Astensia’s cry energized everyone, filling their veins with adrenaline and hearts with vigor as the vanguard burst through the gates and into the devastated town.
Lancet’s boots pounded on the ash-choked ground as he surged behind others, his armor hung against his lean him, humming and clanking as he ran.
The first sensation he felt the mont he crossed the threshold was an eerie cold, and then an abrupt heat. The temperature had dropped and spiked simultaneously. Lancet knew instantly that it was from the miasma, rembering the novel describing the yucky substance as deathly cold.
The heat, anwhile, was coming from the burning buildings.
Lancet looked up and around at the town. His eyes stretched wide, completely out of words for what he was seeing.
Hebthej was a corpse wearing a town’s skin.
The street beyond the gate had once been a respectable rchant thoroughfare. Now, the cobblestones had black sludge oozing between the cracks like diseased veins.
The buildings on either side—once proud structures of marble, iron and stone—had their walls bloated with pulsing, fungus-like growths.
Windows wept crimson condensation. Doorways sagged open like screaming mouths, revealing interiors completely swallowed by the sa red-black rot that coated everything.
Lancet could sll the miasma in the air. It was horrible, but not in a way that made you cover your nose. Instead, it drew you closer to the scent, a cathartic aroma.
The thing hung thick in the air while its mass moved like a living thing. It swirled in deliberate currents, tendrils reaching toward the invading Awakeners like curious fingers testing for weakness.
Lancet’s armor reacted quickly.
[ Armor Set: The Purifier’s Duskguard ]
[ Grade: S ]
[ Details: Woven during the Era of Rebirth using silver-threaded mythril. ]
[ Passive: This armor burns away Demonic Miasma within a two-foot radius, acting as an absolute deterrent to Gloom infection. Highly resistant to slashing and blunt force. ⸥
The silver-threaded mythril burned the air around him, actively pushing back the miasma back a full two feet around him. Lancet watched the rot sizzle and retreat where his feet touched the ground, leaving clean bootprints in the sludge.
Others had to use repellent magic or weapons to slice the evil away. Lancet didn’t have ti to appreciate his fortune.
Because the Demons were already coming.
They poured from every alley, every broken window, every sagging doorway. These ones were Humanoid Demons; but the term ’Humanoid’ was used very charitably in this case because those things were grotesquely wrong.
Their limbs bent at extra joints, their fingers elongated into scything claws. They reminded Lancet of Vorgath, Theo’s Descending Demon, except for one little detail.
Their heads...
Yes! Their damn heads! Those greedy monsters couldn’t do with one head each. Most were three-headed, so four-headed, others with faces stacked on top of faces like fleshy totems.
Their skin was the color of at after it had been badly bruised, stretched loosely over bulging, misaligned muscles. Their eyes—dozens of them—were red, yellow and wet, all fixed on the twenty-three living souls who had just invaded their feeding ground.
They shrieked like starving things recognizing prey and quickly crashed forward towards them in waves. Their dripping claws were raised, their hollow mouths were wide.
Thor pushed her empty left hand forward, palm facing the oncoming horde with her fingers spread.
"Lightning Storm Plurality!" she declared with determined eyes.
The sky — even as infected as it was — obeyed her command.
CRACK—CRACK—CRACK—CRACK—
Dozens of jagged blue lightning bolts fell from the roiling red sky. They converged at the exact center of the charging swarm, and spread it into chains of lightning.
Each of these hot bolts struck the Demons violently, from one Demon to the next. The electrical force was so imnse that the multi-headed Demons were instantly flash-fried, their bodies roasting away and leaving their charred bones.
"STORM SPHERE!" Thor cried again.
She leaped a distance and slamd her warhamr on the ground.
A sphere cracking with lightning suddenly expanded and within the next second, detonated.
A shockwave of white-hot plasma blasted outward in a perfect ring. Lancet threw an arm over his face, feeling the heat wash over his armor. When he lowered it, the first thirty feet of the street had been cleared.
The Demons caught in the blast had burst like red balloons.
Bodies split along their malford seams, purple-black blood spraying in geysers that painted the surrounding buildings.
Heads—multiple per corpse—rolled across the pave stones, their red eyes still twitching, jaws still snapping even in death. Limbs lay scattered like broken kindling, the sizzling stumps leaking viscous fluid that hissed against the hot ground.
One three-headed demon had been caught at the edge of the blast; only its lower half remained, stumbling two more steps before collapsing into a heap of twitching viscera.
But more demons were already scrambling over the corpses of their brethren, climbing the walls to bypass the kill zone, dropping from windows above.
Before they could even muster a challenge, Astensia stepped into the front, gripping the hilt of the Blessed Blade with both hands. Her golden aura flared into a blinding halo.
"Dissecting Cross!" she exclaid
She swung horizontally — a slash so fast no one couldn’t track the blade, only its afterimage.
The tilted crescent arc of white light that erupted from the edge traveled at chest height, tearing through the front line of charging demons.
Bodies split cleanly at the torso, upper halves flying backward while lower halves continued running for three, four, five steps before collapsing.
Then, a split-second after that, another slash followed, bisecting the sa space but tilting from the other side.
The combination created an X, slashing the next set of Demons into half, aty chunks. Purple blood sprayed in arcs, staining the floor.
More demons poured into the street. A second wave, larger than the first. So crawled on all fours, their spines bent backward, heads swiveling 180 degrees to keep their eyes on the vanguard.
But right then, the golden ’X’ tilted, rotating forty-five degrees to form a perfect, upright Cross ( ).
In doing so, the slashes cut down numbers of Demons. Then it exploded towards the approaching horde, spinning as it traveled, carving through Demons like a buzzsaw through wet cardboard.
Lancet saw a four-ard demon try to block with its claws. The cross passed through its arms, then its chest, then out its back. The demon stood frozen for a mont, its multiple heads looking down at the new gap in its torso, before it fell in multiple chunks like Lego blocks.
The cross kept going, cutting a swath through the horde until it struck a building at the end of the street and detonated, bringing the entire structure down on top of a cluster of demons trying to flank from the right.
After that, there was silence.
The students all stared in disbelief.
Beside Lancet, he heard Nereus Grimlake’s quiet, asured voice.
"I find myself glad that those two are with us."
Then they heard more shrieks.
Astensia glanced over her shoulder, her blue eyes sweeping across the assembled students. She pointed her Blessed Blade toward the right, where a narrower street branched off toward the southern district.
"Let’s go!" she shouted, her voice carrying over the shrieking and the crackling of distant fires. "Follow your instructions! Evac team, with ! Attack team, join Thor. NOW!"
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