The Last Dainv

Chapter 303

Erin raised her hand. A circle of ice formed beneath Kair and lifted her up into the air, encasing her in a smaller protective sphere that floated away from the battlefield. Her small hands pressed against the surface, looking on curiously through the transparent ice.

Gale charged at the captain. Three Early-Resonant knights moved to intercept. Before they could close the distance, dozens of ice spears shot out from Erin's position, each one the height of a man.

The second knight had tried to dodge instead of blocking. Too slow, though. An ice spear pierced through his right arm just below the shoulder. His arm dropped, dangling by sinew and skin. His sword clattered onto the cobblestones.

The first and third scattered, avoiding the barrage.

Gale was now completely free and continued his charge.

The captain saw the attack. Digging into the earth, he scooped up the cobblestones, dirt, and debris from the courtyard and threw it at the oncoming threat, Gale.

Phase Defense activated across where each rock would hit him. The rocks passed through him. Dirt got on his clothes. Cloud of debris didn't matter much.

As he arrived at the other side, a sword slashed at Gale's face.

Too easy to read.

His stance lowered into a slide. Sword passed over him just centimetres from his face. Erebus swept upward in a rising slash aimed at the captain's unprotected side.

The captain dashed backwards, his feet skidded against the cobblestone to a stop.

Gale didn't let up. The movement was followed by a Reflection, sending out a copy of Erebus that chased after the captain where he landed.

The captain's sword came upwards. Blade met against the Reflection wave. One slash was all it took to dissipate the skill.

Erebus turned back into mist. Once it formed back, Gale held a massive sledgehammer with the slab of metal three times the size of his head, already mid swing downwards against the captain's raised sword.

Metal met metal with a sound that shook the surroundings. Both men were locked against their weapons. Neither gave ground, becoming a deadlock.

Gale pushed down the hammer. If there was one thing he was confident about, it was his strength. And sure enough, the Erebus sledgehammer was slowly going down millimetre by millimetre as essence flooded his muscles to resist a Mid-Resonant's strength.

"Give up," Gale growled through gritted teeth. "If you still have any humanity left in you, surrender now."

The captain's visor was close enough that Gale could see his eyes through the slits. They were bloodshot, veins of black spreading through the whites.

"Do not even try to tempt me. The only monster here is you!" the captain shouted.

Miasma exploded outward from his body. The oily black substance swirled around him, coating his armour and his sword in a layer of paradoxically viscous smoke.

The ground being gained by Gale's strength came to a complete halt. Instead, the deadlock reversed its direction. In one final roar, the captain threw Gale's sledgehammer aside in a shockwave.

"Guess you've already gone too far," Gale muttered. No point in trying to appeal to this corrupted entity's last remaining humanity anymore.

Erebus changed into a mist again. In its place, a two-handed greatsword nearly as long as Gale was tall.

Charged.

The first slash came from the right, aimed diagonally upwards at the captain's neck. But the trajectory was about to be blocked. Erebus shortened just enough so that it missed the defensive action by just a hair.

Dainv Combat Arts activated at its peak. Mid miss, Erebus changed to a thin blade, allowing Gale to change its direction in a snap. And once it was, it changed back to the greatsword towards the captain's arm.

The captain barely managed to twist away, the edge of Erebus grazing his armour and leaving a bright scratch on the viscous miasma encasing him.

The second slash came from overhead. The captain raised his sword to block and swat it to the side, but Erebus shortened at the moment of contact, slipping past the guard to scrape across the captain's breastplate.

Reflection shot out from the missed slash, forcing the captain to dodge sideways or take the cutting wave to the face.

The third slash came from the left. The captain deflected it, but the blade extended past his guard, the point reaching toward his visor.

Reflection fired again from the extended tip, and the captain had to duck under it while parrying the physical blade at the same time.

Gale sent out a relentless assault, using up any essence reserve he had to push his body to the limit. Slash after slash rained down on the captain, each one accompanied by a Reflection that turned every miss into a second attack. The blade changed length constantly, sometimes long enough to reach across the courtyard, sometimes short enough to be a dagger, never the same twice in a row.

The captain's skill was commendable, though. Compared to William Elisworth, who was at the same stage, the person in front of him was leagues above. Being titled as the 'captain' wasn't just a title after all.

