Chapter 619: Chapter 23: History

Sasha’s calm words were like ice picks, carving into the cold air word by word, exposing the darkest and most brutal truths of the Eternal Tower’s experiments nakedly before Lynch and Kong.

“Forcing him to kill us with his own hands… in the most cruel ways…”

In the blacksmith shop, young Nicholas was bound by an invisible force, glaring as the blacksmith uncle he respected was forcibly shoved into the scorching furnace, the agonizing screams and sizzling of burning flesh drowned out by the wizard’s cold observational notes.

He was forced to take the red-hot branding iron, trembling under the wizard’s will, to brand his childhood sweetheart, Sasha, leaving an eternal scar.

In the square, his loving mother was hanging from a makeshift gallows, her legs kicking futilely.

A cold dagger was thrust into Nicholas’s hand, the wizard’s icy voice echoing in his soul: “Cut the rope, or watch her suffocate to death, then ’revive’ and repeat a hundred times.” He screamed in agony, yet the dagger slashed uncontrollably…

In the cellar, his strong father was stripped, fixed on a cold torture rack.

The wizards leisurely displayed various torture tools, then ordered Nicholas to choose: to flay the skin with a blunt knife bit by bit, or to crush the bones inch by inch with pliers? Every choice was a deep lingering torture to the soul.

On designated “training days,” the entire town turned into a dead spirit hell. Nicholas was thrown into it, surrounded by familiar faces turned into grotesque monsters.

He had to fight, had to personally behead past neighbors and playmates, watching them turn into black smoke, only to face their empty, numb gazes again in the next cycle.

These images were not directly shown by Sasha, but forcibly infused into Lynch and Kong’s consciousness with her cold and numb description, like the most venomous curse.

Each death was painfully real, each “revival” meant a desperate recurrence. Nicholas’s pain, struggle, and collapse were eventually tempered into a nearly inhuman numbness and resilience tinged with destruction, all delivered clearly.

Lynch and Kong stood in place, their faces pale, silent for a long time. The weak fluorescence from the emerald solution in the laboratory cast their shocked and heavy faces in relief. The smell of preservatives mingling with a dense scent of blood and despair.

“So it is…” Lynch’s voice was dry and hoarse, breaking the deathly silence.

He suddenly recalled seeing fragments in an ancient forbidden book, “Psychological Torture Training Method”!

By repeatedly enduring or inflicting extreme pain, repeatedly rubbing against the brink of soul collapse to forge an impenetrable mental barrier and soul stamina by sacrificing emotions…

He had thought it to be some exaggerated theory or the rambling of a cultist, believing it impossible for anyone to endure such inhuman torment without going insane or turning into a monster.

Never could he have imagined that the wizards of the Eternal Tower not only practiced it but applied it to such a frenzied, large-scale extent!

Using the souls of the entire hometown, all the family members’ eternal pain as a forge, solely to create a so-called “Nicholas Avalon” as the “ultimate weapon”!

“Madmen… A bunch of utter madmen!” Kong’s voice carried suppressed anger and a slight, almost imperceptible tremor, silver-gray eyes flickering coldly. Even as a void being, she felt a strong impact and disgust.

The ghost girl Sasha hovered there, her hollow gaze sweeping over their complex expressions as if accustomed to such reactions. Her transparent figure appeared even more ethereal under the weak red glow of the array.

“Who are you… and why have you come here?”

Lynch suppressed his emotions, opening his mouth to explain, “Sorry for disturbing you. We are wizards, exploring these ruins to seek some lost magic knowledge, especially regarding the mysteries of the space domain.”

“Wizards?” Sasha’s voice became noticeably wary, carrying some hostility as she questioned, “Are you from Lascodo?” Orıginal content can be found at novel✶fire.net

Lynch could more or less understand the source of her hostility.

He shook his head, continuing to explain, “No, we are not people of Lascodo. In fact, the term is hardly used now, as it is part of history.”

Sasha was taken aback, “History?”

Lynch nodded, “Yes, Acadia has already perished, and naturally, Lascodo faded away with the decline of that civilization into history.”

Sasha paused, very surprised, “Acadia has perished?”

Lynch nodded again, “Yes, that was ten thousand years ago. The Eternal Tower, Acadia—all of these have long turned to ruins in the dust of history. The fragment left by that era is what lies as the ruins beneath our feet.”

“Ten thousand years…” Sasha mumbled softly, her transparent figure swaying gently, as if this long stretch of time made her fragile soul even more burdened.

Lynch looked at Sasha with surprise.

According to her, the tombstone outside belonged to Nicholas, yet wasn’t Acadia exactly what Nicholas destroyed? Yet this girl in front of him seemed unaware of Acadia’s extinction.

Lynch then reiterated his query, “Miss Sasha, you just mentioned that the tombstone outside belongs to Nicholas? Is that true?”

Sasha raised her head, her hollow eyes seeming to pierce through Lynch, gazing towards the laboratory above, towards the black tombstone standing in the cemetery. There was no sorrow or remembrance on her face, only profound exhaustion and a… eerily calmness.

“The Nicholas I once knew…” her voice was as ethereal as a sigh, “The one who would steal bread from the blacksmith shop, climb the clock tower to watch the stars, and fight for his bullied sister… When he was forced to deliver the first slash and kill the blacksmith uncle… he was already dead.”

She paused, her transparent fingertips gently brushing against the glass wall of a container holding a child’s remains, leaving a faint mist trace.

“He buried himself… along with all his weaknesses, love, and memories of this town… here, beneath that stone.”

After saying this, Sasha seemed to have exhausted her last bit of willingness to converse. Her transparent figure began to destabilize, like a candle in the wind.

She raised her hand, pointing to an inconspicuous corner deep within the laboratory. There was a dust-covered metal cabinet embedded in the stone wall, its door tightly shut, etched with Lascodo’s emblem—a chain-bound, overlooking eye.

“That place contains Lascodo’s experiment records and… some of their research outcomes.” Sasha’s voice grew weaker, more distant, “Perhaps what you seek is there…”

Before the words finished, her figure shattered like a bubble, completely dissipating into the cold air. No farewells, no lingering, only her final words echoing in the vast, corpse-filled, cold-solution laboratory, along with an overwhelming, suffocating sorrow that had settled for millennia.

Lynch and Kong’s gaze involuntarily shifted to the corner Sasha pointed out—

The tightly closed, dust-covered metal cabinet door.

Lynch’s gaze lingered a moment in the direction where the girl vanished, then he turned away, heading towards the direction she pointed out.

At the metal cabinet, Lynch opened it, revealing a stack of thick papers spread before him.

Lynch couldn’t help but lick his lips.

So,

Will there be any surprises here?

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