“A-Althea—Argh!” Nicole exclaimed as a large Dark Beast, the size and similar shape of Bo’guth, slammed her away.

I was currently faced with a couple of those things, so I couldn’t move to protect her, but I could still sense the barrier that Asteora had placed on the girl being able to withstand the blow, leaving her mostly unharmed—even if she hit a wall after being blown away.

The one closest to me raised its large darkness arm, slamming it down right after on top of me. I dodged it by dashing to my right, passing by the strike that lifted a few rocks after hitting the floor. I countered by slashing at the side of the Dark Beast, but this being in particular was tougher than the other smaller ones, so the only thing my weapon did was send it flying to the side, where it took down a couple of small, goblin-like Dark Beasts.

The remaining large Dark Beast rushed right after, its body tilting forward as its long and thick arm flowed behind it, as if it was dragging them. Due to the speed it was coming, it didn’t manage to stop itself, so it tried to ram me with its body.

I put up a Mana Barrier to force it to stop, causing it to crash against it, and creating a small shockwave over the barrier. But I didn’t leave it up, as right after, I dropped the barrier and launched a lightning strike to the large Dark Beast’s head.

It didn’t have the ability to dodge it, so its head was completely blown off by the bright lightning, causing the monster to falter backwards. Before its body hit the ground, a small Dark Beast suddenly flew off from the direction where the first one had landed.

This smaller one was aimed at the large one, quickly crashing where its head was just a moment ago, creating another red lightning on impact, and regrowing the lost head.

I was left stunned momentarily, since I didn’t expect the other one to aid this one in that way, but I didn’t have time to contemplate it, as the healed Dark Beast quickly looked down on me, its red eyes glowing even stronger.

From its eyes, a small Hellfire beam was fired. There was no room for me to dodge it, so it burned right into my chest, sizzling the barrier on the armor which quickly crumbled to give way for the beam to hit the armor directly.

With a dash backwards, I dodged the beam, hoping to make sure that it didn’t cause any more damage to the armor, which didn’t break down, but did turn slightly red, giving me a burning sensation in my chest.

The Dark Beast, however, was still able to continue firing that beam, which it redirected by raising its head and following my movements. I quickly dashed to my right side, summoning a fireball to my left hand, and throwing it after taking just a handful of running steps.

It flew straight to the Dark Beast’s chest, creating a small explosion that only managed to stagger the Dark Beast as it was forced to take a couple of steps back. But it was enough for me to turn on my feet and rush straight for it.

Blue lightning cracked on my dark blade, tracing its large form from the grip on my hand all the way to the tip of the sword and back down to my hand. With a high jump, I spun on the air, and brought down the weapon on the Dark Beast.

It looked up to me, its eyes threatening to fire that small Hellfire beam again, but I was much faster. The dark blade hit the Dark Beast right between its red eyes and large dark horns, creating an exploding sound as lightning cut right through its body, making way for the rest of the blade to cut it down right in half.

With a deep screeching sound and a couple of Hellfire beams that shot in completely different directions from it's split head, the large Dark Beast’s halves burst into a mist of darkness, much denser than those from the small ones.

It was then that I noticed how, as it was disappearing, some of the dark particles still hanging in the air moved into my body.

I worried that perhaps these were some final form of attack, so I quickly moved away, but the particles moved much faster than I could, reaching my chest and passing right through the barrier, the armor and even my skin.

In a hurried state of mind, I activated healing magic, hoping to expunge whatever had reached my body, but I quickly realized that those darkness particles had integrated into my own Darkness and Hellfire Power.

With a frown, I brought up my hand to the center of my chest. I had almost forgotten that I was here to become stronger by both training my body and reclaiming some of Salrak’s power… However, it still felt somewhat strange to have darkness within my body—a body that used to be only for holiness.

As if to bring me back from my own thoughts, the remaining large Dark Beast screeched with a deep voice, causing me to look at it. The other smaller Dark Beasts were currently running to it, crawling one on top of each other as the large one grabbed the ones that it could with its arms and threw them to its open maw.

I readied my blade and rushed forward to ensure that it wouldn’t be able to empower itself, but as I took my first step, I heard Nicole scream from somewhere behind me.

“A-Althea! Lady Asteora! Please help me!” she shouted, and I stopped to look behind me.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

The large Dark Beast that she was faced with had her currently pinned down to a wall with its large arm wrapped around her neck.

I frowned yet again and looked at Asteora, who was floating somewhere between me and Nicole, looking completely unconcerned about what was going on with Nicole. I was almost certain that she was protecting her, which is why I hadn’t paid as much attention to what was going on with her, but looking back down at Nicole, I got worried.

“Asteora! What happened to her protecting her?! Help her!” I shouted, pointing my finger at the girl that was currently being choked.

“Hm?” she replied, just as unconcerned about the girl. “I think she should be able to fight on her own.”

“What? She’s in no way able to—”

As I was trying to chastise Asteora for ignoring Nicole, the large Dark Beast I was facing before, fired a Hellfire beam. I hurriedly looked back at it, reacting as fast as I could to put up a Mana Barrier.

The Barrier wasn’t able to withstand the attack, fully cracking for a second, before completely shattering, draining my mana in an instant and giving me a slight backlash. But the time I stopped it was enough for me to quickly move out of the way.

