The massive obsidian doors of the Abyssal Castle had been blown inward, shattered into thousands of jagged fragments by the combined explosive charges of the Vanguard engineers. The smoke from the detonation still hung thick in the air, a grey shroud that choked the lungs and stung the eyes.
The remaining team—Damien, Nicholas, Morgane, and Gayeol—stepped through the breached threshold. They had fought tooth and nail through the courtyard, cutting a path through the endless ocean of the Demon God Cult's army. They expected to find the surviving soldiers of the US Vanguard holding the line inside the foyer, waiting for their heavy hitters to arrive.
But instead of the disciplined ranks of soldiers welcoming them, they were met with a scene of absolute, silent devastation.
The grand foyer of the castle, a cavernous hall supported by pillars of twisted black stone, was painted in crimson. Bodies lay strewn across the polished floor in grotesque, unnatural angles. Rifles were snapped in half. Combat armor, designed to withstand anti-tank rounds, had been shredded as if it were wet paper. The smell of fresh blood, void magic, and voided bowels created a miasma so thick it was hard to breathe.
Damien's obsidian eyes scanned the carnage, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs. His tactical boots splashed in the pooling blood as he rushed forward.
"General!" Damien shouted, his voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings.
He darted between the mutilated corpses of the men he had trained, the men he had commanded.
"Lucy!"
Damien screamed as he saw her. General Lucy McClane, the iron-willed commander who had never backed down from a fight, was slumped against the base of a ruined pillar. Her normally pristine uniform was soaked in blood. Several of her elite guards lay dead around her, their bodies hacked to pieces.
But it was Lucy's injury that made Damien's blood run cold.
She had a massive, gaping hole straight through the center of her stomach and lower chest. It was a wound identical to the one that had taken Simon just hours prior. The edges of the wound were seared with black, necrotic mana that was actively eating away at her remaining flesh, preventing any natural coagulation.
Damien dropped to his knees, sliding in her blood. "Lucy, wake up! Goddamnit, wake up, General!"
Damien grabbed her shoulders, pulling her gently toward him. He tried to apply pressure to the wound with his hands, but there was nothing left to press against. His hands just slipped into the void where her organs used to be.
Then, he felt a weak, trembling touch on his cheek.
Lucy's hand, slick with her own blood, reached up. Her eyes fluttered open. They were hazy, the sharp, commanding light fading rapidly into a dull, glassy fog.
"He... hey..." Lucy coughed, a wet, rattling sound that sprayed crimson flecks onto Damien's vest. "You... finally arrived, huh."
"Don't speak. Save your strength," Damien choked out, his hands shaking violently.
"You were... too late to get inside," Lucy continued, her voice a fragile whisper. "I mean... I don't really blame you. Those two Apostles... the First and the Fourth... they were so fast. Too fast. They bypassed the barricades like ghosts."
She coughed again, her body spasming in Damien's arms.
"We were... we were too relaxed after the breach. We thought we had a moment to breathe. We got caught off guard by one of them. The big one... he just... reached right through me." Lucy cupped Damien's face, her thumb smearing blood across his cheekbone.
"Damien..." she whispered, her eyes trying to focus on his face. "You know... I really did regret it. I regretted not accepting Simon's confession..."
Damien's breath hitched. "Lucy, stop. We can fix this."
"The truth is," she pressed on, ignoring him, her voice fueled by the desperate clarity of the dying, "I really had feelings for him. I loved him, Damien. But..."
Tears welled up in her fading eyes, mixing with the soot and blood on her face.
"I was distracted by my own responsibilities. The stress of the command. And the trauma... the trauma of losing someone you love on the battlefield." She looked deeply into Damien's obsidian voids. "Like you, Damien."
Damien froze.
"Hic... hic..." Lucy sobbed, a terrible, broken sound. "I was scared. I was so terrified that if I accepted Simon's confession, and then he died out here... I would become like you."
The words struck Damien harder than any SSS-Rank attack ever could.
"A suicidal bastard," Lucy wept, her hand trembling against his skin. "A broken man. A goddamn husk who has no soul or emotions left. I saw what Melissa's death did to you. I saw it hollow you out until there was nothing left but a weapon looking for a reason to break."
Her chest heaved, struggling for air that her ruined lungs couldn't process.
"I-I was so scared to have the same fate as yours. I pushed him away to protect myself. And yet... look at me now."
A bloody, bitter smile touched her pale lips.
"I'm dying the exact same way he did. A hole punched straight into my chest. Ironic, isn't it? Or maybe it's karma. Karma for giving a good man a cruel, cold rejection when he offered me his heart."
