Chapter 470: The Bone Church (3)

The Gallery of the Damned detonated into a tempest of boiling crimson fluid, emerald poison flames, and roaring pressurized water as the four of them charged straight through the center of the hall.

The three-inch layer of pulsating blood-rot liquid beneath their feet surged upward, attempting to bind their boots and siphon their vital energy. But before the pale, ash-white hands could close around Kyle’s ankles, Seraphina slammed the butt of her ocean trident onto the stone walkway.

"Ocean Art: Tides of Purification!" Seraphina shouted.

A torrent of crystal-clear sea water erupted in a continuous, flowing wave from her trident, spreading across the floor like an advancing shield. The pure elemental sea water clashed violently with the corrupted blood-sludge, neutralizing the dark magic on contact and washing away the grasping bone hands before they could touch a single member of the team. The floor beneath them was cleared into a glistening, wet slate path, allowing the party to maintain maximum speed.

"Stay behind my water path!" Seraphina called out, her azure hair whipping wildly in the wind generated by her domain. "The liquid field won’t recover for another sixty seconds!"

"Sixty seconds is fifty seconds more than I need!" Yua cackled.

She blurred forward, her body leaving dark red afterimages across the grand hall.

The twenty transformed bone-juggernauts—twelve-foot hulks encased in layers of interlocking rib-plates and armed with spiked iron war-hammers—formed a impenetrable wall of heavy armor in front of the elevated bone dais. The front line of four juggernauts raised their massive war-hammers simultaneously, bringing them down in a coordinated strike meant to crush the entire corridor into rubble.

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!

The floor shattered under the kinetic impact, sending shockwaves of dark red energy flying outward. But Yua was already gone. She didn’t bother dodging around the massive constructs; she leapt directly onto the face of the leftmost juggernaut’s helmet, driving her heels into its eye sockets with brutal force.

CRUNCH!

Using the giant’s staggering form as a springboard, Yua flipped high into the air, over the heads of the front defensive line, and landed directly in the middle of the juggernauts’ tight formation. Her pale hands curved into lethal claws, glowing with dense, compressed crimson blood-mana that hummed like a high-voltage saw blade.

"Blood Style: Crimson Whirlwind!" Yua screamed with wild delight.

She spun like a top, her body transforming into a localized hurricane of razor-sharp blood blades. The crimson claws sliced cleanly through the heavy joints of the juggernauts’ armor, severing the nerve-tendons and marrow-hinges binding their giant limbs together. Armor plates, severed arms, and shattered bone-hammers flew in every direction, raining down into the grand hall like hail.

"Falcon, clear the upper balconies!" Kyle yelled, his dark slitted eyes tracking several cultists on the high arches above who were pulling back heavy bone cross-bows primed with soul-corroding darts.

"On it!" Falcon shouted back.

Her dark brown skin glistened under the violet light of the cathedral as her four dark brown tails ignited with blinding, emerald-green poison fire. She leapt forty feet straight into the air, spinning her body horizontal to the ceiling. With four rapid whips of her tails, Falcon launched four dense arcs of green fire toward the high balconies.

WOOSH-BOOM!

The emerald poison fire slammed into the ruby stained-glass windows and archways, expanding instantly into a massive chemical inferno. The toxic heat didn’t just burn the cultists; it vaporized their bone weapons and melted the stone ledges right out from under their boots. Screaming cultists fell from the high ledges, plunging straight into the boiling red sludge below, where Seraphina’s sea water instantly neutralized their blood-arrays.

Kyle moved through the center of the battlefield like a phantom of pitch-black death.

A surviving juggernaut swung its spiked war-hammer horizontally at Kyle’s head, the weapon tearing through the air with enough force to collapse a stone tower. Kyle didn’t stop or slow down. He ducked smoothly beneath the swinging hammer, stepped into the construct’s inner reach, and thrust his left hand directly into the center of its chest plate.

His black gauntlet flared with roaring demon fire.

"Burn," Kyle said softly.

THUMMMM!

The pitch-black demon flames didn’t just scorch the outer armor; they shot deep into the construct’s internal mana-circuitry, devouring its soul-core in less than a second. The twelve-foot juggernaut stiffened, its red eye-sockets flickering out, before its entire body crumbled into a harmless pile of black soot.

