Gardener of Eden

Chapter 206: Chapter 206: Cursed Son, Kael

Deep beneath the shattered peaks of the northern wasteland, buried hundreds of meters below the reach of the Imperial Shadow Guards and the Emperor’s golden gaze, lay the dark subterranean heart of the Order of Humanity.

Here, far away from the sunlit streets of Sol Aethel and the fresh, blooming scent of Eden International, the air was thick with the suffocating stench of brimstone, boiled acid, and festering decay.

At the center of a cavernous obsidian chamber carved with glowing crimson runes, dozens of dark-robed cultists moved in silent, hypnotic unison. They tilted massive leaden cauldrons over the rim of a sprawling, circular pit. Down into the bubbling black depths, they poured concentrated corruption residue—liquid distilled from the same black miasma that powered Adam’s scythe and Roxie’s chain whip—alongside thousand-year-old basilisk venoms, rotted S-Rank monster cores, and liquefied curses designed to devour organic life down to the bone.

Suspended in the very heart of this boiling, toxic abyss was a young man.

He was eighteen years old, his pale skin marred by intricate, dark purple veins that throbbed like living serpents beneath his flesh. Heavy cold-iron chains bit deep into his wrists and ankles, keeping his trembling frame submerged up to his chest in the dark, corrosive sludge.

He did not scream. His eyes, completely devoid of white, glowed with a terrifying, hollow violet flame as his body ravenously devoured every drop of poison poured into the vat, his skin absorbing the deadly blights as if he were born from them.

”Pour more!” High Elder Deth hissed, leaning over the stone balustrade above the pit, his withered fingers clutching a staff made of twisted dragon bone. ”Adam and Roxie were naive to think their weapons alone could rot the Grand Tiller’s roots. They were merely the heralds... the instruments sent to measure the pulse of his strength.”

A dark-robed acolyte bowed nervously beside the elder. ”Grand Elder... the boy’s mana core is dangerously unstable. The corruption saturation has reached ninety-eight percent! If we force any more blight into his body, his soul might shatter before he even reaches Sol Aethel!”

”Then let it shatter!” Deth snarled, his hollow eyes gleaming with fanatical obsession. ”If his soul shatters, the Vessel of the Blight will become an unthinking, immortal engine of absolute decay! Rowan Vance claims to hold the power of the Origin Earth Pulse—he brings life to stone and blooms flowers in barren dirt. But this boy... this boy will be the absolute antithesis of life itself!”

Down in the pool, the dark sludge suddenly surged violently, reacting to the heavy malice vibrating through the chamber.

The young man lifted his head slowly. A jagged, pitch-black aura—a fusion of extreme poison and conceptual blight—erupted from his pores, instantly rotting the heavy iron chains into brittle red rust. The liquid corruption surrounding him was forced back in a massive, swirling vortex as he took a single, ragged breath.

When he opened his mouth, an exhale of dark, violet mist spilled over his lips, instantly withering the subterranean moss on the obsidian walls into lifeless dust.

”Rowan...” the boy rasped, his voice sounding like two dry bones grinding against each other. ”Your green paradise... will drown in black.”

The cult elders broke into chilling, echoing laughter that reverberated through the deepest vaults of the fortress, utterly convinced that while high society toasted Rowan’s grand opening, the ultimate weapon to wither his garden was finally taking its very first breath.

***

The toxic sludge in the cavernous pit boiled violently, its pitch-black surface parting as the eighteen-year-old boy slowly pulled himself upright. The remaining corrosive liquid didn’t spill off his body—it was absorbed greedily through his pores, turning his skin pale as marble while dark, violet-black veins pulsed fiercely across his neck and arms.

His eyelids fluttered, then opened completely. Where white and iris should have been, there were only twin pools of hollow, burning violet void.

From the high stone ledge overlooking the pit, a towering figure draped in heavy, rune-embroidered obsidian robes stepped into the flickering red light of the torchfire. Elder Deth, his face hidden beneath a skeletal mask carved from ancient monster bone, looked down at their ultimate creation with fanatical reverence.

”The vessel is complete,” Elder Deth’s voice echoed through the vast underground chamber, dry and rasping like rusted metal scraping against stone. ”You are no longer a remnant of the weak, fragile filth that once bled for this world.”

The boy raised his hands. Dark, conceptual blight rolled off his fingertips, instantly corroding the air around him into wisps of toxic, ash-like vapor. He stared at his trembling palms, feeling the endless, agonizing tide of thousand-year poisons and curses circulating through his core in place of normal mana.

”From now on, your name is Kael, the Cursed Son,” Elder Deth proclaimed, extending a withered, claw-like hand toward the dark abyss beyond the fortress gates.

Kael slowly tilted his head up, his hollow violet eyes locking onto the ancient elder. The sheer weight of his aura was so dense, so violently opposed to natural life, that even the robed cultists kneeling around the pit lowered their heads, gasping for air as their own mana cores revolted.

”Go forth,” Elder Deth commanded, his voice rising in a dark, ecstatic crescendo that rattled the cavern’s ceiling. ”Climb the Tower. Feed upon its trials, absorb its deadliest toxins, and grow stronger. When you reach the apex, you shall destroy this world and tear down the foolish gods of magic—returning mankind to the glorious times when mana did not exist!”

Kael took a single step forward, floating effortlessly out of the dry pit. The stone beneath his bare feet instantly rotted into fine grey dust upon contact.

A chilling, lifeless smile slowly cut across his pale face.

”The Tower...” Kael whispered, his voice resonating with the eerie double-layered tone of a thousand suppressed curses. ”I will climb it. I will rot every floor, every champion... and then I will wither the farmer’s garden into dust.”

With a sudden burst of violent, pitch-black miasma, Kael vanished into the darkness of the subterranean tunnels, setting his path toward the legendary Tower—a living calamity unleashed upon the realm.