Chapter 67: Chapter 67: The Devil’s Playground

Azrael stumbled forward and pressed his bare hand against the cold stone wall to catch his balance.

The heart inside his stolen chest was beating weirdly fast. Its rhythm was highly erratic, pumping blood so hard his ears started ringing with the pressure.

’Am I afraid?’ The thought filled his mind, confusing his divine senses.

He was the King of the Seventh layer. What’s there to be afraid of?

But the human boy trapped inside the stitched core was reacting to something.

Shane was fighting back with a desperate surge of energy, perhaps triggered by the lingering presence of that teacher back at the tunnel fork.

The human soul was thrashing against its cage, trying to tear the seams apart.

[System Alert!]

[Soul-Stitcher Protocol Is Being Overwritten]

A burning pain bloomed behind his ribs.

Azrael dropped to one knee, gripping his suit.

He gritted his teeth, refusing to scream in front of the mortal children.

"My lord," Melissa whispered, quickly stepping right behind him so the others could not see his face.

She placed her soft hand flat against his back.

A faint blue magic circle formed beneath her palm, dimly in the dark.

She pushed her dark mana into his flesh, fighting away the resisting human energy.

The magic circle acted like a heavyweight, pressing the rogue soul down and sealing it back into its tight corner. The erratic heartbeat slowly returned to a normal, steady pace, allowing the demon king to regain control of the nervous system.

After ten long minutes of resting quietly on the floor, Azrael stood up again and let out a long breath.

He rolled his shoulders, feeling the tension bleed out of the human muscles.

"You okay, man?" Raven asked, leaning casually against the opposite wall with a weirded-out expression on his face.

"You look like you just swallowed a ghost, or maybe bad cafeteria food."

"Yes," Azrael replied coldly, straightening his uniform jacket and ignoring the boy’s annoying tone.

"I am fine. Let’s move."

They walked deeper into Narrow Path One.

The small group was two kilometers deep into the winding tunnels, leaving the other freshmen far behind.

Azrael navigated the front of the line very efficiently, relying on Melissa’s detailed map and the human boy’s instincts.

Shane’s muscle memory was bleeding through again, guiding Azrael’s boots over the uneven terrain and helping him avoid loose rocks without even thinking about it.

The path was very narrow, forcing them all to walk in a single file line.

Small patches of bioluminescent fungus cast a faint blue light on the rough walls, making their shadows stretch and distort like tall monsters.

Zephyr walked behind Azrael for forty straight minutes in total silence. He kept his intense gaze fixed right on the back of his target’s head. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

All of it felt wrong in ways too small to name out loud.

It was a perfect copy on the surface, but the underlying way of his movements belonged to a killer instead of a desperate survivor.

Shane used to walk with a nervous energy, always looking for a quick escape route.

’I can’t wait until we reach the pendant room,’ Zephyr thought, his grip tightening on his own weapon.

’If he gets his hands on his artifact, he will slaughter all of us without blinking.’

"We are almost close," Melissa said quietly from her position right behind Zephyr.

The narrow tunnel finally opened up into a much grander corridor. The faint blue light of the fungus shifted abruptly, and the new cavern gave out a sickly green hue that made everyone look pale and sick.

The air here was even more dense than the previous stages, pressing heavily against their lungs and making every breath feel like a difficult chore.

Deep, guttural beast sounds echoed loudly from the shadows ahead, indicating they had officially crossed the boundary into the highly dangerous B-rank territory.

Zephyr listened to the terrifying roars.

He realized that if Melissa actually secured her artifact down here, it would be far too late to stop the apocalypse.

He had to act right now while the demon was still partially restricted by the human core and the boy’s internal resistance.

’No more pretending,’ Zephyr decided, stopping his boots from taking another step.

In a single moment of action, time seemed to freeze entirely.

Nobody moved, but at the same time, everyone moved at once in a blur.

Melissa sensed the sudden shift in Zephyr’s killing intent.

She did not bother to warn her king because she knew he could handle the golden-eyed boy in a direct fight.

She targeted the biggest actual threat in their group instead.

Her scythe swung out from her back, cutting a sharp arc through the air directly toward Mia’s neck.

But the quiet girl was much faster than she had anticipated.

Before the curved blade could even touch her skin, Mia raised her pale hand.

A concentrated wave of telekinetic power slammed directly into Melissa’s chest. Melissa’s body was lifted high into the air and thrown brutally to the side, crashing hard against the stone wall with a loud thud.

The beast sounds increased in the dark, masking the sudden noise of betrayal.

Azrael felt the intense killing intent flare right behind his back.

He started to draw his iron sword and turn his shoulders to face the ambush, fully expecting a standard magical strike or a sword swing.

But he was half a second too slow, and Zephyr did not use a weapon.

Zephyr lunged forward and grabbed Azrael’s face with his glowing hand.

His fingers dug painfully into the side of the skull, and his thumb pierced straight into Azrael’s both eyes.

The holy light burned deeply into the demon’s optic nerve, searing the soft flesh and blinding him instantly on that side.

A flash of pure agony ripped right through Azrael’s brain. It was a pain so sharp it bypassed his divine tolerance and hit the fragile human nervous system directly, forcing a primal reaction.

"YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUU," Azrael roared, his voice distorting from a human shout into a terrifying demonic shriek that shook the green cavern.

A red wave of concentrated mana exploded from his chest.

The shockwave spread rapidly through the tunnel, tearing the ground apart and pushing Zephyr, Mia, and Raven far behind him into the dirt.