The Vonelle Heilliege Guild had fucked him over.
Undkese knew that the best way to save himself would be to leave the children behind and run away, but unfortunately, his mother had drilled in him the teachings of Lord Gu, The Vodun of Iron and War that he must always protect the innocent.
Two twelve-year-old goblinkin children ran in front of the pack, carrying a younger child each, while the rest of the seven to ten-year-olds ran behind them with Undkese bringing up the rear.
His feet sank into the swamp as he ran, the mud slowing him down. He cursed himself for leaving his teammate behind. Synn would buy them time with her life and he had to make sure her death wasn’t in vain by ensuring that these children arrived alive in a safe zone.
Undkese could not believe that the one time he had chosen not to follow the rules stated in The Relgte of The Vodun of Iron and War, this had happened.
'If the reward is too good for the task, then the price you pay will be your soul.’
In his defence, though, The Vonelle Heilliege Guild's quest had offered 100 silver for him and his party to deliver 13 goblinkin children from Hamden to their families close to Heilliege's Gorge. They explained that, while the journey was not long by lucent bus, they needed a party with three Tier 1 adventurers because the bus would need to pass through a level 8–10 red zone in the sky filled with corrupted baby harpies.
Now, granted, it should have raised a red flag that the Vonelle Heilliege guild insisted on putting the children to sleep for the journey, but they said that it was so they wouldn't freak out when they saw the monsters. And okay, maybe them making Undkese’s party take the long way through the red zones instead of the quick straight path that went through safe zones should have told him that something was off, but the reward was 100 silver for the gods' sake!
Besides, he had no reason to suspect that the guild would screw him over, given how well they'd taken care of him and the other players during the first seven days after the tutorial.
They even offered his team a chance at guild membership if they performed well. For a group of thrown-together newbie adventurers, joining a top-ten-ranking mercenary guild in the Tower was enticing. He just hadn't known that The Vonelle Heilliege Guild also did mercenary work for voident gangs, including the most notorious voident gang in the Ground Storey, The Accari Crows.
By the time the party discovered that they had just trafficked 13 goblinkin children to a hidden Accari Crows voi-den within Heilliege's Gorge, they had been locked up inside a pseudo-void territory cell, draining their stamina and karma. Their mana signatures went haywire thanks to the void veil, and they could not call for help on their comcers.
Honestly, Undkese could have powered through the stamina and karma losses in the territory. Still, unfortunately, his mental resistance was only 2%, so he fell victim to the torture of the Chaotic Mind Debuff. Even thinking about that experience now made him shudder. He had been stuck reliving the moment of his sister's death over and over again until he wanted to slit his own throat.
That would have been it for him if it wasn't for Synn. She had wormed her way into the mission to infiltrate Heilliege's Gorge, but even she had not expected them to be working with voidents. Thankfully, Synn had high mental resistance, so she had broken through the debuff and managed to place the voident watching them under some sleeping spell before she stole his keys and freed them.
Synn had to drag the party out of the pseudovoid territory while undergoing the Chaotic Mind debuff, with her stamina below 10%. Thankfully, since this was Heilliege's Gorge, the voidents couldn't cast a void veil over the whole territory as that would change the territory from neutral to negative and alert the Guardians. To prevent that, each of the voidents claimed a small area, creating their little territories away from each other.
At least the voidents needed the children alive and pure, so they had not been placed inside a void veil. Undkese's team saved the children, but lost some of their teammates in the process. Once outside, Undkese and Synn were accosted by a couple of level 13 voidents. At that moment, Synn chose to remain behind and hold them back to give him and the children time to escape.
All Undkese could do was pray to his god for help. It was ironic that he prayed now when he had ignored the Vodun's rules when he took this mission.
Neither the children nor Undkese was familiar with this area, so he desperately posted his location on the Dent forums now that they were out of one pseudovoid territory with a big 'HELP, I'M BEING CHASED BY VOIDENTS!’ title. The responses to his post were either trolls laughing at him or players from the Vonelle Heillege Guild berating him for slandering their territory.
So now he was running for his life while protecting innocent children. His situation was truly hopeless.
A mana bullet whizzed past his ear, and he instinctively reached into his mana core and activated Blood Sacrifice. The bullet struck a seven-year-old child in the back, but Undkese grimaced as all the damage went to him.
"Found you!" Someone said with a joyful cackle.
"Get behind me, and don't get further than five metres away from me!" Undkese shouted at the children, turning around to face their pursuers. If the children were too far away, then he wouldn’t be able to take their damage.
