He gazed up at the dark door. It loomed like a void carved into the wall, silent and waiting. Nothing about it screamed "entrance," and yet it pulled at something inside him. A quiet dare.
But the door didn't open. It just stared back, as still and cold as the rest of the room.
Belial turned away with a grunt and wandered back to the statue —the Lonesome Prince. He tilted his head up and stared into the prince's eyes again. They were sunken, shadowed things, not sorrowful exactly, but... distant. Gloomy. Gloomy but strangely attractive, in that tragic, "I-watched-my-kingdom-burn" kind of way.
"Sunken eyes, huh," Belial muttered.
He pressed his palms against the eyes. He poured Abit of ether They gave way with a soft click.
Behind him, the dark door groaned open.
Stone grinding against stone echoed across the chamber. Belial turned slowly. The door was no longer a wall but a mouth, wide open, yawning shadows. It revealed a stairwell—sort of. The stairs weren't normal. They were huge. Each one stood as tall as his chest. Not quite a climb, not quite a jump. It felt like hopping from one mountaintop to another.
"Huh," he said to no one. "Rude."
With a half-sigh, half-chuckle, he bounded up. The first few steps were the worst. Knees scraping, muscles burning. But after a rhythm set in, it became almost fun. Like a game. The stairwell spiraled downwards, faintly glowing from lines etched into the walls. No torches. No magic orbs. Just that soft, sleepy glow.
After what felt like five minutes—or maybe twenty, time was weird in this place—he reached the first level.
It opened into a library.
Sort of.
The room was vast and circular, and the walls were all bookshelves. Towering ones. Endless ones. Books upon books, stacked high, each the size of his upper body. Some were even bigger—like sarcophagi with spines. They didn't sit quietly either; they stood firm and watched. They waited.
Belial stepped forward cautiously. "Creepy," he whispered. But kinda cool.
He wandered for a while, eyes flicking from shelf to shelf, hoping to find one small enough to actually read. He finally spotted a squat, square book on a lower shelf, pried it out, and let it fall open with a thud. The pages were stone. No ink. No pencil. Just words carved deep into the surface in looping, beautiful characters.
He squinted.
Still couldn't read the damn thing.
"Figures," he muttered, tossing the book aside with a sigh.
He lingered for a moment, then glanced down at his wrist. The interface visor flickered to life—a grey-blue rectangle of pulsing symbols and soft humming noise. It projected a small hologram of his inventory.
Then he grinned.
Not a happy grin. Not a hopeful one.
A greedy one.
"Alright," he whispered, rolling his shoulders, cracking his fingers. If I can't read 'em... I'll just steal 'em.
He began snatching books from the shelves, one by one, feeding them into the visor's interface. The visor pulsed with a soft shooop each time a book was absorbed by the gray light. He moved quick, skipping and climbing shelves like one of those Beastmen with tails and flexible joints. What were they called again?
He blinked.
"Monkeys!" he said, snapping his fingers. That's the one.
He was like a monkey—no, a purple-headed monkey, leaping from one marble shelf to the next, grabbing stone books like bananas, eyes glittering.
He laughed once, just once, sharp and boyish and full of adrenaline.
The visor's light dimmed after the thirteenth book. It pulsed red for a moment, then flickered. He opened the interface again.
Name: Nero
Rank: Balancer
Weapons(1): Bloodfang
Armor: ---
Items(15): Room Key, Horn, Crystalline Book, Crystalline Book, Crystalline Book...
Fifteen's the limit, huh, he thought, waving away the projection.
He perched on the edge of a shelf and dangled his legs like a bored kid in class. A thin layer of dust clung to everything, but there was a strange cleanness to the place—like it had been forgotten, but preserved. No rot. No cobwebs. Just quiet. Heavy quiet.
He leaned back and stared up at the domed ceiling. Cracks ran through it like veins, glowing with that same soft light. He wondered how many levels were above. How many secrets were tucked away in stone libraries, hidden rooms, and behind even stranger doors.
He wasn't really supposed to be here. Or maybe he was. Who the hell knew.