"Lucy, please..." Damien begged, his vision blurring with tears.
"I had no choice, Damien. I really felt like I didn't have one."
Her hand began to slip from his face. Her strength was evaporating.
"I-I am sorry... hic... hic..." Lucy cried, her tears leaving clean streaks through the grime on her cheeks. "I'm sorry, Damien. For being too harsh on you all these years. And I'm sorry to Simon."
Damien couldn't hold it back anymore. The tears spilled over, tracing paths down his face to mix with the blood on her hand.
"You-you shouldn't say sorry to me," Damien wept, his voice cracking, shedding the tough exterior he had worn like armor for five years. "You should say sorry to Simon when you see him. You can tell Melissa I said hi, too. But please, don't go yet. Morgane! Morgane, please help her! Pl-please heal her!"
Morgane stood a few feet away, her staff lowered. Her eyes were filled with profound sorrow, but she shook her head slowly. The necrotic void mana in Lucy's wound had completely severed her life force. Divine magic needed a spark to amplify; Lucy's spark was already extinguished.
"You're right," Lucy whispered, her eyes looking past Damien, staring at the high, dark ceiling of the castle. "You're goddamn right. I should say sorry to them. I will..."
Her chest stopped heaving.
"I guess... I'll go first, Damien. Please... don't die quickly, alright? Live a little longer..."
After a second, Lucy's hand went completely limp. It fell away from Damien's face, dropping to the blood-soaked floor with a dull, final thud.
It was a declaration of her end.
Brutal, wasn't it? A woman who had cruelly rejected a man because she feared becoming broken by grief, and yet she died suffering the exact same physical wound as the man she loved. Was it cruel? Was it cruel that a woman who had secretly wept and mourned for two days straight over the loss of Simon, hiding her tears behind a General's mask, was now a corpse on a cold floor? Was it cruel that she realized it too late? Too late to confess her feelings because she was held back by fear and military responsibilities?
Yes. It was cruel. The universe was infinitely, unimaginably cruel.
Damien's eyes, full of tears, stared at the lifeless face of his commander. He couldn't accept the death of his comrade again. He had lost too much already. He knew—he goddamn knew—when he signed up for this raid that he would lose everyone close to him in this hellhole.
Sometimes, standing in the quiet of his apartment, he thought he wanted to join them already. He wanted to die because the sheer weight of losing so much was crushing his spine. He was losing his reasons to fight, his emotions, and lastly, his capacity for tears.
Damien didn't scream. He didn't rage.
He just slowly stood up, gathering Lucy's lifeless body into his arms. He lifted her with the utmost care, cradling her head so it wouldn't loll. It was the exact same motion, the exact same hollow gentleness he had used when he carried Melissa's broken body out of the Twin Dungeons five years ago. It was the same way he had handled Simon's headless corpse just layers above.
He turned around and walked toward Morgane. He gently laid Lucy's body down at the Saintess's feet.
"Give her a proper burial," Damien said, his voice completely devoid of inflection. It was terrifyingly flat. "All of them. Please."
Damien dropped his pride. He didn't ask as a cynical soldier mocking a Hunter; he asked as a broken man. He pleaded not because he wanted comfort, but because the very last shred of his humanity—the part of him that cared about military protocol, the part that cared about his friends' futures—had just vanished into the void.
Lucy's death had stolen his last lingering doubt about his own suicidal intentions. Now, he was deathly certain.
'They will pay,' Damien promised to himself. It wasn't a hot, fiery rage. It was a cold, absolute absolute certainty. He would make those bastards pay for what they did to these people, including what they did to Lucy.
"I will... I will give them a proper burial," Morgane said, her voice shaking. She wiped a tear from her own eye. She turned and instructed the surviving WHA members and the handful of remaining vanguard soldiers to gather the dead. They were to carry them back outside the castle gates and use their earth magic to dig graves. It was the least they could do before the final confrontation.
Morgane knelt down, gently touching Lucy's blood-matted hair.
"I-I'm sorry," Morgane whispered, bowing her head in deep reverence. She then stood and walked toward the exit, helping the soldiers carry their fallen comrades, leaving the heavy hitters alone in the vast, bloody foyer.
Nicholas approached Damien. The towering Titan of the West didn't offer empty platitudes. He didn't say it was going to be alright. He just raised his massive, newly regenerated right arm and placed a heavy, comforting hand on Damien's left shoulder.
He didn't speak. He didn't need to. Nicholas understood exactly how agonizing it was to lose your friends and comrades in the blink of an eye. Both Damien and Nicholas knew that losing a friend was statistically normal in this war, and yet... it was still uniquely, individually painful every single time. It was painful to see a close friend—someone who had just anchored your last shred of humanity—snatched away so violently.
