dare you let us down!"
"No!! No!! I didn't! I didn't!!"
"You lie! You liar! Coward!"
"Don't say that to me...Leanna, don't say that to me..."
"Shut up! Look what you have done! The tribe will be destroyed because of you! The ancestors will be shamed because of you!!"
"It's not like that! It's not like that..."
"Raise your head, coward! Look at those children who died in the battle! They all died because of you! Because of you!!"
"Trash! Coward!"
"Incompetent! You have a heavy responsibility!!"
"..."
Niracek was speechless. A dilapidated and abandoned fortress slowly appeared in front of his eyes. The streets and alleys of this fortress were filled with the tragic corpses of killed barbarians and abandoned and smoldering ruins.
The merciless wind and snow blew violently through the gaps in the collapsed city wall. The thick ice and snow covering the streets in the city slowly gathered in the cold wind into familiar figures that almost stopped Niracek's heart.
"You...killed us..." A barbarian who was missing half of his head looked at him blankly and said.
"Because of your incompetence..." Another old woman wearing a brown fur robe also walked up to him.
"Uncle Sera...we trust you so much..."
Niracek turned around and saw Anya, with only half of her body left, crawling toward him from the snow while dragging her frozen intestines.
"Harrogath...destroyed..."
He raised his head again and saw the big leader Qualkek walking towards him out of the snow and wind - a sharp knife had been inserted into his heart, and his whole body exuded a pale will of death.
"No...no...no!!!"
Niracek finally collapsed. This horrific scene and the blame from his own people drove him to the corner of madness.
All these reflections that he feared most in his heart appeared in front of him like a true prophecy.
He struggled and curled up into a ball, covering his face with his hands, feeling cold hands surrounding him from all directions.
Despair has arrived.
And just when Niracek's mind was about to sink completely into the bottom of the abyss as cold and hopeless as the endless winter night, the voice that appeared in his mind before came again.
"Submit...be loyal to me, and your tribe will be saved from destruction."
"Serve me and none of this will happen!"
Niracek raised his head suddenly, his eyes exuding the ecstatic and desperate light of a drowning man seeing the last straw.
"I surrender! I am loyal! I swear! As long as you are willing to save us..."
Niracek knelt on the ground with tears streaming down his face, offering his loyalty and soul to the unknown and indescribable darkness.
"I will... If you are loyal to me as you swore, I will fulfill my promise..."
"I am willing to dedicate everything I have, and I am willing to entrust my soul to you...my...master."
Niracek kowtowed to the ground and without hesitation tore apart a part of his soul and sent it into the unknown darkness.
From this moment on, the connection between him and the Professional Sacred Contract was immediately severed and replaced by another contract from Chaos Purgatory.
"Very well, my servant, now, prove your loyalty and complete the first task for me!"
"As you wish, my lord, what are your orders?"
"Your big leader is planning a counterattack... You don't need to stop him, the hell army will naturally teach him what it means to hit an egg against a stone.
But you must take this opportunity to seize Anya, the girl with the blood of the elders.
I need her blood to completely pollute the top of Harrogath!"
"Anya..." Nilasek's expression became uncertain.
Anya is the girl he grew up watching and the daughter of his best friend in the Presbyterian Church.
It can be said that Nilasek, who has no children, almost treats Anya as half a daughter. Now his new master wants him to hurt Anya, which makes him feel a little hesitant.
"You hesitated, my servant."
"Master...why Anya, if you need the elder's blood...I am also an elder!"
"No, your blood won't work, it has to be hers, do you understand?
Niracek, I thought you didn't want your tribe to be destroyed?"
"No! No! Master...I...I understand..."
Listening to Hong Guoguo's almost threatening words, Niracek could only give in.
In the face of the survival of the tribe, everything can be sacrificed, right? (To be continued)
