Chapter 36: 036. Hero, You... Might Not Have Children!

Jace knelt heavily on the scorched cracked earth as his lungs dragged in ragged bloody breaths.

He clutched Caliburn closely to his chest, but the legendary Holy Sword had completely lost its divine golden glow. The once radiant metal now looked dull and lifeless under the choking blanket of ash.

All around him, the bustling frontier town of Kakune had been reduced to a smoldering graveyard.

Buildings were flattened into splinters and the air was thick with the suffocating stench of burning flesh.

The Hero was seriously wounded.

His left arm had been blown clean out of its socket by a singular burst of dark magic, leaving a ragged, cauterized stump just below his shoulder.

His ornate silver divine armor summoned by Caliburn was shattered, and his free right hand was trembling violently as he gripped the hilt of the unresponsive holy blade.

Standing a few paces in front of him, looking completely untouched by the devastation, was the First Demon King.

The entity was terrifyingly humanoid.

He possessed pale, almost translucent skin with long flowing hair, and two jagged, obsidian-curved horns protruding from his temples.

He wasn’t panting... He wasn’t even sweating... He simply looked like a man who had simply taken a leisurely stroll through a garden.

"Why didn’t you run?" The Demon King asked calmly.

Jace gritted his teeth, forcing his exhausted body upright.

He raised his chin as his blue eyes flashed with desperate heroic resolve. "Because... because a Hero doesn’t abandon the innocent! I am the blade of the Goddess! I fight for the people that have been replac—"

However, mid-way through his righteous declaration, the pale man simply turned his back and began walking away.

Jace’s eyes widened in sheer disbelief.

"Hey! Where are you going?!" He shouted with his voice cracking. "We aren’t finished!"

The First Demon King paused. He didn’t turn around, but his calm voice drifted back through the swirling ash.

"My name is Morcatio. The First Demon King, and the strongest of the Demon Lord’s forces," he stated plainly. "I have no interest in crushing insects that are already broken. If you somehow manage to survive this wound... get stronger. Then, find me again."

Jace’s face twisted in fury.

He wasn’t an insect... He was the Chosen One... He gripped Caliburn, intending to shout a defiant challenge and launch one final, desperate strike at the demon’s back.

He opened his mouth.

SHNK.

There was no sound of a spell being cast neither was there a grand swing of a weapon as Morcatio simply flicked his wrist.

A nearly invisible thread of condensed dark magic, thinner than a hair but sharper than any physical blade, lashed backward with terrifying velocity. It bypassed Jace’s innate magical resistance completely.

The thread sliced horizontally through the center of Jace’s head. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Jace froze.

His mouth remained open, but no sound came out. A thin perfectly straight red line materialized across his body, cutting cleanly through his shattered armor, his skin, and his spine in one go.

A second later, Jace’s body slid into two halves that fell sideways with a sickening wet sound.

Blood erupted in a massive fan as his upper torso completely separated from his hips, tumbling backward onto the scorched earth while his legs crumpled underneath the sudden loss of balance.

His internal organs spilled out onto the ash in a steaming pile.

As the world rapidly went dark, the last thing the Hero saw was the First Demon King vanishing into the smoke.

...

Jace’s eyes snapped open.

He immediately started breathing hard, frantically gasping for air as his right hand shot out, desperately reaching for Caliburn.

His fingers grasped empty air as the holy blade was not there.

Panic surged through his veins, but as he rapidly blinked, the vision of the burning town and him in half faded.

He immediately looked around and forced himself to calm down.

He was not lying in the dirt.

He was lying on a plush, silk-sheeted bed... The room was vast, adorned with intricate white marble and gold filigree, illuminated by warm sunlight streaming through massive stained-glass windows.

Standing near the foot of the bed was a young girl wearing the pristine white and gold holy clothes of the central church.

She dropped the basin of water she was holding.

"The Hero is awake!" she screamed out immediately with her voice echoing down the grand hallway outside.

Instantly, the heavy oak doors burst open.

A contingent of royal guards rushed in, followed immediately by the Emperor of the Empire himself, wearing his heavy ceremonial robes.

