Chapter 63: Bloodshed

Leon drove his forearm into the side of a Corrupt beast’s jaw and felt the impact travel through his bones before disappearing into the ability he had been relying on for the past several hours.

He released the stored force through his other arm.

The blow folded the creature’s head sideways with a wet crack, and it collapsed at his feet.

Leon barely had time to breathe before another one came through the smoke.

He caught the creature’s claws against his forearms. The impact forced him backward, boots grinding through the dirt as the beast snarled inches from his face. His shoulders shook under the pressure. He was already carrying more pain than he wanted to admit, a bruised rib grinding every time he inhaled, a cut above his eyebrow filling his vision with a thin red haze.

"Leon!"

He heard the warning just before a sword split the creature’s skull.

The body sagged against him.

Leon shoved it away.

"Thanks."

The student who had helped him nodded, then turned back toward the horde.

There was no time for anything else.

The battlefield had stopped resembling an examination.

Candidates were spread across the island in broken groups, fighting wherever they could find enough ground to stand on. The Corrupt creatures no longer moved with any recognizable formation. They poured toward the center from every direction, climbing over the dead and tearing through anyone too slow to move.

Leon saw a girl trying to drag an injured boy away from the horde.

"Help me!"

Her voice cracked.

Three creatures were already moving toward them.

Leon ran.

His legs felt heavy, but he forced them forward, raising both arms as one of the beasts lunged. Its claws slammed into his guard, and the force buried itself inside his body. Pain flashed across his shoulders.

He absorbed it.

Then he released everything at once.

The monster flew backward and crashed through another creature.

The girl stared at him.

"Move!" Leon shouted.

She grabbed the injured boy and ran.

Leon turned toward the next wave.

Another candidate was screaming.

"Someone! Please!"

A Corrupt creature had him by the waist.

Leon watched as the thing pulled.

The student’s fingers clawed helplessly at the ground.

"P-please!"

The sound ended abruptly.

Leon flinched when the creature’s jaws closed around his head.

He looked away.

There were too many.

He couldn’t save everyone.

That realization sat in his chest heavier than any wound.

A group near the center was still holding together.

Lucian’s people.

They had managed to form a defensive line around the wounded, with several strong fighters rotating positions while others rested. Kyla stood near the front, sword in hand, her clothes soaked with dirt and blood.

She looked exhausted.

So did everyone else.

But they were still standing.

Leon felt something loosen in his chest when he saw them.

At least they were doing well.

Then a scream came from their left.

Kyla turned.

Leon saw the hesitation.

One tiny break in her focus.

A Corrupt beast came through the gap.

She twisted just as its arm came down, raising her sword.

The impact shattered the blade.

The creature’s fist struck her chest.

Leon heard the crack from where he stood.

Kyla was thrown backward and hit the ground hard.

She tried to rise.

Her hands pushed against the dirt.

Her legs trembled beneath her.

"Get up," someone shouted.

Kyla coughed.

Blood spilled from her mouth.

She looked toward the voice.

Then toward the hole at the center of the battlefield.

Lucian wasn’t there.

For a second, her expression softened under the pain, tears streaming down her eyes.

She tried to smile.

The creature came down again.

Its foot crushed her into the ground.

Leon froze.

Steel struck flesh.

People screamed.

And Kyla did not move again.

"Leon!"

He snapped back.

A creature slammed into him.

He caught it with both hands, teeth clenched as its weight drove him down. His knees nearly buckled.

He screamed and released every bit of stored force.

The monster flew away.

Leon stumbled after it, breathing hard.

His hands were shaking.

He looked toward the center again.

Kyla was gone beneath the bodies.

Leon gripped his fists and forced himself forward.

There were still people behind him.

He could mourn later.

If there was a later.

---

Caelus felt the world compress.

The creature before them had folded inward so violently that the flesh which once sprawled across the cavern now clung tightly to a single humanoid frame.

Its new shape was narrower, taller, and somehow worse.

Faces were pressed across its chest and shoulders, mouths opening and closing independently. Thin arms grew from its back like unfinished limbs, folding against one another before retracting into the mass. An eye opened beneath its collarbone, blinked twice, then sank beneath the flesh.

The pressure struck Caelus so hard that his knee hit the ground.

His sword nearly slipped from his fingers.

He sucked in a breath and immediately regretted it. The air around the creature seemed to have thickened into something almost solid, every breath dragging against his lungs. Sound bent strangely in its vicinity.

The scrape of his boot against stone reached him half a second late, while the creature’s breathing came through the cavern as a low vibration rather than a proper sound.

Even the space around it looked wrong.

The darkness behind its body seemed stretched.

