Chapter 261: Destroy The Cursed (77)
Chapter 261
No way... it can’t be, Magus thought, eyes narrowing.
The dark smoke cleared and a figure stepped out. Burnt flesh dotted his body like fresh wounds. "Shut the hell up already," he snapped, voice tight with barely restrained fury.
The small purple glow in his eyes confirmed it. Ronan. Still alive. Still refusing to die.
Ronan looked at Magus, dug into his palm, and swallowed a white pill whole.
The System answered instantly. Restoration pill consumed. All status restored to peak.
Power surged through him... bone knitting, burns sealing, every tendon and tendon-mind flickering back to life. HP. Energy. Exhaustion, all were gone like they’d never been. And then the impossible: Onslaught’s timer blinked back to life.
Onslaught skill activated. Host damage increased a hundredfold.
Ronan’s hands trembled as he stood. He looked up at Magus and spat, "You should shut your mouth. You talk about the greater good, about sacrifices so countless others may live but you serve the cursed. You and your order have caused those deaths. You’ve ruined lives... men, women, children. How do you justify that?"
Magus didn’t answer. He only watched.
Ronan let out an angry chuckle, raw and ugly. "You can’t answer because there’s no justification. What the cursed have done, what you’ve done deserves death. All of you."
"I’ll get rid of you. And the others. Today, the cursed must fall."
He activated the dread crown.... the artifact he had gotten after killing the Dreadlord. It merged into him, weaving itself into an intricate suit of armor that wrapped his frame. Plates locked like a knight’s shell, edges honed and dark as a moonless night. The thing radiated power and a quiet, grinding dread.
Ronan’s purple eyes flared. A cold, violent aura bled into his blades. He raised them and crossed them in front of his chest, an X of steel and shadow.
In a low, icy whisper that tasted like a promise, he said two words:
"LET’S ROLL."
Far from the blazing battlefield, high up the mountain, a cavern sighed with a false calm. The fighting inside had raged for hours now it lay quiet. Not the kind of quiet that heals. The kind that waits. The calm before the storm.
Quint’s eyes twitched. His whole body trembled with disbelief.
A few metres away, Aiden and Clara stood... two ruined silhouettes in the dim light. Clara’s eyes flicked to Aiden’s left arm and froze. It was gone.
Aiden’s face was a map of emotions: anger, pain, and, beneath them all, a terrible, hollow relief. He had stopped himself. He had stopped himself from hurting Clara and for that sacrifice he’d lost an arm.
"Why did you do that?" Clara asked, voice raw. She understood what it took... a sheer, violent will to defy Quint’s command and strike himself instead of her.
A broken smile trembled on Aiden’s lips. He shook his head. Speaking was a gamble. Quint still had threads on him; that last act had been pure, born from his stubborn will to not let Clara die.
"Enough of your stupid reunion," Quint snarled, his expression hardening. He stretched a hand forward. Aiden convulsed. Control slipped away again, harder this time, like drowning in a current that wouldn’t let him surface.
"Buy... time," Aiden gasped, voice shredded. "Survive..." The words fell out of him like last breaths. Then the puppet strings yanked tight and he went still.
Clara’s face went stone. Quint had taken Aiden back.
Aiden collapsed to his knees, body shaking as if wracked by unseen pain. But Clara could see the truth: he was still fighting, still resisting from inside. She couldn’t wait. If she could kill Quint before Aiden was fully consumed, maybe, just maybe they could stop this madness.
She forced her battered body upright. Every muscle screamed. Her suit was dented, systems damaged, but she had no choice. Kill Quint. End it. Save Aiden.
Golden energy coalesced in her palm, bright and desperate. She thrust her hand forward the light split into multiple golden blasts and tore toward Quint.
Quint’s face didn’t move. Calm as a tomb. Then, impossibly, a figure dropped between Clara and the blasts and absorbed them without flinching.
Clara’s breath hitched. "Wait...he’s taken already?" she thought, panic flaring. She had no luxury to stand and puzzle. She needed time, any time until help came.... That is if help do came.
