Black Hearted Mage

Chapter 302 Trap

More than twenty days later, Violet City welcomed the long-awaited sunshine, bringing a languid warmth. Caesars sat in the sun, flipping through his thick travel notes. He wasn't in a rush to set off; he planned to wait two or three days until the forest had dried out a bit.

One afternoon a few days later, Caesars stood at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, his fingers unconsciously stroking the elven dagger at his waist. Sunlight filtered through the leaves, casting specks of light across the forest floor. He narrowed his dark eyes and probed the depths of the snake's nest with his magical tentacles. The gray-green crystals radiated energy—they pulsed within the cracks of the rock as if alive, emitting an eerie luster that made his blood boil.

"Ouch!"

The pup bit his boot and dragged himself back. The entrance to the snake's lair was completely blocked, and it couldn't get in. Caesars squatted down and rubbed its head, which was covered with short, dark red hair. This lava dog pup, like him, was completely immune to the monster snake's venom.

"Don't be impatient, damn dog!"

Kaisas' voice was filled with suppressed excitement. He untied his leather gloves and placed his palm on the stone blocking the cave entrance. Tiny, almost invisible crystals suddenly lit up, like countless eyes suddenly opening. A familiar tingling sensation ran through his fingertips and into his veins, like the sensation of enduring the Abyssal Body Tempering Technique.

Caesars wanted to pull out the stone he had stuffed in, but he found that no matter how hard he tried, the huge stone remained motionless.

"It seems we used too much alchemical glue back then!"

The gray-green crystal is an unknown energy. In order to avoid accidents, Kaisas had to give up using spells and instead use an elven dagger to cut the stone.

After more than ten minutes, the stones were cleared, the fat puppy shrank its body, and Caesars cast a magic guide on it.

"Damn dog, stop somewhere open, or I'll teleport into the rocks!"

The puppy whimpered, nimbly slipped into the snake's nest, and scurried deep underground. He ignored the short, thick vipers, determined to reach the deepest part of the nest as quickly as possible.

After about twenty minutes, the magical beacon stopped moving. Caesars chanted a spell, and purple arcane energy enveloped him, and in an instant he appeared deep underground.

A slight feeling of dizziness and weightlessness made Kaisas feel uncomfortable, which was the sequelae of long-distance teleportation.

Before him lay a natural cavern, pierced by a vein of some kind of crystal. The entire space was shrouded in a strange halo of light refracted by the crystals. Gray-green crystal clusters grew wildly from the ground and the walls of the cave. Some pillars of crystal rose from the ground like giant fingers, reaching heights of five or six meters. The thickest parts required two adults to hug them.

The demon's remains stood silently on a crystal throne in the center of the cavern. Its upper body retained a humanoid outline, while its lower body extended a serpentine tail. Surrounding it were hundreds of monstrous snakes. These cold-blooded creatures entwined and wriggled, casting eerie shadows across the crystal surface. Smaller kin had long since vanished, evidently prey to these thigh-thick serpents.

The hissing sound resonated strangely in the cave, and cold sweat seeped out of Kaisas's palms as he clenched his weapon. The puppy beside him was drooling over the three or four-meter-high "living altar" made of stacked snake bodies. But faced with so many prey, even this greedy puppy didn't know where to start.

"Don't act rashly, you idiot." Caesars lowered his voice and took out a magic steel pick with a faint blue sheen from his bag. "Let me try these crystals..."

He carefully selected a crystal cluster far from the snakes. The moment the pick collided with the crystal, a crisp "ding" echoed through the cave, and several red sparks flew from the point of contact. Surprisingly, the seemingly fragile gray-green crystal surface remained unscathed. The noise, however, startled the dormant snakes, and countless stubby bodies instantly stood upright. The triangular-headed monsters all turned toward the source of the sound, their cold, vertical pupils flashing dangerously in the crystal's reflection.

Caesars abruptly withdrew his hand, a drop of cold sweat forming on his forehead and trickling down his cheek. Although he was immune to snake venom, facing the simultaneous bites of thousands of spitting, venomous snakes, even the strongest body would likely be riddled with wounds. The fearful puppy had already hidden behind him, its moist nose twitching nervously, its crimson pupils reflecting the twisting, writhing serpents.

