Outworld Liberators-Chapter 142: Radeon’s Plan Coming to Fruition

Petrus tried to stir, and the first thing the Aberrant inside him checked was vitality.

Not pain. Not pride. Vitality, the pulse of the world that told it where prey walked and where fear still had a warm throat.

Spendworth Hills was thick with it. Over fifty thousand hybrids already answered the call, and Petrus sent them out again, hungry orders carried on the same infected instinct.

In Cairnlight Barterhold, Radeon moved first.

He activated the Vitality Obscuring Array. The air changed, subtle as a veil pulled across a face.

Hybrids that were used to hunting by lifeforce found the streets suddenly wrong.

Warm bodies became harder to find. The living turned into dim candles behind frosted glass.

Calyx, still pinned a heartbeat ago by throne and javelin, broke out of the seal.

Darkness billowed from him, a smoke so heavy it pushed men back without touching them.

It rolled over stone, swallowed sight, and when it thinned the throne and the javelin were gone.

No one paused to mourn lost artifacts. Everyone was watching the only thing that mattered.

Calyx swung his stake. Spikes flared wide in a brutal arc.

The Aberrant did not feel damage at first. It tried to reposition in midair, trying to make space, trying to remember that it was supposed to be clever.

Calyx swung harder. A golden gong tolled on impact, a sound that did not come from wood alone but from the arts inheritance he was trying to digest.

The Aberrant’s body shook and plummeted to where Calyx wanted it.

Silvertoll Summits. The barrier cracked as it struck.

Calyx used the barrier like a wall. The shielding collapsed and drove the creature through buildings, not chasing, herding.

Stone burst. Roofs folded. Dust rose in sheets.

Down in the small tunnels, ghosts moved with the rhythm of the blows.

Vault routes that had been dug beforehand opened again. Alerts blared.

Above ground, no one understood yet what the sound truly meant.

Petrus tried to fog the new area with Vision Crystal again.

Calyx inhaled and simply sucked it all in.

The mist vanished into him like breath into lungs. Petrus froze, shocked for one fatal beat.

Calyx hit him again and sent him flying, then hit him a second time and drove him back toward Spendworth Hills like a nail being hammered home.

Petrus descended and his huge body struck the auction houses that still stood.

Walls buckled. Floors collapsed. Stalls scattered.

Calyx flashed into place above him and struck down.

Stones leapt. People leapt with them. There was no blood. The blow was refined, narrow, as if Calyx had decided the people of the city did not deserve to be punished for Petrus’s greed.

The destruction was limited to the Aberrant itself, but collateral still happened.

Bodies thudded onto pavement, bloodied and bruised. Some screamed. Some crawled. Most still ran.

In the broken belly of the auction houses, cages were revealed.

Not crates of ore. Not sealed relics. People.

Men and women packed behind bars like animals, eyes wide and asking for help.

Those who had come to loot were already waiting for the vaults to open.

When they saw bodies instead of goods, the street turned.

Shouts rang out, sharp and furious, loud enough for scry to catch.

"These scoundrels are running slavery."

"Fuck, that’s my cousin over there. You’re all sick bastards."

Scries on other peaks saw the cages and carried the sight outward. News spread like wildfire through Goldkeep Crownmarkets.

Silvertoll Summits answered with its own cries of grievance as other hidden cellars were exposed by the same chaos.

For a moment, the Aberrant was forgotten.

Calyx felt a signal whisper through his system.

[Go back now.]

He obeyed without hesitation. One last strike landed.

The Aberrant’s body rang like a bell being beaten, metal muscles jolting, a temporary stun.

Then Calyx retreated, gone as quickly as he had arrived. He looked at Jekyll, his hands in a passive and neutral offering posture.

"All yours now, fellow daoists," Calyx said and bowed.

Below, the ghosts who had been in cages ran out first. They spread the word as they fled, eager and loud, promising salvation to the hungry eyes of the caged men and women.

"Let’s come to Cairnlight Barterhold. I was told people could work here after it finished maintenance."

"Did you see that strong man? He was so strong and from Cairnlight Barterhold. They would not need to sell people like us for petty sums."

"I hope their gates open for us. Venerable white robed. Wait a moment. Sir of the staff. Please wait for us!" one even shouted, running.

Hundreds of ghosts led. Thousands followed.

Some were too dazed to walk and were carried, soothed, fed water.

This was what Tiyanak did best. Acting pitiful. Looking broken. Luring the living with a promise of shelter.

Radeon did not invent that talent. He simply used it.

Some of the ghosts swelled with the mischief of it, stronger at the edges, as if the crowd’s belief fed them.

When the small show ended, Jekyll stood among the cracked stone and watched the Aberrant with a new kind of attention.

He looked at Calyx’s retreating back and felt something close to thankfulness.

Silent Severance had always wanted to capture an eldritch alive. This chaos, ugly as it was, might have given them the only chance they would ever get.

The Aberrant recovered its wits. Pride rose in Petrus like bile.

Humiliation stung deeper than wounds. He would not crawl. He would not be a spectacle.

So he did the one thing left to him.

He assimilated everyone still infected with Vision Crystals.

It happened in a rush, a mass inhalation. Lifeforce threads snapped inward. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

The army he had tried to build collapsed into him and became him.

His form swelled, then changed, stabilizing into the shape the original Aberrant had always been meant to wear.

It grew again. Petrus’s body was armored in a large, bulbous mantle, layered in plate like folds and ridges.

Lobes flared outward in thick membranes that shivered when it breathed, as if the flesh could not decide whether it wanted to be shell or skin.

Several tentacles hung from it like tree trunks, absurdly thick and muscled, tapering toward blunt ends.

Their surfaces were mottled and rough, patched with hard growths that looked like scar tissue gone wrong.

Between them writhed a nest of thinner tendrils, serpentine and restless, weaving in and out.

Color slid across it all in a sickly rainbow sheen, like crude spilled on water, beautiful for half a heartbeat, then nauseating as it shifted.