Building My SSS-Rank Universal Empire: From Trash to Cosmic Overlord-Chapter 240: Coldness

He didn’t have to wait long before the monster appeared. He didn’t know how it folded its mass out of the hallway and the door, but it did so without breaking anything.

The only thing it brought with it was the coldness and the darkness that shrouded half of its form.

"You’re even bigger now." Five skulls reared up into the air, sockets of green fire staring down at him. Except for the five big skulls, Vale couldn’t discern the rest of the body. It was as if the shape was constantly changing.

"What are you?" Vale said. The power coming from the monster certainly matched his. "This is not a normal Errant Knight rank."

"Oh? How perceptive," a voice said, and a man emerged from within the shadow of the monster. He was covered in a bright red cloak, his head hidden beneath a hood.

"So you finally show yourself," Vale said.

The man pulled back his hood to reveal a thin face, his flesh dry and pressed tightly around the skull. His eyes were sunken. "I have heard so much about you, Vale of Athrimir. They say you have a fire that can burn anything. How will that fare against my fire of soul-consuming?"

"Necro Knight," Vale hissed. And not a normal one either, the undead monster with him was something special and unique. Something that shouldn’t be in the human world. "Where did you find that thing?"

The Knight put his hand on the monster and shrugged bony shoulders. "You’ll be dead anyway. It’s a Rift final boss, a gift for me from a Master Knight. Few have escaped my wrath since then."

"Then what have I done to earn your wrath? I don’t know you," Vale said, genuinely curious. "Is this all because someone paid you gold?"

The man laughed, and it sounded like two dried bones rustling together. "I don’t take gold. I’m after your body because it is powerful, and I was given a hint that you carry something unique. I can smell it on you. Be part of my collection, Vale!"

Fire gathered in Vale’s left hand, forming into a sword with many needle-like points, Emberwraith’s Fang. "I’d rather not. I like my body very much alive, thank you."

The Knight smiled a sinister, cold smile that stretched the skin on his face tightly against his skull. "You don’t get to decide that."

One of the skulls opened its jaws, and green fire spewed out. Vale didn’t avoid it. Instead, he ran toward it, his hands raised as a wave of fire erupted from him and smashed into the oncoming green flame.

A shockwave rippled through the air, and Vale was thrown back. When he raised his head, the Knight had disappeared.

"...I can’t sense him around me, so he’s trying to control that thing in the shadows... not bad..."

The green fire from the monster wasn’t ordinary it had no heat. It was something cold. The monster began moving toward him.

Vale raised his sword with both hands and poured essence into it until the blade lit up the night in a fiery redness. "Don’t come closer!"

He brought the sword down. It stretched and expanded into a whipping arc that cut through the air in an instant. The monster didn’t dodge or maybe it never intended to.

The sword slammed into the central skull... and bounced back.

Vale’s eyes widened. "What the..."

He had used a lot of power to infuse his sword, and it just bounced back? That thing had that much strength?

Vale didn’t waste time with another normal attack. He expanded his tower and let himself be absorbed into it. Amplifying the power from his mark, Order, he released a pulse through the air.

It covered the monster, and he finally saw what it looked like. The monster wasn’t fully in the mortal world, part of its body was still submerged inside a portal.

"...So that’s why I couldn’t see the rest of its body earlier... just what is that thing..."

All five skulls turned upward toward the tower. As one, they opened their jaws.

A howl, a condensed shockwave of tortured screams, blasted out. The force cracked the ground and shattered all the glass in the castle and beyond.

The castle trembled as the ground shook.

Vale manifested his fire cloak. It was much bigger now, easily covering the whole tower. The attack slammed into him. The howling seemed to sprout claws, digging into his shield like a living thing. But he simply increased the essence he poured into it, and his shield held firm.

"...At this rate, we’re really going to destroy the castle..."

"Infernal Prison!" Vale shouted.

The tower thrummed with power. A curtain of red spread from the sides, the floor, and the surroundings, joined by thick bars.

When it was complete, they were completely shut away from the outside. Unlike the normal Infernal Prison Vale usually created, this one was fully formed, it didn’t just overlap reality. It severed them from it.

It was far bigger too, more than the space of the castle grounds.

Vale realized his mistake a second later. With the tower’s help amplifying his already massive essence, he had unintentionally manifested an Infernal Prison in one of its true forms.

It was a space completely removed from the world and its rules.

And the undead monster and its Knight took advantage of that.

A wave of darkness and green fire exploded outward, clinging to the walls of the prison and crawling across the ground like ink, polluting it.

By the time Vale realized what was happening, the monster had taken control of half the prison.

"...Shit... I should have been wary of something like this... that monster is a Rift Lord, it has some kind of power to control spaces like this. Good thing I did it only with the help of the tower, or I might have found myself totally in its space..."

With a groaning, cracking sound, the monster began to lift the rest of its body out.