"Hold on!" I barked to Tessa, gripping Oathstorm tightly with both hands.
And t the charge head-on.
The frantic rush of the four robed figures looked like they were moving underwater. I sidestepped the first dagger entirely, bringing Oathstorm up in a tight, brutal arc.
The dark lightning hissed, violently severing his weapon arm before I drove my boot into his chest, sending him crashing into his comrade.
To my right, Scarlet was a blur of lethal motion. She ducked under a clumsy dagger thrust, grabbed the cultist by the robes, and drove her knee squarely into his chest with a sickening crunch of bone.
Then drove her obsidian claws directly through his throat.
I spun, parrying a desperate overhead strike, letting the montum carry his blade into the dirt, then brought Oathstorm down in a guillotine chop, the black electricity completely frying his nervous system on contact.
Within seconds, the remaining two figures were dead on the ground, their bodies twitching slightly from residual electricity.
[Level Up!]
I barely glanced at the text, flicking the blood off my blade.
These guys were weak, I noted ntally, my brow furrowing.
Barely Level 20. Just standard grunts. Nothing like those we faced before.
I kept Tessa safely behind and scanned the rest of the massive chamber.
The cavern was a warzone.
Garf had sohow shattered the suppression glyph holding him down, and was currently swinging his massive war axe, completely clearing a path through the chanting cultists.
Yenna’s roaring flas illuminated the dark corners, incinerating anyone who tried to flank them, while Mira’s arrows flawlessly picked off the stragglers.
But my eyes were drawn to the center of the room.
Edric and Rolf were locked in a blistering, high-speed duel.
Rolf’s twin daggers moved in a desperate, frantic blur, parrying strikes that would have decapitated a normal man.
He was incredibly fast, holding his ground.
But I could see the terrifying reality of the fight... Edric wasn’t even breathing hard. The silver-black aura surrounding him was completely overwhelming Rolf, driving the rogue backward step by bloody step.
Eventually, the screams of the cultists stopped.
The cavern fell eerily silent, save for the low, pulsating hum of the massive, glowing star-shaped circle carved into the floor behind the dais. Every single robed figure lay dead in the dirt.
Rolf parried a heavy strike from Edric, but his wounded shoulder gave out. He stumbled backward, dropping one of his daggers as he crashed to his knees at the very edge of the massive, glowing star-shaped circle.
He was completely surrounded.
Edric lowered his sword, the tip hovering inches from Rolf’s throat. Mira stepped up on the left, an arrow fully drawn and aid right between the rogue’s eyes.
Yenna flanked him on the right, a sphere of fire hovering just above her palm, her breathing ragged. Garf stood directly behind them, his heavy war axe resting on his shoulder, his face set in stone.
Scarlet, Tessa, and I stepped up behind them, keeping our distance but watching the cornered rat.
"Why?" Mira demanded, her voice shaking with a mixture of grief and fury.
"We trusted you, Rolf. We broke bread with you. We guarded your back for months. Why?!"
Rolf looked up at her, coughing up a splatter of blood. His sheepish, terrified mask was completely gone. The look in his eyes was one of pure, apocalyptic hatred.
"Trust?" Rolf spat, a bloody, mocking grin stretching across his pale face.
"You dogs only trust the gold in your pockets and the nobility that hands it to you. You protected because you pitied ! You looked down on !"
"You set us up to die!" Yenna scread, the flas in her hand roaring hotter. "You stabbed in the back!"
"I would have stabbed every single noble in the capital if I had the reach!"
Rolf roared back, his voice cracking with fanatical desperation.
"This world is a rotting corpse! The strong take whatever they want, and the rest of us are left to bleed in the gutters! I gave everything to balance the scales! Everything!"
He slowly raised his head, looking past Edric’s blade, staring directly into the pulsating crimson light of the massive ritual circle behind him.
"And it’s not over yet," Rolf whispered.
His eyes went completely wide, snapping with sheer madness.
He didn’t attack Edric. He threw himself backward.
"Don’t let him get in there!" Edric roared, his usually stoic voice cracking with genuine panic.
Thwip!
Mira’s arrow tore through the air, burying itself deep into Rolf’s thigh. He scread, tumbling wildly across the glowing runes, but he didn’t stop.
Edric blurred into a streak of silver and black, moving faster than the eye could track.
But he was a fraction of a second too late.
Rolf crossed the final threshold, stepping directly into the dead center of the star-shaped runes.
The mont his boots touched the core, the liquid light surged upward, violently connecting with his mana.
He threw his arms wide open, tilting his head back toward the dark cavern ceiling.
"It’s done now!" Rolf scread, a manic, hysterical laughter ripping from his throat. "It’s over! Hahahahaha!"
SHKKK!
Edric materialized right behind him, driving his blade brutally through Rolf’s back.
The blood-soaked steel erupted cleanly from the center of the rogue’s chest.
Rolf gasped, his maniacal laughter choking on his own blood. But he didn’t scream.
He slowly, agonizingly turned his head to look over his shoulder at Edric. A terrifying, victorious grin split his pale face.
"It doesn’t matter... if I die," Rolf bubbled, a thick stream of crimson spilling down his chin.
The crimson light of the circle beginning to violently throb beneath them.
"It’s done. You’re... all... dood. Hahaha..."
Rolf’s eyes rolled back into his head. His body went completely limp, sliding off Edric’s blade and hitting the glowing runes with a heavy thud.
For a fraction of a second, the cavern was dead silent.
Then, the ritual circle detonated.
A blinding, cataclysmic pillar of pure, violet light erupted from the center of the star, completely swallowing Rolf’s corpse and throwing Edric violently backward through the air.
"Get back!" I yelled, throwing my arm up to cover my eyes and shielding Tessa with my body.
Then, the heat was gone.
The temperature in the cavern plumted so fast that my breath instantly turned to white mist.
Slowly, the blinding pillar of violet light began to fade, dissolving into a thick, swirling mist of pure, concentrated miasma.
I lowered my arm, blinking the spots out of my vision, and stared at the center of the circle.
My blood turned to absolute ice.
Standing exactly where Rolf had died was a nightmare pulled straight from the abyss.
It was horrifyingly tall, easily cresting nine feet.
Its skin was the color of ash and dead stone. It had no eyes, only a smooth, pale expanse of flesh above a jaw that unhinged, revealing rows of jagged, obsidian teeth.
Floating above its head was a halo of slow-burning, violet flas.
Four long, multi-jointed arms hung from its hunched shoulders, each ending in cruel, scythe-like talons that scraped softly against the frozen floor.
The suffocating aura of absolute decay rolling off the creature was so heavy it forced to my knees.
It was The Culler of the Unworthy.
A true Demon.
[Error: Target level exceeds...]
[Error: Data Corruption...]
[System Alert: ABYSSAL ENTITY DETECTED. CHANCES OF SURVIVAL: 0%]
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