The Dark Sea was a churning cauldron of obsidian waves, roaring with a primeval hunger that seemed to challenge the very sky. Suddenly, the surface broke. Alista Tudor dragged himself onto the jagged shore, gasping for air that tasted of salt and ancient rot.
He was a mess of shredded leather and crimson gashes. Blood leaked from a deep wound in his side, staining the dark sand beneath him. Gwen was there in an instant, her hands glowing with a soft, urgent light as she pressed them against his chest. The cooling sensation of her healing essence began to knit his torn flesh back together.
Gwen's eyes were wide with a mix of fury and fear. Her fingers moved in sharp, rapid signals: [You are crazy. You know that, right? Throwing yourself into that sea over and over—it's suicide.]
Alista coughed, spitting out a mouthful of seawater. "I need… a stronger Memory," he rasped, his voice cracking. "Or an Echo. Something powerful enough to crack Gunlaug's golden shell."
For days, Alista had been conducting a dangerous experiment. He wasn't just hunting for loot; he was retracing the Bright Lord's footsteps. By hunting in the treacherous Dark Sea—the very place Gunlaug had conquered to cement his power—Alista was performing a ritual of psychological warfare.
He was hunting the way Gunlaug hunted. He was bleeding the way Gunlaug bled.
Through this brutal repetition, Alista reached a grim conclusion about his enemy's mindset. Gunlaug wasn't just a tyrant; he was a man who understood the absolute relationship between risk and reward. He knew his strengths intimately and never shied away from weaponizing them. That was how he had maintained his grip on the Bright Castle for so long, even while hiding behind the borrowed power of a Transcendent Echo.
Gwen's hands flickered as she finished the worst of the mending. She signaled again, her expression skeptical: [And? Was the risk worth it? Did you get any good Memories?]
Alista leaned back against a cold rock, his breath finally evening out. "A few," and summoned his runes:
Name: Alista Tudor
True Name:Blood Emperor
Rank:Dreamer
Soul Core:Dormant
Class: Monster
Soul Fragments:[250/2000]
Memories:[Flame Armor], [Hunter's Sword][Dawn Shard][Light Lamp][Heaven's Jar][M… Un…old][Scarlet Signal][Blood merger][Swords collection][fatal water][Bottomless Pit][Unlimited Quiver][Jade Sword]
Echoes: [Cursed Herald]
Attributes:[Uniqueness of Black Emperor], [Instincts], [Barbarian], [Battle Analyzer]
Aspect:[Black Emperor]
Aspect Rank:Divine
Aspect Ability:[Bribe]
Alista looked at the flickering text and sighed. 'They are useful,' he thought bitterly, 'but not useful enough. None of these can pierce that golden armor. None of these can kill a god-king.'
He looked up at the grey, oppressive sky of the Forgotten Shore. "Where are the others?"
Gwen signaled back: [Fors, Klaus, and Artemis went inland for a routine hunt to keep the settlement fed. They should be back by sundown. So, what's next? Please tell me you're done with the sea.]
Alista stood up, his muscles screaming in protest, but his eyes were burning with a new, dark resolve.
"I'm done with the water," Alista said, his voice dropping an octave. "It's time for something else. We are going to hunt a Fallen Devil. Specifically, the one that roams the halls of the Ruined Cathedral."
Gwen's eyes widened
******
he air inside the cathedral was thick with the scent of ancient incense and rotting stone. High above, the vaulted ceiling was lost in a sea of absolute, oily darkness—a darkness that didn't just exist but seemed to breathe.
At the center of the grand hall stood the Black Knight.
Two meters of anthracite steel loomed over them, the gothic armor etched with carvings that seemed to writhe and scream if looked at for too long. From the narrow slit of his visor, twin embers of ghastly red fire burned with a cold, primordial hatred. He held a greatsword that looked heavy enough to crush a mountain, yet he held it with the ease of a feather.
"This is the Fallen Devil," Alista whispered, his hand tightening on his hilt. "Remember the plan. If we lose the light, we lose our lives."
The Black Knight didn't roar; he simply vanished.
