A group of three figures moved cautiously toward one of the escape tunnels, wearing stolen Death Cult cloaks pulled low over their heads to conceal their faces.

Cultists swarmed everywhere around them in the underground caves, frantically searching for the escaped prisoners.

One woman cultist suddenly laughed out loud while running directly toward their small group. She skidded to a stop right in front of them as her eyes were wild with fanatical fervor.

"Have you seen the intruders yet, sisters?!" she asked breathlessly, practically vibrating with excitement. "The Heir said they couldn’t have gotten far! When we find them, we’ll feast on their flesh and offer their souls to our glorious god!"

Seo trembled violently beneath her cloak at the direct question.

She was supposed to speak. All the cultists here were women, and since Klaus and Neo were both men, she needed to act as their voice to maintain the disguise.

Many other cultists were frantically moving around in the immediate vicinity, checking every cavern entrance and shadow. If their group slipped up even a little bit right now, it would be absolutely catastrophic.

’B-but I can’t...’ Seo thought desperately.

No matter how hard she tried to force words out, her voice refused to leave her throat. It was stuck there, trapped by fear.

Looking at the malnourished, skeletal face of this cultist woman reminded her too vividly of—

CRACK!

The memory hit her like a physical blow, dragging her back to that torture chamber.

She could feel the whip tearing across her skin again in precise detail... the leather cutting through expensive fabric and soft noble flesh like neither meant anything at all. She could see that vengeful maid’s face twisted with years of accumulated hatred and grief and eyes burning with the need for justice.

She could hear her own screams echoing endlessly off cold stone walls, begging for mercy that never came.

The pain had been indescribable. Not just physical agony, but the complete destruction of everything she’d believed about her place in the world.

The helplessness... The terror... The realization that she was no different from any commoner when the power was stripped away...

Seo’s breathing quickened dangerously toward a full panic attack. Her hands trembled beneath the cloak. She was going to give them all away. She was going to get them killed because she couldn’t even speak. She was—

Suddenly, Klaus spoke from beside her but his voice was completely feminine... it was high-pitched and natural-sounding, nothing like his normal tone.

"We’re heading to the top level to ensure that those foolish mongrels who don’t worship our god will be caught if they try to escape through the mountain exits," Klaus said in that perfect female voice, matching the fanatic energy of the other cultists. "When I catch them with my own hands, I’ll personally bring them back here and we’ll feast on their bodies together while giving our souls to our merciful god!"

The woman cultist’s face lit up with manic joy. "Yes, sister! Yes!"

Both Klaus and the cultist woman threw their heads back and laughed together... a truly unhinged sound that echoed through the cavern.

"AHAHAHAHA!"

"AHAHAHAHAHA!"

The cultist woman patted Klaus’s shoulder enthusiastically before running off to continue her search, still cackling to herself.

Once she disappeared around a corner, both Seo and Neo turned to stare at Klaus with expressions of complete shock and disbelief.

Klaus shrugged slightly under his cloak.

"It’s just a little skill of mine. Nothing special."

Well, he wasn’t lying about that assessment at least. He’d rolled the gacha wheel today and gotten a Tier 1 spell called Voice Changer, which essentially allowed him to seamlessly switch his voice between male and female registers. It was honestly pretty useless in most situations.

But at least it had just saved their lives, so maybe the gacha wheel knew what it was doing after all.

The three of them moved forward quickly through the winding tunnels, trying to look purposeful and confident rather than desperate as they navigated the underground maze.

Every corner could hide cultists and every shadow could be their death.

After several tense minutes of walking that felt like hours, they finally reached a critical junction point. A set of three diverging tunnel entrances loomed ahead of them in the torchlit darkness.

Each massive passage led into complete blackness beyond the immediate light, with no obvious indication of which was the correct path to freedom.

The left tunnel... The center tunnel... The right tunnel...

All three looked identical... carved from the same dark stone, ascending at the same angle and offering no clues.