He took a deep breath and slowly removed the leather glove on his right hand. The moment his palm touched the surface of the crystal, a piercing chill ran up his spine from his fingertips. The pulsing energy from within the crystal made his pupils constrict suddenly—this was no ordinary magical mineral. The gray-green energy flowing within it was like a living being, each tremor carrying a shuddering, unfamiliar rhythm. As Caesars tried to channel a trace of this energy into his body, dark golden scales instantly spread from his neck to the back of his hand. An intense burning pain, accompanied by an eerie chill, coursed through his veins. This energy seemed to carry the whispers of the dead, and each surge tore at his mental defenses.

"Try this, damn dog!"

Caesars used his dagger to pry off a sharp, angular crystal fragment. The puppy sniffed cautiously at first, then suddenly lashed its tail with excitement. Its long, scarlet tongue wrapped around the crystal, and with a crunch, it swallowed it down. It narrowed its eyes in satisfaction, even rolling over to expose its belly, showing no sign of discomfort at all.

Just as Kaesus frowned in thought, a scorching wave of air suddenly rolled in from the depths of the cave. The withered demon's remains twitched strangely, and the magic core embedded in the center of its chest cavity burst into a faint green light. The serpents that had been glaring at him suddenly retreated like a tide, the rustling sound of their scales rubbing against the crystals terrifying.

In the light of the crystal, Caesars discerned the distinctive bone spurs along the remains' spine—they perfectly matched the characteristics of the serpent demons of the ninety-seventh layer of the Abyss, as recorded in his ancestors' notes. He recalled the faded annotations: male serpent demons are bound to their formless forms throughout their lives, while female serpent demons, also known as Medusas, possess not only the Stone Gaze but also the ability to change forms freely. The Medusa Dynasty, which ruled this vast plane, was said to have enslaved millions of abyssal beasts.

A puppy suddenly barked at a fleeing viper, interrupting Caesar's thoughts. He gripped his cold, gleaming adamantine dagger. He noticed that these mutant vipers, absorbing the crystal energy, had grown unusually sturdy. Their once nimble bodies now twisted clumsily. The mage's hand precisely clamped down on a monstrous snake as it attempted to burrow into a crevice. With a flash of his blade, foul-smelling dark green blood splattered onto the ground, hissing with corrosion.

Kaisas hunted swiftly, his magical blade both hard and sharp. The mage's hand snatched the viper, then with a swift movement of the blade, chopped off the snake's head, discarding it to the side to discard the strange-smelling blood. The blood of the strange snake was extremely foul-smelling and highly corrosive.

Not far away, the puppy, teeth bared, lunged at a stubby snake's tail. Its tiny fangs slid futilely across the snake's scales, and its chubby body spun in the sand from the sheer force. Caesars swung his dagger, and sticky snake blood drew a dark green arc through the air. Suddenly, his pupils constricted—the decapitated snake's body was still twitching strangely, and faint gray light flickered from the broken surface.

He immediately pulled the Soul Gem from his interspatial ring. Surprisingly, the gossamer gray light was slowly being absorbed by the gem. This was clearly soul energy, yet the Soul Gem would have disdained the souls of ordinary monsters. Caesars frowned, his fingertips caressing the cool edges of the gem's surface.

As the soul of the thirteenth mutant viper was drawn into the gem, a dull thumping sound suddenly echoed from the depths of the crypt. Between the sternum of the demon's remains, the dark red, blood-curdling heart suddenly glowed with green veins. This heart, silent for a thousand years, suddenly began to beat, each contraction distorting and heating the surrounding air. Caesars took a half step back, watching as the gray-green crystals, once as clear as crystal, began to soften and flow like melted grease, forming strange paths across the ground.

