Chapter 3013: True Relic - Insatiable Jar
Date: Unspecified
Time: Unspecified
Location: Myriad Realms, Void, Hundred Frost Domain, Frost Maze
"Finish your job!" the Snow Elven Elderâs stern, grating voice echoed through the shifting walls and stairs of the maze as the mercenary group tried to throw themselves backward into the living walls. But the walls remained unresponsive, the clones would take them in.
"Rising Purple Sun!" the Phantom Haze Devil roared.
Stepping to the front, the Phantom Haze Devil unleashed a massive wave of his signature purple Phantom Flames. A towering, blinding dome of illusionary purple fire erupted with him as the core, encasing the entire mercenary team inside a dense spiritual flame barrier.
The brilliant purple flames violently clashed with the advancing red mist, the two forces locked in a brutal struggle to consume one another. The Phantom Haze Devilâs flame desperately attempted to hijack the energy of the red mist, trying to use it as fuel to burn brighter, expand bigger, and utterly overwhelm the plague.
Meanwhile, the red mist didnât just try to consume the fireâit effortlessly succeeded. It systematically devoured the spiritual phantom flames, using the mercenaryâs own spiritual power to multiply at an exponential rate.
Within seconds, the purple dome began to visibly wither. The phantom flames were barely sustaining themselves on the raw energy that the devil was frantically pumping into them. Realizing that he couldnât win this war of attrition, a sharp, uncharacteristic panic finally set into his eyes.
"Fuck! What is this plague? Itâs devouring everything in its path!" the Phantom Haze Devil screamed in sheer terror.
He could feel the exact moment the blood-red plague chewed through his defenses. These were high-tier, illusionary purple flames created entirely from refined spiritual powerâyet the plague was devouring even that intangible energy, growing larger and more ravenous with every spark it consumed.
"Insatiable Jar!"
One of the five mercenaries, completely shrouded from head to toe in heavy black robes, stepped forward. He reached within his garments and pulled out an unpretentious, earthy brown jar. With a swift flick, he expanded the mouth of the jar, it was disgustingly similar to an asshole opening wide, and shouted the toolâs true name toward the raging storm of energy.
The mouth of the jar immediately transformed into a miniature, localized black hole. It acted like a powerful vacuum, aggressively swallowing the remaining phantom flames and the advancing red mist alike. The suction was so immense that the rampant crimson fog in the corridor visibly stalled, its relentless momentum completely grinding to a halt. Within seconds, the overall volume of the spreading plague even appeared to decrease, trapped inside the relic.
Seeing that the crisis was temporarily under control, the robed mercenary finally turned back to answer his frantic team. As their resident expert on esoteric curses and biological plagues, his word carried absolute weight.
"Itâs a cursed plague," the robed devil explained, his voice tight with lingering stress. "It is incredibly dreadful, exceptionally powerful, and shares distinct, terrifyingly common traits with the roots of the World Calamity Tree itself. If not for my familyâs heirloom, we would be in serious trouble right now."
Hearing that verdict, the mercenary devils simultaneously looked back at me in profound, unadulterated dread. For a renowned witch doctor of their crew to compare my red mist directly to the catastrophic World Calamity Tree was no small matter. The casual confidence they had walked in with was entirely dead. It was no longer just unwise to underestimate meâit was suicidal to fight someone who had either meticulously developed or been born with the viral authority of a walking apocalypse.
I looked at the crude jar in the robed devilâs hands with genuine interest. Up close, it didnât look like fired clay at all; it appeared to be fashioned from raw flesh. More accurately, it was a petrified stomachâhardened into a calcified shell on the outside, yet fully organic and functioning exactly as a stomach should on the inside. I couldnât decipher what kind of massive creature or high-tier entity this organ had been harvested from, but it was certainly deserving of the name Insatiable Jar.
It was fascinating, really. Someone out there had hunted down an entity possessing a stomach that powerful, hollowed it out, and refined its anatomy into a formidable relic. Every single time I thought I was finally catching a glimpse of the absolute ceiling of power, the myriad realms handed me a brutal wake-up call: Donât kid yourself.
Unfortunately for the robed devil, despite correctly identifying the nature of my plague, he had still drastically underestimated its adaptability.
Being sucked into the spatial vacuum of the Insatiable Jar hadnât destroyed the World-Devouring Plague at all. The moment the crimson mist entered the dark chambers of the petrified organ, it didnât dissolve; instead, it aggressively began to infect the fabric of the relic itself. It immediately launched a vicious, war for dominance against the lingering residual will of the Insatiable Jar.
Unable to fight off the rapid corruption from within, the relic did the only thing it couldâit screamed out to its master for help.
A look of sheer horror washed over the robed devilâs face as the spiritual feedback slammed into his mind. He instantly cut the vacuum transmission, slamming its mouth shut to stop sucking in the external red mist, and frantically began to pour his own raw energy into the jar. His hands trembled as he desperately tried to reinforce the relic, forcing his power down into the calcified flesh to fight off the red plague that had already compromised its internal walls.
Seeing the robed devilâs desperate reaction, the faces of the other mercenaries turned incredibly grim. Even without their curse expert uttering another syllable, the sheer dread of the red mistâwhich was steadily creeping through the shifting icy corridors with every passing millisecondâsettled heavily over the group. They were visibly shaken, their professional composure fracturing.
Refusing to accept the situation, the red-skinned, four-eyed devil aggressively gathered an immense amount of flame rule energy into his palms. He thrust his hands forward, chanting with feral intensity: "17th Inferno!"