Lord Of The Lost

Each wall was adorned with eight murals, their lines rough yet powerful, their meaning clear despite the age.

But the hall itself was falling apart.

One wall had completely collapsed.

The second was half-destroyed, letting in gusts of freezing wind.

Only the last wall remained intact.

And on it, the murals told the tale of the giants.

---

Mural One: A giant stands in the wilderness, roaring toward the heavens. The earth beneath him cracks open, and mountains rise from the ground.

Mural Two: A giant rides a tornado, soaring into the sky to battle dragons.

Mural Three: A giant exhales, and a blizzard blankets the world, freezing everything in its wake.

Mural Five: A giant wields a spear of lightning, striking down a demon crawling from the abyss.

Mural Eight: A giant, engulfed in flames, throws a punch at the gods themselves.

As William stared at the murals, a chill ran down his spine.

Something was happening.

---

His Demon Wolf instincts flared.

His pupils dilated.

The images on the wall came to life.

The giants frozen in stone moved, their battle cries echoing in his mind.

A torrent of ancient knowledge surged into his soul.

[Special Notice: You have been baptized by the Inheritance Mark.]

[Game Notification: Though the giants have perished, their immortal will remains etched in these murals, waiting for a worthy successor to awaken them.]

[You have triggered the Giant's Inheritance Mark and learned an Advanced Combat Skill – Storm Attack.]

---

[Storm Attack] – The Power of the Wind

Your attacks now contain the fury of a storm.

You are the embodiment of the wind itself.

Advanced combat skills were far beyond ordinary techniques.

They weren't just moves, they were forces of nature.

For a moment, William felt like his head was about to explode.

---

"F*ck!"

A sudden shout snapped him back to reality.

It was the Gambler, he had also triggered an inheritance mark.

Realizing what had happened, William quickly informed the Forum Master and Metatron.

But neither of them triggered an inheritance.

That meant the murals had conditions, not everyone could receive their legacy.

---

"Advanced combat skills…" The Forum Master sighed, his voice tinged with envy.

They were extremely rare.

Ordinary combat skills were already expensive.

Advanced ones? They could only be bought with magic gold coins, each skill worth the price of an entire bottle of magic potion.

For players at this stage, they couldn't fully unleash their true power.

But that didn't matter.

Owning an advanced skill was already game-changing.

---

There were eight advanced combat skills hidden in the Giant Murals.

But each person could only inherit one.

William glanced at the mural again.

"I must have triggered the second mural, the Wind-attributed Storm Attack."

With this skill, he could become the storm itself.

The giants once rode tornados into the sky, battling dragons.

Could he do the same?

---

The Gambler, rubbing his temple, groaned:

"Mine was the eighth mural, Fire Attribute: Rage Attack."

Alex, ever the quiet one, simply stated:

"Fifth mural. Thunder Attribute: Lightning Attack."

A sudden crack echoed through the hall.

The stone beneath their feet trembled.

Dust rained down from the murals, and the images of the second, fifth, and eighth giants blurred.

---

Something had shifted.

The inheritance marks of Wind, Fire, and Lightning had been claimed.

But five more remained.

For now, the ruins held no treasure.

But they had given them something far greater.

The lost knowledge of the giants.

And now, they had to decide what to do with it.

The inheritance marks had drained their energy.

With each activation, the giant's legacy weakened fewer marks remained.

"Good thing those deformed giants didn't inherit these skills," the Gambler muttered, still shaken. "We'd all be dead by now."

Unlike basic combat skills, advanced skills carried elemental power, making them lethal.

If the giants had mastered them, the battle wouldn't have been so easy.

Then again…

If the deformed giants had any real intelligence, they wouldn't have been so easy to manipulate.

Their thought processes were primitive, more like wild beasts than true giants.

They probably couldn't even trigger the inheritance conditions.

It was no different than if humanity was wiped out and its survivors grew up in a world of nuclear radiation; deformed, mindless, without knowledge of their past.

Even if you handed a grenade to one of them, they wouldn't even know how to pull the pin.

---

The group turned their attention to the second wall.

Though half of it had collapsed, the remaining fragments hinted at a forgotten history.

The first row of murals was chaotic—

Darkness engulfed the world.

The stars were scattered in disarray.

The sun and moon hung upside down.

But the final scenes were incomplete, broken beyond recognition.

Even Metatron struggled to decipher them.

---

In the second row of murals, a silver figure was depicted walking toward the moon, step by step.

From the shadows of the chaotic night, a pair of eyes stared at him.

Then, in the next mural—

A golden figure walked toward the sun in the same manner.

In the third row, the sun and moon inexplicably returned to their rightful positions.

The sun rose.

The moon set.

The stars realigned.

Nature restored balance, and the world regained order.

But the fourth row was the most unsettling.

Carved near the bottom, where time had spared the details, the images became even more disturbing.

---

Behind the moon, the sky was pitch black.

Where there should have been stars, there was nothing.

It was as if the entire universe had gone out.

Then, in the next mural—

The moon became infected with black lines, spreading like veins of corruption, twisting across its surface like bloodshot eyes.

The pure white moon darkened.

It transformed into a black moon.