But now he had thirteen books made of crystal and stone. A puzzle he couldn't read, but maybe could learn to read. Maybe someone back at the safe zone could decipher them...Maybe not.
Either way... he finally had something new to entertain himself with.
Beneath the library was another room.
This one didn't smell of dust or forgotten parchment. It smelled like storage and stone. A training room. Maybe. Or at least something like it.
Belial stepped in cautiously, boots tapping lightly across the smooth floor.
"Huh... The Lonesome Prince knew how to fight?" he said aloud, glancing around. Didn't peg him for the type.
But then again, looks could be deceiving. That statue upstairs had the eyes of a man who'd watched everything die—maybe he had fought. Maybe he'd fought so hard he forgot what peace looked like.
But that's what kings normally do, But the lonesome prince wasn't a king according to his memories. But he could've had the chance to be a king too if he wasnt so...well its in the name.
Then a question arose...What about him? Would he be able to be a king one day?
Absolutely not. His personality and carefreeness is not any realm or reality, Besides he liked living the way he did already. Being king would only hinder that.
In the center of the room stood a single kneeling statue.
This is new
It was massive. Humanoid. Silent.
At first, Belial thought it was just another soldier. A knight. A guard, maybe.
But the longer he looked, the more his gut twisted.
"No… That's not a soldier," he whispered. That's a general.
He didn't know how he knew—he just did. The stance. The armor. The sheer gravity of presence. This wasn't a thing you sent to patrol the gates. This was the thing that led.
The statue's armor wasn't ordinary either. It looked... expensive. Practical, but ceremonial. Crystallite armor...he recognized the pattern. Hardened like metal, flexible like leather. Each scale interlocked like a dragon's hide, layered atop deep, silk-like underplates. The design was intricate—vibrant colors once painted the edges, now faded but still regal. Insignias embroidered across the chest, small runes etched along the lamellar seams.
A tall helmet with winged flaps framed the head, while a faceguard stared back like a dead king.
It was nothing like the old bulky Euronia plate suits with all their clanking bravado, nor the overly elaborate Demonic armor with its masks and layered plates.
This was balance—movement, defense, authority.
Belial stared at the general for a long time.
Then he moved on.
Another stairwell waited behind the chamber, this one spiraling down.
He took a deep breath and stepped in.
And down he went.
And down.
And down.
And still down.
The deeper he went, the colder it became. The walls changed, too—shifting from smooth stone to carved symbols and angular reliefs. At some point, hours must've passed. The darkness wasn't just a lack of light anymore. It was weight. A kind of pressure on the shoulders.
Eventually, Belial unfurled his wings.
Thin, leathery, and veined with faint ether lines, they carried him silently through the deepening spiral. He coasted downward, silent as dust, passing strange statues embedded in the walls. Figures half-formed. Half-melted.
At first he thought they were decorations.
But no—he knew better.
Something about them tickled a memory he did Not like.
Finally, he saw the bottom.
A wide, circular chamber stretched out beneath him, bathed in green-filtered light. It spilled from cracks above like algae-stained sunshine. Part of the ceiling must have collapsed at some point. Roots dangled from the breaks like withered hands.
He landed softly on the ground, talons scraping lightly on ancient stone.
The air smelled... different. Faintly sweet. Almost fruity. It clung to the back of his throat like moldy nectar.
And in the center of the room… was it.
A giant.
Not a man. Not a monster.
Just... a thing.
It didn't have a name, at least not one Belial knew. A vast, lumpy, fleshy mound. A grotesque shape, bulging out of the floor, sides rising like tumors, veins like ropes curled around its surface. The color was wrong—off-black, bruised grey, somewhere between black raw meat and fermented fruit. And at the center of it, he saw it pulsing. A grey-like core, soft and strangely glowing.
Each throb was a heartbeat. A pulse that shook the stone beneath his feet.
He didn't need a voice in his head to tell him. No glowing arrow. No quest log. He knew.
This was his real mission—a selfish mission...a non sensical...a ruthless plan, the kind that'll only leave him standing.
The last person to get the last laugh.