Chapter 238: Shadows of the Past

The grease fell upon the thing that had emerged from that suit of armor, coating its form as it writhed, gilding it with a shifting, iridescent sheen.

As for the thing itself, it was a semi-transparent, glowing white, revealing within it a tangle of fibers and sharp, shard-like shadows that, with every movement, pressed toward the contact surface, spreading out to envelop the other, shredding the cheese-like, molten prey.

The victim's struggles had ended before the lamp oil was poured, and that thing grew even more active and powerful; the shrouded remains collapsed under the grinding and squeezing, becoming part of the semi-solid mass.

Incompletely digested bone fragments were drawn into its amorphous jaws, becoming accomplices in chewing up the next hunting target.

This made humans hate their own intuition and imagination, able to envision through the shadows beneath the semi-transparent skin how the body was being dissociated and merged into the other, as if the two had always been one.

Green thrust a torch forward to stab. Though it had no eyes, that mass of matter clearly sensed the approaching heat source; it swelled, forming some kind of gathered, extending structure, and lunged back at him.

The glossy white substance tried to bypass the torch and coil around his bare wrist, but the priest's swordsmanship did not allow him to miss at such close range.

The two collided in mid-air; from the point of contact, that oily sheen erupted into blinding flames, spreading rapidly across the entire grotesque form, wrapping around the expanded white mass and causing it to contract reflexively.

It paused for an instant, then immediately began to boil.

The semi-solid form, as it appeared, was rich in moisture; the erupting heat vaporized it, causing it to swell and bulge violently, stretching the wrinkled surface into a dense cluster of bubbles.

The bubble clusters sprouted and swelled within the flames, merging with one another, peeling the skin from the contents, then bursting to release a gray mist resembling smoked, bloody rotting flesh, emitting a vicious odor as if fermented from the souls of the desecrated.

Some particularly terrifying, low, hoarse tones emerged from the boiling fire; from within them, they discerned several familiar yet incomplete accents, including one they had just believed they would never hear again, repeated in a parrot-like fashion, piecing together plausible-sounding syllables and phrases.

That mass continued to shudder and contract, obeying instinct as it retreated toward its shell—that suit of armor—attempting to burrow back into the damaged opening of the helmet. Large, dried-out portions were gouged away by the rusted iron burrs, carrying away some of the fuel.

However, the second bottle of fuel was poured onto the helmet in time, intensifying the blaze.

This time, the armor offered no protection; the metal, with its excellent heat conductivity, scorched the water-rich tissue, while a sizzling mixture of oil and water dripped continuously, seeping inward through the gaps.

As the last of the carried grease was poured in, turning the armor into a complete roasting oven, those anthropomorphic voices gradually faded.

Flames erupted from within, baking the faceplate grille to a charred black; the steam mixed with ash made the burning scene even more hazy and impossible to gaze upon for long.

Green coughed with difficulty, dodging the smoke to take deep breaths, his gaze never leaving that suit of armor.

The upper half of the armor twitched slightly a few times, then came to a complete stop, returning to the silence proper to an ancient metal construct.

A momentary dizziness struck him, the kind of symptom that occurs when the spirit is severely depleted; he stumbled a few steps in the water, reaching for the brick wall of the passage, the smooth texture requiring his palm to feel around several times before finding a brick seam to lean on.

"Damn it, we must press on." Green, with trembling hands, unstrapped another torch and ignited it on the helmet, where flames still flickered. "Share some of the lamp oil you brought with me."

"Forgive me, Father..." The monk jerked violently, snapping back to his senses; before fear of the aftermath could arise, shame appeared first.

A fanatical fear had stiffened his limbs at that moment, preventing any reaction; for someone who prided himself on devout fearlessness, this was hard to accept, enough to generate the most severe self-doubt.

"We'll discuss it later; clearly, we are not the first to encounter this thing." His confession was cut off by Green, who, observing the wall he leaned against with slight puzzlement, noticed that the pagan carvings on this tunnel wall did not seem as dense as his initial impression.

There were gaps between the honeycomb-like carvings rather than full coverage of the entire wall; they alternated with normal stone bricks.

It was as if part of the scene had been quietly removed while his entire mind and body were focused on the fight, making the before and after unable to correspond completely. But under the sudden emergency, there had been no opportunity to observe more closely beforehand; he could only dismiss it as an optical illusion.

Leaning against the wall to recover some strength, Green continued forward. As he passed that slightly cooled, rusted suit of armor, something occurred to him; he paused and used his sword scabbard to sweep away the black ash and rust flakes from the back of the breastplate.

A grayish golden mark was revealed, indeed a sword-shaped pattern, surrounded by very faint traces of pale yellow powder, indicating that there had once been more gilded decorations around it, though they were now unrecognizable.

Only the central sword emblem, made with the most substantial material, remained, twisted and distorted by the somewhat warped iron armor pressing against it.

As someone with limited affection for nobility, Green's knowledge of heraldry was restricted to a few families still influential around Dunling; discerning any information from it was too difficult for him.

And the status of the sword in heraldry was roughly comparable to that of seafood in the North's culinary world—a common, overused synonym.

In a martial environment, families that liked to add a sword to their coat of arms conservatively accounted for at least thirty percent; the degree of distinction approached zero.

Even if the cost of the armor could filter out most of them, the remainder would still pose a considerable challenge for a heraldry researcher.

He abandoned the notion of solving it himself, preparing to view the whole picture before returning to consult the records.

But after brushing away more rust spots, the lower part of the sword-shaped pattern did not appear; it terminated completely at the midsection of the blade.

Green rubbed harder, confirming it was not due to incomplete cleaning or detachment, but that it was simply so from the start. Only the lower half of the sword remained, pointing downward, as if...

【Stabbed downward into something】

A very ominous guess arose.

Sword-shaped emblems were everywhere, but the image of a sword stabbed downward into something, given his meager but barely usable related knowledge, narrowed the scope considerably.

"I hope it is merely the overthinking of the ignorant." Green shook his head, forcing himself to stop these wild speculations, striving to withdraw his mind from the various conspiracy theories it had spawned.

The only thing to do now was to move forward, find the group, and then return later to consider whether this thing should be brought back.

Passing another fork in the path once more, the sound of water ahead changed slightly. Several orange-yellow light sources swayed uneasily in the darkness.

The priest raised his torch high and walked toward them; the water parted beneath his feet, and the intermittent chill gradually receded, left behind.

When he approached to within a dozen paces, he heard exclamations coming from ahead.

"Father Green?!"

Before the collapsed dead end, leaning against a pile of stones from which water gushed, several monks, gripping their weapons tightly with extremely tense expressions, were on guard in this direction.

Upon discovering that the approach was their own side and not some strange thing, they lowered the crossbows in their hands.

"Did you encounter that thing?"

"If by 'that thing' you mean a suit of armor, then its filling is thoroughly cooked." Green wanted to force a strained smile to ease the tension, but the undermanned number of people present dispelled the last shred of hope, making even a dark joke seem dry and hollow.

"Besides, you should have returned to report upon seeing those symbols, rather than pressing forward and waiting for others to clean up the mess."

"Symbols? What symbols?" The rescued monks looked at one another, their eyes filled with bewilderment.