Arcanist In Another World-Chapter 112: Devil?

“Move,” Garran grunted, dragging his legs toward the swarm of shadows, skin painfully sensitive around his back. Prickling there as if thousands of needles were stabbing at him. Crawling fear in the pit of his stomach as Lenora’s figure rose with her wings stretching out to the sides.

“All hail, the Daughter of the Hatred,” the strange woman muttered as she faced the crowd, half-closed eyes slowly opening while the fog churned around her. Garran could’ve taken her as a daughter of some middle-class family. Looked barely twenty years old. Delicate skin and delicate features. Short, too, now he thought about it.

And yet the shadows hissed and screeched around her. Tides of them inched forward as if in a rush to be embraced by her fog.

Garran, instead, was staring at Lenora. Or the creature she had become.

No, she’s still the same. Still the same…

Hexmenders died young. Garran knew the fact before he became a Proved in the Brotherhood. Knew that the more you give them time, the more the shadows take control of their mind. Insidious pressure, the Captain had once told him. It was like living with maggots wriggling inside your head.

But Lenora was no simple Hexmender. A Warden of the Veil, who had a real chance at completing her Third Trial. For too long she braved the murmurs of the fallen. For too long she managed to hold her chin high against their insistent probings. She even fashioned a locket for the purpose. Told them it reminded her of the deeds she had done keeping the shadows close to her chest.

Now that locket was alive, tendrils oozing from inside of it, covering her scaled skin and higher up into her head. Horns jutted out from the sides of her face, dark horns gleaming with darkish lights. As if welcoming a newly crowned queen, hundreds of Shriekers prostrated themselves in front of her, their forms wavering in twisted pleasure.

Then, as Garran prepared himself to rip into their tides, the man on the stage stepped forward and held Lenora’s hand. He bent the knee and planted a kiss on her pulsing skin.

He felt sick just looking at this sight. Sick that he couldn’t move, or do anything to stop it. There were just too many of them. They were lucky all of them were too focused on this dark ritual to pay them much heed.

We have to do something—

Blazing lights. That was the first thing. Then the warmth around his back, sending heat down across his arms and underneath the armor. Blazing lights of fury and dancing flames, lunging at the back lines of the shadows that stood in a dreamy haze. Waves of it ripped into them like Justice himself had descended upon the world, scorching their ethereal forms with brutal ease.

High over the ceiling, the pillars began crackling as fissures appeared on their sides. A rain of gravel and dust sprinkled over the burning flames as the whole hall shifted an inch.

Garran turned, heart thundering in his chest, to face the source of this sudden heat. The Healer’s hands were blazing, eyes completely still, disturbingly focused as he peered out into the hall. The undead was at his back, a crooked smile plastered on his lips. He had a sword. A mean-looking weapon much like theirs, and it looked like he wasn’t scared to use it.

“What are you doing?” Garran managed to say. Something was off about him. Something about those blue eyes gave him the creeps, alright.

“Killing monsters,” Valens said, face illuminated with his own flames. “The eye in the sky is connected to those Riftshards around the dais. That Evercrest woman is using Lenora as an anchor to gather all the mana in this place. This has to stop, or there would be no Belgrave to speak about when that woman was done preparing.”

“For what?” Garran questioned.

“I don’t know,” Valens said gravely. “But the Gate could only be opened from the Underworld, right? This is why she must be preparing something. I see lines in the air, pulsing with strength. Thousands of lines feeding into her fog. We have to stop—”

The ground cracked. Wisps of fog seeped from the very foundation of earth, adding to the already rising tides of the Evercrest heir’s own. She smiled joyfully like a child parted with her mother and was now blessed with the sight of her face again. Seemed like a reunion, and there was even a crowd to celebrate the occasion.

Screeches and screams rose instead of happy cries. Flames blasted into their groups, and yet the Healer might as well have been trying to burn the sky itself by how his effort fell short at making a dent in their numbers.

The problem was the fog. For every Hollow that he burnt, two new ones were being born from the fog, all the while the Shriekers and the Wailborn stood untouched further out in the front.

Someone had to do something.

The undead hauled the sword high and lunged into the pews.

Dain came bounding beside him, then smacked him across the helmet with the force of a bull.

“Move,” he said, in perfect pronunciation.

Garran looked him in the eye, and slowly, felt the inner flame come to life.

Right, he thought as he felt the armor’s weight over his shoulders. He was fitted for the occasion. Got himself a sword and an armor. A man couldn’t ask for more in a battle.

That meant taking action.

He was, after all, a Templar of the damn Blessed Father.

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…….

Pulsing lines of mana across the hall. Valens couldn’t have imagined he would witness such an amount in his lifetime. His mana pool was a tiny drop against the ocean of energy here, seeping from those Ancient Riftshards, pouring out from the dangling invisible lines, all being pumped into Lenora for some reason.

Her skin bulged. Her horns grew larger. She herself was becoming more as the seconds trickled past.

That wasn’t the end of it.

The dozens of Wailborns in the front took to the platform like little children rushing to the skirt of their mothers. They wept, they screamed as they touched her skin as if it was the most precious thing in the world.

Nobody knew.

Nobody seemed aware.

But Valens could feel Lenora was taking everything from those Wailborn. Shadows merged into her presence as she grew into something grand.

The irony of it.

They were in a church. An old one, perhaps, but still the walls were adorned in appropriate dressings. Still the sigil of the Blessed Father hung from the ceiling. Golden swords with their chains, dangling aimlessly across the hall.

This is a message, isn’t it? A simple claim that the Ancients have little regard for the puny gods, self-seeking, little thieves who took the thrones in their presence. What would they do, now? The Blessed Father isn’t here, is he?