And then—

The Black Moon crashed to Earth, wiping out all life.

The sun watched from above… cold and indifferent.

---

The Gambler nudged the Forum Master.

"So, Master… see anything?"

The Forum Master rolled his eyes.

"What, you think I can casually analyze ancient giant prophecy?"

Metatron, however, was deep in thought.

His brow furrowed.

"The second-row murals… they feel familiar."

"How so?" William asked.

Metatron's expression turned serious.

"It looks like the process of the 'Original Moon' ascending to godhood."

The room fell silent.

Everyone, including William, was stunned.

But the more they thought about it, the more it made sense.

The giants' mural style was simple, they carved only what they saw, what they believed.

In the second mural, a silver figure moved toward the moon.

In the third row, the moon returned to its rightful place.

The Gambler spoke up first.

"If that's true… then the golden figure must be the Sun God."

Metatron shook his head.

"We don't know enough about the Sun God. The real focus should be on the Original Moon."

---

Unlike the Sun God, who still had statues standing in church shrines, the Original Moon had vanished abruptly.

And yet, the Original Moon was once one of the strongest deities.

They had ascended before the Witch.

They became the incarnation of the Moon.

They ruled the domain of Night itself.

The Witches, powerful as they were, could only become followers of the Original Moon.

But now?

The Original Moon had been erased.

In their place, the Moonlight Goddess.

Something had happened.

Something that no one remembered.

And the answer might just be buried in the ruins of the giants.

Secrets of the Moon & the Cursed Blood

For centuries, the Moonlight Goddess had nurtured the path of the "Hunter."

Metatron, who maintained close ties with the church, had never heard the bishop mention it.

The clergy avoided discussing the gods in private, not out of secrecy, but out of faith.

To question too much was to invite doubt and doubt was the beginning of heresy.

---

The murals showed the Black Moon crashing into the earth.

Had this happened before?

Or was it a prophecy?

"This world is strange." The Gambler crossed his arms. "The last time I saw the full moon hanging that low, I seriously thought it was going to fall."

William nodded. "If we go by Earth's astronomy, that moon is too close. It's like it's just passing by, grazing the atmosphere."

"Are we even sure it's a planet?" someone muttered.

"How big is it?"

They weren't followers of any deity, so they had no fear in speculating.

On full-moon nights, the sky was dominated by its light.

It was so massive that mortals couldn't even see its full form.

As white as jade, looming overhead like a benevolent god watching the world.

The moonlight bathed the land in an ethereal glow, making night as bright as day.

A sight so breathtaking it left one in awe.

Yet their conversation was drifting dangerously into astrophysics.

Deep down, they knew it was pointless.

No amount of measurement or calculation would reveal the truth.

---

William refocused.

"What about those black lines on the moon?"

"Looks like contamination."

Metatron's voice was calm but firm. "We should stop digging too deep into this."

The Forum Master and the Gambler exchanged glances before nodding in agreement.

They already had enough nightmares dealing with the Black Forest's forbidden power.

Some things, once touched, tainted you forever.

Even seeing certain entities on a full-moon night, those twisted shadows that distorted the moonlight, was enough to leave a scar on the mind.

And they were players, with mental resilience far beyond ordinary people.

Yet even they had struggled against the psychic corruption upon encountering it.

The only thing that had helped was Helka, the knight commander.

With his guards, he had activated the Knight's Code, their battle oath shattering the spiritual pollution trying to consume them.

---

Their search led them deeper into the ruins, where they found something far worse than murals.

They came upon an excavated area, a rift in the ground.

At first, it looked like a dried riverbed.

But what flowed through it wasn't water.

It was blood.

Thick, polluted, reeking of death.

A network of blood rivers twisted through the earth, like exposed veins inside a rotting corpse.

And all around it, giant footprints.

The Gambler exhaled. "Those deformed giants… they're drinking this blood?"

The Forum Master's face darkened, not from disgust, but from the overwhelming mental shock.

"I'm afraid… they didn't just drink it. They crawled out of it."

---

The truth became horrifyingly clear.

Beneath this forest, the bodies of ancient giants lay buried.

This entire land had been feeding off their corpses, thriving on the nutrients of the fallen titans.

But the giants hadn't simply died.

Even after death, their blood still flowed.

And from this corrupt river of magic, the deformed giants were born.

---

Ancient giants carried immense power.

But their deaths weren't peaceful.

Before their demise, they had felt—

Unwillingness.

Hatred.

Fear.

Agony.

Those negative emotions didn't fade.

Instead, they festered, turning their very blood into a curse.

This was why the giants reborn from their remains were all twisted, monstrous aberrations.

They had inherited the corrupted extraordinary traits of their ancestors.

---

William's voice was steady. "We don't know what's lurking below."

"But if these deformed giants came from the blood… there might be more beneath us."

More larvae waiting to grow.

More giants waiting to crawl out.

It was just a matter of time.

---

The Gambler stroked his chin.

"So… what if we just blocked the hole?"

The room fell silent.

Four pairs of eyes turned toward him.

Seriously?

The Gambler shrugged. "If they can't climb out, problem solved."

A long pause.

Then—

"You're actually evil."