Cleaver Of Sin

Chapter 550: Organs

With that thought in mind, Asher walked forward with calm, measured steps, for he had been leaning against the thick metallic door that led to the prison chamber. Within this room, only a single door seemed to exist aside from the one beside him, so Asher walked toward it, and from the ceiling high above his head, he could already deduce that he was at the highest floor of the structure.

’No windows of any kind,’ he thought to himself as he walked with composed ease, as though he were not infiltrating the base of an unknown organization whose intentions and capabilities remained entirely obscure to him.

Arriving at the door, Asher phased through it once again with silent ease, but what met his eyes this time was complete darkness; however, it did not matter. Asher simply willed it, and the Astra energy in the air responded obediently, subtly brightening the place, and what stretched before him was a descending circular staircase spiraling downward into unseen depths.

Asher paused for a moment, then took a step, his movements soundless against the cold stone of the floor. Learning from his earlier encounter in the room he had just departed, Asher decided to spread his Star Energy everywhere as he walked; it was the same skill called Astra Sense that he had originally created using Astra energy, but this time, he was employing Star Energy instead.

Asher continued forward with tranquil composure, never rushing, never hesitating. His heart did not beat out of rhythm with fear, excitement, or anticipation; it remained steady, controlled, disciplined.

His body, shrouded in Star Energy, ensured that the faintest sound, whether the subtle pulse of his heartbeat or the quiet circulation of blood through his veins, never reached the ears or sensory perception of anyone within the building. After all, people could still detect others even if they were invisible, because invisibility removed sight, not sound, and many trained individuals relied on far more than their eyes to perceive threats.

So, invisibility concealed him from sight, while the Star Energy cloaking his form eliminated any sound that dared to originate from him, rendering him effectively nonexistent to some detection methods.

Asher came to a gradual stop, his purple eyes flickering toward a long hallway that opened up before him. ’How large is this place?’ Asher thought to himself, but the next moment he dismissed the thought from his mind and walked into the hall itself, his Star Sense still active as he could already detect various presences on the ground floor. The sheer number of life signatures subtly brushing against his perception suggested that this base was far more expansive than he had initially assumed.

Asher walked forward as he headed toward the first door he could reach, which was positioned on the left side of the hallway. Phasing into the room without disturbing so much as a speck of dust, his purple eyes moved calmly across the chamber with measured scrutiny. But in the very next moment, a frown formed upon his face as he fully absorbed what lay before him; there was no presence within this particular room, nobody guarding it, literally nobody, which in itself was unsettling given the nature of such hidden facilities.

But what Asher saw caused his imagination to flicker wildly. Within the room were rows upon rows of shelves meticulously arranged, each aligned with deliberate symmetry against the walls, some even standing in the middle of the room to maximize space, and upon these shelves were large glass jars containing liquid, yet not merely liquid, for suspended within them were organs.

Various jars contained hearts, some held spleens, some preserved brains, some sealed lungs, some kidneys, and countless other anatomical components; every organ imaginable was present. No, scratch that, every part of the human body was here, catalogued and preserved with chilling efficiency.

On another side of the room stood larger containers, but these did not contain organs alone; they contained entire body segments. A long glass container held a severed hand, another preserved a lower limb, another encased a spine, and yet another held a head suspended within translucent fluid, its features eerily intact.

The liquid within these jars and containers appeared specially formulated to preserve these organs and body parts in a state of unnatural freshness, as though they were ready to be used at any given moment. The frown on Asher’s face deepened; the more he walked around the room, the more grotesque and incomprehensible it seemed to become.

These people had not spared any part of the human body. A complete sheet of human flesh could be seen, as though the entire skin of someone had been removed in one seamless motion with surgical precision so absurdly exact that even doctors back on Earth could scarcely replicate it, and Earth was technologically more advanced than Crymora in terms of medical instrumentation and procedural development.

Asher did not require anyone to inform him that someone, most likely a villager, had been skinned alive. They had not taken fragments or patches of skin; they had taken all of it in a single, horrifying procedure, ensuring that the flesh remained whole and undamaged, which implied not only skill but also a calculated level of cruelty.

Asher had seen scenes somewhat similar to this in movies, where storage rooms held organs, usually within hospitals for legitimate transplantation purposes, but this, what he was witnessing, was something far more sinister and horrific.

But Asher did not feel nauseous; he did not feel the urge to vomit or recoil in discomfort. He had killed before, had witnessed mangled corpses and severed limbs scattered across battlefields; the sight before him, while grotesque, was not enough to shake his mental fortitude.

’It seems even in this world there are human traffickers and organ sellers, but they are simply more dangerous and precise,’ Asher thought to himself, although he knew that human trafficking and illegal organ harvesting existed on Earth as well, he doubted they were as methodical or refined as this organization appeared to be.

The level of organization here suggested something far beyond crude criminal enterprise; it hinted at structure, funding, and possibly influence.

Asher felt an urge to destroy everything within this room, to shatter every jar and reduce every shelf to splinters. He could not fathom why anyone would commit such atrocities. Organ trafficking? That explanation felt insufficient. Anyone with enough platinum coins, or even gold coins, to purchase organs from such individuals would certainly possess enough wealth to hire someone with a healing ability capable of regenerating missing limbs and organs entirely.

After all, healers within Crymora could accomplish nearly anything as long as the individual requiring treatment was still alive, and depending on the healer’s proficiency and the recipient’s own strength, regeneration of limbs, restoration of organs, and even reversal of fatal injuries were within the realm of possibility.

Asher’s thoughts churned continuously. Was there more to this than ordinary human trafficking, or was he overanalyzing the situation? Could these organs serve another purpose entirely, ritualistic, experimental, or perhaps something even darker that he had yet to uncover?

His eyes shifted toward a particular shelf that held a jar containing an eyeball suspended within viscous liquid, its iris oriented in such a way that it appeared to stare directly at him. Beside the eyeball floated a severed tongue, then preserved fingers, and even toes, and even objects as small and disturbingly meticulous as human fingernails, each catalogued and stored with unnerving care, as though nothing about the human body was too insignificant to be collected and preserved for some unknown design.