The air distorted around its shoulders, bending the edges of the cavern until Caelus couldn’t decide whether the creature had moved or the world itself had shifted.

Across from him, Eve had lowered both blades.

Lucian had gone pale.

Caelus felt his own body starting to surrender.

His vision blurred.

Then he forced his head upward.

"Snap out of it!"

His voice came out harsher than he intended, almost a rasp.

Eve’s eyes shifted toward him.

Lucian blinked.

Caelus shoved himself upright.

"One wrong move and we’ll die! Stop fucking holding back!"

The words snapped them out of it.

Eve drew a quick breath and tightened her grip.

Caelus reached into his inventory.

"Eve, give all the cores you found to Lucian."

She pulled the collected cores from her storage and tossed them toward him.

Lucian caught one of them.

Then stared at it.

"It’s a corrupted one!"

"So what!" Caelus shouted. "Should we wait until you meditate to purify it? We’re going to die. Purify it forcefully with your light and consume them all. Prepare your most powerful attack. You’re the only one who can damage it."

Lucian hesitated.

Caelus looked at him.

"Now."

Lucian crushed the core.

Sacred Light erupted through his hand.

Then the corrupted mana inside the core began boiling.

Black vapor leaked between Lucian’s fingers as the golden light forced its way through every crack, burning away the corruption while the remaining mana surged into his body. His shoulder jerked. His breath caught sharply, and the veins along his wrist darkened before the Sacred Light chased the discoloration away.

He swallowed.

Then took another.

The pressure inside the cavern seemed to increase as the creature watched him.

Caelus pulled out the cores he’d been carrying and shoved them toward him.

"These too."

Lucian caught them.

"Caelus—"

"Use them."

Lucian crushed another.

The light around him grew brighter as the corrupted energy fought to spread through him, and for a moment black streaks appeared beneath the skin of his neck. He clenched his jaw until the muscles stood out.

Then the corruption burned away.

He consumed what remained.

Caelus reached into his inventory and pulled out the three cores he had kept.

He crushed the first.

Corrupted mana slammed through his circuits in a violent surge, cold at first, then burning so intensely that his fingers spasmed around the core fragments. His stomach twisted as the foreign mana scraped along his channels, forcing itself into every corner of his body and colliding with the cleaner mana already moving through his core.

His heartbeat thundered.

The corruption surged upward.

His vision darkened from the edges inward.

Caelus’s breath caught.

Black spread through his irises until almost nothing remained of their original color.

The blue of his pupils stayed visible in the center.

He crushed the second core.

The sensation doubled.

His muscles tightened without his permission, mana racing through them so quickly that his fingertips went numb. Something cold crawled behind his eyes. He could feel his own pulse there.

He consumed the last.

The world tilted.

Caelus swallowed against the bile rising in his throat.

His mana core strained beneath the sudden density.

He forced it down.

The creature moved.

Eve disappeared.

Shadow swallowed her body for an instant before she burst forward, both blades crossing toward the creature’s throat.

Caelus turned toward Lucian.

The Hero had already begun chanting.

The syllables came in a strange progression, full of broken stops and sounds that seemed to overlap each other.

"Vael’ka... zhur en’Ai... Soraeth Kha..."

Lucian crushed another core.

Golden light crawled over his body.

"Ri’avel... ozh ka’rin... Thael Veyr..."

The chant continued beneath the violence.

Eve’s body shot past him.

The creature’s blow caught her squarely in the side, sending her skidding across the stone until her boots finally dug into the ground and stopped her. She remained crouched for a second, one hand pressed against the floor while blood ran freely from the split in her forehead and down her cheek.

Then she looked at his eyes.

"Done?"

Her voice was rough, but there was still that faint edge of excitement buried beneath her ragged breathing.

Caelus stared at her.

"Use your other senses."

Veil Mist exploded from his body.

Vapor surged through the cavern in a violent wave, spreading across the ground and climbing through the air until the entire battlefield disappeared beneath a thick, suffocating haze. The mist swallowed the monster’s distorted silhouette, drowned the broken stone beneath their feet, and curled around Eve and Lucian before settling over everything.

Caelus stopped holding back.

He let the Eclipse Ring take over.

His perception expanded.

The mist became more than something he could see.

He felt every disturbance inside it.

His senses pushed even further.

Pain stabbed through his ears.

Blood leaked from his nose.

Something warm ran from the corners of his eyes, and when he opened his mouth to breathe, he tasted the iron already filling it.

His knees threatened to give out.

Caelus forced them straight.

The world had become unbearably loud without making a sound.

Somewhere inside that storm of information, the creature moved.