novelraw Chapter 76: COLLAPSE
Chapter 76: COLLAPSE
The knight spirit’s body began to disintegrate into particles of light, not destroyed, but dissipating voluntarily, its form fragmenting and rising into the dark sky.
"You will be played with." His voice echoed even as he faded.
Kira clenched her fists, confused, feeling her body tremble.
And the spirit disappeared completely. A heavy silence fell upon them.
Only the sound of breathing, Kira’s controlled but rapid, Haru’s irregular, faltering every three seconds.
Kira looked at Haru hesitantly.
"Master..."
The memories flooded back.
Fifty consumed spirits. Fifty fragmented lives screaming inside Haru’s head simultaneously.
*"...I had three children..."*
*"...the blade entered here..."*
*"...my name was..."*
*"...NO, MY NAME IS..."*
Overlapping voices creating a mental cacophony that made it impossible to think straight.
Haru tried to focus on the present, on the now, on who he was, but the boundary blurred.
Physical signs began: Double vision, he saw the cemetery through his own eyes and through the eyes of a dead mercenary and through the eyes of a child who had died of fever.
Three different perspectives of the same place overlapping. Imbalance, his body didn’t respond properly, as if he had forgotten how to walk, muscles receiving conflicting signals from fifty different nervous systems.
Irregular breathing, lungs expanding and contracting out of rhythm, trying to follow the breathing patterns of dozens of dead people.
The system overloaded with inconsistent information:
```
[ERROR - IDENTITY MATRIX CORRUPTION]
◊ Processing 51 concurrent memory streams
◊ Neural pathways: OVERLOADED
◊ Self-recognition: FAILING
◊ WARNING: User may lose primary identity permanently
Haru tried to walk, to take a step forward, that’s all, but his foot wouldn’t obey properly and he stumbled, almost falling.
Kira was beside him instantly, grabbing his arm.
"Master... stay behind me." Her voice came out firm even though she trembled internally.
Haru blinked, confused, looking at her. "Behind... her?"
Kira pulled him, placing her own body between Haru and the rest of the cemetery, daggers in hand, ears alert, tail straight.
Total predator mode, it was no longer Kira who needed protection. It was Kira who was protecting.
And then it began. Spirits that had wandered far away all turned toward Haru.
Translucide Shadows, distortion on the air. Even the invisible spirits, Haru could feel the presence of all of’em coming
Dozens of them began to approach slowly, drawn by something.
Kira noticed. "Master... they’re coming..."
Haru processed through the mental fog. "Fifty spirits... fifty cores... concentrated spiritual energy in one place..."
The rule was already seeming simple: The more he consumed... the more he attracted.
He had become a spiritual beacon, a massive concentration of energy in a living body that shouldn’t have it.
The spirits sensed it and came to investigate or consume in return.
The first spirit approached.
Kira cut, a quick movement, dagger passing through the ethereal form.
The spirit recoiled but didn’t flee.
The second arrived from the other side.
Kira spun, blocked with the second dagger.
Third. Fourth. Five.
She fought defensively, not trying to kill, only to control space, maintain a perimeter around Haru, prevent them from getting close.
Single objective: keep Haru alive and buy time.
Far away, atop one of the houses, large mausoleums of noble families with a small chapel-like structure, Flavius stood observing the cemetery.
Yukihime, beside him inside the protective bubble, was drawing in the air with a glowing finger.
The atmosphere was calm... but wrong.
Flavius sensed a change in the energy of the place.
He turned his head north.
"Great spiritual concentration..." he murmured softly.
He looked directly at where Haru was; he couldn’t see through the mist, but he felt it.
Yukihime stopped drawing and looked at him. "Mr. Inspector?"
Flavius turned to her, his analytical eyes behind his glasses.
Direct question: "Your father... is a necromancer?"
Yukihime blinked, confused. "Necro... what?"
"Someone who deals with... with ghosts." Flavius simplified it into child-friendly language.
"Aaah!" Yukihime thought. "Papa deals with a lot of things! He has swords, and fire, and that black thing in his eye..."
She paused, her memory returning.
Scene of the healing. Haru almost dead in the mansion. Wrong energy emanating from him. A name she had heard adults say afterward.
"At the Vandris mansion..." she said innocently, "...Papa got all strange and..."
Flavius interrupted, raising his hand. "Vandris?"
Silence.
Yukihime realized she might have said something wrong. "I-I... shouldn’t have said that?"
Flavius stood still, processing.
’Vandris’.
A well-known noble house. An ancient lineage of necromancers, the good ones, those who worked with the Church, performed purification rituals, guided souls to eternal rest.
But if Haru had been at the Vandris mansion... and was now emanating massive spiritual energy... and Yukihime mentioned "a black thing in his eye"...
Pattern, energy, behavior.
