Swordsman's Regression: Reawakened as a Necromancer-Chapter 149: Chamber Of The Final Tear

The weeping of the woman in the center of the room escalated from a sorrowful cry to a maddening, echoing shriek.

It was like she could sense them regaining their mental focus and was doing all her evil best to claim it back. Her cries scraped against the inside of their skulls, amplifying the ⸢Despair Aura⸥ radiating from the Revenants.

But Percival pushed through it, telling Lewis what to do as he parried a Vampire’s claws and kicked it backward into Mercius’s waiting greatsword.

"Listen, Lewis. Focus your senses on the room itself, not the Demons. Where is the demonic mana pooling from?"

Lewis pressed his hands to his temples, his face pale and slick with sweat. He tried to close his eyes, but a Vampire materialized and attacked him, causing him to scream and scurry backwards.

"I can’t!" Lewis screamed, throwing a frantic burst of kinetic mana that sent the Vampire crashing into a velvet armchair. "There’s too much noise! They’re everywhere, Percival! They’re tearing me apart!"

A Revenant phased through the wall directly behind the Arcanist. Its iron mask gleamed in the dim light as it brought a spectral blade down. The blade grazed Lewis’s shoulder, bypassing his physical armor.

The ⸢Soul Rend⸥ activated.

Lewis shrieked, dropping to one knee as a chunk of his stamina and willpower was instantly severed.

"I need them off me!" Lewis gasped, clutching his shoulder as the pink compulsion magic from the weeping girl surged again, trying to drag his mind into submission. "I can’t focus!"

Percival gritted his teeth. He swung his sword in a massive arc, hurling three Vampires away, but two more instantly appeared to replace them.

Mercius was a juggernaut, but even the dead Knight was being bogged down by the sheer volume of Level 80 Revenants phasing in and out of his strikes.

The Skeletons did their best, but Demons were provingly more powerful at the higher levels.

This led Percival to the realization: They needed a meat shield.

"Keep trying to find the current, Lewis!" he commanded. "I’ll keep them busy."

He thrust his left hand out, tapping into his Summon Space.

"Attack!"

Instantly, a swarm of azure-blue specters erupted out of Percival’s open palm. The Nightwraiths were vastly out-leveled, but they were numerous and entirely immune to the girl’s psychological charm.

They swarmed the Vampires and Revenants, wrapping their freezing, ethereal bodies around the higher-level Demons.

It was a massacre. The Revenants slaughtered the Nightwraiths with their swords, and the Vampires tore through them, but for every Nightwraith destroyed, it bought Percival and Lewis three precious seconds of distraction.

Lewis squeezed his eyes shut. He stopped looking at the terrifying fangs and iron masks, and instead reached out with his raw mana manipulation.

He felt the chaotic, violent splashes of the battle. He felt the cold blue dots of the Nightwraiths blinking out of existence. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

And then, he felt the current.

Beneath the chaotic noise, there was a steady, rhythmic thrum of thick, suffocating dark mana. It was pumping into the room like blood through an artery.

Lewis’s eyes snapped open. He pointed a trembling finger at the massive, ornate silver chandelier hanging directly above the weeping woman.

"There!" Lewis yelled. "The chandelier! It’s not just sending off light! That bastard! It’s the Source!"

Percival narrowed his eyes at the deceitful object. He wondered how he hadn’t noticed it all this while.

As Mercius, engaged in a battle with Revenants, slammed his massive shield into the floor, Percival sprinted, stepping onto Mercius’s knee, then launching himself off the angled shield.

He soared through the air, soaring directly over the weeping woman and the chaos below. At the apex of his jump, he gripped the Basilisk with both hands, channeling his dark mana into the blade.

Then, with enough might and precision, he swung the sword and cleaved through the silver chandelier.

CRASH!

The ornate fixture exploded, but instead of glass and silver raining down, a geyser of thick, foul-smelling green sludge erupted from the ceiling. The Demon Source ruptured with a dying screech.

Percival landed heavily, rolling to his feet. Now, the infinite spawn was broken.

"Mercius! Cull them!" Percival looked back and ordered.

Victory was finally possible. Percival and his Soul Soldier tore into the distracted Vampires and Revenants.

Without the infinite reinforcements, the higher-level Demons were systematically isolated and dismantled.

Percival chopped through the legs of a Revenant, waiting for its phasing to end before driving his sword through its iron mask. Mercius crushed the skulls of two Vampires simultaneously.

Percival quickly counted the remaining Demons in the room. Twenty-eight. Exactly enough to max out his current capacity.

"Stop!" he yelled at Mercius and Lewis. "No more killing!"

The Soul Soldier and the Arcanist froze, turning to Percival.

Sighing, Percival raised his left hand, his blue eyes flashing with necromantic authority.

