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Chapter 201: Cautionary tale.
🕑 Added 2023-04-19 18:06:15 +0000 UTCEmeri and I woke groggily, our senses returning to us as the acrid smell of blood filled our nostrils. Thankfully, the fighting had abated during our time away, meaning that reinforcements had yet to arrive.
We found ourselves surrounded by the remainder of Dalius’ forces, though most of them had fallen in battle. Noticing our return, a lieutenant gave the signal to retreat which was followed by the sound of several dozen classers filing through a narrow corridor and back into the cavern.
There, we came across Dalius lazily leaning against a boulder as he nursed his wounds. The inquisitor’s body was nowhere to be found.
“Ah, you’re here! Good. That’s good…”
Dalius sighed, lifting his tired body from the ground and regarded us coolly.
“It’s time to fulfil your end of the bargain, princess.”
The request seemed to catch her off guard, making Emeri lose herself in thought for a moment. In the meantime, a purple portal had appeared back to the hideout, through which the most wounded classers were already being transported, along with the corpses that were mostly whole.
Dalius was visibly starting to lose patience, obvious from the way he tensed.
“So? Out with it, Emeri! What did you see? We don’t have the time to dilly-dally. The people of the continent need to know the truth! Without it, they’ll never wake from their nightmare of ignorance, never gain the ambition to pursue their true purpose!”
Realising that the situation was doomed from the start, I wanted to pull Emeri away from the situation. Before I could figure out a way to escape, however, my companion broke the silence.
“I’m afraid you’ll be left disappointed, Considering Helios’ story could be called a cautionary tale against your every ideal, rather than gospel to reinforce it. Helios nearly fell to madness in pursuit of creating a better world, but saw the truth at the end of his path. He refused when the system asked him to advance to the ninth tier. As a result, he lost himself to his own deification.”
The more Emeri spoke, the more deadly Dalius’ gaze seemed to become. Simultaneously, a blue mark began to glow on her wrist, before shattering entirely at the end of her explanation.
“The contract… had been fulfilled.” Dalius spoke coldly. “With it, any remaining obligations I once had to you… have also been abandoned.”
My eyes widened, realising what he was implying. Dalius continued with a deeper, gravelly voice, sounding almost as if he was grieving. He slowly raised his hand in our direction, which began to glow purple as the gravitational field around us twisted.
“Sorry, kids. I can’t have that story gettin’ out. I just can’t. Not after the sacrifices we’ve made. I hope you understand.”
As our deaths became all but assured, a black blur appeared from the edge of my vision, bowling Dalius over as if he were a toy.
For a moment, I didn’t recognise the draconian skeleton standing before me, it’s ram-like horns and spikes differentiating it from the more familiar form of Revan.
That was when the realisation struck me. That was Revan. I hadn’t noticed during our earlier retreat because of my haste, but Revan had evolved, just as he always did when I tiered up my class. I felt a pang of guilt, wondering why I hadn’t remembered that particular point of interest until now.
As Revan followed his initial attack up with a tail swipe, he threw something at us that he had been holding in his mouth. Emeri and I stared down at the breathing body of the inquisitor in numb shock, before understanding what my lizard companion had in mind.
I quickly deposited all of the healing potions I had on hand before charging into the fray while Emeri applied as much of it as she could.
During my sprint, I summoned as much mana as I had recovered during the vision to summon my third dark pursuer of the day. My core screamed as it attempted to follow my command, despite the stress that using such a skill repeatedly put my body under.
Thankfully, a fully formed pursuer appeared after a few moments, just in time to stave off Dalius’ remaining men while I ran over to Revan. I had let the elemental copy [Overloaded orbs] a second time, as the skill seemed to be useful when used against large groups.
I didn’t look back as I ordered the elemental to defeat all the people clothed with Dalius’ colour scheme, but could hear the carnage from some distance away.
Even more impressively, Revan was somehow holding his own against a wounded, tired Dalius. ‘Holding his own’ was perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, ‘holding on’ was more appropriate.
As I got closer, I realised that Revan had gained a new ability, which was responsible for his newfound power in large part. Whenever Dalius’ destroyed Revan’s bones, they would slowly start to regenerate, as if Revan had access to my- wait a minute.
