Calixan fell to the ground in a grotesque splat. Blood bubbled out of him, spilling forward in lines carved out into the ground and bordered by his flesh.

Grey could still feel an undying amount of fury in his belly, so much he didn’t even know how to control or direct it. Everything just felt like it was fighting against him, and even the death of Calixan did nothing to make him feel any better.

His eyes were drawn to the notification blinking out in his periphery.

—

Operation: The Heirless Final Knight

Quest Rank: Legendary

Quest Class: Vector

Mission Type: Revenge

Objective: Reclaim the ancestral land of the Trolley family.

Description: The last of the Trolley was born 173 years ago. Banished from their land and cursed with impotence, he has lived out the last of his days in silent seclusion and tepid humiliation. In the last of his days, he took on a disciple, not with any great hope, but instead with a subtle stewing aspiration for something better. Unfortunately, he died long before he could pass on this hope or any word of the tragedies he suffered.

Reward: Noble Rank of Duke

—

Grey frowned, not liking what he was reading.

There were some oddities about Edmun, the fact he was unmarried, the fact he had never taken on a disciple until Grey came around, but Grey didn’t expect that he was harboring that sort of thing the entire time.

If the reward for the Quest was Duke, then it should mean that the Trolley family was a former Dukedom. But what kind of special circumstances could strip someone of their rank entirely and warrant something as bad as impotence?

Grey wasn’t trying to make a joke in his thoughts. If they were cursing Edmun with something like that, it meant that they had cleansed his entire family, and refused to let them repopulate even in a much weaker state.

What sort of crime could warrant a reaction like that?

But what was even the point? It felt like such a joke to try and reclaim that land now.

So he could inherit it? He wasn’t a Trolley. What good would it do their ancestors if he took the land? If anything, it would just harshen the legacy all the more.

In the end, they were still wiped out and their land still wouldn’t be their own.

There was only one way to make all of it worthwhile.

’Kill whoever’s responsible.’

A flicker of darkness danced in Grey’s eyes before there was a twitch at the edge of his senses.

BANG.

Grey vanished, a palm of black slamming down where he had just been.

His gaze snapped toward where Calixan had been only to find tendrils of black extending up and out of his body. A large hand twice the length of Grey’s body hovered in the air above him, puppet strings extending from its tip.

The second hand had slapped down onto the ground, but tendrils of darkness came from it as well, causing Calixan’s body to stretch out oddly on the ground.

His heels touched the back of his head, one of his arms pulled back between his knees. His chin touched his chest and his body balanced on three points between the top of his head and the two sides of his hip bone.

The crackling of bone echoed as the second hand rose to the skies, causing Calixan’s body to snap back to attention, standing to his feet.

But even then he looked odd. Setting aside the fact his head and part of his torso were split in two, the two halves hanging limply to the left and right of him, his feet only touched the ground through his heels, his toes pointing straight up to the skies.

His fingers looked broken and snapped at all sorts of awkward angles and there wasn’t a single portion of his body that looked natural in any way, shape or form.

Darkness oozed out from the wounds of Calixan’s body and the squires watched on in horror as the man began to weave himself back together. Even Grey’s miraculous heal from the brink of death didn’t look like this.

There was simply something... unnatural about what Calixan was doing.

The church trembled as Calixan was stitched back together. But even then, the stitches themselves were still very much visible, oozing with black pus and tentacles of darkness that wiggled about as though in some vain attempt to make it seem the man had more life than he actually did.

Calixan snapped to attention. His fingers went straight and normal, his feet slammed down to the ground properly, and a chittering came from his teeth, his eye sockets rolling as though to expose what was behind his pupils and then flooding out with seeping darkness.

His head turned to face Grey and then his elbows shot upward, his hands dangling freely as the puppeteering black hands above him moved.

Grey’s pupils only had time to constrict before Calixan’s open jaw was snapping at his throat. The latter’s mouth unhinged itself, black tendrils barely connecting the two halves together as it opened wide enough to swallow his entire head.

Grey didn’t have the time to use his spear to counter, and something about the puppeteering hands, much like Sir Ovaal before, made it difficult for his Paladin Spirit to react properly.

That didn’t stop him from reacting on instinct and slamming out an elbow at Calixan’s head.

The bishop’s head spun like a top on his neck, his skin wrinkling like a compressed spring before it unwound and snapped back forward.

Calixan’s teeth chattered as they clattered against one another and a bold notification appeared high above.

—

CITY BOSS BATTLE TRIGGERED

—

[Bishop Calixan VERSUS Grey Temolt]

—

Grey’s eyes narrowed, pools of darkness spilling out from Calixan faster and faster as the entire church seemed plunged into a hell that seeped out from the very abyss itself.

—

[Congratulations, Genesis Candidate! You have triggered a Rare Instance! Good luck and don’t die! :)]