No, he wasn’t here, but then, that was about what Valens had expected.

Inferno’s flames rose around him as Nomad, Garran, and Dain bounded forward. They came across with no resistance on their way. Hollows fell and Hollows withered. Valens watched as their twisted souls got broken under the relentless assault of the warriors.

More waited ahead. Looking at Lenora’s growing form, paying no heed to the chaos in the back.

What are they doing?

Their frequencies all shared that nonsensical rhythm of peace. Such serenity that Valens even envied them. A person’s mind was divided. Two sides ever stuck in a raging battle. Primal and the intelligent parts of the brain scarcely found a common ground to agree upon. So they fought, and the thoughts churned inside even a simple man’s mind.

But not the shadows. It seemed they were a part of a whole. Each granted their own space, together hauling the shared burden of life. Were these small kids who were standing to the back? Underneath those crooked faces and sharp claws, their frequencies reflected an innocent soul’s melody.

Why are they not fighting? It’s the fog. It must be the fog. It’s taken hold of their minds. Made puppets out of them.

Valens tried to convince himself even if he couldn’t sense any lull in those frequencies. They seemed aware of their surroundings. They flinched whenever Garran or Nomad stabbed them through. Hissed in pain, but never tried to retaliate.

The Riftshards around the dais began glowing. The invisible lines pulsing with corrupted mana wrapped themselves around Lenora’s wings and held her high as the ground beneath her cracked wide open. A metallic hue caught Valens’s eyes under the broken tiles, its surface busy with inscriptions and sigils of a familiar origin.

Is that… the Gate?

“It’s a pity, Surgemaster, that you’ve come too late,” a woman’s voice echoed in Valens’s mind as Garran and others came to a stop ahead. “I could’ve used you as a key had you come a bit sooner. Now you have to watch the seals of your Forefathers being undone. A new age is upon us, and this time, you’re all alone.”

Dark, viscous blood poured from where the invisible lines bit into Lenora’s scaled skin, dripping down through the broken tiles and into the Gate underneath, feeding into the inscription of the Old Tongue.

The frequencies made the breath hitch in Valens’s chest. He knew those carvings. He saw them many times after coming to this world. Nine spheres in total, with one of them right in the middle.

It was the same design of the Gate that he carried in his chest cavity.

A Gate of Surges here, underneath the Cathedral, and already it had begun opening.

Valens stepped clumsily away as a fissure ruptured beside him, the ground breaking to reveal more of the enormous gate hidden inside. He jerked himself away and managed to find his balance on one foot, Inferno still alive over his fingers and eating away the horde of Hollows.

There was no end to them. Even when he tried to stop Lenora’s drop from dripping into the ground, they swarmed over to her and protected her body with their lives.

“Faster!” Valens called out to the group further ahead while he saw through his sound vision Celme dragging Selin away from the chaos. “Stop her! Stop her!”

They tried. Garran stormed out into the rising tides, golden sword cleaving away at the Shriekers. Dozens of them fell against his raging fury, dozens more died before they could scream, but it changed nothing.

“So much for the tales,” the Evercrest woman’s voice dinned inside Valens’s head.

He snapped back at the platform, but she wasn’t there. Through the Resonance he picked her strange, elusive set of frequencies hovering in the air.

The fog carried her like a true Mistress. She was looking at him with a playful smile. “You’re just a lost man trying to find his way, aren’t you?”

“Never said I was something else,” Valens answered, fingers stinging as he drew the flaming storm back to his core. “You, on the other hand, don’t need any introduction. Evil is evil no matter which world you’re in, eh?”

“Evil?” The woman’s lips curled downward, then tapped a finger on her right cheek. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, arrogance is one of your most esteemed features.”

“Comes with experience,” Valens said, staring at her eyes. “But at least we’re not trying to play games with the minds of people, right? Killing hundreds and thousands of innocents just to serve as a distraction. Why go through it all, one couldn’t help but wonder. Why is your kind so stuck with the senseless killing?”

“You…” The woman paused, scowling deeply at him as if confused. Then slowly, she began to laugh. A hysterical, manic laugh that echoed across the hall. “You don’t know!” she cried, holding her stomach, long hair spilling about her in a craze.

What the hell is she talking about?

“Stop with the games already!” Valens demanded. He could stomach being battered by hundreds of shadows, but being laughed at was something that deeply unsettled his nerves.

“Or what?” The woman wiped the sides of her eyes wet with tears. “You’re going to take me? Make me one of your little pawns? It’s too late, Surgemaster. You have already tried and failed before!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Valens said, eyeing the hall. Garran and the others were too deep into the lines that he couldn’t see them anymore. Everywhere he looked were shadows wriggling in mirth. Surrounded by all this noise and chaos, and yet he had never felt this alone.

“It almost worked,” the woman said, face creasing into a mean frown. “People believed you were the saviors. They thought of you as the masters of humanity. Great heroes waging war against the Shadow and his court. Through millions of worlds and a thousand lifetimes. Such dedication to the work that you even fooled some of the Ancients into believing your cause, but Mother knew it all. She knew why you created the system, and why, at the end of times, you’ve decided to do it again.”

“Do it again?” Valens’s chest went still. “This… doesn’t make any sense.”

The fog churned and twisted. Valens couldn’t even raise his hands before the woman’s body appeared a few steps away from him.

“Tell me, do you think you alone can scare me off?” she hissed, one finger pointed out into his face. “You think you can stop the Ancients from awakening? Still, the land remembers your past sins. Still, it weeps knowing what you have done to its children. It’s time these naive fools learned the truth. Past time they were told from whom the Shadow hailed and who forced him to be the devil.”

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