Chapter 314 Death, Death

Boom—Dark red infernal flames abruptly erupted, carrying a suffocating stench of sulfur. An invisible shockwave blasted outward like an explosion, sending rippling currents through the air.

Xia Nan's longsword halted in midair. An invisible resistance made the blade move as if slicing through water—heavy and sluggish.

Sensing extreme danger ahead, Xia Nan decisively pulled back his strike and instinctively raised his Arm Shield to protect his front.

A split second later, the shockwave blasted both him and his sword backward.

[Tidal Stabilization] silently took effect, drastically weakening the force of the blast. He only tumbled backward twice before regaining his center of gravity and landing lightly on his feet.

In contrast, the dwarf and the female Swordsman fared much worse against the surging blast.

Thordin came out relatively fine. His incredibly dense, stocky frame made him like a block of solid metal. After being knocked over, he tumbled twice across the ground and climbed back to his feet.

His shirt and trousers were already corroded to rags by the toxic fog, so a fresh coating of dirt and mud hardly made him look any more miserable.

Margaret, however, took a harder hit. Despite her outstanding performance against the devil's previous spells, she clearly hadn't expected the enemy to unleash another spell at such close range after casting so many in quick succession.

Under the effects of Slow, she was practically frozen in place. The surging shockwave swept her completely off her feet, hurling her far across the cavern.

She gritted her teeth in obvious pain as she struggled to stand. Such a sudden, violent impact had clearly taken its toll.

With no time to worry about his temporary allies, Xia Nan immediately locked his eyes on the center of the battlefield the moment he landed.

"Rumble—"

An ominous, blasphemous light bathed the entire underground nest in an infernal, deep blood-red hue.

A pungent stench overpowered everything else in the air—a sickening blend of sulfur, burning corpses, and molten metal. It was the foul reek of the deepest depths of the Nine Hells.

Abi remained frozen in the exact posture he had struck when signing the contract. The one-handed sword at his waist, the small buckler on his back, and the ordinary leather armor on his torso all marked him as a lowly, bottom-tier Adventurer.

Yet in this moment, illuminated by the fel flames that warped the very air around him, a lifetime of insignificance vanished right alongside his dissipating consciousness.

He looked like the glowing scales along a dragon's neck right before it unleashed its Dragon Breath, or a twisted insectoid monstrosity squirming violently inside its cocoon, on the verge of bursting free.

His body was tearing itself apart from the inside.

Dark red, magma-like fissures erupted from his heart, spiderwebbing rapidly across his skin. The purest infernal fel energy pulsed and flowed through those glowing cracks, radiating a profoundly evil light.

His fragile leather armor and shirt were incinerated into ash. The dark red flames clinging to his body writhed and surged like living entities, greedily devouring the oxygen of the Material Plane and scorching the earth beneath his feet into a black, viscous sludge.

His muscles spasmed and bulged unnaturally. His bones shifted and elongated, emitting a sickening series of sharp cracks that set teeth on edge.

Abi's body was being brutally inflated and stretched, forcibly reshaped with a total disregard for whether the vessel could survive it. It was being warped to accommodate a terrifying power that far surpassed that of a Mortal.

Yet there was no trace of pain on his face.

Instead, his eyes had completely changed. They now radiated bottomless malice, replaced by pure, glowing orbs of dark infernal flame.

The contract was signed. The young Adventurer's body and soul now belonged completely to a powerful fiend from beyond the Material Plane.

His original consciousness had been mercilessly swept into the darkest corners of his mind.

The one controlling this body now was the infernal Baron named "Saloyan".

Using this vessel as a natural bridge between the two worlds, massive torrents of fel energy poured directly from Saloyan's true body in Purgatory into Abi's battered frame.

Just like his rapidly stretching limbs, his terrifying aura climbed higher and higher.

Xia Nan's expression remained grim. Under his sharp Perception, the enemy's rapidly expanding aura only made him realize how much worse this situation was getting.

He had done everything he could to intervene, but he still hadn't managed to stop Abi before the contract was sealed.

He didn't know the exact terms of the contract, but given the scene before him, it was obviously some bargain trading the boy's body or soul to the devil.

Judging by his current state, Abi had likely lost even the most basic control over his own body, his consciousness completely faded.

Their opponent was no longer a rookie Adventurer borrowing a sliver of a devil's power. They were now facing the devil himself.

These thoughts raced through Xia Nan's mind in a flash.

Blistering waves of sulfur-tainted heat repeatedly washed over his face.

