Reincarnated with the Country System-Chapter 231: IN’THERAK’S AWAKENING

[CASPIAN'S POV – BURIED ALIVE]

Darkness.

Not the kind that comes from closed eyes or shadowed corners. This was the darkness of nothing—the suffocating, crushing weight of the earth pressing down on him, the stink of molten rock and his own burning flesh clogging his throat.

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Caspian—no, the thing that had been Caspian—twitched.

His body was broken.

Not just broken. Ruined.

Alberto's Godfire had seared through muscle, bone, and soul—leaving him a smoldering wreck buried under half a mile of collapsed Black Site. His limbs were gone, his torso a blackened husk, his face… well, he didn't have one anymore. Just a skull wrapped in strips of meat, jaw unhinged, teeth ground to powder.

He should be dead.

But he wasn't.

"Pathetic."

The voice slithered into his skull like oil—thick and rancid.

Caspian's remaining eye rolled wildly in its socket.

IN'THERAK.

The Eldest Evil. The God of Devoured Flesh.

"You let them burn you," the voice mused, amused. "A king reduced to cinders. How… disappointing."

Caspian tried to snarl. All that came out was a wet gurgle.

"But," IN'THERAK purred, "you've served your purpose."

A sound like a thousand bones snapping.

Then—pain.

Not the clean, sharp pain of a blade. This was deeper. Older. It wasn't just his flesh tearing—it was his soul being peeled apart, layer by layer, like fruit under a knife.

"Time to wake up, little king."

And then IN'THERAK ate him.

Not metaphorically.

Not poetically.

Literally.

Caspian's last thought wasn't fear. It wasn't rage.

It was relief.

Then—

Nothing.

---

The earth screamed.

Deep beneath the ruins of the Black Site, the ground heaved, stone cracking like eggshells under a boot. The facility's wreckage—twisted steel, shattered concrete, the corpses of dead men—all of it lurched upward as something monstrous pushed its way to the surface.

Then—

Silence.

A hand burst from the rubble.

Not a hand. A mockery of one.

Five fingers—too long, too sharp—each tipped with hooked talons that gleamed like polished obsidian. The skin wasn't skin. It was shifting darkness, veins of crimson pulsing beneath, as if the thing's blood was liquid fire.

The hand flexed.

And the earth obeyed.

Millions of tons of debris exploded outward, a shockwave of force ripping through the landscape like a bomb detonation. Trees were uprooted. Boulders vaporized. The few surviving ISSD scouts stationed at the perimeter were erased before they could scream.

At the center of the devastation, IN'THERAK rose.

In Caspian's body.

Tall. Sleek. A nightmare given flesh.

Its form was humanoid only in the loosest sense—a towering, emaciated frame wrapped in a cloak of living shadow. Its face was a smooth, featureless mask, save for a single vertical slit where a mouth should be. And when it opened that slit, what emerged wasn't a voice.

It was hunger.

"Free," it hissed, the word slithering into the world like a curse.

Then it laughed.

The sound wasn't sound. It was pressure—a force that made the air itself tremble, that sent fissures cracking through the earth for miles. Birds dropped dead mid-flight. Animals within a hundred kilometers bolted, instincts screaming.

Alberto, on the other hand, dragged Circe, spitting out dust and dirt. The whole area still shook, the dust in the air as thick as fog.

---

[SYSTEM PANEL – FIELD ALERT]

⚠ CATASTROPHIC EVENT DETECTED – 3KM RADIUS

THREAT CLASSIFICATION: IN'THERAK (Eldest Evil – Vanguard Form)

ENERGY READINGS: ERROR: Sensor Overload

WARNING: Evacuate immediately

Then, another boom—louder, deeper.

The ground cracked two hundred meters away. Trees fell like small sticks, the shockwave blowing away everything around.

Through the dust and rubble, the System Panel flickered to life in Alberto's vision.

---

[SYSTEM FEED – PARTIAL SCAN]

TARGET: IN'THERAK (Vanguard Form)

STATUS: Stabilizing

CURRENT POWER OUTPUT: 37% of full awakening

WEAKNESS: N/A (Data Insufficient)

Circe clutched his shoulder, her fingers trembling. "We can't deal with this. Not here, not now."

IN'THERAK laughed—free, but not completely. For it was not yet in its true body, which was sealed in the Eternal. It had taken over Caspian's body.

The forest began to die with its steps.

Not through fire or decay—but through extinction. The trees collapsed backward, folding in on themselves like broken puppets. Leaves did not wither or burn; they melted, dissolving into a thick, primordial mist. The birds in the sky screamed—not from pain, but from something deeper, something instinctual. And then they dropped.

One by one, they plummeted like lifeless stones, smashing into the cracked earth, their bodies still twitching as if they had been touched by something they could not comprehend.

IN'THERAK tilted its head. It raised one grotesque, clawed hand, staring at the fingers as if testing them.

Then, it spoke.

"LITTLE HUMAN."

Alberto stiffened. His entire body went rigid. It wasn't just speaking to him—it was speaking through him, its voice clawing through his skull like a thousand insect legs.

IN'THERAK took a step forward. The very earth recoiled, cracking beneath its weightless presence.

"YOU PREPARED THIS VESSEL FOR ME."

It flexed its claws—and the ground screamed.

Five parallel fissures tore through the earth, splitting outward in jagged lines. From their depths, a black liquid began to ooze, boiling and hissing like acid. It did not flow naturally; it crawled, moving against gravity, reaching hungrily toward the sky.

Alberto gritted his teeth. Move, damn it. MOVE.

His muscles wouldn't respond. No one moved.

Not Circe. Not the soldiers behind them.

They were frozen—not by fear, but by something else. Something deeper.

It was the weight of inevitability.

IN'THERAK laughed.

A sound not meant for mortal ears.

It did not laugh **at** them. It did not laugh **for** them. It laughed because it **did not care.**

To it, they were insects. Nothing more.

It did not even need to kill them. It did not waste its time crushing ants.

And so, it simply left.

The shadows rippled around it, shifting as two great, jagged wings burst from its back. They did not resemble those of a bird or bat—they were fractures in reality, bleeding something deeper than darkness.

With one mighty beat, IN'THERAK ascended.

The wind roared as it tore through the sky, a storm of abyssal energy spiraling in its wake. The air howled, the land trembled—

And then it was gone.

For a long moment, no one spoke. No one breathed.

Then, Circe whispered, voice barely above a breath:

"...We are so fucked."