Walking swiftly beside the Emperor was the Former Saintess. She was a beautiful, older woman with deep wrinkles of wisdom lining her face and long, striking white hair tied in a complex braid.

Jace struggled to sit up, his hand flying to his stomach where he expected to feel a massive, gaping wound.

Instead, he felt smooth, unblemished skin beneath his linen bandages as his left arm was fully attached and functional.

"Where is Caliburn?" Jace demanded. "And where am I?"

The Former Saintess stepped closer to the bedside with her expression grave but relieved.

"You are safe within the Royal Palace, Jace," the Former Saintess said, her voice soothing. "The Holy Sword Caliburn is currently secured within the grand cathedral, undergoing a ritual of purification and blessing by the high priests to restore its divine glow. You were found clinging to life and brought directly here."

Jace nodded slowly, processing the information.

The white-haired woman reached out, gently placing her hand against his back. A warm, immensely comforting wave of pure holy power washed through his body, erasing the lingering ache in his muscles.

She breathed a deep sigh of relief. "It is a genuine miracle of the Goddess. Despite the fact that you were completely split in half by dark magic, the emergency healing rituals took hold perfectly. You have healed completely without fail, your physical form restored to its peak... except..."

She hesitated, her eyes darting away from his face for a fraction of a second.

Jace caught the hesitation immediately.

"Before you tell me any bad news," Jace interrupted, "where is Lumi?"

He needed to see his current Saintess... His girlfriend and the girl he had sworn to protect.

’Perhaps she’s handling Caliburn’s purification personally?’

The Former Saintess swallowed hard. "Lumi has left the Capital. She departed a day ago to go collect a highly specialized, enchanted item that she personally ordered from the Dwarven Empire."

She paused, desperately trying to think up of a plausible excuse for her wayward disciple.

Even the Former Saintess couldn’t truly understand why Lumi, a girl who so fervently claimed to love the Hero, would actively choose to leave the city and not be here by his bedside during his most vulnerable time of need.

"She... she stated that she had gone to retrieve items that would specifically aid in healing your new condition." the Saintess continued.

Jace frowned, pulling the linen sheets up slightly. "New condition?"

The young church girl at the foot of the bed immediately looked at the floor.

The Emperor cleared his throat loudly, suddenly finding the tapestries on the wall incredibly fascinating and finally, the Former Saintess cleared her throat as well, shifting her weight awkwardly.

"During the emergency reconstruction of your body," the Former Saintess explained gently, "we discovered that after your fight with the Demon King, you had contracted a highly deeply rooted curse."

Jace scoffed, waving his newly reattached left hand dismissively. "A curse? So what? I’ll just request a Divine Authority from the Goddess to purge it. She cleanses all darkness."

His words stopped abruptly in his throat.

His mind flashed back to the argument he had with Lunerei right before he charged off to the Demon Lord.

He had ignored her direct divine warnings so his Goddess was undoubtedly still incredibly pissed off at him.

He swallowed hard. He wouldn’t be able to request any Divine Authorities from her anytime soon without issuing a massive apology, which he wasn’t prepared to do.

"It is no normal curse, Jace," the Former Saintess continued, bringing his attention back to the room. "I attempted to purge it myself during the surgery. It violently rejected my holy mana. Even I couldn’t handle it."

That made Jace genuinely surprised.

Before her power as the Saintess had been officially passed over to Lumi, this woman was universally well-known for not only being one of the best healers of all time but for her unparalleled, specialized ability to banish ancient curses.

If she couldn’t banish this one, then the magic behind it was terrifyingly strong.

"Although the curse didn’t physically harm your vitals or your mana core like others would," the Saintess continued, her cheeks flushing slightly as she forced the words out, "you have a... serious issue."

Jace’s brow furrowed. "A serious issue? What does it affect?"

The Saintess slowly lowered her gaze, looking directly at the linen sheets covering his crotch.

"Dear Hero," she said, her voice dropping to a sympathetic whisper. "This curse has severely altered your lower anatomy. It has entirely prevented you from being able to use your penis."