When the captain finally made a mistake, Gale saw an opening that couldn't be missed. The miasma around the captain's body pulsated faster, trying to compensate for his failing body.

Erebus raised high above his head with both hands, blade extended to its maximum length. Essence surged through every muscle and joint in his body. And in one forward step, Erebus came down like a guillotine towards the captain's centre mass.

Captain's sword raised up, yet the blade continued its descent.

Mistake #1. Erebus' sharpness is perfect according to Erin.

As Erebus reached the bottom of its movement, stopping just a centimetre from the ground, there was no sound of it making contact with the captain's sword nor flesh.

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The next second, his right arm from his shoulder slid down from his torso, disarming him and incapacitating him from fighting. The captain fell onto the cobblestone, still breathing hard as he coughed up blood.

"The true Kair will punish you," the captain rasped. "You will not have a quick death for pretending to be the successor of the Divine Dark. She will find you. Your blasphemous words will give you a slow and painful death. Mark my words—"

Erebus sliced once. The captain's head separated from what remained of what could be called his body. The oily smokey miasma around his body melted into the ground, leaving a black residue.

[Corrupted Knight Captain, Orist felled...]

[Extracting Origin from Prey.]

[Description: The most loyal knight of the princess of Kulbran. When the princess was slain by the foreign entities, he devoted his life to the false Kair in hopes that the princess would be resurrected.]

Gale stared at the system message for a long moment.

The princess. Sacrificed to the Shadow Scouts.

He looked down at the captain's severed head. The visor had fallen away in the final strike, revealing the face of a man who couldn't have been older than thirty. His black veins bulged with the same miasma, seeping out through his pores. Those eyes held the conviction of a man driven insane, most likely by the sweet whispers of the corruption.

Looking back at the battlefield towards Erin, her side was already over. In fact, she was sitting down on an ice throne with Kair on her lap. On her face was an almost imperceptible expression of boredom.

On her field specifically, three knights were skewered to the ground straight through the heart by melting ice spears. Miasma from each one dripped down to the ground through the shaft of ice.

Gale, Erin, and Kair went towards the prison door at the side of the castle. The entrance led to a staircase that went down into darkness. Torches lined the walls, but most of them had gone out, leaving only a few weakly flickering to light the way.

Presence Between gave him smell first. It was that familiar smell from the castle in the Eclipsed. The thick oily miasma pulsated along the cobblestone walls of the prison. Tendrils went ahead, telling him the same state of all the cells. Each and every one of them was empty. No prisoners, not even rats, no bones, nothing. Apart from the cobwebs, dust, and litter, there was nothing else.

"Everything's empty," Gale said.

Kair held his hand tighter. She pointed forward, deeper into the prison.

Continuing to walk down, the hallway stretched further inwards. Erin conjured up an orb of light as the torches had become too dim to see as they went deeper.

Crossing through a set of double doors, the cavity opened up to something that wasn't a prison. A church where wooden podiums lined up in rows. The ceiling arched up into the shadows where the light of the two torches by the centre didn't reach.

At the far end of the church, where an altar should be, was something that shouldn't exist. Literally.

A grotesque flesh growth covered the back wall. Smokey veins pulsated like a heartbeat, with capillaries growing out from them. Black mixed with murky red pushed through the veins with each pulse.

In the middle of that growth, embedded in the flesh, was a boy as if he was the very heart of this whole thing. He didn't look older than 12 years old. His body was skin and bones, ribs clearly poking out through his visible pale chest. The blue hair, a signature of the Kairians, was more pale on the boy.

He was being drained and fed at the same time. But what was the point of using such a young child as the heart?

In front of the growth, kneeling on the stone floor with his hands clasped together, was the king with his shining golden crown, the same one who led the tribute ceremony from that knight. Before the growth, his head bowed, and lips moved in prayer of something inaudible that was clearly not of the natives' language.

Gale's fist clenched.

He looked down at Kair, who was staring at the flesh growth. Her eyes didn't look at it with disgust. Just apathy and curiosity, as if the thing in front of her was a foreigner just like him.

Free the boy, Kair said.

Gale nodded. An obvious solution to this whole shit.

Presence Between had already caught the movement before the remnant could fully materialize. Erebus appeared in his hand, and the blade swept through the space where the creature's neck would be.

The remnant's head tumbled to the ground before its body could finish materializing from the shadows. Black blood splattered across the stone floor.