Neo leaned in dangerously close to Klaus and whispered as quietly as possible, barely audible even to someone right next to him.

"Which one is the correct path to take? If we choose wrong, we could end up trapped in a dead end or walking straight into their ritual chamber. We only get one chance at this."

Klaus reached carefully into his storage ring, moving slowly so the motion wouldn’t attract attention from any nearby cultists.

He brought out the Compass of Truth... He was thankful that he had brought it along with him or else it would have been running to a random location.

He pointed the ornate compass forward while hiding its distinctive golden glow with his body, keeping the enchanted item concealed deep within the folds of his stolen cult cloak so no one could see the light.

The enchanted arrow on the compass face spun once in a full circle, then twice, gathering information about their surroundings then it pointed definitively straight ahead at the center tunnel with absolute certainty.

Klaus leaned back and whispered to the others.

"Straight ahead. The center path. Follow my lead and stay close behind me. Don’t get separated no matter what happens."

They began running toward the center tunnel entrance as quickly and quietly as the situation allowed but halfway there, Neo’s hood slipped down from the movement, revealing his distinctive black hair.

Immediately, one of the cultists patrolling nearby noticed the anomaly and her eyes went wide with recognition.

"THE INTRUDERS ARE GETTING AWAY!" she shrieked at the top of her lungs. "THEY’RE HEADING FOR THE CENTER TUNNEL! STOP THEM!"

Within mere moments, several dozen cultists materialized from side passages and began chasing after them with bloodthirsty enthusiasm.

"KILL THEM!"

"BRING THEIR SOULS TO OUR GOD!"

"THEY WILL NOT ESCAPE!"

Neo looked back with panic.

"I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—"

"Just run!" Klaus shouted, abandoning all pretense of stealth now.

Klaus looked forward desperately. The entrance to the center cavern tunnel was only a few meters away now. They were almost—

Immediately, a brilliant flash of light erupted from inside the tunnel entrance itself and Klaus’s instincts screamed danger.

"DUCK!" he shouted.

A massive slash of pure death magic cleaved outward from within the tunnel, cutting through the air in a wide horizontal arc.

The three of them threw themselves to the ground.

The cultists chasing behind them were not so lucky or quick to react. The slash of condensed death magic cleaved through their bodies like they were made of paper, cutting them cleanly in half at the waist. Bodies fell in pieces as blood sprayed across stone.

A figure emerged from the center tunnel, surrounded by an aura of swirling purple mana that seemed to devour the light around it.

The Heir of Death.

She brought down her hand in a definitive gesture with her eyes cold behind her ornate mask.

"You will not be leaving this place alive. Your souls belong to my god now."

Klaus’s mind raced. They couldn’t fight her directly... she was far too powerful so they needed a different approach. He looked down and the compass pointed another direction.

"The other way!" Klaus immediately shouted, pivoting hard and pushing Seo toward the left tunnel entrance instead. "GO!"

The Heir of Death raised her hand to stop them with another death magic slash but in that split second, something appeared in the air directly above her head.

A sword made entirely of metal materialized out of nothing through Klaus’s Forge spell slashed downward at her skull with tremendous force.

The Heir was forced to redirect her attack upward, using her hand to slash the metal sword apart mid-swing and the blade shattered into fragments.

But by the time she’d dealt with that distraction, Klaus’s group had already disappeared into the left tunnel entrance at full sprint.

Other cultists were screaming and giving chase behind them like a mob of fanatics hungry for blood.

The Heir of Death stepped fully out of the center tunnel and watched them flee then she slowly went down to her knees in front of the women she had just killed with her death magic slash.

"My god, it is done as you commanded," she said reverently.

*So you have successfully implanted that atop the Hero?* a very old, inhuman voice asked directly in her mind.

She nodded, though no one else could see the gesture. "Yes. It has been placed."

