novel bin Chapter 237 Im, Attack
Chapter 237 Im, Attack
Chapter 237 Im, Attack
A few seconds later, a voice came from the Den Den Mushi. Cassius heard a male voice with an indescribable, heavy quality.
That was the voice of one of the Five Elders.
"Zoom in on the boy's image, make sure you see every single frame."
Cassius's fingers touched multiple texture nodes on the Den Den Mushi's shell in succession. Each touch triggered the Den Den Mushi to re-encode and re-transmit the stored image. The encoding precision was higher and higher each time, and the amount of data transmitted was larger and larger each time.
After the images were transmitted at the highest resolution, silence fell over the other side of the flower room once again.
This silence lasted longer than the last.
So long that Cassius began to wonder if he should say something to break the silence.
But his intuition told him not to speak.
While those at the pinnacle of world power are pondering, any extra syllable is irresponsible towards one's own life.
After an unknown period of silence, a voice came from the Den Den Mushi.
This time, it wasn't one of the Five Elders who spoke, but one that Vader Cassius had never heard before through a Den Den Mushi, yet he recognized the voice from just one syllable. Although the voice changed, the tone remained the same.
The voice was neither old nor young, neither strong nor weak; it had no descriptive features whatsoever. It was simply a voice, a pure, attribute-free voice that seemed to emanate from the world itself.
"Send the video again."
"OK."
Cassius barely realized he had uttered those two words, because his body had already operated the Den Den Mushi before his brain gave the order. The speed and accuracy of that operation were so fast that even he felt like a stranger to it.
The image was transmitted again with higher precision, slower speed, and a more complete color space.
This time, the scene was played repeatedly among the flowers countless times.
Each time it was played, Cassius could sense an invisible and intangible change in the air on the other side of the flower field through the feedback signal of the Den Den Mushi. That change was not a change in temperature, not a change in air pressure, not a change in any physical quantity, but a more fundamental change that existed at the conceptual level.
It's as if something has been awakened in the most hidden corner of this world.
Mary Geoise.
Among the flowers.
The room with the most concentrated power in the world.
The room was astonishingly large, with an incredibly high ceiling, and the floor was covered with a carpet woven from the hair of some extinct giant creature, looted from a kingdom that had been erased from the map by the World Government.
The carpet is a deep purple color that has no counterpart in nature, and this purple has a flowing, liquid metal-like luster when illuminated.
Five huge portraits hung on the walls of the room.
Deep within the flowers, behind the five enormous portraits, lies a plain white wall devoid of any decoration.
The wall was an unnaturally white color, so white that it made it impossible for the eyes to focus. Anyone who stared at that wall for more than three seconds would experience a strong sense of dizziness, feeling as if they were gazing at a boundless, empty void.
At this moment, all five elders were present.
The five of them stood in the center of the flowers, forming a semi-circle, with all eyes focused on a spot below the white wall.
There is a throne in that position.
The throne's design is unlike any other piece of furniture in the room. It is not made of gold, nor is it inlaid with gemstones. It could not have been designed and manufactured by any craftsman or artist, because the materials and methods used to make this throne do not exist in any records of this world.
The throne is entirely black, not painted with black paint, but the material itself is pure black, absorbing all light and reflecting no wavelength of light.
A person sat on the throne.
No, it's not a person sitting there; it's an entity that appears on the throne in a sitting posture, because whether that entity is actually human is itself an unanswerable question.
Im.
The most secretive and supreme being in this world, a being that even the Five Elders must kneel before.
Among the five elders, the one standing in front was a tall old man with a white beard, wearing a white suit.
He took a step forward, his steps were light, but as he did, visible wrinkles appeared on the deep purple carpet of the ground among the flowers. The wrinkles spread out in all directions from his toes, like ripples created by a pebble thrown into a calm lake.
Jaigolusia Satan, the holder of the identity of the God of Scientific Defense among the Five Elders, has power so great that he can mobilize all the military forces under the World Government with just a thought. However, the way he is behaving in front of Im is like a child instinctively retreating when facing a being he cannot understand, who is both awe-inspiring and fearful of.
"Lord Im."
Satan's voice carried a tension he tried to conceal but could not. It was not because he had done anything wrong, but because he sensed a rare emotion in Im's silence.
"Your influence on this young man—"
"Not that boy."
Im's voice came from under the hood.
The sound wasn't loud, but each word landed on the ground between the flowers like a lead ball hitting glass, creating a shattering, numbing sensation in the eardrums.
Satan frowned slightly, a very small frown, but the other four Elders present noticed it, as their attention was entirely focused on the conversation between Satan and Im, and no detail could escape their notice.
"Not that boy."
Im repeated it.
"It's his eyes, those peculiar eyes, he seems to come from somewhere else."
Satan's pupils contracted sharply at that moment.
He saw Bai Yu's eyes in the images that had just been played, but he didn't connect those eyes with any known entity because his brain selectively ignored some details he considered unimportant in that moment of overwhelming information.
But Im did not overlook it.
Im will never ignore those eyes.
"Just as the Lulusia people come from other places, people with such special eyes should also be like that."
