Chapter 203: Corisande Everwood

Corisande's yell was so loud, it rivalled even the screams of the Night Banshees. The pain in it was profound, the heartbreak, the realization that she would never see Corvell again.

It all poured out and pierced the shuddering darkness. And with that yell, she had reached down, furiously navigating into the deepest, coldest part of her mana pool.

Then she activated her sole S-Grade Skill. The ⸢Thread of Fragility⸥.

Right then, for a single, agonizing second, the world seemed to freeze. The violent, swirling mist halted mid-air. The horrific, unhinged jaws of the swooping Night Banshees locked in place.

Even Aethelstan, his face pale and twisted in panic as he blindly swung his broadsword, became a living statue.

From the center of Corisande's chest, a blinding burst of light erupted. Thousands of translucent, glowing threads exploded outward.

Radiant and green, they moved like they were sentient, like raw, living nerves. The threads whipped through the frozen battlefield.

They bypassed the physical armor of the surviving Awakeners, phasing harmlessly through Deron's plating, Bromm's thick skin, and Aethelstan's royal crest.

But the moment they made contact with the spectral, translucent green flesh of the Night Banshees, they struck like vipers.

Zip. Zip. Zip.

The glowing green nerves burrowed violently into the ethereal bodies of the Level 40 monsters, stitching themselves through the Banshees' Demon Cores.

⸢Defense Down⸥

⸢Health Siphoned⸥

⸢Structure Compromised⸥

The system notifications flashed vividly in Corisande's wet eyes.

Once the threads anchored, the world snapped violently back to speed.

Corisande immediately collapsed to her knees in the damp dirt. She gasped for air as if she had been held underwater, her chest heaving, her entire body trembling violently as her mana pool was instantly drained to critical, near-fatal levels.

The Banshees didn't seem to realize what had just happened to them. Their attacks were slower, but they continued to attack all the same, screaming at the fleeing Awakeners.

"Run! Return to the Gate!" Aethelstan screamed, his voice cracking with terror as he realized the monsters were momentarily stunted.

He turned his back on the enemy, abandoning his pride, and bolted for the swirling blue-gray vortex. "Fall back!"

Bromm, Dagna, and Vadrian scrambled backward, slipping in the mud as they rushed to get behind the collapsed Princess and toward the safety of the portal.

Nessa didn't run. The Shadow Assassin stayed planted, her dark eyes analyzing the sudden, flickering vulnerability of the Banshees.

Glancing at the Elven Princess, she realized that Corisande had used her skill, which meant the Demons' structure was compromised.

Nessa whipped her head around toward Stenya, the terrified Arcanist who had just leaped over a sonar blast.

"Stenya!" Nessa roared over the wailing of the spirits. "Use an Explosive Shield! Now!"

Stenya was weeping, her hands shaking violently as she gripped her staff, but the command pierced through her panic. She looked at Nessa who gave her a serious glare.

Throwing all their differences aside, Stenya quickly obeyed. If there was one thing she knew, it was that Nessa was smart.

So, she slammed the base of her staff into the earth and channeled her mana into the explosion shield.

"⸢Explosive Shield⸥!" Stenya cried out.

A massive, semi-circle of brilliant, blinding golden energy erupted from the ground, snapping into place over Corisande, Nessa, Deron, and Stenya just as the Night Banshees recovered enough to retaliate.

Furious, a cluster of the spectral women swarmed the golden dome. They unhinged their jaws, their hollow eyes flaring with malice, and unleashed a point-blank, dark-sonar shriek meant to shatter the barrier and turn the Awakeners inside to ash.

The dark sonar slammed into the golden magic.

But because Corisande's threads had entirely hollowed out their defenses, the Banshees couldn't withstand the shield's secondary effect.

The moment the sonar made contact, the golden semi-circle absorbed the kinetic shock and violently exploded outward.

A shockwave of raw, searing arcane energy blasted directly into the monsters' faces.

Because their structure was completely compromised, the Banshees couldn't absorb the blast. Their spectral bodies shattered like fragile glass.

They broke apart into fragments of dissipating light, their horrific screams abruptly silenced as they vanished completely into nothingness.

Stenya was lucky to be the one to reap the rewards of the kill, but even as her sight was filled with the notification of her boon, she was in no mood to celebrate.

The immediate vicinity was cleared, yes, however, the chilling wails of more Banshees echoed from deeper within the silver-treed forest.

They had seconds, at best.

Corisande pushed herself up on one weak, trembling arm. Her vision was swimming, her ears ringing from the explosion. Just a few feet away, lying in the disturbed dirt, was the gray pile of Corvell's ashes.

Tears streamed down her dirt-streaked face.

"Corvell..." she sobbed, her fingers digging into the mud as she desperately tried to crawl toward the remains of her friend. "I have to... I have to bring him..."

Strong hands suddenly clamped down under her armpits.

Nessa and Deron hoisted the Elven Princess off the ground, hauling her backward.

"He's gone, Princess!" Deron yelled, his armored boots slipping as he dragged her heavy, exhausted weight toward the swirling vortex. "We have to go! Now!"