She had seen it clearly when they’d been captured earlier... through the gap in the cloak that Neo was wearing during the initial ambush, a small medallion in the shape of an unblinking eye rested innocently in his pocket.

This cursed amulet was the exact reason she had carefully orchestrated their entire capture and brought them down here to the cult’s hidden base in the first place, rather than simply killing them on sight.

Now they didn’t need to sacrifice nearly as many lives to complete the awakening ritual. The Hero would do most of the work himself.

The Hero might not consciously realize it himself yet, but he was going to inevitably become an unwitting conduit to awaken the very ancient entity he was supposedly destined by prophecy to destroy.

His divine life force granted by the goddess, his pure spiritual energy, his connection to the celestial realm... from the very moment he had unknowingly taken that cursed amulet into his possession, even if he discovered it and threw it away in horror, the curse had already been permanently and irreversibly placed deep in the core of his heart and soul.

Though it might take considerable time to fully mature and would still require many blood sacrifices to accelerate the process, her god would absolutely awaken eventually. It was inevitable now. The trap had been perfectly laid.

*What about him?* the ancient god’s voice asked meaningfully.

Of course they were referencing the commoner who traveled alongside the Hero. He was no ordinary peasant after all. He was the current incarnation of the S—

*Why did you let him escape when you could have captured him?* the god finished.

"He has no use to us until he awakens to his true nature," the Heir explained calmly. "I simply wanted to see him up close at least once in this lifetime. And I must say, he’s far superior to his predecessor in temperament and willpower."

That lecherous man from the previous cycle would fall for any trap as long as it was set by a beautiful woman.

At least this incarnation had the decency not to fall for seduction, but rather had to be forced into the cult’s scheme through circumstance.

"Once he fully awakens to what he truly is, I will personally bring him over to our side," the Heir continued with absolute confidence. "We will not have a repeat of the last cycle’s failure. This time, everything will proceed according to plan."

The bodies of the cultists she had killed with her death magic began turning to dust, their essence flowing back into her hand as dark energy.

"We must succeed," she whispered. "For your return."

...

Klaus, Neo, and Seo ran desperately up a steep, wide stone staircase that seemed to climb endlessly upward through the mountain’s interior.

The cultists were still on their trail like a screaming mob that refused to give up.

"Wind Blade!" Neo shouted, thrusting his sword behind him.

"Wind Blade!" 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

"Wind Blade!"

He kept firing compressed blasts of cutting wind magic downward at their pursuers. Several cultists fell, their bodies torn apart by the invisible blades.

But the cultists began screaming back with equal fervor.

"DIE, HERETICS!"

"YOUR SOULS ARE OURS!"

Dark flames erupted from their hands... death magic fire that would kill instantly upon contact with living flesh, burning away both body and soul simultaneously.

The protagonist’s arms became a complete blur of motion as he switched tactics instantaneously. He began firing smaller, more numerous Wind Blades in rapid succession to intercept and destroy the incoming death flame projectiles while simultaneously cutting down the cultists who kept launching them.

’Like Master Vaecna taught me during that brutal training session in the mountains,’ Neo thought as he gripped his sword with both hands, pouring mana into it.

The blade began glowing bright green with heavily concentrated wind magic. ’If I compress the raw magic I use to fire these Wind Blades as much as physically possible, condensing it down to its absolute limit, and then compress it even further beyond what seems reasonable... the explosive destructive power upon release will be exponentially higher than a normal cast. That’s the secret technique of master-level combat wizards.’

Compressing spells to their absolute maximum density before releasing them was exactly how elite wizards unleashed their most devastating attacks on battlefields. It was the difference between a competent magic user and a true master of the craft.

Neo slashed forward with absolutely everything he had, compressing all that accumulated wind mana into what appeared to the naked eye to be a singular impossibly thin line of brilliant green light.

But that singular compressed line tore through the physical air like reality itself was being cut open. It absolutely murdered every cultist in its path. Bodies didn’t just fall... they came apart completely spilling blood on the staircase.

