Novel Bin Chapter 104 - 104 Broken Crow
This strange out-of-body feeling made him feel like he was in a dream.
However, ever since he inherited the curse and became an undying Crowman, he hadn’t had a dream for more than a thousand years.
The Crows passed through the storm and gathered on the reef in human form one after another.
!!
As Crowmen were existences that carried his curse, everyone had similar looks—pale skin, thin face, and charcoal-like raven-black hair.
Of course, there were also those amber eyes that resembled crows.
Most of their hair stuck to their foreheads due to the drenching seawater, but they thought nothing of it. After taking shape, they genuflected in front of the ancient throne in unison.
“Boss…”
The Crow Feather Prophet—who had been brought here—looked at the shattered person sitting on the ancient throne in front of him and said with a complicated expression,
This was the first time he had seen the leader of the Crows.
The Crows were roughly divided into three levels—Feather, Claw, and Beak. According to what he knew, only the highest-level Beak was qualified to see this legendary person who had supposedly lived for more than a thousand years.
Ever since the previous Beak was killed by the Astral Lighthouse’s tower guardian 15 years ago, no Beak—one that had advanced to Legendary— had appeared among the Crows.
Before this, he never expected that the mysterious and powerful Boss would be this…
Broken and disheveled.
A familiar soul voice appeared in his mind, causing the Crow Feather Prophet to involuntarily lower his head.
Then, he heard a voice that sounded like a broken ventilator blowing from the throne in front of him.
Coles slowly raised his lowered head and opened his cracked mouth, “If I weren’t like this, you wouldn’t have been born.”
More than a thousand years ago, Judgment 4 caused irreparable damage to Coles. His body gradually couldn’t withstand the intense Crowman curse. Helpless, he could only constantly disperse the curse and create so-called Pseudo Crowmen.
They were his limbs, his avatars, and his puppets.
But even so, the deterioration of the curse inevitably continued to eat at him. His body shattered completely a hundred years ago. He could only hide here and have his body be still to maintain his existence.
Therefore, he could only control the Crows to interfere with Currere.
Coles twisted his neck and looked around at the Crows kneeling on the reef before saying, “I summoned you here because I have something to announce. Your Lord is about to be complete, and your destiny will be fulfilled.”
There were no cheers, applause, or screams.
The Crows quietly listened to Coles.
Only one person had a different reaction.
The Crow Feather Prophet couldn’t control the doubts in his mind and asked, “Boss, I still don’t understand why you asked me to come here directly. The Presiding Judge is clearly about to obtain the soul fragment sealed in the Mad Box…”
Coles turned his gaze to him.
“Because I’ll never be able to obtain that soul fragment.”
He replied and continued, “Weren’t you curious why the Astral Lighthouse in Viper 15 years ago knew of our plan?”
The Crow Feather Prophet subconsciously nodded and said, “Could it be that there’s…”
Coles’s cracked face revealed a bizarre smile before saying, “It’s impossible for there to be a traitor, nor will any secrets be leaked. The defense measures back then were strengthened because the Mad Box suddenly turned unstable, and the Astral Council sent more people.”
“As for the reason why the Mad Box became unstable, it’s because someone doesn’t want me to obtain that soul fragment. This is also why I didn’t make another attack attempt on the Astral Lighthouse after that failure.”
After understanding Absurdity Jester Valk’s stand, Coles had no intention of snatching the soul fragment.
However, Coles’s answer confused the Crow Feather Prophet even more. He asked in confusion, “But didn’t you ask me to help the Presiding Judge collect the remaining soul fragments?”
The Crow Feather Prophet still remembered that after the Eighth Holy Spirit’s figurine manifestation, the Boss told him that the Father of the Crows had already predicted the imminent return of the great Presiding Judge and asked him to go to the nearest Sealing Temple to wait for the other party’s arrival and help him retrieve the remaining soul fragments.
Coles stood up from the barnacle-covered throne with difficulty and staggered to the Crow Feather Prophet.
With every step he took, a dangerous cracking sound sounded.
The Crow Feather Prophet didn’t dare look up. Only when Coles gently helped him up did he look at the other party’s shattered face.
Then, the person said, “You’re right. That’s why you were born from that moment.”
The meaning behind the other party’s words made the Crow Feather Prophet extremely uneasy.
“What… does that mean?”
The Crow Feather Prophet looked around in panic.
At some point, the gazes of all the Crowmen around him turned to him. Their eyes were filled with the same emptiness as if none of them had a soul.
“Try recalling. Do you remember your former name?” Coles asked patiently.
“My name is…”
The moment the Crow Feather Prophet spoke, he felt as if a memory had been locked. It should have been something very simple to recall, but his mind was blank when he tried recalling the past.
“After becoming a Crowman, we should abandon our former names, so I…” the Crow Feather Prophet replied with difficulty, but it was obvious that he couldn’t convince himself.
Thinking back carefully, his memories only lasted until he was imprisoned in the Sealing Temple’s dungeon. Everything before that seemed to be shrouded in thick mist.
Seeing the gradually despairing expression on the other party’s face, Coles slowly said,
“This can be considered an attempt. After all, I seem to have given up on creating personalities for my puppets more than 400 years ago. If the Whispering Empress hadn’t told me that the Presiding Judge had returned, I probably wouldn’t have tried again.”
In the beginning, when Coles created the Pseudo Crowmen, he would give them a complete personality.
However, because these Pseudo Crowmen would inevitably come into contact with the Father of the Crows, and it was very easy for them to be wiped out by the Father of the Crows during this process, causing him to lose his strength, Coles gave up on giving them personalities a long time ago. Instead, he created puppets without self-awareness.
Coles relied on these puppets to control the peripheral Crows. This was also the reason why no one on the continent had figured out the organizational structure of the Crows over the years.
Upon hearing the other party’s words, the Crow Feather Prophet asked in a daze, “But why?”
He wasn’t asking why Coles gave him such treatment.
After all, as the other party’s creation, he didn’t have the right to question his master.
However, what he didn’t understand was why the man named Coles Jackdaw in front of him would betray the Presiding Judge he had once regarded as a god.