Chapter 76: The Golden Spite

Ten kilometers deep into the Wildlands, the earth had ceased to be soil. It was a churning lake of molten glass and dark, toxic slag.

The air was completely devoid of oxygen, entirely replaced by the suffocating pressure of two beings whose sheer existence warped the laws of physics.

Elder Mathews floated three feet above the scorched earth, his midnight-blue robes billowing as waves of demonic, metallic-gray mana poured from his body.

His face was twisted into a scowl of genuine strain. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

He was fighting a man who had completely abandoned reason.

Patriarch Vance Hennessey stood amidst the burning glass.

His pristine armor was scorched and dented, but his posture was terrifyingly perfect.

The golden broadsword in his hand hummed with a violent, holy frequency.

"Your son died screaming, Hennessey!" Mathews roared, launching a barrage of massive, dark-iron spears from the corrupted fog.

"He begged for a savior! He begged for his father! And where were you? Sitting in your lavish estate while the Abyss devoured him!"

Mathews expected the Patriarch to lose his mind. He expected the grieving father to scream, break his stance, and charge wildly like a rabid beast.

But Hennessey did not scream.

Instead, an absolute silence fell over the nobleman.

His eyes, bloodshot and swimming with unspeakable grief, went entirely dead.

The wild, roaring golden flames that had been cascading off his body suddenly stopped.

They did not disappear, they compressed.

The raging inferno of the [Valor of the Righteous Pyre] condensed perfectly into the razor-thin edge of his broadsword.

The blinding light became a focused, microscopic line of absolute, god-slaying heat.

His rage did not turn him into a brawler.

It stripped away all his mortal hesitation, leaving behind only the cold, flawless, apex swordsmanship of a High Noble.

Hennessey raised his blade. He stepped forward.

’For my blood. For my House. For my son,’ Hennessey recited in his mind, his soul locking onto the Cultist.

"[Divine Rendering]."

SWISH!

Hennessey swung the sword. He didn’t emit a massive wave of fire.

It was a single, elegant, impossibly fast arc of pure, condensed divinity.

The barrage of massive dark-iron spears flying toward him were instantly bisected.

They were cleanly sliced down the middle, the cut so hot that the demonic iron simply vaporized into steam.

Before the steam could even clear, Hennessey was already standing directly in front of Elder Mathews.

Mathews’s eyes bulged in sheer panic. He barely managed to raise his staff, summoning a dense shield of Level 200 corrupted metal.

CLANG!

Hennessey’s blade struck the shield.

The elegant, refined strike carried the weight of a falling sun.

The demonic shield cracked instantly, sending a shockwave through Mathews’s arms that shattered both of the Elder’s wrists.

"ARGH!"

Mathews shrieked, blasted backward through the air, crashing violently into a jagged rock formation.

Hennessey did not run after him. He walked. His movements were terrifyingly methodical, his golden sword leaving a thin, burning trail in the air.

"You are out of your depth, fanatic," Hennessey’s voice was a chilling, aristocratic whisper that echoed across the molten earth.

"You claim your god brings a new era. I will show you the fires of the old world."

Mathews scrambled to his feet, spitting black blood.

Fear, cold, primal fear, gripped his demonic heart.

Hennessey was not just stronger, the Patriarch’s divine technique was actively cleansing his dark magic.

"You think you have won?!" Mathews screamed, his eyes bleeding dark purple mana as he tapped into the absolute limit of his corrupted soul.

He slammed his shattered, bleeding hands directly into the earth.

"[Edict of the Iron Maiden]!"

RUMBLE!

The entire Wildlands shook as if a planetary fault line had snapped.

In a massive, hundred-yard radius around Hennessey, the ground violently erupted.

Colossal, thick slabs of jagged, weeping black iron shot into the sky.

They didn’t just act as a wall, they curved inward, violently slamming together high above Hennessey’s head.

In less than a second, Hennessey was entirely sealed inside a massive, pitch-black dome of demonic iron.

SHCK! SHCK! SHCK!

From the ceiling, the walls, and the floor of the dome, thousands of razor-sharp, poisoned iron spikes violently thrust inward, aiming to turn the Patriarch into a pincushion.

The enclosed space immediately filled with an absolute domain of demonic torture, designed to crush the soul and rot the flesh.

Outside the dome, Elder Mathews collapsed to his knees, panting heavily. A sickening, relieved smile stretched across his face.

"Melt your way out of that, you arrogant fool," Mathews wheezed, knowing the density of his Edict was impenetrable from the inside.