Gayeol stood a few paces back, leaning on her katana. She watched in silence as Damien looked up at the vaulted obsidian ceiling, silent tears tracking through the blood on his face. They were the tears of a man mourning the death of his own soul.
After a gruesome, suffocating minute of silence, Damien finally spoke.
"They will pay."
Nicholas squeezed his shoulder. "They will, son. They will pay for this."
Damien clenched his hands into fists so tight his knuckles popped. He took a deep, shuddering breath.
"Huuuu... haaah..."
He looked at Nicholas, his obsidian eyes now completely devoid of light.
"The two Apostles are mine. I don't care which person critically injures them during the fight. I want to kill them with my own hands. I want to be the one who delivers the final blow, old man. Understand?"
Nicholas looked into the bottomless abyss of Damien's eyes. He nodded slowly. He didn't offer a reply, because there was nothing left to say.
***
Deep within the Abyssal Castle.The Throne Room of the Pope.
The throne room was a monument to megalomania. It was larger than a football stadium, lined with towering statues of forgotten, demonic deities. At the far end, elevated on a dais of polished human and monster skulls, sat the Throne.
Lounging casually on the massive, ornate chair was the Pope of the Demon God Cult. He was an Elf, ancient and regal, wearing flowing robes of deep violet and gold. He was holding a silver platter, lazily plucking plump, dark grapes and popping them into his mouth.
The heavy, metallic footsteps of the First Apostle and the soft, gliding steps of the Fourth Apostle echoed through the vast chamber as they approached the dais.
"Did you kill those intruders?" The Pope asked, not bothering to look up from his grapes. His voice was smooth, cultured, and utterly bored.
"Yes, Your Holiness," the Fourth Apostle replied, kneeling gracefully at the base of the skull stairs. The First Apostle dropped to one knee beside him, his massive armor clanking loudly.
"Though," the Fourth Apostle continued, his tone cautious, "those people—including the monsters the humans refer to as SSS-Class Hunters—will undoubtedly breach this throne room soon. They are attempting to stop our ritual to unseal our Goddess."
The Pope chewed slowly, swallowed, and nodded.
"I see. Though it is sad that we have no choice but to kill them all," the Pope sighed dramatically, adopting a tone of mock sorrow. "I am filled with guilt for leading my own kind, my devoted followers, to commit such cruelty against those poor humans. It is a heavy burden to bear."
He smiled, a twisted, cruel expression that belied his words.
"But... it is the price they must pay. It is the blood-debt they owe for killing the Second, Third, and Fifth Apostles."
"I completely agree, Your Holiness," the First Apostle grunted, his deep voice vibrating in his chest plate. "That is the price and karma they get for killing our brothers and sisters so mercilessly. We merely returned the favor to their vanguard."
"Mhm," the Pope hummed, popping another grape into his mouth.
Suddenly, the entire castle shuddered. A massive vibration rolled through the obsidian floors, rattling the silver platter in the Pope's hand.
"Ah," the Pope smiled, sitting up slightly. "It seems they have finally arrived."
-BOOM!
The colossal, enchanted double doors at the entrance of the throne room exploded inward. Shards of metal and wood flew like shrapnel across the vast hall.
Through the settling smoke and dust, four figures emerged. Morgane, Nicholas, Gayeol, and Damien walked into the throne room, their weapons drawn, their auras flaring with lethal intent.
The First Apostle and the Fourth Apostle immediately stood up, raising their weapons and stepping in front of the dais to instinctively defend the Pope.
"You two will pay for what you guys did to my comrades and Lucy!" Damien roared, his voice tearing through the cavernous room, echoing with raw, unfiltered fury.
"Really?" The Fourth Apostle retorted, raising an elegant eyebrow, twirling his magical staff effortlessly in one hand. "Because as far as I remember, you and that old man over there murdered my siblings. You slaughtered our youngest, the Fifth, without a second thought."
"It's a fair trade, y'know!" The First Apostle laughed, a booming, guttural sound that grated on the ears. He hefted his massive Poleaxe, resting the blade on his armored shoulder. "You killed the Second, Third, and Fifth. And we killed your comrades! Including that woman in the uniform they called General. You know, I really enjoyed punching a hole straight through her chest! Lol! Hahahahaha! She looked so surprised!"
Damien stopped dead in his tracks. The world around him seemed to slow down.
"So..." Damien whispered, his voice dangerously low. He raised his A-Rank Poignant Dagger, the blade already beginning to seep black mist. "You were the one who killed her, huh?"
The First Apostle smirked beneath his helm. "I sure did, little rat."
