Chapter 2525: Containing the Outer God’s Power
The instant I spoke, the scene changed. The surrounding clocks, wind-up dolls, and stuffed animals were all stained with fresh blood. Strange runes written in blood appeared on the walls and within the heartwarming photos.
Just one glance made my brain feel like it had been struck by a hammer. Older Brother Jayad’s hand moved quickly to cover my eyes, preventing me from seeing anything. A surge of magic flowed into my eyes and reached my brain, alleviating the pain and causing the runes to become hazy in my memory.
After a while, Older Brother Jayad finally said, “You can open your eyes now.”
I opened my eyes, and the runes on the wall were no longer visible, as if shrouded in a blurry black fog, no matter which angle I looked from. This was not Jayad’s doing to censor the dangerous runes; rather, he was shielding my perception of Outer God knowledge.
While my eyes were covered, I felt a sticky sensation beneath my feet. Looking down, I saw I was standing on a pool of semi-congealed blood. This blood was emerging from the opened music box on the table; with every rotation, fresh blood plasma would ooze out.
“This used to be our home,” a little girl’s voice said. Another little girl added, “But it will never be again.”
The Despair Double Sound appeared before me. Unlike their previous clean and cute appearance, their dresses were now covered in blood, and bloodstains streaked their faces.
“Is this the moment you and your sister were murdered?” I asked somberly. Only with such a deep impression could they remember it so vividly, to the point of forming a nightmare.
“Yes, the music box was in this very spot. When Father used our blood for sacrifice, the blood splattered onto the music box. We were also sealed within the Outer God’s Power in the music box forever,” one little girl explained.
The other little girl looked at Older Brother Jayad and said, “You can see the runes Father etched and directly understand the music in the music box. It seems you truly possess the ability to accept the Outer Gods. We can finally rest.”
It appeared they had been skeptical of Older Brother Jayad being favored by the Outer God King, as the matter was too absurd. Few had succeeded before; most went mad upon merely coming into contact with the Outer Gods.
“I’ll do my best. Let me have a look,” Jayad said. He extended a finger and gently touched the slowly rotating music box, bringing it to a halt. The instant the music stopped, the atmosphere around us changed again.
An unspeakably foul chaos surged from the music box, like black-red mud. Immediately, the surrounding scene shifted again. The background shattered like glass, and an invisible black fog poured in from the cracks in the doors and windows.
Countless twisted, deformed black hands emerged from the clock faces and the bodies of the dolls, tearing at everything around them, even tearing at each other. However, as these monstrous hands approached me and the two young girls, they were blocked by an invisible barrier and slid past.
I was protected by Older Brother Jayad’s Divine Power, and the Despair Double Sound were guardians of this chaotic energy, so they wouldn’t be harmed by this leakage of Outer God’s Power. Merely by stopping the music from the music box, allowing a trickle of Outer God’s Power to leak out, Jayad had completely transformed the nightmare constructed by the Despair Double Sound. While it had been a nightmare before, it was far better than this current fragmented, grotesque dreamscape filled with the Unspeakable.
But Jayad stood steadily before the music box. The black mud oozing out crawled onto his hand like a Slime and climbed up his arm, quickly integrating into his body and disappearing. This was him absorbing the Outer God’s Power into himself. The deformed, monstrous hands reached out beside him, but instead of attacking him or being repelled, they seemed to gently caress Jayad’s body.
Any normal person surrounded by so many deformed monstrous hands would have been terrified and fled. Even the brave and meticulous would have been covered in goosebumps. But Jayad stood calmly, as if the deformed hands resting on him were beautiful girls. He was completely unfazed, focusing solely on absorbing the Outer God’s Power.
“So strong, he’s actually absorbing that terrifying, chaotic Divine Power into his body,” one little girl exclaimed. The other little girl then asked with concern, “Will he really not go mad by drawing the Outer God’s Power into his body like this?”
Back then, cruelly murdered and blood-sacrificed by their father to become the sacrifices for summoning the Outer Gods, these two young girls must not have understood anything, not even why their father killed them. But after dying and searching for many years to find the father who killed them, they must have investigated many places, consulted countless documents, and questioned many people. The memories of those whose souls they devoured became theirs as well. Now, they were veritable Outer God experts. I don’t know if anyone understood Outer Gods better than them, but I guessed no ghost understood Outer Gods better than they did.
“He won’t. I believe Older Brother can do it,” I said, looking at Older Brother Jayad with complete trust. Favored by the Outer God’s chaotic cradle, he could surely contain power of the same origin.
As Jayad’s absorption quickened, the speed at which the chaotic energy erupted from the music box also increased, eventually becoming like a geyser, continuously spewing forth. With the increasing amount of Outer God’s Power absorbed, Older Brother Jayad’s aura gradually became unfathomable. A blurry phantom appeared behind him. It was a monstrous creature resembling a giant clam, its shell seemingly containing an entire universe, dark and profound. Countless Unspeakable limbs, eyeballs, and gaping maw struggled to break free from the clam’s confinement, but most of their bodies remained within the shell. This was an Avatar of Azathoth, the image of Sadan-Heglor, the chaotic cradle of Chaos. Of course, this might not be its true form, but rather how the Sh had depicted it in their statues after their observations. In the Sh myths and legends, Sadan-Heglor was the form Azathoth took before its complete release, protecting Azathoth’s origin, the primal core of chaos, within the clam shell. Hence, it was called the chaotic cradle.
Once this divine image appeared, the surrounding deformed hands, black fog, and black mud gushing from the music box were all drawn into the giant clam. It seemed to be infinitely vast, capable of consuming as much as was produced. After devouring enough chaotic energy, the room returned to its previous state, no longer the fragmented, grotesque scene of the Unspeakable.