The five elders reacted almost simultaneously. Satan's body trembled slightly, and the long-haired old man in a black robe next to him unconsciously clenched his fists. The force of his clenching was so great that his knuckles made a series of clearly audible cracking sounds. The old man's name was Shepard X. Pitt, the holder of the status of Environmental War God among the five elders.
"Isn't that—"
"Um.
"
Im didn't let Pitt finish speaking, because there was no need for him to finish. Everyone present knew what the unspoken words Pitt had said were.
The atmosphere among the flowers changed completely at that moment.
Im stood up from the throne.
The action itself was nothing special; it was simply a state of being changing from sitting to standing. But the instant Im completed the action, the room itself, the Flower Room, underwent a certain change.
The ceiling of the room seemed higher, the walls seemed farther away, and the floor area seemed larger.
It wasn't because the room had actually gotten bigger, but because Im's presence occupied such a large proportion of the space that the room's sense of space was distorted in the face of Im's will, and the room was forced to make room more for Im.
Im stood before the throne, its height seemingly unchanged from when it was seated, but the oppressive feeling it exerted on the Five Elders was entirely different now. It was as if the entire sky was slowly falling, and although you knew the sky couldn't actually fall, your body was telling you to run.
run.
Run as far as possible.
But the Five Elders stood still, not because they didn't want to move, but because in the face of Im's will, their bodies no longer belonged to themselves.
"Nighogd".
Im uttered the name again, and this time, the longing in its voice was even stronger than before, so strong that the Five Elders could clearly feel its presence.
"How long ago was the last time I saw it?"
The five elders stopped breathing at that moment.
The impact of the name Nighogg on the Five Elders was so profound that it defied description. This name signified the period before the establishment of the World Government, before the war that altered the entire world order, and before an era in which the name was sealed by history, unrecorded in any existing document, and erased from everyone's memory by the World Government through every means possible.
This terrifying existence.
"Nighogg was a—no—"
There was a brief pause in Im's voice, like someone recalling the past getting stuck on a detail of their memory and needing some time to sort it out.
"He is synonymous with destruction."
Im paused here, its jaw twitching slightly in the shadow of its hood.
The five elders stood there, unable to utter a single word.
The Five Elders saw Im's lips.
Those were thin, almost invisible, bloodless, pale lips, their curves slightly upturned, forming an arc that wasn't a smile but was more unsettling than one.
That curve was telling the Five Elders something.
Im was very happy.
It's not the simple, direct happiness that humans experience when faced with pleasant things, but rather a kind of happiness that comes after a long, tedious period of calm, finally allowing it to rediscover the concept of "being alive," a happiness tinged with excitement and cruelty.
"interesting."
Im uttered a word that it had rarely used in the past eight hundred years.
"How interesting, an old friend has appeared."
At this moment, Satan made a decision that he knew might anger Im, but as one of the Five Elders, he had to make it.
He stepped forward.
"Lord Im."
Satan's voice was steady, but there was a solemnity that only appeared when facing a real, irreversible danger.
"Please take back the idea you were considering."
Im did not answer.
Its hood tilted slightly, as if looking at Satan, or as if seeing through Satan, as if seeing through Satan's body, Satan's soul, and the entirety of Satan's existence.
"Nighogd is no ordinary being, not even your old friend—"
Satan continued, "It is one of the most dangerous beings in the history of this world. Its decaying power can erode everything in this world, including Haki, Devil Fruit abilities, and even space itself. Your personal journey to Elbaf is far too risky, far beyond what we can bear."
"We can't bear it?" Im repeated the six words, his voice carrying an emotion that Satan couldn't discern.
"Yes, we can't afford it," Satan gritted his teeth. He knew that what he was about to say might cause him to lose Im's trust, but he still had to say it.
"You are the cornerstone of this world's existence, the sole reason why this world's order is maintained. If anything happens to you—"
'
"If anything happens to me..."
Im interrupted Satan: "What will this world become?"
Satan opened his mouth, but no words came out.
"Lord Im."
Vochuli's voice was gentle, with a carefully calculated sense of proportion that would not offend Im but still allow him to express his views.
"Satan's words are not without reason. Although Nighogg's decay ability does not pose a real threat to you, Nighogg himself has many abilities that we have not yet fully understood. If someone else interferes while you are fighting Nighogg, the Five Elders exchanged glances."
Im did not speak.
Its body turned again, from facing the Five Elders to having its back to them. Its gaze passed through the window between the flowers, through the thick clouds above the Holy Land of Mary Geoise, through the boundary between the sea and the sky, and was directed towards the unimaginably distant land of giants, Elbaf.
"I'm going to see an old friend. Don't worry, there won't be any problems."
Im said that the nostalgia in his voice was so intense that it was almost overflowing.
"By the way, I'd like to see if the owner of those eyes is qualified to inherit that name."
The last of the five elders, who had remained silent until now, finally spoke.
"Lord Im."
Nasujiro's voice carried a firmness completely different from Satan's. Satan's dissuasion stemmed from his concern for Im's safety, while Nasujiro's dissuasion was driven by an emotion he rarely showed in public.
"If you insist on going, at least let us accompany you."
Im tilted his head slightly, his face expressionless.
"you?
'
Im uttered a word and then paused for less than a second, but in that brief moment, the Five Elders felt something more unbearable than any rebuke.