Two voidents were headed his way, one an eaglekin, and the other a sun elf, two mana shooters in his hands. The eaglekin was the one who spoke, and he was swooping down to attack.
Undkese would have to tank all the attacks directed at the children from the two voidents and he could only hope that he lasted long enough that someone who saw his post would come and help save them. He had enough stamina for only two skills and his attribute at the moment. His Blood Sacrifice attribute allowed him to take all damage dealt to allies within a certain radius. He had a skill to enhance his body strength for physical attacks as well as a skill that boosted his health by 50% of its maximum for 120 seconds, allowing him to take damage at the cost of stamina.
The eaglekin dove down towards Undkese, talons extended, ready to slash at him. Undkese quickly activated his Iron Body skill, bracing himself for the impact. The eaglekin's talons dug into his shoulder, causing a sharp pain to shoot through his body, however, he didn’t lose any health because the passive skill protected him.
He gritted his teeth as the sun elf shot a volley of enhanced steel bullets at the children, struggling to keep his attribute active as his stamina started to plummet with all the damage he was taking the longer the attribute remained active.
Fuck, if only he had a weapon or a shield at least, then he could defend himself. Undkese absorbed the damage, feeling the strain on his stamina as he took the brunt of both attacks. He knew he couldn't hold out for long, but he refused to let the voidents get to the children.
He punched the eaglekin as hard as he could in the face with his enhanced iron body strength, pushing him back. He then had to jump back to avoid being shot at by the sun-elf. He released his iron body to preserve stamina, and as if this were exactly what he had been waiting for, ten sharp steel bullets penetrated his skin from the sun elf’s shooters.
“That hurt, you filthy Asmodeus spawn!” the eaglekin screamed, and his mana surged as he activated a skill.
Multiple small wooden stakes erupted from the air, flying towards Undkese. He could have dodged, of course, but he stood still and let them hit him because if he didn’t, the children would get hurt. His stamina was running out, and he staggered unsteadily as pain radiated throughout his body.
“Run!” he said to the children. Without his protection, they wouldn’t make it far, but he had no choice. He heard hesitant shuffling behind him and then running.
"Enough, Wru, stop playing with your food. Activate the veil," the sun elf said in annoyance.
The eaglekin pouted, but withdrew his wings, ending his transformation as he walked on the ground, and pulled out a Void Pearl.
"Wait, if you create a pseudovoid territory here, the children will be corrupted. Don't you need them pure?" Undkese asked desperately. His whole body was covered in wounds, and he was just about ready to collapse.
The sun elf shrugged. "The 1st Floor is ripe with children. We can always get more."
That was the most horrible thing Undkese had ever heard in his life, and before he could act on his anger, the air shifted and the void veil came into effect. He heard the children start screaming, and Unkese's mind started swimming in haziness as he fought to keep his stance.
"Hope you enjoy your trip back to Hamden," the sun elf sneered, raising his shooter while the eaglekin's pseudovoid territory took stamina and karma from Undkese.
The children were howling in pain from the Chaotic Mind debuff, and writhing on the ground in pain from the rapid stamina loss. Undkese knelt on the ground, his heart heaving in pain as he waited for death, seeing his sister's lifeless body in front of him. This was the end for him since his respawn point was set in Hamden, the Vonelle Heilliege Guild's territory.
As his mind devolved into chaos, he could only bitterly laugh that his father had been right after all, he should have remained an NPC.
Just as he resigned himself to the pain of death, lightning flashed before his eyes, and something blurred past him. He blinked blinded by the sudden intense light and thought he saw a spear, but when his eyes opened, the lightning was gone. To his utter shock, the sun elf who'd been about to kill him lay on the ground with a hole in his chest.
Up ahead, a human stood over the body of the eaglekin, his back to Undkese, a silver blue spear dripping with blood in his hand. The aura surrounding him made Undkese tense up in fear as if he were in the middle of a raging lightning storm that threatened to consume him at any moment if he so much as made a move.
What just happened? One second, he was about to die, and the next, his attackers were dead. How could anyone move that fast?
The human lifted his hand, and the Deiform Ring on his finger glowed brightly and destroyed the eaglekin's Void Pearl. Immediately, the void veil dissipated. He then placed Deiform Amulets around the voidents’ wrists, and their bodies disappeared.
The human turned around. His black eyes scanned the situation, frowning when he saw the children, and seeing his face, Undkese recognised him. He had watched his videos religiously, after all. This was the voident hunting rising star from his tutorial batch, who provoked the Hallow Reaper Cult without a care in the world.