Aiden’s stump twitched once, then twice, then a third time. Then a new arm erupted, bursting from the wound in a black bloom of shadow and steel. Darkness crawled along the graft like oil, swallowing light. Aiden’s gaze went hollow; his eyes locked onto Clara with a cold, unblinking stare.
Think. Think. Think.
Clara stumbled back, her mind racing through options that weren’t there. Her suit’s integrity was shredded; her combat reflexes were frayed; and the man in front of her was no longer the Aiden she knew.... he was a puppet with muscle and blades.
It wasn’t a question of if she could hold. It was how long.
Aiden moved with unnatural speed. He closed the distance in a heartbeat. Fist swung for her face, Clara ducked just in time. A kick plunged into her abdomen; the metal plating groaned and bent, but it held.
She used everything she had left, mind, grit, instincts to redirect his blows away from fatal strikes. Each small success cost her something. Cuts, bruises, a little more blood. Tiny wounds stacked into a mountain.
How long could Clara hold on before she broke? The question wasn’t if only when. She knew, without doubt, that she wouldn’t last long. No trick, no tactic, no desperate feint would let her beat Aiden in his current state. And she was nowhere near whole herself.
Aiden closed the gap in a heartbeat. A few steps, too few for Clara to breathe then he was on her. His speed was brutal, unnatural. A fist rocketed toward her face; she twisted her neck at the last instant and the blow clipped past. It wasn’t a clean dodge. It was survival by inches.
He followed with a kick that slammed straight into her abdomen. The metal plating across her suit groaned and bent. Pain flared hot and bright, but she held.
She had to. She threaded her thoughts through battle IQ and instinct, picking openings like a thief picks locks. Each deflected attack cost her something: a cut here, a bruise there, a little more of her will chipped away.
Minute wounds stacked into a mountain. Her body was a ledger of small losses that added up fast. Every breath tasted like iron. Her legs shook. Her vision narrowed. The next hit.... one perfect strike would be the one that finished her.
She hit that limit hard. Clara collapsed to the floor, slick with blood, lungs burning. She breathed in tiny, ragged breaths. She was surviving on sheer will and nothing else.
Aiden stepped forward and grabbed her head in a strangling, tender motion. His face was hollow.... empty but there was depth in the pain there too. He trembled as if pulled between two currents.
"So... this is it, then?" Clara forced a smile through the blood and grit.
Aiden’s body convulsed. He was fighting something inside him. For a sliver of a second, light flashed in his eyes then Quint’s voice cut through the cavern like a blade.
"Kill her," Quint ordered. Cold. Merciless.
Aiden’s frame shook. He didn’t want to obey. He tried not to. But the puppet strings snapped taut. There was no choice.
One hand shifted. A second limb, sleek and black morphed into an obsidian dagger, dark as a void. The essence wrapped itself around the blade and turned it into something frighteningly alive. It fell toward Clara’s throat.
Silence swallowed the strike. No pain. No cold steel. Only an impossible stillness.
Clara opened her eyes and saw something she didn’t expect: Aiden, face wet with tears that were almost... horribly.... happy. The dagger hovered inches from her skin. He smiled.
"You did well, Clara. You bought us enough time," he whispered.
Her chest stuttered. He’d broken free, he’d snapped the strings, even if only for a breath. But the puzzle solved itself from across the room.
Quint stood a few metres away, confusion flickering across his face. Red liquid trickled from his mouth to the stone floor. Clara’s gaze followed the stain and then looked up.
A bladed limb.... Aiden’s severed limb had impaled Quint through the throat. The scene moved in staccato: Quint’s eyes widened with shock, rage warred with pain, then his face slackened. Aiden’s stare went cold, shadowed.
"The one who deserves to die... is you," Aiden rasped.
The bladed limb tore free on its own. Quint’s pupils rolled; his hatred faded into nothing. He collapsed with a dull thud.
One of the Dark Emissaries was dead.
TO BE CONTINUED.......
AUTHOR’S NOTE
That’s the Chapter, everyone!
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– Ultra