"You're my enemy then!" Damien screamed, the sound tearing his vocal cords.
He didn't run. He instantly activated [Black Flash] and teleported, appearing mid-air directly in front of the First Apostle's face, his dagger thrusting toward the giant's eye slit.
Nicholas didn't scream. He didn't shout back in anger. He just acted. With a burst of golden lightning, he followed Damien's charge, summoning Mjolnir and swinging it with bone-shattering force toward the First Apostle's knees.
"Two versus one, ayy? How's that fair?!" The First Apostle laughed heartily.
He didn't retreat. He simply swung his massive Poleaxe in a brutal, sweeping arc.
-CLANG!
The impact was earth-shattering. The First Apostle parried both Damien's descending dagger strike and Nicholas's sweeping hammer blow simultaneously. The shockwave blew the surrounding dust away in a perfect circle.
While the brutes engaged in their clash of titans, the Fourth Apostle turned his attention to the women. He hovered slightly above the ground, raising his ornate staff high.
"Let us thin the herd. Break."
The Fourth Apostle didn't chant a long incantation. He simply spoke a 9th-tier spell of destruction.
The ceiling of the throne room tore open, revealing a swirling vortex of space. From that void, a literal flaming meteor, thirty feet across, plummeted directly toward Morgane and Gayeol.
Gyeum Gayeol didn't flinch. Her face was a mask of perfect serenity.
She stepped forward, unsheathing her katana in a fluid, continuous motion.
"Absolute Severance."
A thin, barely visible line of blue light shot upward from her blade. It met the descending meteor silently.
For a fraction of a second, nothing happened. Then, the massive meteor split perfectly in half. The two burning hemispheres parted around them, crashing into the obsidian floor on either side of Gayeol and Morgane with deafening explosions, leaving them completely unharmed in the center. She sheathed her blade without breaking a sweat.
"I was right about you," the Fourth Apostle said, clapping slowly, genuinely impressed. "Your swordsmanship... it's amazing. It borders on the conceptual. Too bad you're my enemy."
The Fourth Apostle twisted his hands. The magical staff he held suddenly shifted its molecular structure, reshaping and hardening into a long, wicked-looking rapier made of condensed dark mana.
"You two are my prey, then," the Fourth Apostle declared, and in a blur of motion, he appeared directly in front of Gayeol, thrusting the rapier toward her heart.
-CLANG!
Gayeol didn't even flinch. She didn't need to. She simply drew her katana an inch from its scabbard, catching the tip of the rapier on her guard.
"Tch. How annoying," the Fourth Apostle clicked his tongue, twisting his wrist to disengage and strike from another angle.
Morgane didn't stay idle. She immediately cast a series of high-tier blessings—[Hestia's Vigor], [Aegis], [Swiftness]—onto the three fighters. Then, she raised her staff, pointing it directly at the Fourth Apostle's back.
"[The Goddess Torch!]" Morgane chanted.
A pillar of pure, divine, blinding white fire erupted from the floor beneath the Fourth Apostle.
The Fourth Apostle widened his eyes, feeling the searing heat of holy mana that threatened to purify his abyssal existence. He instinctively canceled his attack on Gayeol and used a spatial leap, jumping fifty feet backward to escape the pillar of flame.
"Ah! You must be the Saintess of Hestia!"
The voice echoed from the dais. The Pope was leaning forward on his throne, casually taking a bite out of a crisp, red apple.
"Interesting," the Pope mused aloud, chewing thoughtfully. "Hestia is really involving herself directly in this war, huh? I thought she wouldn't dare interfere with our Goddess's resurrection. And yet, she sends her own cherished daughter, the Saintess of the Hearth and Home, to fight our forces. How poetic."
The Pope swallowed the apple and smiled wickedly, his eyes glinting with malice.
"Fourth," the Pope commanded, his voice slicing through the sounds of combat. "Don't disappoint me. Kill the Saintess first. She is the battery keeping them alive."
"As you command, Your Holiness," the Fourth Apostle knelt briefly in mid-air. He then disappeared completely, erasing his presence.
Morgane flinched, her eyes darting around. She began to cast a defensive barrier, raising her staff.
"It's too late!"
The Fourth Apostle materialized directly above Morgane, dropping downward with his rapier aimed straight for the crown of her head.
Morgane braced for the impact, unable to complete her chant in time.
-CLANG!
A flash of blue steel intercepted the black rapier inches from Morgane's hair.
"I am your enemy!" Gayeol shouted, her muscles straining as she parried the Fourth Apostle's plunging attack, throwing him off balance.