"Blazing Blitzhunter!" Undkese shouted in awe.
*
Langa cringed as the nickname was said with so much admiration. He seriously needed to talk with Jandri. What kind of idiot could not think of a cooler, non-copyrighted name for a fast, lightning-based player?
"Good work buying time," he said to the halfkin kneeling on the ground. Thanks to the voidents being focused on him, it had been easy to sneak in and kill them before they awakened their Void Pearls.
He was glad he had made it in time to save these children, although they were still shaking and terrified from the effects of the void veil.
Langa had been scouting around Heilliege’s Gorge, looking for a way to sneak in and search for the voi-den. He had brought Aquila's team with him because he wanted a free ride on their flying carpet since the distance was so far away from the Valley of Guardians. He had not told them that, of course, he had enticed the party with a level 10 hunting field near the gorge. He had been helping them hunt level 10 corrupted bats when he’d seen the halfkin’s post on the Dent.
He was glad he came as he crouched down and picked up a crying child who could not have been more than three years old. He could not believe that voidents had erected a void veil in the presence of children. "It's okay. You're safe now," he said quietly. "What's your name, dear?"
"Teyin," she whispered, her big eyes stained with tears.
He held her close to his chest, "You are a very brave girl, Teyin. Everything will be okay."
He cradled the child's head as he used to do for Khaya when she would cry. He was decent with children because when he was a child and his sister was at work, he would look after her with Neo. He absolutely could not stand seeing children hurt.
Teyin sniffled, as Langa smiled at her. "Really?"
"Really," he told her, putting her down. "I won't let anyone hurt you."
The halfkin gathered all the other children around him, whispering to them and comforting them. He was making sure they weren't badly hurt.
"Is he a hero?" Langa heard one of the older children ask the halfkin.
"Yes, he is. He's a well-known voident hunter, and he came all the way here to save you. You don't have to worry, the bad guys don't stand a chance, he'll wipe them out in less than a second. That's why they call him The Blazing Blitzhunter," he told them and their terrified eyes turned to awe, snuffing away the comment Langa had been about to make about how he was not a hero, just a bounty hunter looking for silver who occasionally protected children.
"You're cooler than Black Fist Na'koma," one of the children said.
Langa didn't think he deserved to be compared with the most ruthless and notorius voident hunter of The First Storey. He turned to the torn-up halfkin, whose name he discovered was Undkese after he scanned him.
"Wait here a bit; my companions are going to come and help you with the kids, they got held back fighting the Vonelle Heilliege Guild’s guards. I told them to wait until I destroyed the void veil before they came here. One of them has a healing skill, so he should be able to help you. Are there more voidents around here?" he asked.
Something crossed the player's face, and he gasped. "Blitzhunter, please, you have to go back and save Synn!" Undkese pleaded, his voice filled with desperation, as he clutched Langa's arm. "She stayed behind to give me and the children a chance to escape. I know there were three of them, but she's very strong, so she might still be alive."
Langa tensed at the mention of more voidents and someone needing help. "I'll go back for her, I promise," he assured Undkese. "Stay with the kids."
As soon as Undkese told him the direction she was, Langa turned and ran towards the area, wondering if he was too late to save this Synn. He activated the Distortion skill on his jerkin, staying invisible.
How was the Vonelle Heillege Guild getting away with this? How come they had void veils in their guild territory, yet the Guardians had not come for them?
He finally reached another pseudo-void territory, where he found the person he presumed to be Synn engaged in a fierce battle with one armed voident. Two dead voidents lay sprawled on the ground. There was fire surrounding the woman, so he could not see her clearly, and the voident's bastard sword was spewing a red substance that seemed to be disassembling her fire.
Without wasting a second, the invisible Langa circled behind the voident, activated Flash Step, and plunged Tonare into his neck. Blood sprayed from his neck, and he died instantly. Langa hastily used his Deiform artefacts to destroy the Void Pearl controlling this pseudovoid territory and bound the voident. Now, when he respawned, it would be in a prison cell.
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His task done, Langa turned to the person he had just helped and blinked, feeling strange yet familiar threads of connected karma between the two of them as he stared at her. Tonare vibrated violently, and Langa's karma wavered at the sight of her, captivated by the powerful yet warm aura that seemed to come from her very being. Did they know each other?
