Chapter 246: Blessed Mace
Chapter 246: Blessed Mace
Lancet obeyed without argument, moving half a step to her rear flank as she drove forward.
"Blessed Reinforcements," she declared, and gold surged around her sword in a radiant line that made the weapon look almost angelic in the rotten street light. Then her whole body moved.
She took the first Bug Demon with a straight thrust that punched through its shell and out the back of its skull.
Without pausing, she pivoted on the same step and cut across the second Demon’s shoulder with such force that the creature’s arm nearly detached at the socket.
The third lunged in from the side, jaws wide, and Astensia answered by changing the form of her sword. "Blessed Blade form! Blessed Mace!"
The greatsword instantly transformed into a giant golden chain mace, with deadly spikes jutting out of metal ball-head. Astensia leaped up and swung the weapon upward with enough holy force to send a shockwave through the street.
The mace struck the under chin of the Bug Demon — if that was even possible. The spikes pierced into its chitin, puncturing the flesh and sending blood and demon goo splashing everywhere.
The second Demon was torn in half by the force of the blow before the first had even finished falling.
Lancet could only watch for half a heartbeat before a fourth shape emerged from the wall behind the ruined storefront, and his own body snapped back into motion.
That one came for him low.
Too low.
He let the creature’s first strike pass beneath the sword by a fraction, then turned his wrist and dropped the Guillotine into the line of its spine. The blade cut through armor, then flesh, then the stone beneath it.
The Demon shuddered, tried to crawl forward anyway, and Lancet finished it with a vicious vertical cut that split the skull.
[Heroine, Astensia, has killed 3 Demons (Rank: Descending)]
[You have killed a Demon (Rank: Descending)]
⸢ Astensia has gained 900 EXP ⸥
⸢ You have gained 18000 EXP ⸥
⸢ You have gained 150 CP ⸥
⸢ You have gained 300 EXP ⸥
Lancet’s eyes flicked over the system text as it climbed.
Even with the fairplay policy, the numbers were still absurdly high. And now with Spectra, Kestrel and Espel added to his roster, his EXP was going to skyrocket again, and this time, Lancet had no plans to hesitate.
He was going to level up right after this.
Also, the Phantom Ring had 4 charges now. Astensia’s forty-three kills had charged the artifact up with her powers. Soon, the kills of his other Heroines would start stacking up and Lancet would have a stack of various powerful Skills to use when he pleased.
Sometimes, he wondered how the artifact was even a B-Grade.
Despite the excitement, he kept his focus forward. There was no room to waste attention on anything but the next strike.
The demons did not stop.
A Winged Demon dropped from above and screeched as it went for Astensia’s blind side. Lancet pivoted and took its wing off with a rising cut before she even needed to turn.
Another Bug Demon hit the wall and skittered down toward his shoulder; he spun the Guillotine in a tight guard and split its body in half when it tried to leap.
Astensia moved beside him like a golden hurricane, her blade and body working together so completely that it barely looked like she was attacking at all. She was just present in whatever space the Demons had hoped to occupy, and then the space was empty.
A Fallen Demon rushed Lancet from the side.
He slipped inside its claw swipe, used rhythm breaking to make the creature overreach, then stepped through the gap and cut from shoulder to hip. The body staggered a step, and he finished it with a backhand slice across the neck.
Another Demon came from the opposite rooftop and tried to pounce. Lancet raised the blade, let his Grace thread through the sword, and blocked the impact with enough force to send the thing bouncing backward in a spray of black saliva.
Astensia vaulted the space beside him, landed on the demon’s back in a single motion, and drove her Blessed Blade down through its heart.
[You have killed 3 Demons (Rank: Fallen)]
[Heroine, Astensia, has killed 6 Demon (Rank: Fallen, Descending)]
Lancet was breathing harder now, but not from panic. From exhilaration.
Kestrel’s lessons were living in his muscles now, and the old combat sense Astensia had drilled into him during training was riding on top of that, making every cut cleaner, every step more exact, every kill more efficient.
Behind them, where they had already carved a path through the broken street, Espel started to revitalize
Her hands lifted slowly, and her Gravewings started to break down the thick miasma coating the ground and walls. Kestrel worked mindlessly, but then, a pack of humanoid Demons who weren’t smart enough to know when someone was in the mood, attacked her with jaws full of black saliva.
Espel’s eyes raised and glared daggers at them. Then, she extended her hands towards them and shot out actual daggers.
Well, not literal daggers. They were wingblades; small purple wings of her moths with sharp edges like razors.
They cut across the Demons’ bodies, causing tiny scratches that seemed minor at first glance. But then, their flesh began to rot where the wings had slashed, and rapidly too.
It was as if the ugly creatures had been denied permission to remain whole. They all continued to rot until their eerie skeletons remained. When the skeleton fell to the ground, it dissipated into dust.
Espel lowered her eyes and continued with what she was doing, like killing those demons had just been a small inconvenience. Swatting a fly, basically.
Lancet finished another Demon and saw the notification blink in front of him just as the next one broke from the far alley.
⸢ Heroine, Espel, has killed 5 Demons (Rank: Fallen) ⸥
⸢ You have gained 500 EXP ⸥
⸢ You have gained 150 CP ⸥
Lancet barked out a laugh as he pivoted into a killing cut. "Heh," he muttered, once the slashed Demon fell. "Even Espel has started paying dividends."
Astensia cut through another pair of Fallen Demons and barked, "Left side!"
Lancet turned, saw a cluster of three more demons breaking from a side alley, and answered without hesitation. One slash. One sidestep. One thrust.
The first Demon went down, the second lost its jaw to a diagonal cut, and the third hit him low enough to force him to plant his heel, twist his body, and drive the sword into its skull from above.
The street around them was becoming a graveyard of broken bodies and splattered purple-black blood.
Espel’s moths drifted through the aftermath behind them, eating the lingering miasma and softening the corruption around the edges. Butterflies followed after, leaving threads of life in their wake as the dead stone began to show the first thin signs of green again.
Lancet could hear the other groups somewhere farther off in the town.
Thor’s thunder.
Kestrel’s blade.
Spectra’s laughter, faint and dangerous on the wind.
Here, on his street, it was only him, Espel and Astensia and the rising fury of the Demons trying to keep them from the center.
A pack of six broke from the shadowed archway ahead.
Lancet stared at them, then laughed once, breathless and fierce. "Good. There’s more."
Astensia looked over at him, one eyebrow lifted. "Enjoying yourself?"
He rolled the Radiant Guillotine back into a ready guard, eyes bright with the same savage focus that had carried him through every lesson Kestrel had thrown at him. Blood was on the stone. Blood was on his blade, and his pulse was high enough to feel in his hands.
He grinned.
"Oh, you betcha."
Then he lunged straight into the pack, sword swinging, and the first thing the nearest Demon saw before Lancet’s blade came down was his face twisted into a feral, delighted snarl.
"Come at me, demogorgon!"