The Hellfire beam passed close to my right foot as I was trying to move away, and just like last time, the armor’s protections activated, making sure that I didn’t take any damage besides the burning heat that remained on top of the armor.

I turned to look at the large Dark Beast. It was bigger by about half of its previous size. Its arms had grown larger, with its left arm in particular being deformed to be twice as big as the other one; and its head had grown much bigger with a mouth that covered most of it, and a couple of extra blood-red horns on top of it all.

I quickly turned to look back at Nicole, who by now was on the verge of passing out under the large Dark Beast’s arm.

Asteora remained unconcerned about the whole situation, only looking down on me with a cold gaze. “If you keep half-assing this whole thing, that girl might die.”

“What?! But you’re supposed to be her master now! You should be—”

“Pay attention,” she leisurely said, pointing a finger at the Deformed Dark Beast.

It was rushing this way, its mouth wide open and a Hellfire beam being charged in the depths of its darkness body. The speed of its movements was surprisingly fast for how uneven the body was, so I hardly even had the time to think.

My old master was right. I thought that just because she was protecting Nicole that I could just do things the way I wanted, but if there’s something that I’ve learned about her… it’s that I can’t trust her, and right now, both mine and Nicole’s lives were in danger. I couldn’t worry about what she might think of me.

I empowered myself with Darkness and Hellfire, and brought up my left hand with a ball of darkness, aimed straight at the Deformed Dark Beast’s maw.

It bit down on my arm, eating it completely up to my shoulder as its maw closed down around it, and the Hellfire in its depths was fired.

But I didn’t worry about what it might do, as with the darkness in my hand, I took hold of the Hellfire it tried to use on me, quickly gathering it in my hand, and compacting it into the palm of my hand as much as I could.

The Deformed Dark Beast didn’t seem at all concerned about it, as it maintained the same gesture, one where it was trying as hard as it could to end me. It raised its large deformed arm and grabbed me by the waist, trying to lift me up and shove me into the mouth it was opening again.

But as mindless a beast that it was, it didn’t know what I had done with the Hellfire. I released the condensed Hellfire in my hand, even faster than it had been compacted. The body of the Deformed Dark Beast was quickly filled with a blood-red light, burning every single bit of its shape as it destroyed the darkness that composed it.

In a second, the Deformed Dark Beast blew up in a mess of Hellfire and Darkness, spreading in every direction, before suddenly stopping and whirling into my body, gathering at my chest where it disappeared into my body.

Once more, I felt how my powers grew—even if it was only slightly—and prepared to quickly use them again as I turned around to face the large Dark Beast holding Nicole.

She was desperately trying to burn the arm away, her hands gripped on the beast’s arms as fire flared and faded several times. I didn’t waste time, pointing one finger at the Dark Beast, and firing a small Hellfire beam covered in darkness as I dashed over to where she was.

The beam easily pierced through the Dark Beast, cutting off the arm from the shoulder and causing it to screech with its deep voice as it faltered backwards. Nicole landed on the floor, still holding on to the cut arm as her fire grew much larger now that she wasn’t being choked by it.

I infused the large dark blade with a mist of darkness, readying the blade to finish off this Dark Beast in one swing, but as I was doing so, I noticed Nicole’s fire growing larger and larger, to the point where it was now forcing the large Dark Beast to take a step back.

I couldn’t be concerned with what was going on with Nicole, as at that moment, I had to take the opportunity that the Dark Beast gave me. So I swung the blade in a wide horizontal swipe that went from left to right, easily splitting the Dark Beast in half, before gathering even more darkness in my left hand to create a pulse, directed at both halves of the Dark Beast.

The remains of the Dark Beast burst along with the pulse, leaving nothing behind. However, I didn’t have time to think about it as I quickly turned my attention to Nicole, whose fire was growing bigger and bigger, already being larger than she was.

“Nicole!” I shouted, but the fires kept growing. “That’s enough! We’re clear now!”

It appeared like she couldn’t hear me, and from what I could see from behind the fires, she had her eyes shut tight and her hands clutched in the same position as if she was still gripping on to the now long gone arm of the Dark Beast.

Without hesitation, I jumped into the fire. The barrier on the armor activated, and was able to withstand the fire, keeping me safe from the flames, but I could still feel the burning heat of the magic surrounding me, which meant that it was just a matter of time before the barriers broke down. I had to be fast.

I reached for her hand, grabbing it softly but firmly as I lowered it, before grabbing the other hand, and doing the same. “Nicole.”

Finally, after touching her and getting myself as close to her as I could, she opened her eyes, and looked surprised at me.

“A-Althea!” she exclaimed, the fire surrounding us finally subsiding until nothing of it remained. “You’re on fire!”

Nicole anxiously tried to move her hands to turn off the few bits that still burned on the armor, but I refused to let go of her. By now, what remained of the fire was nothing to harm me, so with a small wave of darkness, the fire that remained in my armor was completely gone.

She looked back once more with surprise. “What was that?”

I softly smiled, letting go of one of her hands as I lifted my hand up with the palm facing up. A mist of darkness gathered on it.

“Darkness,” I said, summoning a small blood-red flame to float on top of the mist of darkness. “And Hellfire.”