Kyle stepped over the ashes, his slitted eyes locked onto the Blood Moon Commander standing atop the elevated bone dais three hundred yards ahead.

The Commander’s raspy, arrogant demeanor evaporated into pure terror as he watched his twenty elite juggernauts and upper archers get annihilated in under forty seconds. His pale bone staff trembled in his hands as he raised his left hand, holding up the dark iron parchment scroll covered in glowing blood-runes.

"Im-Impossible!" the Commander rasped, his voice cracking with desperation. "This is Vladimir’s design! You cannot break through the Gallery without paying in blood!"

He began frantically chanting in the ancient, guttural language of the Void, trying to force the dark iron scroll to activate a high-tier spatial suppression barrier that would freeze Kyle’s movements.

"You talk too much and cast too slow," Kyle’s icy voice echoed directly behind him.

The Commander’s eyes widened in sheer horror. He hadn’t even seen Kyle move. The distance of three hundred yards had been erased in a fraction of a heartbeat.

Kyle stood right behind the Commander on the dais. Before the cultist could turn his head, Kyle reached out with his right hand, catching the pale bone staff by its shaft, and squeezed.

CRACK-SHATTER!

The high-tier bone staff exploded into a thousand splinters under the sheer physical strength of Kyle’s grip. The violet skull at the top shattered, spilling inert smoke onto the dais floor.

"N-No!" the Commander shrieked, dropping the iron scroll as he tried to leap backward.

Kyle’s dark gauntlet shot out, clamping around the Commander’s throat like an iron vise, lifting the tall, slender cultist six feet off the ground with a single arm. The pitch-black demon flames coating Kyle’s gauntlet immediately began singeing the Commander’s crimson robes, the dark energy burning away his magical wards like dry parchment.

"Where is the second core?" Kyle asked, his voice flat, emotionless, and colder than the subterranean draft.

"I-I will never tell you... Lord Vladimir will rip your soul into pieces..." the Commander choked out, his legs kicking uselessly in the air as he tried to scratch at Kyle’s iron grip.

Kyle didn’t argue. He simply tightened his grip, letting his demon fire seep slightly deeper into the cultist’s throat.

"Snow," Kyle called out internally.

’Scanning target’s residual mana-pathways,’ Snow responded immediately. ’The secondary core—the Sanctum of Whispers—is directly behind the dais, behind the giant mural of the Blood Moon. The wall is a spatial illusion reinforced by dark blood-runes.’

"Thank you," Kyle said mentally.

He looked back up at the Commander, whose eyes were rolling back into his head from asphyxiation and demon-fire burns.

"I don’t need your answers," Kyle said coldly.

With a swift, casual flick of his wrist, Kyle slammed the Commander headfirst onto the stone dais floor. The impact shattered the cultist’s skull and neck, killing him instantly and deactivating the remaining blood-arrays in the grand hall.

Yua, Falcon, and Seraphina regrouped at the base of the dais, their weapons still humming with residual mana. None of them had sustained serious injuries, though the sheer intensity of clearing two massive sectors back-to-back was beginning to show in the slight sheen of sweat on Falcon’s forehead and the steady rise and fall of Seraphina’s chest.

"That Commander was all mouth and no substance," Yua scoffed, flicking a drop of dark blood off her claw tips. "Where’s the second core?"

Kyle pointed his shadow blade at the massive, thirty-foot-high mural of a weeping blood moon carved into the back wall behind the dais. "Behind the illusion. Snow confirmed the Sanctum of Whispers is right on the other side."

Seraphina stepped forward, inspecting the intricate blood-runes lining the edge of the mural. "This illusion is laced with a soul-drain trigger. If we try to push through it physically without breaking the rune sequence, it will attempt to siphon our spiritual energy."

"Then we don’t push through it gently," Kyle said.

He raised his dark blade, coating the steel in a concentrated, dense layer of pitch-black demon fire that burned so hot it distorted the surrounding air. He stepped up to the mural and drove the blade straight into the center of the weeping moon carving.

SCREAM!