"Tch! You annoying human insect!!!" the Fourth Apostle hissed, recovering mid-air and launching a relentless flurry of thrusts and slashes at the Sword Empress.
-CLANG!-CLANG!
Sparks filled the air as Gayeol and Morgane tag-teamed the Fourth Apostle, a deadly dance of divine magic and peerless swordsmanship against abyssal trickery.
While Gayeol and Morgane fought a high-speed duel of precision and magic, Damien and Nicholas were locked in a brutal, bone-crushing slugfest with the First Apostle.
'Tch! Just how ridiculously strong is this musclehead?!' Damien thought, his teeth gritted in agony.
He was barely parrying the massive, sweeping strikes of the Poleaxe. Every time their weapons met, the kinetic feedback threatened to shatter Damien's wrists. He was already fully utilizing his [Black Death] trait, letting the dark, tribal markings cover his entire body to amplify his strength, agility, and perception to SSS-Rank levels.
But it came with a horrifying cost.
[System Warning: 25 years of Lifespan remaining!]
[System Warning: Vitality critically low. Continuation of Black Death state will result in permanent cellular degradation.]
Damien grimaced as he glanced at the glowing red system notifications hovering in his peripheral vision. He swiped them away mentally. He didn't care. Twenty-five years, ten years, five minutes—it didn't matter. He just needed enough time to kill this bastard.
"Where are you looking at, you puny punk?!" The First Apostle screamed, noticing Damien's momentary distraction. He raised his massive Poleaxe high above his head, the blade glowing with destructive red energy.
"Die! You fucking murderers!" The First Apostle roared, bringing the weapon down like a guillotine aimed straight for Damien's throat.
Damien's eyes widened. He was overextended. He couldn't raise his dagger in time. The shadow of the blade fell over his face.
-CLANG!
A flash of gold intercepted the strike.
Nicholas had lunged forward, swinging Mjolnir upward to block the descending Poleaxe. The impact was titanic, creating a shockwave that cracked the stone pillars around them.
But the First Apostle's raw strength, combined with the momentum of the swing, was too much. The Poleaxe didn't stop. It sheared past the head of the hammer, sliding down the haft, and sliced cleanly through Nicholas's right shoulder joint.
For the second time that day, Nicholas's right arm was severed from his body.
"Tch! I thought you would die of shock after I cut your arm off the first time!" The First Apostle sneered, his eyes filled with sadistic glee as blood sprayed from Nicholas's shoulder. "But I was wrong! I should have aimed for your head first!"
The First Apostle stepped past the falling arm, shifting his grip on the Poleaxe to deliver a fatal horizontal slash to the Titan's neck.
But before he could swing—
-BANG! BANG! BANG!
Damien had drawn his Glock with his left hand. He fired three rapid shots at point-blank range directly into the First Apostle's exposed flank.
The bullets, heavily imbued with the corrosive, necrotic energy of [Black Death], bypassed the Apostle's natural armor and buried themselves deep into the side of his stomach.
The First Apostle gasped, caught completely off guard. He stumbled sideways, dropping his Poleaxe and clutching the left side of his stomach. A web of thick, black, rotting veins instantly began to spread outward from the bullet holes, visibly eating away at his flesh.
'Poison?!' The First Apostle thought, his eyes widening in panic. 'No... it's a curse! A goddamn, high-tier curse! How could this be?!'
He felt his immense vitality draining rapidly, his mana circuits shorting out as the black energy invaded his system.
'This must be the reason why the Third and Fifth died while fighting them! Yes, this should be it! That human's power negates our regeneration! I must kill that red-haired human first, and then finish off this old cripple!'
The First Apostle gritted his teeth, fighting through the agonizing pain. He raised his right hand. The massive Poleaxe on the floor dissolved into dark mana and instantly reshaped itself in his grip, condensing into a smaller, heavily enchanted throwing axe.
He pointed it toward Nicholas, feinting a throw at the wounded Titan.
But in a fraction of a second, he pivoted and hurled the axe with all his monstrous strength directly at Damien's chest.
"Damien!" Nicholas shouted, panic in his voice as he tried to rush forward despite his massive blood loss.
Damien had no energy left. He couldn't activate [Black Flash] to dodge. He couldn't run. He had been using maximum mana and burning his stamina fighting this behemoth for what felt like hours. His muscles were screaming in protest, flooded with lactic acid and necrotic backlash.
He planted his feet firmly on the ground. He raised his A-Rank Poignant Dagger, holding it horizontally with both hands to brace for impact.
-CLANG!
The heavy throwing axe slammed into the dagger's blade.
The sheer kinetic force pushed Damien backward. His boots skidded across the obsidian floor, leaving deep grooves in the stone. The axe and the dagger ground together, a terrifying screech of metal on metal, sparks showering Damien's face.