"What's the hold up!" Aethelstan screamed from the threshold of the Gate, his face pale, entirely stripped of his usual arrogance. "Don't just stand there, drag her through!"

"No! Please!" Corisande fought them, weakly thrashing her legs, her hand reaching out desperately toward the small pile of gray dust. "Let me go! Corvell!"

"I'm sorry, Corisande," Nessa gritted her teeth, pulling with all her might. "I'm so sorry."

Together, the Assassin and the Knight hauled the weeping Princess backward into the swirling, smoky abyss of the Gamma Gate.

As the magical vortex swallowed her, pulling her out of the haunted nighttime forest and back toward the Sunstone Lands, Corisande's final, devastating scream echoed through the closing rift.

"No!"

The Gate snapped shut, leaving the quiet, silver forest to its eternal gloom, and the ashes of the elven Healer to scatter in the chilling wind alongside the other dead Heroes.

—---—

The swirling blue-gray vortex violently expelled the surviving Awakeners back into the ruined vineyard of the Sunstone Lands.

They hit the dirt hard, tumbling over the withered grapevines and coughing up the residual, suffocating smoke of the Gamma Gate.

Silence.

It lasted for quite a long moment. The only sound in the vineyard was the ragged, desperate panting of the survivors.

They were a broken assembly. Bromm, the stout dwarven Barbarian, dropped his heavy axe and fell to his hands and knees, dry-heaving into the dirt.

Vadrian sat completely paralyzed, his eyes wide and vacant, staring at nothing as the memory of his comrades turning to ash looped in his mind.

Stenya had curled herself into a tight ball, her shoulders shaking with violent, uncontrollable sobs.

Deron and Nessa landed heavily, instantly letting go of Corisande. Nessa immediately scrambled into a crouched, defensive stance, her dark eyes darting around the vineyard as if expecting the Night Banshees to pour out of the rift.

Even the stoic Shadow Assassin was trembling, the overwhelming reality of a Demon Gate having completely shattered her composure.

Aethelstan stumbled out last.

The Crown Prince of the Human Kingdom looked entirely pathetic. His pristine royal armor was caked in black mud and gray ash. His chest heaved as he gasped for air, his golden eyes wide with residual terror.

The paralyzing fear that had gripped him inside the Gate was still suffocating him, but as he looked around the sunlit vineyard and realized he was safe, that fear rapidly mutated into something else to protect his fragile ego.

Rage.

He needed someone to blame. He needed a scapegoat for the absolute slaughter he had just led his Party into.

He found one standing just a few paces away.

Master Omares stood exactly where they had left him, his hands neatly tucked into his pristine white sleeves, his blank, unreadable eyes fixed on the ragged group.

"Your return was fast," Omares stated. His baritone voice was perfectly flat, completely devoid of surprise or pity.

Aethelstan snapped.

"You set us up, old man!" the Prince roared, his voice cracking with hysteria as he marched aggressively toward the Great Scholar. He pointed a trembling, gauntleted finger at Omares's face.

"Why didn't you tell us what was inside of there?!"

Aethelstan took another heavy step forward, his jaw clenched. He knew he was standing before the Great Scholar, a man to be respected, yet he proudly showed off.

But something suddenly went wrong.

Aethelstan's body froze.

It wasn't a hesitation. It was absolute, instantaneous paralysis. His muscles locked entirely, constricting so tightly that his armor creaked under the sudden tension. His raised arm locked in place mid-air. His boots cemented to the dirt.

Panic instantly flooded back into the Prince's veins. He strained against the invisible force, veins bulging in his neck, but he couldn't move a single inch.

"What the hell is happening to me?" Aethelstan gritted out through locked teeth. He glared at the Great Scholar, his eyes narrowed with terror. "What the heck are you doing to me, old man?!"

Omares simply tilted his head slightly. He remained completely apathetic, his white eyes staring right through the paralyzed Prince.

"Me?" Omares asked quietly. "I am not the one doing this to you."

Aethelstan's eyes—the only part of his body he could still control—widened in confusion. If it wasn't the Great Scholar, then who?

Then he heard gasps behind him. Nessa slowly backed away, her hands dropping to her sides. Bromm stopped heaving and stared. Deron and Dagna looked petrified.

Behind the paralyzed Prince, Corisande rose from the dirt.

The sweet, composed Elven Princess was entirely gone. Her face only showed wrath. Hot tears streamed rapidly down her dirt-streaked cheeks, but there was no weakness in her posture.

Her hands were by her sides, but they were glowing with a terrifying, blindingly bright green light. That same verdant, raw mana poured from her eyes, illuminating her irises like twin emerald suns.

To everyone's astonishment, Aethelstan began to lift into the air.

His boots left the ground, dangling uselessly as the unseen, vice-like grip of her magic suspended him helpless in the wind.

Everyone stared in silence as the Healer Mage looked up at the suspended Prince, her glowing green eyes burning holes through his armor.

"You..." Corisande's voice trembled darkly, "killed... my… best friend!"