This wasn't some video game cutscene. There was no way Xia Nan was going to just stand there and let the enemy complete their Stage 2 transformation.

Pushing off the ground, the phantom of a black wolf had just begun to form a blurry outline around him, but before he could charge forward—

His eyes darted to the side.

In the deep shadows just outside the reach of Abi's fel flames, a thin figure with an incredibly faint presence was silently creeping closer.

Was it the Rogue from the Adventurer Squad?

Suddenly, everything clicked.

Due to his positioning and other factors, the Rogue had reacted slightly slower than Xia Nan and the female Swordsman. Paradoxically, this meant he hadn't been hit by the Slow spell, and he had even managed to quietly slip past the ensuing shockwave.

As a result, when Xia Nan and the other two were blasted away, the Rogue ended up being the closest person to the devil.

And he was clearly taking full advantage of this precious opportunity, handed to him by a twist of fate.

Activating his class abilities, he melded into the shadows and crept forward.

The moment the transforming devil entered his striking range, he exploded into action!

"Swish!"

Holding absolutely nothing back, Goldensand unleashed his full strength.

The instant he broke out of stealth, his speed surged exponentially.

The dagger in his hand was wrapped in incredibly dense shadow energy; at a glance, the blade itself seemed to be forged from pure darkness.

This was [Shadow Assassination]—a combat technique he had acquired upon reaching Level 3 as a Rogue. Tailored perfectly to his combat style, it was currently his most frequently used and deadliest offensive skill.

He had already pushed its proficiency all the way to "Mastery," which was exactly how he had managed to advance to his current rank of Level 4.

Bugbears, ghouls, perytons—countless powerful enemies had already met their end at the edge of this very technique.

Goldensand knew exactly how much devastation this strike could unleash.

He was brimming with confidence.

Even if this lowly Adventurer's body had been hijacked by a devil, the transformation process was clearly far from complete.

As long as his strike hit a vital spot, even if it didn't end the battle outright, it would effortlessly inflict a grievous wound, severely crippling the devil's overall strength post-transformation.

Goldensand's estimation of his combat technique's power was dead-on. If anything, he was actually overestimating Abi's current physical defenses.

If he managed to land this attack on Abi's neck or heart, it was highly likely that Saloyan's transformation would be violently interrupted.

Unfortunately, witnessing the devil's barrage of magic had misled the Rogue. Goldensand had mistakenly assumed he was dealing with a pure Spellcaster, drastically underestimating the enemy's physical reaction speed.

Even if Saloyan hadn't clawed his way out of the "Blood War", the sheer combat experience he had accumulated over his long lifespan easily eclipsed that of everyone else in the cavern combined.

Bolstered by his fel-enhanced, rapidly skyrocketing physical attributes, Saloyan instantly pinpointed Goldensand's exact location the moment the Rogue drew near.

Just as the Rogue leaped from the shadows, dagger raised high and suspended helplessly in midair without any room to dodge—

Saloyan turned and raised a hand.

Wreathed in dark red flames, a hand noticeably broader than any mortal's clamped directly over Goldensand's face.

Before the Rogue could even struggle, the infernal fel fire from Purgatory surged through the devil's arm and flooded directly into Goldensand's body.

"Ahhhhhh!!!"

This veteran Adventurer had undergone professional training from an assassin syndicate, maintaining his composure even when struck by the [Fear] spell.

Yet now, subjected to the ravages of infernal fel energy, he was hit by a soul-scorching agony so intense that even the most iron-willed knight would have broken under it.

His horrifying shrieks and wails sounded like those of a sheltered noble girl who had never known hardship in her life.

"Clang."

The agony was brief.

The fel flames poured through his face and skull, flooding his entire body.

Saloyan casually swung him by the head, and the ear-piercing shrieks came to an abrupt, chilling halt.

The Rogue hung in the air like a piece of laundry on a drying rack, limp as a strip of rotting jerky.

His arms dangled lifelessly, his entire body rigid and dead.

Saloyan opened his hand.

The thin, flame-wreathed corpse collapsed limply to the ground.

Where his face had once been clamped beneath the devil's palm, there was nothing left but a horrifying, featureless mass of charred flesh.

The Rogue, Goldensand, was dead.

"Damn it!"

"Goldensand!!!"

Not far away, the dwarf Thordin—having been less affected by the shockwave due to his sheer weight—had just witnessed his comrade's brutal execution up close.

His wide eyes went bloodshot. Roaring in absolute frenzy, he hoisted his Faceted Hammer and charged.

Behind him, Margaret moved even faster.