Jace stared at her, his brain completely flatlining. "...What?"

"The dark magic has severed the specific nervous pathways required for arousal," she explained clinically, though clearly deeply uncomfortable. "It also completely restricts your body’s ability to generate semen. In essence, the tissue remains physically attached, but it feels incredibly flimsy down there. It is entirely non-functional."

The Emperor finally spoke up with his voice sounding grim. "We have the best mages in the Empire working in absolute secrecy to find a solution to this issue, Hero. But as it stands, you are unable to use it. So in essence... Jace, you might not ever be able to have children."

Jace’s blue eyes darkened completely.

The color drained from his face, leaving him as pale as the Demon King who had killed him.

The sounds of the grand room faded into a dull ringing silence as it felt like his entire world had just collapsed to the ground.

...

『 System Alert: You have received 20,000 SP for subjecting the Hero to immense terror at losing his manhood! 』

Ren grinned broadly as his right eye finally stabilized. He blinked, adjusting to the sudden influx of golden light outlining the dark cavern around him.

’Oh, finally,’ Ren thought, dismissing the glowing blue notification. ’I was starting to think that arrogant fucker would never wake up from his coma.’

He knew exactly why the System had awarded him such a massive bounty for a seemingly petty curse.

The reason why this specific punishment was so deeply psychologically brutal for Jace was deeply tied to his backstory. Jace had tearfully promised his mother that he would survive the war, settle down, and give her beautiful grandchildren to carry on the family name.

There was absolutely no way to fulfill that heroic promise if his dick stubbornly refused to stand at attention.

Ren chuckled softly, thoroughly enjoying the misery he had orchestrated from here.

Regardless of Jace’s ruined future, Ren needed to focus on his own present.

He tapped the side of his face, focusing on the new highly detailed vision pouring into his brain from the Eye of the Unseen.

The sheer volume of visual data... the glowing mana currents, the structural weaknesses in every rock, the biological circulatory systems of the corpses was staggering.

’Well, I definitely don’t want to be seeing the world like a chaotic, glowing blueprint all the time...’ Ren thought.

He willed the magic to recede. Immediately, the brilliant golden light radiating from his new Divine Authority vanished, and his right pupil expanded, returning to its normal appearance.

The overwhelming flow of data ceased, returning his vision to normal. However, the moment the magic deactivated, a massive wave of lethargy slammed into him.

Ren felt incredibly drained. His vision swam and his knees buckled.

’Ah,’ Ren thought dizzily as he fell forward. ’I forgot that forcefully combining a mortal body with a raw Divine Authority was a physically taxing thing—’

WHOOSH!

He didn’t hit the cold, rocky cavern floor. He landed softly, his head resting perfectly on the plush, incredibly comfortable lap of Eternia.

The Snakekin Vanguard had immediately dropped to her knees the moment she saw him sway, catching him flawlessly.

She was currently using a relatively clean piece of cloth torn from a goblin’s tunic to gently wipe the sweat from her pale, blood-spattered face.

Eternia looked down at him as her golden eyes went wide with genuine concern. "Master, are you okay?"

Ren blinked away the dizziness, looking up at her from his comfortable position. "Yes. Though... I might not be able to stand up for a few minutes while my mana core stabilizes."

He shifted slightly, adjusting his head on her thighs. "If you don’t mind, I want to use your lap until the dizziness passes."

Eternia’s face immediately flushed a deep crimson, her tail twitching wildly behind her.

"O-Of course, Master!" she stammered quickly, her voice a mix of fierce pride and deep embarrassment. "I am just a simple slave. You can stay on your property’s lap for as long as you want. I will not move an inch!"

Ren smiled softly, closing his eyes and enjoying the brief rest.

It was really hard to compare this eager fiercely protective Eternia to the feral Eternia that had desperately tried fighting him back in the grimy basement of the Slavehouse just a few days ago.

The conditioning was working flawlessly. She was rapidly transitioning from a tool to a genuinely devoted subordinate, and he wasn’t complaining in the slightest.

After a few minutes of quiet rest, the deep ache in his core faded. Ren opened his eyes and turned his head to the side, looking out across the vast expanse of the Hidden Floor.