He melted into the shadows of a nearby pillar and reappeared behind Klaus in a heartbeat. The greatsword swung in a silent, horizontal arc meant to bisect the scout.
"Artemis!" Alista bellowed.
Artemis slammed her palms together.
A localized field of crushing gravity erupted around the Black Knight. The floor beneath the titan's greaves shattered as the weight of his armor suddenly increased tenfold. The greatsword, mid-swing, was dragged toward the stone, missing Klaus's back by a hair's breadth.
"Now!" Klaus yelled. He lashed his whip at a fallen stone gargoyle. The stone creature's eyes glowed with a temporary, artificial life. It lunged at the Knight, wrapping its stony limbs around the anthracite helm to obscure its vision.
Fors Wall didn't wait. She blinked through space reappearing on a high chandelier. She notched an arrow, her eyes glowing with focus. Twang. The arrow hissed through the air, aimed at the gap in the Knight's neck armor.
The Black Knight's shadow suddenly rose like a tidal wave. The darkness swallowed the arrow and the gargoyle, disintegrating the stone construct in seconds. The Knight stepped out of Artemis's gravity field as if moving through water, his speed enhanced by the very shadows that fed him.
The Knight moved like a blur of ink. He reached Artemis in a flash, his gauntleted hand catching her by the throat.
"Get away from her!" Alista roared. He lunged, flicking a Soul Shard at the Knight's visor.
The Knight didn't dodge. The 'bribe' landed, and the Devil's movements slowed. His cold, calculating precision was replaced by a reckless arrogance. He threw Artemis aside instead of killing her, turning his red gaze toward Alista.
"You think you can buy a Devil?" the Knight's voice echoed in their minds, a hollow, metallic rasp.
Alista smirked through the pain. "I'm not buying you. I'm weakening you."
The Knight swung his blade, a strike so powerful the shockwave cracked the pillars. Alista parried, but the force sent him flying across the hall, his ribs screaming in protest.
"Gwen!" Fors shouted from above.
Gwen unfurled her whip, the leather glowing with a soft, pearlescent light. She snapped it against the floor. [Aspect Ability: Sanctuary Field]. A dome of golden radiance erupted, pushing back the encroaching shadows. Inside the field, Alista's broken ribs began to knit together, and Artemis found the strength to stand.
But the Black Knight was immortal in the dark.
Every scratch Fors's arrows managed to find, every nick Alista's sword carved into the anthracite steel, healed instantly as the shadows flowed back into the armor like liquid mercury.
"We can't kill him while the darkness remains!" Klaus shouted, his whip frantically animating debris to keep the Knight at bay.
"Artemis, reverse it!" Alista commanded, his voice desperate. "Fors, on my signal, take the shot!"
Alista charged. He wasn't aiming for the Knight's heart; he was aiming for his ego. He threw more objects—scraps of cloth, shards of bone—forcing the Knight into a state of blind, overconfident rage. The Devil abandoned his silent movements, opting for wide, devastating swings that tore the cathedral apart.
Artemis raised her hands to the ceiling. Instead of crushing the Knight, she targeted the heavy, light-blocking tapestries and the rotting roof. [Reverse Gravity].
The massive stones and thick velvet curtains were hurled upward, tearing a hole in the cathedral's ceiling. For the first time in centuries, the pale, eerie light of the Forgotten Shore's sky bled into the hall.
The Black Knight shrieked—a sound of grating metal and dying stars. The shadows beneath him began to boil and evaporate.
"Gwen, expand the field!"
Gwen poured every ounce of her essence into her whip. The healing field surged, its light acting as a caustic acid against the Knight's anthracite armor. The instantaneous regeneration slowed. The cracks in the steel stayed open.
The Knight, realizing his mortality, lunged for Alista in a final, suicidal charge.
Alista stood his ground. At the last second, he ducked beneath the massive greatsword and drove his blade into the Knight's side, twisting the steel to keep the wound open. "Fors! Now!"
Fors Wall vanished from the chandelier.
She reappeared directly in front of the Knight's visor, mid-air, her bow drawn to the breaking point. She was so close she could feel the heat of the red flames.