However, one particularly agile female cultist with enhanced reflexes managed to duck under the devastating slash at the absolute last possible second, dropping flat to the ground. Others quickly followed her desperate example, learning from her miraculous survival and copying her technique.

"Klaus, when are we going to reach the top?!" Neo shouted over his shoulder while still firing Wind Blades.

"It’s right up ahead!" Klaus called back then he turned to Seo. "Can I carry you? We’ll move faster!"

"What? No!" Neo protested immediately. "I can protect her while—"

But Seo nodded her acceptance, cutting off Neo’s objection.

Klaus scooped Seo up securely in his arms and activated Magnetic Field at absolute maximum power output. He channeled mana through his entire body, focusing it specifically on the metal components embedded in his boots and the trace metals in the stone staircase beneath them.

Using the fundamental principles of magnetic repulsion and attraction, Klaus pushed off the ground in a massive explosive shockwave of force that cracked the stone where he’d been standing.

He shot himself and Seo directly toward the distant exit opening like a rocket propelled by pure magical energy, covering dozens of meters in mere seconds.

The acceleration was intense enough to make Seo gasp and cling to him tightly.

"FUCK!" Neo cursed, suddenly finding himself alone on the staircase. He gathered wind mana into his feet and launched himself upward as well, jumping in massive leaps.

A rain of dark flame projectiles came at him from below, dozens of them filling the air.

Mid-jump, Neo twisted his body and slashed frantically at the flames, destroying most of them with precisely aimed Wind Blades but one death-flame made it through his defense.

Neo’s eyes widened as the dark fire touched his chest.

Klaus had already explained what these flames could do... the moment death magic flame touched a living being, it would consume everything, burning body and soul until nothing remained but—

Immediately, a brilliant golden light erupted from deep within Neo’s body, forming a protective barrier that canceled out the death flame completely before it could do any damage.

’Wha...?’

Neo landed hard at the top of the cavern opening, skidding backward from momentum. Without thinking, he spun and slashed multiple times at the stone ceiling of the opening behind him.

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

His Wind Blades carved through the rock, and the entire entrance began collapsing, sealing off the staircase and trapping the cultists below under tons of fallen stone.

Neo turned around, breathing hard, and saw that the tunnel ahead led to an opening with visible daylight... the mountain exterior was just ahead.

Freedom was so close he could taste it but Klaus had stopped moving forward completely. He was standing perfectly still, staring at something.

It wasn’t the Heir of Death blocking their path.

It was another woman, wrapped entirely in bandages like a mummy, but wearing the same ornate ceremonial robes that the Heir of Death wore. Only her eyes were visible through the wrappings and those were eyes that burned with fanatical madness.

"There is no hope for you," The bandaged woman said. "Your carriage has been destroyed... Your rider is dead.. You will remain here forever for us to sacrifice your souls to our eternal god. This is your fate. This is your destiny. This is—"

Neo didn’t wait for her to finish the villain monologue.

He charged past Klaus with wind mana generating violently around his sword, forming a spiraling vortex of cutting force.

"NEO, DON’T!" Klaus shouted in warning but Neo didn’t listen.

The protagonist was done with this cult, done with being hunted, done with everything. He gathered every bit of wind magic he could channel and poured it all into a single devastating thrust.

His blade shot forward, thrusting completely through the bandaged woman’s chest in one explosive motion.

The shockwave from the impact was tremendous, and blood poured down onto the stone ground.

"FUCK!" Klaus shouted.

This woman wasn’t supposed to be attacked directly because she had the specific magical ability of—

POP!

A similar gaping hole suddenly appeared in the exact center of Neo’s chest, as though he had been stabbed through by an invisible sword in the exact same way he’d just stabbed her.

The protagonist fell to his knees with blood pouring from the wound and then he collapsed face-first onto the ground, bleeding out rapidly.

She had Reflection magic.

...Any damage dealt to her was perfectly reflected back onto her attacker.