The moment she had noticed Goldensand making his move, she had already lunged forward with her sword, desperate to back him up.

By the time Goldensand's corpse hit the ground, she had already sprinted past the slower-reacting dwarf.

She was only half a heartbeat slower than the phantom wolf's howl that had just echoed through the cavern.

Tragically, just as before, the fastest entity on the battlefield was still the twisted, dark red figure cloaked in fel fire.

Hum—

A burst of magical light flashed.

With the contract complete, the lump of humanoid flesh that had served as the physical contract vanished from the battlefield, teleported straight back to Purgatory.

However, the summoning circle etched beneath it remained entirely intact.

Blood-red flames flowed across its surface, quietly rewriting the intricate magical patterns. Finally, the exact instant the Rogue's corpse struck the floor, the circle claimed the veteran Class Holder's flesh as a sacrifice.

It formed a brief, temporary, one-way gate connecting straight to Purgatory.

Summoning a detachment of the Baron's own infernal subordinates into the Material Plane.

Since this was merely a projection, lacking the overwhelming strength of his true body in the Hells, Saloyan couldn't physically pull his entire army through.

He could only summon a handful. Just seven devils crossed over in total.

Four Challenge Rating 1 "Imps", two Challenge Rating 2 "Spined Devils", and a final—

"Barbed Devil"—Challenge Rating 3.

The screeching of the goblins had barely faded from the cavern, and now it was immediately replaced by the maddened, shrill howling of devils.

To these fiends—creatures born in brutally hostile environments and raised on endless, bloody slaughter—the Material Plane was an absolute paradise.

They couldn't wait to unleash their maddening, sadistic desires upon the fragile, worm-like mortals that inhabited it.

The encounter had been brief, but Saloyan had already accurately gauged the combat strength of everyone in the room.

Thus, he deployed his newly summoned devils with cruel efficiency.

The very second they materialized, the four Imps and two Spined Devils were commanded to swarm the remaining three members of the Blackwood Squad.

Meanwhile, he directed the highest-tier fiend—the Barbed Devil—straight at the greatest threat on the battlefield: Xia Nan.

"Grah!!!"

The frenzied, ear-piercing shrieks made everyone's eardrums throb with pain.

Dark red, leathery bat wings beat the sulfur-choked air. Their scaled bodies bulged with muscle and were littered with thick scars and scabs. The Imps were barely larger than goblins, yet they possessed the exact same Challenge Rating as a Bugbear.

They were completely immune to mundane fire and poison, while boasting heavy physical resistance against freezing temperatures and all non-magical slashing, piercing, and bludgeoning damage.

The oversized bat wings strapped to their backs granted them highly evasive flight capabilities.

Worse, they possessed genuine intelligence and were fully capable of wielding weapons.

Out in open terrain, just a single one of these Imps would be an absolute nightmare for eighty percent of the Adventurer Squads in Rivervale Town.

Yet in the Baator Nine Hells, these creatures were nothing but the absolute bottom rung of the hierarchy—lowly, ant-like grunts deployed strictly as expendable cannon fodder.

The Oathkeeper Blackwood Squad consisted of three Level 4 veteran Adventurers and a Level 1 mage. Under normal circumstances, even if they were caught completely off guard, they could dispatch these fiends without suffering any casualties.

But that wasn't the case today. Their Rogue was already dead, and their Spellcaster was completely paralyzed by the dual effects of the [Fear] and [Stinking Cloud] spells, entirely incapable of fighting for the foreseeable future.

That left only Margaret and Thordin capable of engaging the enemy head-on.

Their high Class Levels provided them with enough combat techniques and raw physical stats to weather the fiends' onslaught, but ending the battle quickly was now entirely out of the question.

Forced to fight outnumbered in an intensely high-pressure melee, tiny oversights and fatal mistakes—errors these veterans would never normally make—began to slip through.

"One, two, three—"

"Wait! Why are there only three Imps?!"

"Where is the last one?!"

Swinging her longsword relentlessly to hold the devils back, Margaret's heart suddenly skipped a beat as a chill shot straight up her spine.

Gritting her teeth, she pushed back the devil in front of her.

She abruptly turned her head, only to hear a blood-curdling scream accompanied by the sickening crunch of metal tearing through flesh.

A short distance away stood the young, inexperienced mage, whose injuries had only just been mended by a Healing Potion.

Now, he was collapsing weakly to the ground.

Accompanied by an Imp's shrill cackling, a rusty, blood-stained steel pitchfork had been driven straight through the boy's heart.

The mage, Joshua, was dead.