Victor landed on solid stone. He hurriedly looked around, only to discover he was stranded in a completely black abyss. Nothing could be made out, only an overwhelming smell of decomposing bodies assaulted his advanced sense of smell. But far off in the distance, once his Hound eyes focused, Victor spotted a faint blue glimmer shining like a lonely star in the cold night sky.
So, he ran, as fast as his physique allowed him, towards the wisp, still dragging along his trusty dead companion. As he was in pursuit of an object, the Skill [On Your Tail] activated, increasing his running speed, heightening his vision and smell. His mind tunnel-visioned in on his destination, solely focused in optimizing his body movement to cut through air like a sharp dagger.
Outside, in the grand hall of the cathedral, the moonlight was slowly being devoured by the gluttonous darkness. In that darkness, a figure shades darker than the darkness itself dropped down from the ceiling without raising a single speck of dust from the ground and slowly walked across the hall, slipped into the small opening of the altar despite its massive body, dropping down without making a single noise. The perfectly round empty eyes of the Ape focused on the running silhouette of a boy, panting like a dying horse, desperately reaching for the Ape's mistress. The enraged creature let out a deep growl and started chasing after the intruder.
Alas, Victor had almost reached the source of light.
He could now clearly see his destination, both thanks to
Suddenly, his instincts screamed - something was chasing him, and it was about to catch up. Trusting his heightened intuition, the boy stooped down and slid on the floor, colliding with stray bones and pieces of clothing. A black blur flashed right where his head would have been if the boy had not ducked. However, the creature was fast - it was already in the middle of a grabbing motion after it had failed to behead Victor. Without
But the Ape was far superior in both speed and strength. It caught up in the blink of an eye and grabbed his leg, the tips of its jet-black fur sizzling and burning from the minuscule amount of light. Though the creature was being physically injured, and seemingly much slower and weaker under luminescence, it was not going to let go. Instead, it pulled, hard. Victor was taken back into the darkness in a flash. His stomach dropped - there was absolutely no way he was going to make it out of this alive.
Even if Victor died in the process, he was going to drag the Ape to the underworld with him. That was the kind of person Victor was - although young, the boy had already been shaped into cold unbending steel by tragedy after tragedy. Before the Ape could recover from its weakening from light and follow up with consecutive strikes, the boy unsheathed a dagger from underneath his cloak, and, in a single determined and swift hand motion, sliced the leg the Undead had taken hold of cleanly, sending a wave pain he had never experienced before throughout his body. The boy screamed like a dying horse, but his movements never slowed down. He pushed his
Now that he was safe, the boy had the opportunity to inspect the maiden. A colossal pale woman was hanging off of a wall - an unseemly picture not fit for the otherworldly beauty. Her face was pristine and spotless: her skin pale like the moon, her hair as black as the night. Victor was completely sure that she was the most enchanting creature he had ever seen. However, her eyes were unsightly, frozen in a disbelieving expression. They were wide open - still and lifeless, pupils - colorless, staring off into nothingness. Her body radiated heat, Victor could feel blood coursing through her veins. It seemed she was still alive but suspended in a vegetative state, seemingly due to the pale swords and spears.
His time was running out - he had no time to observe. Victor was very close to death's door - he was already starting to lose feeling throughout his body. Although the [Hound] Class increased his physical durability, healing was not one of its advantages.
He wasn't fooled by the beauty of the woman. According to the log on the fallen city of Styga and the letters he had found, she must be Anwen - the false preacher, and the master of Undead 1027. ...Twin Moon... Victor theorized that it worked on the same principle as the Soul Bind: a special type of connection between an Artifact and its owner, linking their souls together, thus meaning if either Anwen or the Ape dies, both of them die.
The Undead was growling, releasing deep croaky reverberations - Victor was sure it had never made noise before, outside the altar. A characteristic like that would most likely be mentioned in the logs. It was unquestionably very protective of the incapacitated woman, affirming his theory. So, Victor was going to kill her, just out of spite if nothing else. But his intuition told him she was its lifeline.
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He looked at the weapons already inside Anwen. One of them was even skewered through her heart - still somehow not ending the creature.
The Evolution System granted its users the ability to inspect Artifacts. The New World is chock-full of Named Artifacts due to the late Great War, since they are created by the Evolution System as drops from the beasts one slayed or the humans one murdered. A war was the perfect environment for mass breeding Artifacts. Though Artifacts were still invaluable. The outside world was extremely hostile, making expeditions into the wild near impossible. Artifacts powered up soldiers regardless of Class and Skills, as they contained Skills of their own, and could not be copied or produced, only earned through combat or bought with an astronomical amount of funds. But recent evidence suggested that ancient smiths of a time long gone had been able to create these Artifacts - sadly, the practice has been lost to endless warfare.
The pale-blue weapons of old radiating a soothing pale blue aura were obviously higher-tiered Artifacts. Artifacts, just like Classes, were separated into 5 tiers based on their inherent power and utility. Victor grabbed the hilt of a long and thin Greatsword, its blade and grip made out of intricately decorated silver, separated by a gaunt cross-guard. It had been skewered through the lower abdomen of the giant woman. A blue panel appeared before his vision.
