The Hunted Regressor: My Heretic Saint System-Chapter 75: Hell’s Prize

The grin on Ignotus’s face didn’t fade as the light of the upper world vanished.

It stayed there, a defiant spark against the absolute blackness that swallowed him.

But as the seconds turned into minutes, the "fun" began to rot. The wind screaming past him changed. No longer just the realm’s air, it became a physical weight, thick with the scent of stagnant blood.

Hell’s Corruption didn’t wait for him to land to begin its work.

It seeped into his open wounds, directly into his blood, trying to rewrite the very essence of his Soul.

’Ignotus!’

Eris’s voice was faint, sounding like She was underwater.

’Don’t listen to the dark! Keep your eyes—’

Her voice cut out.

The silence that followed was louder than any explosion.

Ignotus reached out, grabbing at nothing but the freezing void.

"Eris?"

His own voice sounded like a stranger’s.

That was when time itself broke.

Before he knew it, an entire day had passed while he kept falling.

It was somewhat easy to handle, much like his time in the fog.

He spent it cursing and trying to use the air resistance to stabilize himself in preparation for a floor that never came.

Indeed, it ’never came.’

By the end of the first week, he stopped searching for a ground.

The Corruption was "playing" with him now, taking his full attention.

It showed him visions of his own rotting corpse in its Will.

Visions of the past that he kept under lock and key.

A month passed under its relentless assault.

Or perhaps it was a year; Ignotus couldn’t tell.

He wasn’t sure of anything at the moment.

The only thing he did now was watch as his skin turned a bruised, sickly purple, no doubt thanks to Hell feeding on his Divinity.

Ignotus stopped trying to move and stopped trying to think.

He was just a stone falling into a well with no bottom.

’How long...’

His thoughts were sluggish, heavy as lead.

’Has it been a decade?’

The abyss offered no answer, only more falling.

His white hair felt like it had grown to his waist; his nails felt like claws.

Corruption whispered that he had always been here. That the world above—the forest, the light, his goals, and vengeance—was just a fever dream of a dying man, insane with boredom.

He almost believed it. After all, wasn’t cooking up scenarios something one did when they were bored and wanted more in life?

It was begging him to close his eyes and dream.

But he didn’t listen, reminded of Eris’s final words.

’Keep your eyes...’

Ignotus paused a moment.

’Keep your eyes, what?’

He didn’t know what She was going to say.

Maybe She would’ve wanted him to keep his eyes closed.

It was only his assumption that he was to keep them open.

Yes, perhaps he’d been—

CRACK!

Eternity ended in an instant.

Ignotus didn’t come close to seeing the wall; he simply fell into it.

His shoulder shattered against it, the impact spinning his body like a top.

He didn’t even have time to feel the pain before the momentum launched him across the narrow chasm.

CRACK!

Ignotus slammed back-first into the opposite cliffside.

Air left his lungs in a red mist, his ribs snapped, and his vision splintered into a thousand white sparks.

The world finally and mercifully went silent.

His body began to slide down the rough stone, limp and broken, as the darkness of Hell claimed its prize.

...

...

...

’Ignotus! Wake up! Wake up!’

Eris’s voice echoed, somehow managing to sound gentle even while screaming.

’You won’t last long if you stay still! Get up, please!’

Ignotus groaned, his eyes snapping open.

Everything hurt.

His ribs screamed, his right arm throbbed like Hell, and a sharp pain burned across his shoulder. Much like his half-gone cloak, his skin was torn in patches where the spears hit, bruises lined his chest and legs, and his left knee refused to bend properly.

His body felt like it had been smashed by a mountain, which, to be fair, wasn’t too far off.

"Ugh..."

He half-blindly pushed himself off the jagged ground.

"...what?" 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

’’You’re awake!’

Eris’s relief slammed into him.

’Don’t move too much yet. Your internal organs—’

"Yeah, yeah."

He sat up, coughing out dirt while forcing air into his lungs.

This ’air’ was heavy—so heavy that it felt like it hated him for breathing it.

His whole body screamed, but he pushed through it and forced himself to his feet.

Around him stretched a place that didn’t belong to the living.

The ground was black stone with faint red light pulsing through the cracks.

Massive roots coiled through the rock, some glowing with what appeared to be... lava. Many of such roots were woven together beneath pillars of blackened bones, all into rivers of even more lava, a lot more.

Far above, dark clouds drifted through endless darkness, chains hanging from them.

This wasn’t the Hell of myths he knew.

It was worse, even though it was only its crust.

’This... is bad. You shouldn’t be here; the Corruption alone could kill you in minutes.’

Ignotus casually nodded and took a step forward, noticing something in the rubble.

It was a shape crushed under slabs of stone.

The Acolyte.

His body was half-buried, skewered through from top to bottom.

Blood pooled around him, and it was still leaking. That made it obvious that, so very thankfully, Ignotus’s nap didn’t last too long, nor did his fall, the body changes he once noted being mere illusions of the mind.

That gave him an actual chance at surviving this place.

Though he wasted some of that ’chance,’ staring the Acolyte down.

"That’s what you get for stealing my kill, you bastard."

Ignotus raised his right hand towards himself, the same one that had ended the fight.

"And... huh. Technically speaking, I did kill him."

It trembled slightly as he closed it into a fist.

"It feels so..."

Tightening his grip, he felt his knuckles cracking.

"...good?"

He didn’t really know how to describe this feeling.

But he didn’t have the time to think about it, either—

Ding!

—

╔══════════════╗

║☆ ORDINATION UP ☆║

╚══════════════╝

[You’ve Slayed An Acolyte!]

[SF = 100]

[Ordination: 24 → 25]

[+3 STAT POINTS!]

—

"Oh..."

He blinked.

"Nice."

So the Soul Fragments increased alongside the class as well, huh?