She was a stunning foxkin with long black hair and sparse black fur on her neck who stood surrounded by a massive ring of fire, her gaze fierce despite the exhaustion evident in her stance. Her face was streaked with dirt and blood and illuminated by the fire, giving her the look of a fox after a hunt.
"Stand back," she warned, glaring at him.
"Are you Synn? I'm Langa, Undkese sent me to look for you," he said, lowering his vibrating glaive.
He scanned her to be sure she was the right person and was shocked when he saw she was bound to an incredibly powerful deity.
Name: SynnForessa (???) Race: Foxkin Age: ??? Character: Player Level: 10 Class: Flame Stitcher Available Karma: 7109 Total Karma: ????? Deity:
[Jiǔwěihú - The Mystical Nine-Tailed Demon Fox God.] - Avatar
Highest Floor
???/101 (Mount Kunlun Towers)
1/101
(Deiwos Towers)
Attribute: Star-Eater Alignment: (-1 411) Negative Available Respawns:
1/1
Respawn Zone: Hamden Mountain (1st Floor)
His head throbbed slightly after reading all that. Why did her readings have as many question marks as Liv's? He wanted to be as non-threatening as possible since she was not dismissing her skill as she was looking at him warily. "Are you alright?" he asked.
"Oh, I'm fine," she replied, her voice soft and weary but also strong. Langa couldn't control the strange karma pull he felt towards her. Had they met before? "Undkese made it then? What about the children?"
As her ring of fire dissipated, Langa approached her cautiously, since she was a red player. None of the negative alignment mortals he had met so far had been pleasant, but since she had sacrificed herself to save the children, he decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. "I managed to get to them on time. They should be safe for now. You should go and catch up with them."
"That's good." The woman regarded him for a moment, and then her eyes widened and she smiled. "It's you! You made it out of the tutorial alive!"
The way she spoke made it seem like they knew each other. "Have we met before?" Langa asked. he was sure he would remember such a pretty woman though.
She pursed her lips. "I guess not—not in this form at least. My name is SynnForessa," she introduced herself.
“Nice to meet you. How are you feeling?” he asked, since her words made little sense to him.
"Fine." She sighed. “Thanks for your help, but I could have handled that guy by myself."
"Are you kidding? You looked like you were almost at mana exhaustion there," he said with a raised eyebrow.
"Let's agree to disagree."
[The Mount Kunlun god: The Nine-Tailed Demon Fox God, is watching you.]
"Um, what does your god want from me? He's the Nine-Tailed Fox, right?" Langa asked.
Synn's head snapped towards him and she grabbed him by the shoulders, her face flushed. He was too startled to push her away. "He's here? What did he say?"
"He's just watching me. Let go," he said, pushing her hands away.
Her face turned incredulous. "Are you fucking kidding me, Master?" she asked, looking up at the sky. "You watch him but you won't even talk to me? How long have I begged and pleaded for you to just look at me?"
[The Mount Kunlun god: The Nine-Tailed Demon Fox God, laughs in amusement.]
Langa bristled when he read that message, and Synn looked at him. "What did he say?"
He hesitated, not knowing whether it was a good idea to tell her or not. "He laughed," he told her.
At first, her mouth went agape with shock. Then shook her head and also laughed mirthlessly. It was a hollow, disbelieving laughter. "You know what? Forget him. If the children are safe, then as soon as my mana and stamina regenerate, I'm going to destroy that fucking voi-den," she said.
In Langa's opinion, she looked like she needed to be healed first. “You need to go back towards Undkese. One of the people I brought with me is a healer, he’ll get you back in fighting shape."
The unimpressed look she gave him was annoyed. “I said I’m fine. I want to destroy these voidents for what they did to those and other children. I’m not wasting any time going back!”
"Are there more people being held hostage?" he asked, ready to take down the voidents and save anyone else they were holding against their will.
"No, they did the previous sacrifice today, so the kids we brought would have been the only ones alive," she said, plopping down on the ground in exhaustion.
Langa frowned, his previous relaxed demeanour gone. He had known that the voidents sacrificed people for their Void Gems to grow in power, but knowing that those children had been brought here to be used as sacrifices made him unbelievably angry.
"Wait, you brought those kids here to be sacrificed?" he asked her, Tonare clutched tightly.
Synn shook her head. "Of course not. That would have pushed me further in the red. I had a quest from one of the neutral villages at Ankhurtam Valley, they said children were disappearing, and I was investigating it with a friend when word reached us that the Vonelle Heilliege Guild had recovered some of the missing children and was looking for people to discreetly transport them back home without alerting the kidnappers," she sighed. "Coraloa went back to the capital to complete the investigation, and I decided to help escort the kids. If I'd known that the Vonelle Heilliege Guild were supplying the Accari Crows with sacrifices and giving them shelter in their guild territory, I would have incinerated their lousy arses to the seventh hell."