This was the heart of a demon, dead some ten thousand years ago. It hovered above the crystal throne, still beating slowly but powerfully. The dark red myocardium was covered in ancient, sinister demonic patterns, and each contraction sent subtle ripples of energy through the air. Judging from the lingering aura of power, this demon must have been nearly as powerful as a demon lord, perhaps even reaching the threshold of an abyss lord. Only such a powerful being could maintain such vigorous vitality after ten thousand years. Even more terrifying, this heart seemed to retain its full regenerative instincts—with sufficient energy, it possessed the ability to repair itself completely.

A viscous substance, like green grease, gushed from every corner of the cave, wriggling like a living thing, emitting a sickening, sticky sound. It gathered along the lines of the ground, climbing up the towering throne like iron filings drawn to a magnet. The white skeleton seated on the throne was being enveloped layer by layer, the slime seeping into every crevice of the bones, forming a translucent film between the empty eye sockets and rib cage. As it absorbed more and more of the slime, the entire skeleton began to glow an eerie gray-green.

The remains of this demon, dormant for millennia, were clearly reviving. Caesars immediately raised his staff, preparing to chant the teleport spell, but suddenly felt his vocal cords as if strangled by invisible hands. Even more terrifying, an ancient energy from the abyss squeezed his body from all sides, blocking all channels for spells and preventing even the slightest movement of his fingertips. He could only watch helplessly as the gray-green slime on the distant crystal throne was absorbed by the skeleton at a visible rate.

As the last trace of slime was absorbed, the demon's remains underwent a terrifying transformation. The pale bones were now filled with a gray-green gelatinous substance, which solidified into large, metallic scales on the surface. Even more horrifying, gray-green hair began to grow at an abnormal rate from the bare skull. These hairs wriggled like living things, drawing eerie paths through the air.

At the same time, Caesars felt the dark golden scales beneath his skin warm. Advanced magic patterns inherited from the abyss loomed on his body, forming a complex magical array. These patterns were drawing arcane energy from the sea of ​​magic with astonishing efficiency, forming a lavender protective barrier around him. Two forces from the abyssal plane clashed fiercely, and every collision made him feel insignificant.

Caesars finally escaped, but he was no longer in control of his body. He felt an unfamiliar power surge within him, as if another soul were peering into the world through his eyes. His limbs trembled uncontrollably, and a strange tingling sensation spread through his fingertips, as if countless tiny snakes were licking him.

"You bastard, you dirty-blooded bastard, how dare you treat my offspring with disrespect!"

The sound was like the hissing of a thousand venomous snakes in his ears, each syllable carrying an ancient malice. Caesars was horrified to discover that his lips were moving, speaking a completely unfamiliar language. He had never heard this language before, yet he understood its meaning perfectly. The shadowy figure behind him gradually solidified, its dark golden serpentine hair dancing wildly in the air, and each scale gleamed with dizzying abyssal runes.

The demon's remains suddenly let out a shrill wail, its wriggling flesh frozen in place. The dark red heart within its chest twitched violently, pumping out no longer demonic blood, but a kind of fear that shimmered with golden light. Caesars could smell an eerie odor of sulfur mixed with a strange incense in the air, reminding him of the forbidden existence recorded in ancient texts, older than the abyss.

The phantom's serpentine hair suddenly stood up, and hundreds of serpent pupils simultaneously locked onto the trembling demon. When those dark golden pupils fully opened, Caesars felt as if his retinas were being burned—those were not the eyes of a living being, more like the eyes of death, capable of annihilation. A golden ray, between light and darkness, burst forth from its pupils. Wherever it passed, the space curled and burned like parchment, revealing a star-filled void beyond.

This is the death gaze recorded by our ancestors, more powerful than the ordinary petrifying gaze of Medusa.

The demon's skeleton shattered into dust. The demon's heart, once full of life, was now like a burning ember, with fine gray powder falling continuously. Even the crystal throne was shattered into dust, leaving only the head-sized demon core floating in the air.

The magic core originally had a gray-green luster, but now it had turned dark red. Caesars stretched out his hand, and the magic core slowly floated over. None of this was his own doing.

When the magic core came into his hand, he felt its heavy weight, and the shadow behind him disappeared at this moment.