The Last Circle-Chapter 19: Return to Hell

Nameless shuddered with the rush of air pulling him into the never-ending abyss. Once again, he found himself encompassed within a familiar darkness, taken into its tender embrace as he closed his eyes, hoping that he did not make a mistake.

What felt like hours to him would pass, unable to open his eyes, frozen in the loop of time as merely his conscious.

'Is this what it's like to be dead?' he asked himself, plagued by the breath he could not take, feeling his lungs screaming for air. 'No movement, nothing to see...'

Eventually, he'd fill his dreading lungs with air, opening his eyes to find himself laying against a dark and warm ground. The smell of burnt flesh withered his nose as he slowly pushed himself up, lifting his head to look ahead.

His vision may have been hazy and unable to focus on what he was seeing, but he was certain of the familiar sight: the black hide and fur that faded like fallen leaves dancing in a gust of wind.

'It's dead.'

He took deep breaths as he yawned, while pangs of pain reminded him that he was still gruesomely injured with the rock shards lodged into his back, feeling his warm blood spill out. Every part of him wanted nothing more than to forget about having to get back on the move, aching in a numbing pain.

'I only got hit once, and,' he scoffed at his pathetic state as he forced himself to move against the pain, 'to think that's what makes me want to stop.'

That was merely half true. Ever since he'd slain both the Heretic Weaver of the Sky and the Transgressor Hellbound Beast, he'd completely forgotten about the events leading up to this point.

He looked over his shoulder and pulled out whatever shards he could reach, grimacing with each piece removed.

The sky still remained in its dimly lit hues, painting the world in dusk, while the white anomaly above continued to hang directly in the centre of the sky, far out of reach. Where the black structure, still far in the distance, once hid its peak in the frenzied sky, it now laid completely exposed, reaching far up until it disappeared once again.

A few minutes would pass by until Nameless removed every single shard, hissing in pain as he closed his eyes.

He let out a deep breath, opening his eyes and lazily dragging his gaze to the towering black structure as he thought:

'Let's get the seeds and keep moving.'

***

Having forgotten about his pain, Nameless continued onward, always keeping the Rift of Flame in hand. He may have been stronger now, thanks to it, but he was still wary. All it took was one unsuspecting moment to send him straight back to the beginning and lose the artifacts.

The neat thing was that he could reasonably collect more Seeds of Corruption now. In fact, ever since he resumed his journey, he'd managed to collect a decent haul of fifty seeds. It still paled in comparison to whatever he needed, but progress was progress, and with each new addition, he was growing more confident in his abilities.

However, he still wanted to be stealthy about it. The Rift of Flame's transformation effect created too much noise, and the last thing he needed to do was draw groups that were larger than what he could handle.

He unfortunately learned that the hard way. For a while, he thought it would be safer to travel in constant transformation, but that notion was quickly proven false when he came across two Sinner Hellbound Beasts.

Still, he was able to bring them both down, but the amount of effort that feat demanded was one he was not willing to spend again. One hellbound beast was enough. Besides, he still had a long way until he made it to the black structure, so he was in no rush to collect a million seeds.

That ended up with him resorting to stalking the unsuspecting envoy imps—which he typically called "pink monkeys"—killing them quickly and with as little effort as possible. They may have been of the Sinner variety like most hellbound beasts, but their defence was lacking.

'Offence is only the strongest defence when you're making the first moves,' so he thought, kneeling as he dug the curved edge of his blade into the head of one of those pink monkeys.

True. The envoy imps, noticeably lacking in any defence, made up for it in ranged attacks that targeted their enemy on sensory level. Be it hearing, sight, smell, touch... they had a way to deal with their enemies, given that they weren't ambushed.

The thought of such powers being evolved with a Transgressor Envoy Imp was not something he was happy to think about.

Although, it really had him wondering just what a talent was capable of then. If that was the reward for ascending to the Eighth Circle of Hell, then perhaps it was something incredible? It also went without saying that he wondered if there was a rigid dichotomy between how talents and attributes were ranked—assuming they were ranked to begin with.

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'Does that mean everyone else above me has a talent?'

His thoughts came to an abrupt halt as unfamiliar footsteps echoed further up ahead, like heavy high heels, slowly stepping through a wide-mouth cavern.

Without a second thought, Nameless hid behind a pillar, peeking around it with only one eye.

The evolution of his [Gaze of the Cleansing Fire], though mostly beneficial, also revealed its demerits. Now that they grew brighter—enough to shed light in a small radius around his feet—he couldn't help but feel that it was easier for the creatures of Hell to spot him from further away.

His eyes widened, however, as he laid his gaze on a slender creature. Before anything else became visible, its fleshless face entered view, fixed with a rictus and missing eyes, its head stuck out with neck at least half the length of his blade. Its mangled arms came into view next, revealing patches of pink flesh and bone, some patches of the flesh suggesting that the rest of it was bitten off, while it reached out with its three bone claws. Its hunched back, more bone than flesh, was at least twice his height in length, and its feet were very much like high heels—except, they were angled more like an arch, more so than an actual shoe, revealing not a single toe.

Having seen enough, Nameless pulled himself back, narrowly avoiding meeting his gaze with... well, the creature's? It wasn't like it had eyes, but he was certain that being an eyeless creature in Hell meant little towards impaired vision.

'Curses,' he said inwardly, and often said it now as a substitute for "damn it", given that the system didn't count it as profanity. 'There just had to be a new monster... but at least it makes a lot of noise, so I should be able to sneak past it.'

Yes... but no. His blood went ice-cold when he heard another one resounding in the distance, this time off to his northwest, and it was only drawing nearer while the other one continued due east. Another set of footsteps echoed, and then another, and one more.

With the overlapping sounds, it was only becoming more difficult to tell where each one was coming from; where they were going.

'This isn't good.'