Stygian Executioner
Even the damned deserve a swift end
Weapon Tier: Tier 4
Soul Bind: Undead Pale Knight Arthur Trant
Skills: [Immortal] [Executioner] [Moonlit Blade]
[Immortal] Skill Description
Ageless and Unbound
Type: Passive
[This weapon is unbreakable, never rusts, never loses its edge nor gleam.]
[Executioner] Skill Description
Your head is gone
Type: Passive
[Damage inflicted at the neck of the target instantly kills them.]
[Moonlit Blade] Skill Description
Thee shall conserve the beauty and horror
Type: Active
[Skill granted to [Pale Knight]. Coats the Artifact in moonlight, strengthening its inherent Skills. Every hit slows the target's movements. Upon 9 consecutive hits or piercing the target's body, they become frozen in time.]
Son of a… Victor had never expected to stumble upon such a treasure - a tier 4 Artifact! He started trying to dislodge it, to move it to seal some sort of damage to the colossal woman to no avail - it was, unfortunately, Soul Bound to someone... to an Undead? Only its owner would be able to wield it, and the Artifact would follow them to the grave. The rest of the weapons were all Soul Bound to the same Arthur Trant.
Stabbing or slicing at her skin with the military-issue dagger that had been able to separate his own leg in a heartbeat had no effect. Victor grabbed a pistol from his vest and started shooting at her eye. The bullets bounced off. At that moment, the enraged Ape tried to lunge at him, but its dark fur instantly started to burn away, revealing its flesh. It quickly stepped back, grunting in pain. The creature healing in the embrace of the shadows. Soon, it would attempt to reach him again, this time more prepared for the pain and resolute.
Victor had been hiding an ace up his sleeve until now - he had a block of C4 explosives stashed away in his pocket. His plan at the start had been to create a trap for the Ape by hiding it inside the corpse of Niki Briggs. However, witnessing firsthand the perverted intelligence the creature possessed, there was no way it would fall for that. Judging that this was the perfect situation to use the C4, he climbed the naked body of the mysterious giant woman as fast as he could, reaching her head, upon which Victor started prying her mouth open. Realizing what the boy was doing, The Undead lunged out from the darkness, although its speed was greatly reduced, to the point of being on par with Victor. Its entire body hissed from the serene illumination of the Moonlit Blades.
Her mouth came agape easier than expected from a 5-meter-tall human as if the jaws had been used to being forced open. Victor shoved a clay block deep down her throat, and immediately lunged back, propelling his body by kicking the giant face. He aimed his body at the space between the Ape's legs, successfully dodging the massive black mass and rolling away behind it, and, as the Ape was between him and the woman - the click of a detonator resonated loud and clear throughout the dark abyss.
Victor was confused for a second: he was expecting a huge shockwave to blast out, but only heard a small splatter. He couldn't see what had happened as his vision was blocked by the static charring figure of the Undead, which was now standing right at the tomb. Seemingly, its welfare and survival did not concern it anymore. It didn't even try to look back at him. Victor tiredly crawled sideways, his path hindered by long-rotten bones and ancient rusted weaponry, and gazed upon the consequences of his actions.
The towering silhouette of the woman was missing its head. Crimson blood slowly flowed downwards from the stump of her neck.
The Soul-Bound Artifacts that had been imprisoning the demoness for a hundred years now melted away into flowing energy, finally having fulfilled their purpose.
Undead 1027, the Ape was stoic - it was now kneeling on the ground, holding the separated head of its mistress with both hands.
"My beloved Twin Moon, may thou dream eternally of the Spring which never came..."
A deep raspy male voice echoed throughout the tomb of Anwen, gradually reducing to a whisper.
Soon, its burning skin turned to ash, together with the rest of its body. No evidence was left of the existence of the nightmarish creature, except a pile of dust on the cold stone floor. Anwen's head, eternally illustrating a static expression of indifference, dropped to the ground with a loud thud.
Victor was dying as well. The feat he had accomplished just now was mainly out of his own control - Dreamer and Stalker had guided him towards the correct path, protecting him from the shadows on the way. He wasn't deluded by thinking his intuition solely by itself led him to the core of the fallen city of Styga, underneath the grand cathedral, to the tomb of a slumbering ancient, who was the key to the death of the creature of darkness. Defiling the pristine beauty by executing her with an explosive left a bad taste in his mouth. The numerous Tier 4 Artifacts were all gone - apart from being stunning, the demoness must've been frighteningly powerful to have required that much power to be incapacitated. Sadly, he couldn't get his hands on them. It was fine, maybe in the afterlife he could dream of becoming the owner of a tier 4 Greatsword. Unfortunately, it seemed his quest for revenge ended here. It was torture knowing that he had indeed succeeded in completing the mission, but was forced to give up on his future at the end.
The boy was still somewhat satisfied with what he had done - he had vanquished a creature much stronger than himself, effectively earning his right to join the Frogmen. To check what tier and Class the Ape had been, he summoned his status window and entered the Kill Count section. To his surprise, it had gone up to 7.
Kill Count: 7
1. Human Irene Hall
2. Undead Jake Elory
3. Undead Muki Nagata
4. Undead Kaito Ashizawa
5. Undead Kenji Takase
6. Undead Nightbringer Anwen Telori [Drop available]
7. Undead Nightcrawler Song of Spring [Drop available]