I focused my eyes to activate [Dark sight] and found out that, sure enough, a tether of mana had been attached to my body, originating from Revan. My mana was being used to fuel his slow but relentless regeneration. That, combined with his now absurdly large skeleton, made him difficult to put down.
I joined the fray with a breaking swipe, hoping to catch Dalius off guard and leave a curse mark, but had no luck. The man in question turned around at just the last second, swishing his hand around and burying me into the solid stone floor of the cave. Before I could sink too far, Revan distracted Dalius with a swipe of his claw, giving me enough time to rise back to the surface.
The tier 5 moved to attack Revan with a purple skill, but I launched some sword arcs to interrupt him.
From there, Revan and I relied on teamwork to exchange upwards of a dozen blows with Dalius. He seemed to prefer dodging over blocking, making it difficult to land a cure mark, unfortunately.
Despite this, we were buying time. One hit at a time, we were tiring Dalius out further. His wounds were starting to reopen due to excessive movement, splattering the stone with blood as he attacked.
Soon enough, he grew frustrated. Perhaps the way his men were getting annihilated by the pursuer was what finally sent him over the edge, because he held both hands out in front of him and started to summon a pitch-black hole of some kind.
All light seemed to be drawn into it, along with everything else, in fact. A powerful whirlwind originated from the hole, pulling in small rocks as it forced Revan and I to brace.
As the skill was completed, the hole had grown smaller and smaller, feeling more deadly the more it shrunk. With a gleeful cackle, Dalius released the hole, pushing it in our direction and watching as we were being pulled in slowly.
At first, Revan and I tried to keep our distance, but our hopes were quickly dashed. Especially Revan, whose body was too large to hang on to anything, was losing ground bit by bit. His tail was the first to make contact with the hole, disintegrating the moment it touched the projectile and pulling the rest of Revan in with it.
Taking advantage of Revan’s temporary ‘death’, I apparated right behind Dalius and activated breaking swipe once again. This time, he couldn’t dodge even if he wanted to, as he was busy stopping the hole from going rogue.
My attack connected without an explosion and didn’t even leave a wound, so much as a scratch. Thankfully, that hadn’t been my goal.
A sickly green mark spread from the scratch, digging into Dalius’ flesh and spreading as I prepared to swing my weapon a second time.
Dalius, having realised that his hole had served its purpose, let go of the skill and let it fizzle out. Despite the curse mark, he was still far too powerful for me to go toe to toe with, so I hurriedly apparated to a safe distance, but not before his gravitational powers pulled a chunk of flesh from my back.
He snarled as I successfully made my escape and prepared to follow up his initial assault with ranged skills, but was stopped by a glowing spear arcing towards his back. Again, it served no other purpose but distracting him, but it succeeded.
Dalius whirled around with rage, finding Emeri there with an arm outstretched. Behind her, the inquisitor was slowly getting to his feet, golden fire starting to swirl around him.
To make matters even worse for Dalius, the pursuer had finished killing the rest of his subordinates and had decided to join the fray as well. It announced its arrival with the sound of howling skill fire, which caused a dozen violent explosions where Dalius was standing.
Finally, he had had enough. Dalius swore as he charged out of the dust cloud that the explosions had created, making straight for the portal to my right. Emeri and I tried to stop him with ranged skills, but he ignored them as they struck his body. Before the pursuer could get to him, Dalius had gone through the mirror-like portal and disappeared.
The portal in question made to close right after his arrival, but was momentarily prevented from doing so by the pursuer, which kept the tear from closing the same way he did his own method of arrival.
The elemental predictably didn’t listen when I told it to abandon its pursuit, instead opting to rip the portal wide open as much as possible. As a result, the portal and the pursuer seemed to enter into a contest of strength, which the portal’s creator eventually won. It closed, but not before dissipating the pursuer as it ran out of mana to sustain itself. All this happened in just a few seconds, too.
As Dalius disappeared definitively, I felt my connection to his curse mark disappear. As I wondered to myself whether that meant that the mark had disappeared alongside the connection, the recovered inquisitor collapsed again, coughing up blood.
