The Hunted Regressor: My Heretic Saint System

Chapter 203: Fate Wasn’t Merciful

"..."

"..."

"..."

For a moment, the cavern was silent.

Ignotus stared down at what remained of the Demon.

Blanc, meanwhile, looked back up with what little remained.

It looked at eyes that weren’t human... eyes that terrified it.

Eyes that made a Demon feel fear.

"You... really are a monster."

Ignotus chuckled softly.

It wasn’t the first time he’d been called that, though hearing it from a Demon made of sewer sludge gave it a nice sense of irony.

"Tell your God I said hi."

He stomped what remained, fully ending its life.

"First one down."

Saying that, he waited a beat as the green poison mist began to dissipate.

His eyes, meanwhile, scanned the puddle for loot. A Divine Relic? A Rune?

Nothing.

’Hm... unfortunate.’

Ignotus turned towards the path leading to the next area, loosening his [Living Ligature].

The purple glow faded a tad, and the heavy weight lifted from his shoulders.

"Now... who’s ne—"

SCREEEEEEEEE!

A high-pitched, agonizing scream tore through the silence.

It came from Ignotus’s belt, making him freeze.

He pulled up the Whispering Snail.

The purple shell was vibrating violently, emitting a sound of pure distress.

Ignotus stared at the momentarily dead snail.

This was linked to Lykos.

It would only shatter if the connection were forcibly severed.

Either by death or by a barrier so thick it blocked reality.

"Lykos..."

Ignotus’s expression changed instantly.

The playful, arrogant smirk vanished.

His face went completely blank.

He turned his head slowly to the left.

To the solid wall of volcanic rock that separated his tunnel from the one Lykos and Merlin had taken.

Ignotus walked to the wall.

"Out of my way."

He placed both hands on the rock face.

RRRRRUUUMMBLLLLE!

The entire tunnel shook, and rock imploded.

Ignotus was erasing the matter in front of him, crushing it into dust with sheer, overwhelming force. He tore through the wall, tunneling straight toward the fading signal of his people.

***

While Ignotus made his way through the dungeon, Aurelia and Ulv were in the middle-left tunnel, facing their own nightmare.

Standing in their way were two Demons.

One was a hulking mass of stone and muscle, holding a club made of petrified bone. The other was slender, floating a few feet off the ground, wrapped in tattered robes that swirled with unnatural wind.

CLANG.

Ulv banged his shield against his ice armor.

Aurelia’s wings twitched instinctively behind her as she turned her attention to her opponent.

The Wind Demon hovered silently, its eyes glowing a sickly green. The air around it distorted with invisible blades.

With that, the opponents were decided.

Once the Demon’s and Aurelia’s eyes met, it raised a hand.

Whoosh!

Two sharp blades of vacuum-compressed air shot toward Aurelia.

She flicked her wrist. Her whip, coated in Divinity, snapped forward, sending two arcs of wind crashing into the Demon’s attack.

Boom!

The attacks collided, exploding into a gust of hot, violent air that ruffled her feathers.

Aurelia dropped into a sprinter’s stance, and a burst of wind exploded from her heels.

She shot forward like an arrow, blurring across the cavern floor.

Anticipating the move, the Demon drifted to the side effortlessly, letting her shoot past.

As she passed, it spun, firing a barrage of Wind Blades at her back. Aurelia, far from panicking, slammed her hand forward, firing a burst of air against the air itself to arrest her momentum instantly, making her spin.

"Wall!"

At the same time, she conjured a dense wall of wind, which the Demon’s blades crashed into, dissipating harmlessly.

Without stopping, Aurerlia triggered her [Air Dash] again, but this time, she didn’t go straight.

She blasted herself to the right, bouncing off the cavern wall. Then she blasted up, hitting the ceiling, and pushed off again, becoming a pinball of destruction, moving faster than the eye could track.

The Demon’s head snapped back and forth, trying and failing to follow her.

Aurelia twisted her body midair, facing the Demon from above.

"Zephyr Mirage!"

She split.

Or at least, it looked like she did.

Three afterimages of her—made of swirling wind—shot toward the Demon from different angles.

Beyond confused, the Demon panicked and attacked wildly at the clones.

They burst into harmless puffs of air, but the real Aurelia was already behind it.

She shifted her weight, turning her momentum into a powerful, spinning kick aimed at the Demon’s head.

The Demon reacted at the last moment, summoning a shield of wind just above its skull.

Aurelia’s boot slammed into the barrier, the impact rippling through the air, but the Demon held firm.

It snarled, lashing out with a claw of condensed air aimed at her stomach.

Instead of retreating, Aurelia blasted wind from her back, launching herself over the Demon’s head, flipping one-eighty degrees until she was hovering upside down directly above it.

For a split second, she hung there like a raindrop frozen in time.

"Fall."

She blasted wind from her feet, diving straight down, her whip aimed like a spear.

The Demon crouched and summoned multiple layers of wind barriers above it, knowing that it couldn’t dodge in time.

Aurelia crashed through the first barrier; she tore through the second, but as she reached the third, her momentum slowed. The Demon raised its hands, reinforcing the final shield.

It was going to block her, the Demon’s eyes lighting up with that triumph.