"⸢Enslave⸥"

First, the energy swept the room, binding the Manor Vampires and Revenants in place. Then the threads sew them all together into his Soul Core.

Then, with high costs in his Mana, Constitution and Charisma, he pulled them all into his Summon Space.

The Demons shrieked in protest, fighting the binding, but Percival’s will crashed down on them like an anvil. They were bound inside of him, joining the rest of his willing and unwilling soldiers.

⸢Summon Space: 50/50 Filled⸥

The room fell deathly silent. The battle was over.

Except for the weeping.

"Thank the Gods..." Lewis’s voice was a soft, breathless whisper.

Percival turned, exhaling a long breath, but the relief died in his throat. Lewis...

Once again, he was staring at the woman in the center of the room. His eyes were completely dilated, with the hypnotic pink light glowing inside his pupils.

The despair and terror of the battle had left him utterly vulnerable to the Area-of-Effect charm. He started walking toward her, his hands outstretched.

"I’m coming," Lewis whispered to her. "I’ll save you. Just put the knife down..."

"This again," Percival grunted. "Lewis, stop!" he barked, stepping forward to grab him.

Lewis didn’t even look back. He swept his hand backward, unleashing a concussive mana blast.

"Ugh!’

The blast hit Percival square in the chest, throwing the Necromancer off his feet and onto the wooden doors, breath driven from his lungs.

"Don’t touch me!" Lewis yelled, his voice distorted with a desperate, manic devotion. "Can’t you see she’s hurting?! I have to save her!"

The woman looked up at Lewis, her beautiful face streaked with tears. She smiled—a tragic, grateful smile—and began to press the silver dagger into her own chest.

Percival looked up, his hair falling over his infuriated blue eyes. "You astounding imbecile."

He pushed himself off the door and dashed forward, covering the ground in three massive strides.

Lewis sensed him coming. The Arcanist spun around, his hands glowing with golden mana. He conjured a solid wall of kinetic force right in Percival’s path, then fired three condensed mana-bullets aimed at Percival’s knees.

Percival spun his sword, deflecting two of the bullets, but the third grazed his thigh, tearing through the fabric and causing slight damage.

He summoned a massive amount of mana into his fist, unleashing ⸢Soulscorch⸥ and swinging at the mana shield.

CRACK!

The raw physical force of the Necromancer shattered the Arcanist’s hastily constructed barrier. Percival burst through the fading blue shards and tackled Lewis around the waist.

The two young men hit the plush velvet rug hard, rolling toward the edge of the woman’s compulsion circle.

"Get off me!" Lewis screamed, fighting with a frenzied, unnatural strength. He clawed at Percival’s face, his eyes wide and unseeing. "She’s dying! I have to help her!"

Time seemed to dilate. Out of the corner of his eye, Percival saw the woman’s hands trembling. The silver dagger was piercing the fabric of her white gown. The tip was sinking into her flesh.

Percival pinned Lewis’s wrists to the floor with his knees, leaning his weight down to trap the thrashing Arcanist.

Lewis opened his mouth, raw mana gathering in his throat for a point-blank concussive scream.

Percival drew back his fist and drove it into Lewis’s jaw.

"Ughhh!"

Lewis’s head snapped to the side, the mana in his throat fizzling out, but his eyes were still glowing pink. He struggled wildly, trying to buck Percival off.

"I have to save her!" Lewis sobbed.

Percival grabbed Lewis by the collar, hauling him up an inch from the floor, and drove his fist into the Arcanist face a second time.

"Argh!!"

"Snap out of it, you moron!" Percival roared. "You are not dying for a ghost! I am not done with you yet!"

"PLEASE!!! HELP MEEEE!!!!" The woman cried.

"Nooooo!!!" Lewis screamed.

Before them, the woman finally drove the dagger completely into her own heart. She gasped. A single drop of blood hit the velvet rug.

Then, she fell backward.

The moment her body hit the floor, the pink light in the room shattered like brittle glass. The heavy, oppressive sorrow vanished, and the Encounter Zone had fresh air again. Seemingly from nowhere.

The woman’s body dissolved into white ash, leaving nothing behind but the velvet rug and the shattered chandelier.

Beneath Percival, Lewis gasped sharply. His eyes rolled back, the pink glow fading instantly to his natural color.

He blinked, staring up at the ceiling, then at Percival straddling him. The manic devotion was gone, now he was just confused, and his jaw hurt like hell.

"Percival...?" Lewis groaned, tasting blood on his lip. "What... what just happened?"

Percival let go of his collar, his chest heaving as he stared at the pile of white ash. He slowly stood up, offering Lewis a hand.

Before Lewis could take it, the holographic interface flared to life in the center of the room.

⸢Congratulations! You have survived the Chamber of the Final Tear⸥.