Flavius connected the dots, but didn’t react emotionally, only filed the information away.
"So... he has a connection to necromancy. Interesting."
He looked north again. "Very interesting."
...
Isabela cut another spirit, the tenth she had defeated. She sealed it in the vial, put it away, stopped, took a deep breath, and looked around.
"I’ve already defeated ten... but the mission was twenty-three in total, divided among all of us..." she did mental math. "If I got ten... and the others got a similar amount... the numbers don’t add up."
She looked at the cemetery shrouded in mist. "It wasn’t just twenty-three..."
Suspicion grew.
The mission had incorrect information. Deliberately or through incompetence. Suddenly...
A column of fire exploded in the distance, rising vertically into the sky, red and gold flames mingling, soaring high, illuminating the mist below, visible from any point in the cemetery.
"Valtherion Fire." Isabela froze; only someone other than her could do that. "Haru."
She changed direction immediately, running that way.
....
He was kneeling on the ground, hands clutching his head, voices mingling and screaming, his vision tripling, his body trembling.
Spirits surrounding him, twenty, thirty, their numbers growing.
Kira, already on the brink of collapse, a slight wound on her arm where a spirit had struck, her breathing heavy, her movements slowing.
"Master... I can’t hold them all..." her voice came out desperately.
Haru tried to focus. "I need... to help... her..." but he couldn’t control his body properly, he couldn’t think straight.
Fifty voices shouting different orders.
And then... on instinct, not thought, without control, just pure survival. Mana exploded from him without conscious command.
*IGNITION.*
Fire exploded from Haru in all directions, not a directed attack, but an uncontrolled release of power, red and gold flames rising vertically to the sky like a massive pillar, heat incinerating mist within a ten-meter radius, spirits being pushed back by the pressure of the explosion.
The pillar of fire rose about fifty meters high, clearly marking the location.
Everyone in the cemetery saw it; spirits retreated.
Kira fell to his knees, breathing heavily, shielding his eyes from the heat.
Haru stood in the center, fire still burning around him, his dark eye gleaming intensely.
But the explosion had consequences: it revealed the exact location and attracted even more.
Stronger spirits, those hidden, the invisible, the dangerous ones, felt that massive release of energy and began to converge.
Now all paths aligned: Isabela, running towards the pillar of fire. Flavius had already perceived the direction, Yukihime with him in the bubble. Kira, defending Haru in the center.
Haru, collapsing, power out of control, and dozens of spirits converging on the same point.
Flavius observed the pillar of fire from afar, picked Yukihime up in his arms, and murmured softly to himself:
"...So this is it." He leaped from the mausoleum roof, a bubble floating gently, descending towards the chaos.
"Uncontrolled release... unstable core... chain reaction..." he thought, analyzing without emotion. "...it worked better than expected."
"The mission never existed. The cemetery was real, the spirits too. But the "work"? The paperwork? The urgency? Everything created, everything aligned... I’ve always done this."
Controlled pressure. Limited variables. Closed environment, pure observation.
"That’s how I discovered who people really were, not in speeches, but when they were about to break."
His lips curved slightly.
"And I thought it would just be another adoption..."
His eyes drifted to Yukihime for a moment, then returned to the fire as they moved towards it...
"I know the Valtherions, everyone knows them, but this...Vandris..."
His reasoning clicked quickly. Valtherions, raw power, bloodline. Vandris, manipulation of the dead, forbidden knowledge.
And in the middle? A child.
He looked at her.
"...interesting... These houses are plotting something... if I catch you..."
A slight smile appeared.
"...the entire empire will speak my name."
The spirits, converging like a swarm, passed by them without doing anything...
"Let’s see..." he murmured softly. "...how much you can take."
Behind him, Yukihime lightly held his coat.
"Mr. Flavius..."
Her voice came out low, worried.
He didn’t look back.
But he answered.
"Stay calm... I’ll save you from them."
...on the other side... the system notified which skill the user wanted to evolve; Haru had called upon the evolution tree with what he had left...
[ACTIVE SKILLS]
♦ [Touch of Goddess]
◊◊ [Ignition] LVL: 2
► 20.800 XP
◊◊ [Mana core] LVL: 1
► 5.500 XP
♦ [Mind Whisper] LVL: 1
► 3.200 XP
♦ [Shadow Step] LVL: 1
► 6.000 XP
♦ [Micro Spatial Compression] LVL: 1
►7.200 XP
◊◊◊ Available skill slots 7/8
[PASSIVE SKILLS]
♦ [Battle Memory] LVL: 1
► 4.000 XP
[CURSES, BLESSINGS, PACT ]
[CHRONIA’S CURSE: ]
◊ Time Stop: LVL 1
►7.200 XP
[DEVOURING COVENANT]
► Activated...