But, having learned from her earlier battles, Aurelia expected this.

Just before impact, she detonated an air pocket directly in front of her.

BOOM!

The explosion barely touched the Demon, but it sure did hit Aurelia herself.

It blasted her sideways, violently jerking her out of the dive just inches before she hit the shield.

She flipped in the air, reaching the ground beside the confused Demon.

The Demon was still looking up, blocking an attack that wasn’t there anymore.

Aurelia was upon a flank that was wide open.

She swung her whip; the blades, hardened by her wind, slashed across the Demon’s exposed back.

"KKKKAAAAAAAAAAARH!"

Dark blood sprayed onto the rocks as the Demon shrieked, stumbling forward.

Aurelia didn’t let up. She used [Air Dash] to close the gap instantly, appearing right in front of its stumbling form.

The Demon, desperate and bleeding, gathered every ounce of Corruption it had left.

It seemed to be a suicide move. A massive AOE explosion meant to take them both out.

Aurelia stepped in and jammed the handle of her whip directly into the swirling vortex forming in the Demon’s chest.

"INTERNAL."

She channeled her spell inside the Demon’s own casting circle.

The flow was disrupted, over-pressurizing the spell, making the Demon’s eyes bulge.

"Wait—"

POP.

Its suicidal attack imploded as it crunched inward, its body folding as the vacuum collapsed.

It let out one final, distorted wheeze before dropping to the floor, a twisted heap of robes and broken wind spells.

Aurelia landed softly, her boots kicking up a small cloud of dust.

She was panting, sweat dripping down her feathers, but she was unharmed.

Flicking the Demon blood off her whip, she turned to look at Ulv.

The wolf-tank was standing over the crushed remains of the Brute Demon, wiping his greatsword.

’We’re strong.’

He looked at Aurelia, then at the twisted corpse of the Wind Demon.

"Show off."

Aurelia smiled, a surprisingly warm one.

"Thank you."

They then looked down the tunnel, toward the deep dark where Ignotus likely was.

"Come on, we’re not done yet."

Aurelia and Ulv left the carnage behind them.

The tunnel ahead was quiet, too quiet. The oppressive Corruption that had choked the air earlier seemed to have settled into a heavy stillness.

"Do you smell that?"

Ulv asked, sniffing the air.

"Iron..."

Aurelia grimaced.

"And old blood."

They rounded a corner, their weapons raised, expecting another ambush.

There were no monsters or traps. Instead, hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the passage was a banner.

It was pale, stitched together with rough twine, and possessed a texture that looked disturbingly like dried skin.

Stretched across its surface were crude symbols painted in black blood that still seemed wet.

It was a primitive Arcane drawing.

Aurelia squinted at the markings while stepping closer.

As a birdfolk, her eyes were sharp, and as the "bookish" one of the group, she knew her theory.

The diagram wasn’t complex. In fact, it was insultingly simple.

It showed a central figure—a massive, horned beast—sleeping. Connected to it were four smaller circles, each perhaps representing the tunnels they were in.

Lines of black ink flowed from the tunnels into the beast.

Ulv leaned over, his frame casting a shadow on the gruesome art.

"What does it mean?"

Aurelia traced the lines with her eyes.

"We thought the Demons were performing a ritual to awaken it."

Her face, usually confident and stoic, went pale.

"They... they weren’t calling it."

She pointed to the black lines connecting the circles to the beast.

"They were holding it back."

Ulv frowned.

"Holding it back?"

"The Lesser Demons we just killed made up corks in a very massive bottle."

Realization hit the wolf hard...

The theory had been standard: kill the Demons, stop the ritual.

That was how it should’ve worked; that was how it always did.

But this dungeon wasn’t fair.

The diagram made it clear. The Greater Demon was already awake; it was just starving. The Lesser Demons were siphoning the ambient Corruption to keep themselves strong, essentially starving the Greater Demon to keep it asleep so they could rule the roost.

By killing them...

"We just broke the seals."

Ulv finished, his grip tightening on his sword until his knuckles turned white.

"We just fed it."

Aur looked at the banner again.

"It was simpler than we theorized and inevitable."

Everything made sense now.

This entire Greater Demon business didn’t happen all of a sudden.

It was a direct result of the war. The rapidly increasing loss of life was too much for these Demons to control and keep away from the Greater Demon, preventing them from stopping its awakening.

In other words, this was a lost cause.

If they hadn’t fought, the Demons would have simply killed them in a way that would help them stop the Greater Demon’s awakening. This was always their plan; even when facing the others, they never mentioned its awakening, only its feeding.

By fighting and winning, Ignotus’s people released the Corruption directly to the Greater Demon far below.

Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t.

A deep, resonant thump echoed from the depths of the earth.

It sounded like a heartbeat, a massive, hungry heartbeat.

The ground trembled, and dust fell from the ceiling.

It wasn’t a mission to prevent an awakening anymore.

It was a race against time.

They had to reach the bottom and kill it before it finished digesting the "meal" they had just inadvertently served it!

"Run."

They bolted down the tunnel, leaving the skin banner swaying gently in the wind of their passing.

Truly, this Fate wasn’t merciful.