Gale didn't slow down. He stepped forward toward the flesh growth.

Another shadow shifted to his left.

Erebus sliced horizontally without Gale even looking. The second remnant fell in two pieces.

Another step forward.

A third remnant tried to ambush him from the ceiling. Presence Between showed him the attack trajectory before the shadow scout even moved. Erebus swept upward, and another head joined the growing pile.

Each step he took, a remnant would emerge from the shadow. Each died before they could either form or touch a hair on Gale's head. When multiple came out, a single spin of Erebus in halberd form dismembered them mid air.

The king saw this display of strength. He crawled back as a tendril softly touched his face while Gale looked down on him with apathy.

The king rose from his knees and rushed toward Gale, his hands reaching out to cling to his legs. "This is Kair's will! Do not interfere, foreigner!"

Even as the pathetic man grabbed hold of his legs, Gale kept moving forward, step by step until he reached where the boy was. A single shake of his leg launched the king backwards to shatter a podium.

Gale's palm connected with the king's chest and shoved him backwards. The king stumbled and fell, crashing into the wooden podiums and scattering candles across the floor.

"Buzz off," Gale said coldly. "Unless you wanna die too."

The king scrambled to his feet and clasped his hands towards Gale in a kneel. "Please, foreigner. I beg of you as the king of Kulbran. Do not interfere."

Turning his head to look down at the king, Gale thought of the description of the captain he killed. The princess was ultimately killed by the Aurians. No wonder they'd have such animosity against them when they arrived. But then why would the citizens themselves think that this whole thing was for the sake of abundance?

"Do you recognize who I am?" Gale asked.

The king nodded fast. "I heard word of a pretender of the Divine Dark's disciple. It is now I realize you are not a pretender. Please, have mercy."

"My title is Dark Hunter, named after the Divine Dark himself. Our kind has slain the corruption for aeons, yet you dare stand against my way," Gale sighed. "Tell me. Is this ritual for abundance or is it for something else?"

The king was about to say something but caught himself before speaking. "It is for..."

"Watch your words, King. Be truthful, and maybe I will be merciful."

"It is not for abundance..." the king prostrated himself, putting his forehead on the cold, dirty cobblestone floor. "Dark Hunter, it is to revive my daughter, Stecia..."

Gale's nose wrinkled at the wretch he just heard. No matter what, to revive a person while sacrificing another life was something he couldn't swallow. Especially when the sacrifice is such a young child who still has so much future ahead of him.

He turned back to the flesh growth. The boy embedded in its mass twitched weakly. Tendrils went into the boy's heart to feel the beat. Still alive, but barely.

Erebus rose. The blade came down in multiple carvings, cutting through the growth that connected to the boy's flesh. Black ichor sprayed from the severed veins, and a droplet of water from Erin entered the boy to close his own wounds.

Gale caught him before he could hit the ground. The boy weighed almost nothing. To do this to a child meant that the king no longer deserved any sympathy.

"Erin, please," he said.

A blue outline formed on the boy as he floated from Gale's hold. He floated towards Erin's embrace, where Kair looked at the boy curiously.

Closing his eyes, Gale wanted to try something. He wanted to use what he had learned to at least try to burn this whole damn thing down.

The symbol appeared in front of his mind. Rhombus, the symbol of access. The distorted Y, plasma.

Access. Plasma. Continuous activation. Shape. Circle. Apply.

[Warning: Syntax 500% inefficient.]

[Max Load Reached: 500/350]

His pathways burned from the heat that flooded through them. Conjuring a spell he didn't know felt like his essence was getting drained like a wide open hose.

When he opened his eyes, he saw an orb of not fire, but one of the concept of plasma. Pure heat energy in his palms.

It wasn't hurting him, as it should since it was his spell, but the intensity singed his clothes. Sorry, Rachel, again.

Stepping forward once, he pressed the pure heat energy orb onto the flesh growth, immediately igniting the growth in flames. Screeching could be heard from all around, yet no mouths were present anywhere in the room that would've produced such metallic grinding.

"MY DAUGHTER! MY DAUGHTER!" the king wailed, sobbing pathetically on the floor.

Gale ignored him as he stepped back to watch the fire spread throughout the whole wall covered in the corruption growth. A smile formed on his face when he glanced over his shoulder to see Kair poking at the boy's hollow cheeks.