"Go back to the void," she whispered.
She released. The arrow, imbued with the concentrated light of Gwen's field and Alista's desperate will, pierced the fissure in the visor. It sank deep into the core of the Fallen Devil.
The red flames in the visor flickered, sputtered, and went out.
The Black Knight froze. The anthracite armor, once indestructible, began to crumble into fine, black ash. The greatsword hit the floor with a final, heavy clang before dissolving into nothingness.
Alista fell to his knees, gasping for air, his body covered in blood and soot. The Cathedral was silent, save for the heavy breathing of the five survivors.
Klaus collapsed against a pillar, his animated gargoyles turning back to lifeless stone. Gwen lowered her whip, her face pale from essence exhaustion. Artemis sat on the floor, rubbing her throat where the Knight had gripped her.
Fors landed lightly on her feet, her bow still trembling. She looked at the pile of ash that was once a Fallen Devil.
"We did it," she whispered. "We actually killed a Devil."
Alista looked up at the hole in the ceiling, the pale light shining down on them like a benediction. He reached into the ash and pulled out a shimmering, dark Soul Shard—the core of the Knight.
"It wasn't just us," Alista said, looking at his weary cohort. "We fought as one. That's the only reason we're still breathing."
He stood up, swaying slightly, and offered a hand to Artemis.
The Black Knight was dead.
*******
The air inside the cathedral was stale, tasting of dust and the metallic tang of dried centuries. Alista moved toward a nondescript stretch of stone, his fingers tracing the seams until they found a hidden lever—an ancient mechanism that had rusted and disintegrated over thousands of years of neglect. With a groan of protest from the earth itself, a section of the wall receded.
The hidden passage led deep underground, twisting and turning through the suffocating mass of cold stone. It felt as though they were walking into the belly of a leviathan. Finally, directly beneath the spot where the statue of the goddess should have stood, the narrow passage opened into a larger, hollowed chamber.
Alista stopped, his silhouette dark against the pale light ahead. "Follow me inside," he commanded, his voice echoing unnervingly. "Just keep moving forward. Whatever you do, do not look at anything on the walls. Don't let your eyes wander."
The cohort nodded in solemn silence, their footsteps echoing as they descended into a deep well that led even further down into the bowels of the ruins. A winding staircase spiraled into the abyss, leading them to a massive door forged from black steel.
Two burning torches illuminated the entrance, but they were unlike any fire the group had ever seen. The flames produced a pale, ghostly light that cast long, distorted shadows, yet they emitted absolutely no heat. The cold was biting, a spiritual chill that seemed to seep into their very bones.
Despite Alista's warning, Gwen's curiosity got the better of her. As they passed a side alcove, her eyes caught a flash of silver.
Resting on the stone was an intricate mural, roughly the size of a human arm. It depicted a silver snake coiled in a perfect circle, biting its own tail. But it was the center of the image that froze the blood in her veins. Piled within the serpent's coil were the carved corpses of small spiders. Surrounding them, the scene depicted a frantic, ancient war: spiders weaving Webs to attack, others shriveling in death, caught in a perpetual struggle against the snake.
The imagery was too vivid,
Suddenly, the room seemed to tilt. Gwen's head throbbed with a sudden, violent pressure, and the world blurred into a kaleidoscope of silver and black. She stumbled, her breath hitching as a wave of dizziness threatened to pull her into unconsciousness.
She slammed her hand against the cold masonry to steady herself, blinking rapidly until the vertigo subsided. When her vision finally cleared, she was no longer in the narrow passage. They had reached the end.
They stood in the ruined main hall of the Cathedral. Before them, bathed in that same ghostly light, stood the Fallen Devil. The hunt they had prepared for was finally at hand.
Gwen clutched her chest, her heart hammering against her ribs,she thought. 'Why am I feeling so dizzy? Maybe it's just the lack of air down here… it has to be nothing.'
"Gwen?" Klaus whispered, stepping closer and placing a hand on her shoulder. "Are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."
Gwen took a shaky breath and forced a smile, though her hands were still trembling. ["It's nothing,"] she signalled.