The wall literally shrieked—a high-pitched, agonizing sound made of a thousand trapped souls reacting to the black demon fire. The dark runes flared violently red, tried to resist, and then withered into gray ash under the absolute destructive force of Kyle’s dark element. The thirty-foot mural cracked down the center and crumbled inward, revealing a hidden archway leading into a dark, circular chamber.

They stepped through the ruins of the mural and entered the Sanctum of Whispers.

The atmosphere inside this chamber was vastly different from the rest of the cathedral. There were no bone constructs or high cultists here. The room was deathly quiet, filled with millions of tiny, glowing violet particles floating through the cold air like ghost fire. In the center of the chamber floated the second primary core—a giant, jagged blood-crystal twice the size of the one in the Catacombs, encased inside a rotating cage of dark iron ribs.

Extending from the core were thousands of razor-thin, silver soul-threads that reached up through the ceiling, connecting to the upper spires of the cathedral.

"These threads..." Seraphina whispered, her ocean eyes wide with disgust as she looked up at the ceiling. "They aren’t just harvesting mana. They’re siphoning the memories and souls of everyone killed inside the Crimson Ridge."

"It’s a soul-refinery," Kyle said, his slitted eyes darkening. "Vladimir used these exact same arrays on Kraken to convert soul essence into spatial stability for his Void gates. The Blood Moon Clan is using this cathedral to power something massive near the central fortress."

’Kyle,’ Snow warned in his mind. ’Destroying this core will trigger a massive structural shockwave. The middle ring of the Bone Church will begin collapsing into the lower subterranean abyss. We must strike and exit the chamber immediately.’

"Falcon, Yua, Seraphina—prepare to move the second this core drops," Kyle ordered, stepping toward the floating iron cage.

"We’re ready," Falcon said, her four tails swishing, her green poison fire flared to maximum intensity to shield the group from fall debris.

Kyle didn’t hesitate. He leaped into the air, driving both hands into the center of the dark iron cage. His gauntlets flared with an explosive wave of pitch-black demon fire that melted through the iron ribs instantly.

"Break!" Kyle roared.

He plunged his hands directly into the heart of the giant blood-crystal and ripped his arms outward.

KA-BOOOOOOOOOOM!

The second core shattered with a deafening explosion of dark red light and violet soul-sparks. The silver soul-threads attached to the ceiling snapped simultaneously, releasing a rush of purified spiritual energy that swept through the chamber like a cool mountain breeze.

Instantly, the entire cathedral began to violently tremble.

Deep, structural cracks rushed up the walls of the Sanctum of Whispers. The stone floor beneath them groaned, splitting open to reveal a endless, pitch-black subterranean chasm beneath the cathedral foundations. Massive chunks of bone archways and stone pillars began raining down from the ceiling as the middle ring of the Bone Church started its final collapse.

"The floor is giving way!" Seraphina called out, raising her trident to create a protective water dome overhead against the falling stone debris.

"Forward!" Kyle shouted, his voice piercing through the roaring collapse. "The final inner ring—the High Altar—is straight ahead!"

They sprinted through the far exit of the Sanctum of Whispers as the entire second sector caved in behind them, narrow stone walkways crumbling into the dark abyss just inches behind their heels.

After a breathless three-hundred-yard dash through a falling stone tunnel, the group burst out onto a vast, high-altitude stone bridge that overlooked the innermost heart of the cathedral.

The dust cleared slowly, revealing the third and final ring of the Bone Church: The High Altar of the Arch-Lich.

Here, towering high above the subterranean cavern, was an immense, floating platform made of solid obsidian, held in place by six massive iron chains thick as ancient trees. Standing at the center of the floating altar, beneath a roaring vortex of dark red blood-clouds, was a figure draped in long, obsidian-plated armor, wielding a massive, two-handed scythe that radiated high-tier spatial pressure.

The third core—the master core powering the final sector barrier—was embedded directly inside the Arch-Lich’s chest armor.

Kyle stopped at the edge of the bridge, his slitted eyes narrowing as he felt the overwhelming, high-grade mana radiating from the floating altar.

"Two cores down," Kyle said, his dark coat fluttering in the heavy, violent wind coming off the abyss. "One left."

The final battle for the Bone Church stood directly before them.