He took in the full scope of the destruction they had caused.

The massive crater from his Starfire Crescent, the charred, bisected remains of the Orc Commander, and the hundreds of glittering cores scattered like stars across a sea of ash.

"Wow," Ren said smoothly, genuinely impressed by the sheer volume of carnage they had managed to produce.

Eternia, eager to prove her worth while he rested on her lap, began excitedly recounting the battle from her perspective.

"Master, the souls in this cavern were incredibly dense!" she told him, her eyes sparkling. "I managed to combine multiple affinities. I used the Shaman’s lightning, but I also acquired some strange things that weren’t standard spells."

Ren tilted his head, his interest immediately piquing. "What do you mean, not spells?"

She raised her right arm, pulling back the dark sleeve of her new shirt. "The Orcs... they had some kind of unique biological motion. A physical reinforcement skill that made their arms incredibly veiny. When activated, they could expend all of their total muscular force into a singular, devastating point of impact."

To demonstrate, she pushed a fraction of the stolen soul energy into her limb.

Instantly, her slender, pale arm puffed out.

Thick, dark purple veins bulged dramatically against her skin, the muscle fibers visibly tightening and expanding with terrifying explosive tension. She held it for a second before releasing the mana, her arm returning to its normal slender appearance.

"It was only the Orc souls that allowed me to use that specific physical reinforcement," she explained, looking at her hand. "The Goblins didn’t have any unique traits worth keeping, and unfortunately, I hadn’t gotten anything useful from the Direwolves we killed outside."

Ren nodded, deeply satisfied with her progress. Her Soul Swallowing ability was evolving exactly as he had calculated.

"You should call those physical reinforcements ’Skills’, not spells," Ren instructed calmly. "Magic relies on environmental mana. Skills rely on biological or internal force so categorizing them properly will help you combine them more efficiently in the future."

Eternia nodded enthusiastically, committing his words to memory like gospel. "Yes, Master! Skills!"

Footsteps echoed across the cavern. Mandy finally arrived at their position, jogging slowly and clutching a massive, bulging burlap sack he had scavenged from the Orc camp.

He was covered in sweat, goblin blood, and looked completely exhausted.

Mandy stopped, taking a deep, gasping breath as he saw Ren casually resting his head on the terrifying Vanguard’s lap.

He immediately averted his eyes to avoid angering either of them.

"M-My Lord," Mandy gasped, holding up the heavy sack. "I have collected the highest quality C-Rank cores from the commanders. Should we pack it all up and head back to the Guild?"

Ren slowly sat up, stretching his neck until it popped. "Naturally. With this haul alone, we’ll be able to bypass D-Rank entirely and rank up straight to C."

He paused as he looked toward the far end of the cavern, where a newly formed glowing blue portal had appeared... the exit from the Hidden Floor that led directly to the staircase for Floor 2 of the main dungeon.

Ren stood up, dusting off his dark trousers. "However... should we go to the second floor before we leave?"

Mandy’s eyes widened in sheer panic as his legs practically gave out.

"No!" he yelled instantly. "My Lord, please! We are exhausted! My sword is chipped, and my mana is completely empty! Going down another floor is suicide!"

"Yes, Master!" Eternia yelled with her voice immediately drowning out the butler’s protests. She scrambled to her feet, her golden eyes burning with eagerness for more combat. "We must go deeper!"

She turned and shot Mandy a fiercely competitive look. "We even have the surplus supplies and rations to last for days! We are more than prepared to conquer the next floor!"

Mandy glared at her, his jaw dropping at her sheer audacity, desperately wanting to strangle the demi-human for volunteering him for more near-death experiences.

Eternia didn’t care. She just stuck her tongue out at him playfully, relishing her position as the Master’s favorite blade.

Ren chuckled softly at their dynamic. He turned away from the entrance, unsummoning his ruined steel sword and pulling a fresh, high-grade one from his spatial ring.

"Settle down, both of you," Ren said smoothly, walking toward the glowing blue descent portal. "We’ll go to the second floor."