The venom in her tone made Langa smile a little. "So, the reason the Guardians haven't been able to locate many of the Accari Crows' voi-dens on the 1st Floor is because neutral guilds are protecting them? I knew that there was no way in hell that a guild with a shithead like Perinda Housci in its ranks would be up to any good.”
”Yeah, so stay out of my way, and I’ll destroy the bastards,” she said, gathering herself and standing back up.
"Are you a Guardian?" he asked.
"Nope."
"Are you Blessed by The Unrivalled?"
She snorted. "No way; she's already done too much for me. Any more would be favouritism."
Langa turned sharply towards her. "Then how the fuck were you able to stand, fight, and kill two voidents within a pseudovoid territory?" The stamina debuff and karma loss aside, how could she stand the Chaotic Mind debuff without Deiform Artefacts? He knew he was more susceptible to it thanks to his low mental resistance, but plenty of people steered clear of voidents because that debuff was pure torture on the mind.
"I have low stamina anyway, and I'm always converting it to mana, so I'm used to being a walking physical corpse. Yeah, losing karma sucks, but I can always earn more. As for the mental debuff," Synn shrugged. "Well, let's just say I've been through so much shit that my mental resistance finally reached its maximum. I'm not immune, but I've been through worse than a pseudovoid territory."
She seemed to find it amusing, but Langa shuddered. What the hell had this woman gone through? “Alright then, you just lead the way to the voi-den and we can destroy it,” he said.
”I don’t need your help,” she told him with narrowed eyes.
”You’re getting it anyway. I’m not doing this for you. I came to this gorge to hunt voidents and that’s what I’m going to do.”
Synn rolled her eyes and led him in a different direction. “Just don’t get in my way, and we won’t have a problem.”
As they walked towards the left, Langa stopped, his Avatar title alerting him to something wrong to their right. The breath of life was increasingly absent in that direction. He turned to that side, not understanding how even the trees and grass were not breathing.
"Don't go that way," Synn said, following his gaze. "Trust me, let's just destroy the voi-den." She had been calm this entire time, but looking at that side made her shiver uncertainly.
"What's there?"
"The reason why everyone fears and detests voidents," she said quietly. "The cost of wielding corruption."
Langa tensed and walked towards the right path. Aria had told him not to enter the voi-den after he had accompanied the Guardians to raid one. She said it with the same look that Synn had now. If Langa wanted to continue hunting voidents, he needed to know what to expect from them. He needed to know what exactly he was hunting. So, he walked towards the area devoid of the breath of life.
Langa's pace quickened as Synn followed him through the dark, open land of the Gorge, not saying a word. He reached the point where life was missing and found that there was another void veil hiding whatever it was he was sensing.
"I'll wait out here if you don't mind," Synn told him.
"Okay, there's no need for you to lose any more karma and stamina." Since she did not have the protection of the Deiform artefacts, it was better to remain outside the pseudovoid territory unless it was an emergency. Langa stepped through the void veil and what he saw made his blood run cold.
There was an altar in front of him with no Name, statues or artefacts on it depicting which deity it was for. The only thing on the altar was a Void Pearl. A red player was standing next to the altar with his back to Langa. On the ground next to the player were dead bodies, and he picked one up, tossing it into a hole in the ground. The absence of life was suffocating, and Langa had to unequip his Avatar title, replacing it with his Team Player title, to scan the red player. He was Level 14, with 0 respawns left.
Looking closer, Langa saw that the bodies were small, frail and shrivelled up. His whole body shook as he gripped Tonare and Flash Stepped forward to the pit to confirm with his eyes what his mind already knew. These were the bodies of children. The red moon cast a dim light over the area, illuminating the horrible sight before him. The stench of blood and corruption was all over the air, mingling with the smell of rotten corpses.
Langa's breath caught in his throat as he saw dozens upon dozens of lifeless bodies that lay broken at the bottom of the pit, their eyes wide open in a silent scream of terror. The sight of the goblinkin children, their veins black and bulging from the corruption they had been forced to endure, filled him with deep, primal anger. As Liberty said, he was always so good at forcing down his emotions, but right now, the bowl of anger spilt over into pure rage. That rage built up like a storm inside him as it filled his entire being.
