Chapter 817: 817

But not too long ago, this bowl which had been kept under heavy, multi-layered containment suddenly went silent. Erik first noticed the change when the constant, heavy drain on his mana reserves abruptly ceased.

That drain had always been a form of feedback, the substance within the bowl was perpetually reacting, and his magical wards and etched runes were forced to consume his mana to fight back and maintain the seal. When that pressure vanished, the sudden stillness was jarring.

The shock of the reaction immediately threw him into a state of high alert. He placed his laboratory under a strict quarantine, ensuring no one could approach while he conducted a frantic series of safety measures to determine what had gone wrong.

To his utter surprise, nothing was wrong. The bowl sat exactly where he had left it, silent and devoid of its usual maddening whispers. The containment hadn’t been breached or forcefully broken. He struggled to believe his own eyes, his first instinct was that the fluid had finally lost its potency, its essence simply withering away after being separated from its source for so long.

Driven by a need for answers, he waited for the cover of night. He slipped away from his kingdom, venturing toward the site of the original spectacle, a location now heavily guarded and fortified by the Sun Kingdom. He had to know if the source itself had changed, or if something far more mysterious was happening to the piece he held.

Erik bypassed the Sun Kingdom’s guards with practiced ease, slipping through their defenses as he approached the spectacle. As he drew closer to the lake of dark, viscous fluid, he braced himself for the mental assault, but it never came. There were no voices, no psychic pressure, and the very fabric of reality remained undistorted.

Finding it impossible to believe, he went as far as to leave the site, capture one of his own people who had been lost to the curse, and bring them back. With a cold, detached gaze, Erik slit the creature’s throat and cast the body into the dark depths to provoke a reaction. He waited, watching intently, but the lake remained still. The body simply sank into the black water, swallowed by a silence that was more unsettling than the whispers had ever been.

Erik stood on the shore for hours, lost in a labyrinth of thought, before eventually producing a new vessel and filling it with the dormant fluid to take back with him.

In the months that followed, he exhausted every method he knew to spark a reaction from the liquid. He poked, prodded, and channeled energy into it, but the substance remained inert. Driven to the edge of his reason, he even went as far as exposing the liquid to his own family members, watching desperately to see if the presence of his own bloodline would trigger a different result. Yet, the dark water remained a mystery, refusing to yield the secrets of its sudden, terrifying silence.

Erik felt a growing bitterness, convinced that the Dark Gods were merely Toying with him in his hour of greatest need. He knew they were aware of how much their "gift" could advance his goals, and he began to believe this sudden silence was their ultimate form of mockery, a way of laughing at his helplessness from the shadows.

He was at his absolute lowest point, a state where he was finally desperate enough to accept help from even the most tainted sources. Yet, just as he stood on the precipice of surrendering to them, they had withdrawn. The silence was deafening.

Before the Dark Gods had gone quiet, their whispers had been constant, a persistent hiss in the back of his mind promising they could facilitate the integration of his bloodlines. Erik had believed them, he knew their power over flesh and corruption was absolute. His only hesitation had been the price, the "dark hands" or hidden taints they would inevitably leave behind in the marrow of his people.

But now, months of silence had passed. The absence of their presence was so complete that a new, jarring thought began to take root: had they fallen? Had the gods of this world finally risen up to eliminate them? It was the only logical explanation he could find. Why else would such opportunistic, noisy deities go silent now, of all times, when Erik was most vulnerable and easily manipulated? He was a prize ripe for the taking, yet he had been left alone in the dark.

Erik found himself torn, his mind a battlefield of conflicting doubts. It certainly didn’t help that Siren was always there to spur him on, her presence a constant, intoxicating weight. She whispered into his ears, her voice sweet as honey, while her hands traced the lines of his body, soothing his fears and telling him there was nothing to dread.

She told him he was destined for greatness, that he simply needed to take the necessary step.

Siren had become his silent, devoted companion ever since his fallout with the gods Ikem and Tide. Since that day, she had never truly left his side. Every moment spent together was a new discovery for Erik, he found himself hopelessly enthralled, convinced he could never grow bored of her presence. To him, her beauty was her most precious gift, the only thing in existence truly worthy of a king like himself. Had it not been for the crushing weight of his crown, Erik would have happily regressed into his old elven habits spending his centuries painting the curve of her smile or composing endless poems to immortalize her grace.

However, the man who sat in that laboratory was no longer the same Erik who had once walked the woods. He had changed profoundly. The constant interaction with an Arch Curse like Siren, combined with his prolonged exposure to corrupted mana, had warped his essence. By bathing his senses in cursed energy, especially that fueled by the primal sources of Lust and Envy. Erik’s very soul had begun to shift, hardening and darkening in ways he had yet to fully comprehend.

The corruption had taken root, refining Erik’s physical form until every feature was enhanced to its absolute limit. His beauty had become so ethereal and delicate that, at a passing glance, he could easily be mistaken for a woman, his presence radiated a magnetic, predatory grace. His human queen, captivated by this transformation, had grown obsessed, constantly seeking his touch and his presence.

But Erik felt only a deep, cold repulsion toward her. To him, she was no longer an equal. Though she possessed a beauty that ordinary men would wage wars to claim, she paled in comparison to the perfection of Siren. In Erik’s eyes, distorted by the influence of the Arch Curse, the queen was flawed, her humanity a blemish he could no longer tolerate.

This transformation was not his alone. His children had begun to shift as well, their bloodlines reacting to the ambient cursed energy and the lingering elven essence within them. They were becoming something more, something "purer" and the queen, witnessing this, began to crave that change for herself.

She was a woman who understood her husband, and she could feel his growing coldness and the way he recoiled from her gaze. She knew of his ultimate goal to overwrite the human genealogy with that of the elves. She saw how the elven bloodline acted as a conductor for cursed energy, allowing one to master the corruption and use it to enhance their physical form and allure.

Driven by her own shallow desires for eternal youth and unrivaled beauty, the queen abandoned her role as the voice of reason. Instead of tethering Erik to his humanity, she joined her voice with Siren’s, spurring him further into the abyss for the sake of her own vanity.

In any other event, the Queen’s whims might have been dismissed as secondary to the state’s survival. However, in the current fragile state of the kingdom, her status was unchallenged. Erik knew that maintaining a bond with her was the key to holding the loyalty of his children and ensuring their unwavering support.

More importantly, for the few subjects who still possessed their sanity, the image of the royal family standing strong and unified was the only anchor they had left. If the Queen faltered or the family fractured, the kingdom’s spirit would break with them. Thus, her desires however selfish carried the weight of a royal decree.

All of these pressures, the silence of the gods, the obsession of his Queen, and the intoxicating whispers of Siren converged in this single moment. Erik remained suspended in the air, his legs crossed, the two vessels hovering before him like two halves of a dark destiny.

There was a final, fleeting moment of hesitation before he opened his palm. Nestled in his hand was a mysterious seed.

Erik had no true understanding of its origin, only that it had been a gift from Siren. She had pressed it into his hand with a silent, lingering promise that it would be the catalyst he needed, and the moment he finally made up his mind, its purpose would become clear.