Damien poured the very last dregs of his strength, his mana, and his lifespan into parrying the axe. As he pushed back, he felt the bones in both of his arms begin to fracture under the immense pressure. His muscles were tearing, giving up.
And yet, he didn't surrender. He didn't yield an inch. He gritted his teeth so hard he tasted blood in his mouth.
'AAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!' Damien screamed inwardly, a primal roar of defiance against a universe that wanted him dead.
He pushed all the [Black Death] mana he had left directly into the edge of his dagger.
A miracle of sheer willpower happened.
The intense, corrosive aura of the dagger bit into the enchanted steel of the axe. The edge of the axe hissed, softened, and then—with a sharp, ringing crack—it was sliced cleanly in half. The two broken pieces of the axe flew past Damien's ears, embedding themselves harmlessly into the wall behind him.
"Huff... huff... huff..." Damien stood there, his chest heaving, his arms hanging limply at his sides, completely numb.
He looked at the First Apostle, raised his trembling left hand, and gave him a slow, deliberate middle finger.
'Fuck you!' Damien mouthed silently, before his eyes rolled back and his body dropped heavily to the floor, completely unconscious.
The First Apostle's eyes widened in absolute shock and disbelief.
"How?!" The First Apostle stammered, staring at the broken pieces of his divine weapon. "How could a mere human destroy my damn axe?!"
He raised his hand to summon another weapon, his anger boiling over.
But before the dark mana could coalesce in his palm, a massive, gaping hole suddenly erupted through his chest from the back.
"AHH—! HOW?!" The First Apostle coughed a massive geyser of blood, looking down at the empty space where his heart used to be.
Nicholas, who had seemingly been rushing toward Damien, had popped out of existence and reappeared directly behind the First Apostle using his ultimate mobility skill, [Godstep].
The First Apostle's knees buckled. He fell to the ground, his hands weakly touching the sizzling edges of the hole in his chest, where golden lightning still lingered, cauterizing the flesh and preventing regeneration.
"Haah... haah... haah!"
Nicholas dropped to one knee behind the dying monster, huffing violently and coughing up blood. His face was ghastly pale. Using [Godstep] while critically injured and missing an arm had required him to sacrifice a massive portion of his remaining lifespan to force his body to perform the impossible. He had successfully caught the First Apostle off guard, putting a hole through his chest exactly as the monster had done to his victims. Justice, served cold.
Damien, roused by the sound of the explosion, weakly opened his eyes. He saw the First Apostle on his knees. Damien tried to stand up, but his legs refused to obey commands. He was paralyzed by exhaustion.
Nicholas forced himself to stand. He walked slowly, heavily, over to Damien. He extended his remaining left hand.
Damien looked at it, then grabbed it. Nicholas hauled the younger man to his feet, supporting his weight.
"You wanted to kill him with your own hands, right?" Nicholas wheezed, wiping a stream of blood that was steadily flowing from his nose. "Here. Cut his head off already. Finish it."
"Are you alright, old man?" Damien asked, coughing up a glob of dark blood.
"You-you shouldn't worry about me, brat!" Nicholas forced a weak, arrogant smirk. "I've survived worse. Just kill him already before he tries something stupid."
Damien nodded. He let go of Nicholas and limped toward the kneeling First Apostle, dragging his left foot across the stone.
He stood before the giant. The First Apostle looked up at him. His eyes were a brilliant, emerald green. They were beautiful, filled with fear and a reluctant respect.
Damien didn't gouge them out. He didn't have the energy for sadism. He simply raised his chipped, battered poignant dagger and rested the cold steel against the side of the First Apostle's neck.
"This is for Lucy, Simon, and the Vanguard." Damien said. A short, final sentence.
And then...
-SWISH!
-SLASH!
Damien put his entire body weight into the swing, slicing cleanly through the thick neck muscles and severing the First Apostle's head. The giant couldn't do anything to resist. He already knew his death was certain the moment the lightning tore through his heart.
The massive head hit the floor, rolling to a stop near the dais.
Damien let his dagger fall from his numb fingers. His body gave out entirely, and he collapsed onto his back, staring up at the dark ceiling.
"Let me rest, old man... but!" Damien murmured, his eyelids fluttering shut. "Wake me up when it's done, alright! I want the Pope's head!"
"Very well. I'll let Gayeol and Morgane know you called dibs," Nicholas replied softly.
Nicholas turned his gaze toward the dais. The Pope was still sitting there, unfazed by the death of his strongest warrior, casually peeling an orange with a silver knife.