“Who the fu-“ The red player finally noticed his presence and turned to look at Langa.
Langa hastily switched to his Voident Hunter title as the player drew his sword. He felt the angry surge of his karma at this senseless killing and that anger was all he was at that moment, overwhelming him so much that he released it outwardly as karma pressure. The player immediately went pale as he succumbed to the fear of his karma pressure combined with the effects of Langa's Voident Hunter title, which instilled fear and terror in people when he was in a pseudovoid territory.
Langa knew that the player had no respawns left. Good. He lunged at the player with Flash Step, his hands curling around Tonare as he unleashed his fury upon the man responsible for such unspeakable horror. He didn’t activate Thunderbird’s Stunning Strike, instead, he allowed his lightning to flow into the strike as excruciatingly slowly as he possibly could.
The player's screams of pain were drowned out by the sounds of Tonare’s lightning, breaking his bones and burning his flesh black. His body spasmed and shook as the electricity flowed from the glaive into him ever so slowly to induce maximum pain.
The player died with his eyes wide open.
His blood stained Langa’s hands and clothes, and his hands shook. This was the first time he ever intentionally and permanently killed a non-voident mortal. A part of him thought he should be disgusted with himself now that his hands were stained red with blood, but as far as Langa was concerned, what he had just killed was nothing more than a corrupted monster in an elf’s body.
He destroyed the Void Pearl on top of the altar, dissolving the void veil.
He looked down at the pit. There were active gods in this world, and people prayed to them for salvation, yet shit like this still, happened? His blood was on fire as he felt the eyes of over a thousand deities watching him. Adtonifulmin’s essence was focused on him too, but Langa couldn’t find comfort in him today.
“Why children?” he asked, looking up at the blood moon.
He'd seen a lot of death and pain since the integration, but for him, at least, this was the worst thing he had witnessed so far. His father had always taught him that children were a precious gift to be protected, so it broke his heart to see shit like this happening to their innocent souls.
He wasn’t expecting the deities to answer, but Synn walked over and stood behind him now that the void veil was gone. “The more innocent or pure the soul of the sacrifice, the more corruption the Void Gems can harness,” she said.
Really? Why were red players and voidents allowed to do this for fleeting power? Why were the gods just standing by and watching this unfold? They had all that power, yet they were content to watch things like this happen? Wasn't the Tower supposed to create safe spaces for innocent NPCs?
Langa gritted his teeth, looking up at the sky. “You’re the most powerful active goddess in the entire multiverse. Is this the Tower that trillions of people from corrupted worlds pray to be integrated into? Aren’t you supposed to save us from corruption? You could stop this by preventing mortals from using corruption in the first place. Why won’t you do it?”
The Unrivalled did not respond to him.
"That goes against the natural order of things and the laws of the multiverse. The Creator gives all of us free will from the moment we come into existence. Mortals are free to learn any type of magic they want. The best that The Unrivalled can do is make that power hard for mortals to find. Forbidding or preventing mortals from learning how to use the power of corruption would be trampling on their free will. She will not take that away from us, no matter how much we sin," Synn told him.
Free will? How was that fair when the voidents took away the free will of other innocent mortals? Were the voidents really exercising their mortal right to be free if their freedom infringed on other people's freedom? Langa didn't pretend to be righteous or to hold the moral high ground. He wasn't someone who went out of his way to save the oppressed or the suffering. But this happened right in front of him.
Langa set fire to the pit, closing his eyes. "What happened to you was unfair, and I hate that you died with your eyes open. I promise you this, your killers will suffer the same fate. I wish that your souls wouldn't linger in the darkness, and I commit whatever is left of them to The Lackadaisical Herald. May you find peace in his embrace."
He infused Tonare with lightning and slashed the altar, setting it on fire as well.
"Are you crazy?" Synn asked. "The voidents will be alerted as soon as the corrupted altar is destroyed. How are we supposed to sneak up on them now?"
Langa shrugged. "We hurry. The void veils disrupt mana signatures, so they won't have been able to communicate with their colleagues that we killed. We still have time until the altar burns to ash. Let's go."
"Unbelievable. I'm stuck with an impulsive, self-righteous idiot," she muttered. Langa resisted the urge to remind her that he had saved her life, instead, he followed her towards the voi-den.
So, the voidents wanted freedom from taking the lives of other people? Fine, if that was the path they wanted to walk, he would walk alongside them. The scent of blood, ash, and death in the air fuelled the fire in his nerves. No voident would leave Heilliege's Gorge alive tonight.