CHAPTER 161: FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE (1):

Nero sprinted after the traitorous spear, his lungs burning with every ragged breath he took.

Gungnir’s silver light disappeared through a gap in the Grigori’s ribcage, vanishing into the depths of the divine corpse.

"Of course," Nero wheezed, stumbling to a halt in front of the massive ribs. "Of course you’d fly in there."

The ribs formed a cage of bone larger than any structure Nero had ever seen, each one thicker than the largest tree trunk and tall enough that he’d need to crane his neck just to see where they connected to the spine. Green moss hung from the bones in thick curtains, swaying gently in a breeze that should have not existed this deep in the ravine.

The gap between two ribs was easily wide enough for him to walk through, though calling it a "gap" felt like an understatement. It was more like a gateway, an entrance into some unholy realm of rot and corruption.

Nero stood there for a moment, seriously considering just turning around and leaving the damn spear.

Then he remembered that without the spear, he was just a half-dead, half-transformed idiot with one working arm and a leg that screamed every time he put weight on it. The bog water would kill him before he made it halfway back. Hell, the fungi might decide to finish him off just for being annoying if it came down to it.

"I hate everything about this," he muttered bitterly, then limped forward into the corpse.

The moment he passed through the ribs, something changed.

It wasn’t dramatic, no burst of light or sudden temperature shift.

It was subtler than that, and a bit more insidious.

The air felt different. It felt cleaner somehow, like he’d stepped from a plague ward into a sealed tomb. The oppressive weight of corruption that had been pressing down on him since he’d entered the Southern Bogs simply... stopped.

Gone was the toxic stench of poisonous fumes burning at his lungs and vitality.

Gone was the damp scent of fungus, death and decay.

Gone was the black decadence...

Suddenly, his hand erupted in pain.

"Gah!" Nero clutched his left hand to his chest, the broken arm protesting the sudden movement. The Mark of Mephistopheles burned like someone had pressed a branding iron against his skin. The inverted crimson cross glowed with a deep red light that pulsed in time with his racing heartbeat.

"What the hell?!"

He stared at the mark, watching it throb and writhe above his skin, the scar glowing with undulating light. The pain was sharp and terrible, nothing like the dull ache of his other injuries. This was fresh, angry, and entirely unpleasant.

He wanted to curse at the gods again. For being responsible for all the pain that had befallen him up until this moment, regardless of how delusional it was.

His mind raced. The mark had been dormant since that encounter with the Defiled Cherub, since Eli had done whatever he’d done in that spatial maze. It had just sat there, an idle, yet permanent reminder of a debt he owed some random heathen nightmarish being he hadn’t even seen before.

So why was it reacting now?

He looked around the interior of the corpse, searching for some obvious answer. But there was nothing, just bone and darkness and the distant glow of Gungnir somewhere ahead.

"Don’t jump to conclusions," he told himself firmly. "Could be anything. Could be nothing. Could be—"

The mark pulsed again, harder this time, and Nero bit back a curse.

"Could be a really bad sign," he finished weakly.

Still, there was nothing to be done about it now.

The mark wasn’t killing him at least. It was just making itself known in the most painful way possible. He’d dealt with worse. Probably. Maybe.

Nero forced himself to focus on his surroundings instead.

The interior of the Grigori’s corpse was massive, which shouldn’t have been surprising but somehow still was. He stood in what must have been the chest cavity, surrounded by ribs that arched overhead like the vaulted ceiling of some perverse cathedral. The bones themselves seemed to glow faintly in the darkness, pale white and pristine despite the millennia they must have spent here.

Actually, that was odd.

Nero squinted into the gloom, his enhanced vision picking out details that normal eyes would have missed. There was no fungal growth on the inside of the corpse. None. The colorful carpets of mushrooms that covered everything outside stopped at the threshold of the ribs, as if some invisible barrier prevented them from entering.

More than that, there was no corruption.

He could feel it, or rather, he could feel the absence of it. The twisted Ein Sof that permeated every inch of Malady’s Garden, that saturated the very air and water and earth, simply didn’t exist here. The interior of the corpse was clean in a way that made Nero’s skin crawl.

Dead things weren’t supposed to be clean. Death brought rot and decay and corruption. That was the natural order of the world.

So why did this place feel more like a shrine than a tomb?

Nero shook his head, refusing to activate Heretic Eyes despite the burning curiosity eating at him. If he looked at this place with his true sight, if he tried to perceive the patterns of Ein Sof in bones that had belonged to a god, there was no telling what would happen.

Best case scenario, his eyes would melt and his brain would leak out his ears. Worst case... well, he didn’t want to think about the worst case.

He started walking, following the Soul Bond that connected him to Gungnir. The spear’s presence tugged at his consciousness like a fishing line, drawing him deeper into the corpse.

The darkness pressed in from all sides, broken only by the faint luminescence of the bones. His footsteps echoed strangely in the vast space, creating rhythms that didn’t quite match his actual movements.

It was rather disorienting still.

Like the bones of the giant was himself and he was just a mere strand of his own consciousness observing from within.

It made him feel small...

Which was not a good thing.