'Tch! He is planning something,' Nicholas thought, his tactical mind racing even as his body failed him. 'But I'm so damn tired already. I can't swing a hammer if my life depended on it. Sigh... I'll have to let Gayeol and Morgane handle it.'
Nicholas heavily sat down on the blood-slicked floor, tightening the grip of Mjolnir in his left hand, ready to defend Damien if necessary, but praying he wouldn't have to.
***
The Magical Duel.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the throne room, Gayeol was fighting a desperate battle of attrition.
She was sweating bullets, her pristine uniform now slashed and burned in several places. She was gasping for air, her lungs burning with every breath.
"Haah... haah... haah!"
The Fourth Apostle was in the exact same miserable state. His elegant robes were in tatters. He was panting heavily, leaning on his rapier for support. He was thoroughly exhausted thanks to Morgane's relentless barrage of divine suppression spells and Gayeol's impossibly fast strikes constantly scoring deep, bleeding cuts across his body.
'Goddamnit!' The Fourth Apostle thought, panic finally bleeding into his calculating mind. 'If I don't finish this immediately, the Pope will forcefully intervene! And if he does...'
The Fourth Apostle cast a terrified glance toward the throne. The Pope was casually eating fruit while his Apostles were dying. No, the Fourth realized with a jolt of horror, he was the only one remaining now. The First was dead.
That meant the Pope had already automatically reclaimed four of the five soul-shards he had bestowed upon them. If the Pope reclaimed the final shard—the one inside the Fourth Apostle's chest—he would possess one hundred percent of his original power, guaranteeing the successful resurrection of the Demon God.
'Tch! I need to finish this before he decides he wants my shard back! I don't want to become his final sacrifice!' The Fourth Apostle thought, grimacing as he coughed up a splatter of black blood.
They had been fighting this grueling, high-speed duel for what felt like hours, and yet every exchange of blows ended in a frustrating stalemate. Morgane's healing countered his lethal strikes, and his spatial magic countered Gayeol's lethal speed.
'And the First... he is dead too,' the Fourth thought, his mind racing. 'Just how terrifying is the latent ability of that red-haired human?! Even the First, who was vastly superior in raw power and endurance, was overpowered by a mere human's willpower!'
The Fourth Apostle knew he had to change tactics. He stood up straight, his eyes flashing. He channeled his remaining mana and seemingly teleported directly in front of Gayeol, his rapier thrusting for her throat.
But as Gayeol raised her katana to parry, the figure of the Fourth Apostle dissolved into mist.
It was an illusion clone.
He reappeared instantly directly behind Morgane, who was focused on channeling a buff toward Gayeol.
"You shall die, Saintess!" The Fourth Apostle hissed, raising his rapier for a fatal plunge into Morgane's unprotected back.
But Morgane didn't turn around. She didn't panic. She just smiled.
"You just fell right into our trap," Morgane said softly.
The Fourth Apostle's eyes widened in horror. He belatedly realized the mana flow around Morgane wasn't a buff for Gayeol; it was a localized, high-gravity snare. He was frozen in mid-air, caught off guard and unable to move a muscle.
'Damnit!' The Fourth Apostle cast a desperate look toward the Pope.
The Pope wasn't moving to help. The Elf Emperor merely gritted his teeth, a look of profound disappointment crossing his face as he watched his final general fail.
'Ahh... so this is my end. I am to be recycled.' The Fourth Apostle closed his eyes, accepting his fate.
Gayeol moved with the speed of thought. She closed the distance in a single step, her katana unsheathed.
"Severance."
With one horizontal slash, she cleaved the Fourth Apostle's body perfectly in half at the waist. As the two halves began to fall, her blade blurred into a flurry of motion, slicing his falling head into neat, bloody cubes to ensure his advanced regeneration couldn't trigger.
The cubed remains of the Fourth Apostle hit the floor with a wet slapping sound.
Gayeol exhaled a long breath, and then simply let her body fall backward onto the stone floor. She was completely, utterly, beyond exhausted. She had nothing left to give.
Across the room, Nicholas, using Mjolnir like a walking cane, and Damien, leaning heavily on Nicholas's shoulder, hobbled slowly toward Gayeol and Morgane.
"Did we win?" Nicholas asked, his voice hoarse.
"Really, old man?" Damien croaked, coughing. "You just saw your own star disciple turn the Fourth's head into a charcuterie board, and you're asking if we won?! You know, you really should get your head checked by a doctor when we get back. If we get back."
Morgane nodded, a weary smile of relief spreading across her face. She raised her staff, preparing to cast a final, restorative wave of healing over the three battered warriors to prepare them for the Pope.