---

Inside the pitch-black domain, Hennessey stood perfectly still.

The jagged iron spikes stopped mere inches from his skin, held back by a shimmering golden barrier of his Valor.

But the barrier was dimming.

The demonic corruption of the Iron Maiden was so heavily concentrated that his standard mana was actively being eaten away.

The spikes were slowly pressing closer.

Hennessey looked at the encroaching darkness. He could feel the absolute zero of the demonic rot trying to freeze his heart.

He knew standard mana would not melt Level 210 demonic iron. If he simply pushed his Valor, his mana pool would run dry in minutes, and he would be skewered.

’Neville,’ Hennessey thought, closing his eyes.

He saw his son’s bright, naive smile.

He remembered the boy’s foolish, merciful heart.

’I cannot bring you back. I cannot save your soul,’ Hennessey’s internal monologue dripped with absolute, crushing sorrow.

’But I can send the devil to hell to serve you.’

Hennessey opened his eyes. They were glowing with a terrifying, incandescent white light.

He stopped drawing power from his mana core.

He reached deeper.

He reached into the very foundation of his life force.

He ignited his own lifespan.

FWOOSH!

The golden fire coating his blade instantly turned blinding, unadulterated white.

The sheer, overwhelming heat radiating from his body multiplied by a factor of ten.

Inside the dome, the temperature skyrocketed to the surface of a star.

Hennessey felt his internal organs begin to scorch.

He felt his mana veins cracking under the extreme, self-destructive pressure.

He knew exactly what this would cost him.

Pushing his Valor with his life force would leave him in a severely weakened state.

He would not wield a sword with this level of divinity for a decade.

He was sacrificing ten years of his prime in exchange for ten seconds of absolute, god-like power.

He accepted the trade.

---

Outside the dome, Mathews was laughing.

Suddenly, the Elder’s laughter died in his throat.

The massive, impenetrable black iron dome began to glow.

First, it turned a dull cherry red.

Then, a bright, angry orange.

"What... what is this?" Mathews stammered, scrambling backward as the ambient heat around the dome began to scorch his own skin.

The iron turned blinding white.

The Edict was literally melting from the inside out.

KRA-BOOM!

The dome exploded.

A geyser of molten, white-hot iron rained across the Wildlands.

Stepping out of the crater was Patriarch Vance Hennessey.

He was a terrifying sight.

His hair had turned a stark, ash gray.

His skin was pale, and blood poured from his nose and eyes, instantly vaporizing in the heat of his aura.

But the white fire burning along the edge of his broadsword was the brightest thing in the world.

He did not look like a human.

He looked like an Angel of Vengeance.

"No! Stay back!" Mathews screamed, trying to conjure a wall of dark metal.

"[Divine Rendering.]"

Hennessey vanished.

SLASH!

He reappeared directly behind Mathews.

Mathews stood frozen. He looked down.

Both of his arms had been cleanly severed at the shoulders.

The cuts were so impossibly hot that they cauterized instantly, leaving no blood, only glowing embers.

Before Mathews could even scream, Hennessey dropped his sword.

The Patriarch reached out with his bare, burning left hand and grabbed Mathews directly by the throat, lifting the towering Cult Elder off the ground.

"You spoke of my son," Hennessey whispered, his gray hair whipping in the updraft of the white fire. "Now, speak to him."

Hennessey squeezed.

CRUNCH!

The white fire surged from Hennessey’s palm, pouring directly down Mathews’s throat.

The Cult Elder’s eyes bulged, glowing white from the inside as his internal organs, his demonic core, and his very soul were instantly reduced to ash.

Hennessey let go.

What hit the ground was not a body, but a hollow, charred husk of brittle black carbon.

The white fire surrounding Hennessey violently snapped out.

The Patriarch swayed on his feet.

The backlash hit him like a falling mountain.

He fell heavily to one knee, driving his golden broadsword into the molten glass to keep himself from collapsing completely.

He coughed violently, a spray of blackened, scorched blood staining his pristine armor.

His mana core throbbed with agonizing, cracking pain.

’I feel cold. Terribly weak.’

The decade-long toll of his sacrifice had settled into his bones.

But as he looked at the pile of ash that used to be a Level 210 Cult Elder, a faint, cold smile touched his bloody lips.

He painfully turned his head, looking toward the distant flashes of liquid-silver and the localized earthquakes rocking the Wildlands.

’One down,’ Hennessey thought, his vision blurring.

’Give them hell, Helion. Give them hell.’