On the dais, the Pope finally stood up. He brushed a crumb from his violet robes.
"Hmm," the Pope's voice echoed effortlessly through the silent hall. "I honestly thought it would take you humans at least a full day to exhaust and end my Apostles. And yet, you managed to win in a matter of hours. Congratulations. You have proven yourselves worthy warriors. But..."
-SQUELCH!
The sound was wet, tearing, and utterly unexpected.
"You really should not let your guard down, Saintess."
The Pope hadn't moved from the dais. Yet, he was simultaneously standing directly behind Morgane. He had bypassed time and space entirely.
His bare hand, dripping with thick, violet mana, was protruding from the center of Morgane's stomach. He had punched straight through her back, rupturing her spine and vital organs in a single, surgical strike.
"Ahh...!" Morgane gasped, blood pouring from her mouth. She looked down in absolute shock at the hand protruding from her abdomen. "H-how?! The Goddess... Hestia told me... she told me if I infused her own pure Divinity into my aura... you wouldn't be able to reclaim the shards from the dead Apostles! My presence was supposed to block your absorption! So how are you this fast?!"
"Morgane!" Nicholas and Gayeol screamed simultaneously, their voices tearing with panic. They tried to rush toward her, but their exhausted bodies refused to move fast enough.
The Pope leaned in close to Morgane's ear, whispering his terrible secret.
"The thing is, my dear Saintess," the Pope replied, his tone almost pitying. "Your beloved Goddess didn't know the whole truth. She didn't know that her pure Divinity is actually the precise magical catalyst required to unseal our Goddess."
Morgane's eyes widened in horror as the realization dawned on her. She hadn't been blocking the ritual; her mere presence and use of divine magic in the throne room had been fueling it. She was the final sacrifice.
"So, blame your Goddess for being so tragically ignorant. Hahahaha!"
The Pope laughed, a dark, rich sound. With a brutal twist of his wrist, he crushed Morgane's heart inside her chest. Then, he placed his other hand on the back of her head.
-CRUNCH.
He crushed her skull effortlessly, dropping her lifeless, ruined body to the floor. The Saintess, the World's Number One Hunter, the beacon of hope for humanity, was dead in an instant.
"MORGANE!"
Nicholas roared, a sound of absolute heartbreak and rage. Ignoring his missing arm and his depleted lifespan, he activated [Godstep] one final time, teleporting directly above the Pope with Mjolnir raised for a lethal strike.
-CLANG!
The Pope didn't even look up. He casually raised one hand and deflected the full, desperate might of Nicholas's Mjolnir with a single finger, completely neutralizing the kinetic energy.
"How?!" Nicholas gasped in shock, suspended in mid-air.
The Pope didn't answer. He simply flicked his wrist. A wave of invisible, concussive force slammed into Nicholas, launching his heavy, armored body across the room. Nicholas crashed into a solid stone pillar with a sickening crunch, slumping to the base, unconscious and bleeding heavily.
Gayeol tried to push herself up from the floor, her fingers scrabbling for her katana. But she couldn't. She had already burned every ounce of mana and stamina she possessed. She was completely immobilized.
Damien, lying a few feet away, gritted his teeth, willing his legs to move. He wanted to get up. He wanted to shoot the smug bastard. But both of his legs were completely numb, paralyzed by the necrotic backlash of his overused trait. He could only watch in helpless rage.
The Pope smiled down at the broken heroes. He raised his hands toward the ceiling.
From the corpses of the First, Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Apostles lying in the various layers of the dungeon, five brilliant, violet shards of pure soul-energy tore free. They flew through the castle walls, converging above the Pope's head.
He merged the five shards together, forging them into a single, blindingly bright, star-like crystal. He slowly lowered it, pressing the crystal into his own chest. It sank into his flesh, completing him.
His aura exploded. The castle shook. The pressure in the room became so intense that the very air seemed to liquefy.
The Pope looked down at Damien and Gayeol. His appearance shifted slightly. His features became sharper, more ethereal, yet inherently terrifying. The violet robes transformed into a suit of ancient, ornate, silver armor. A crown of black thorns materialized upon his brow.
"I apologize. In all the excitement, I forgot to properly introduce myself," he said, his voice now resonating with the power of a demigod.
"Unlike the Apostles, who lost their true identities when they became mere followers of the Demon God Cult... I did not lose mine. I merely hid it while I planned my vengeance."
The man formerly known as the Pope performed a slow, mocking bow.
"I am Erebin Bréacc Von Glassius."
He raised his head, his eyes burning with a violet fire that promised the end of all things.
"The Last Emperor of the Aen Elle Empire. And the Last Elf of my kind."