novelraw Chapter 222: Demons Are Coming
Chapter 222: Demons Are Coming
"STRANGER!"
"STRANGER!"
"STRANGER!"
The chant rocked the Colosseum.
A roar of approval for the Heretic who had just taken down a fire princess with magma and a clever move.
High above, Lothar wiped sweat from his brow.
Even he, in the distance, was affected by the heat.
"WHAT A MATCH! Truly unexpected! But folks, even monsters need a breather! We will take a short intermission before the Grand Final so Priest Ignotus can—"
"No."
Ignotus’s voice cut through the noise.
Standing in the center of the melted, scorched sand, he reached into his inventory and pulled out two vials. One red, one blue.
He downed a high-grade healing potion and a pure Divinity Elixir in three seconds flat.
His Divinity flared, the grey dullness in his Will sharpening back into focus.
With that, he looked up at the VIP box where the top seed was waiting.
"Come down here, sister. Let’s finish this."
"..."
"..."
"..."
The crowd went silent.
From the high stands, a figure stood up.
Rosa, the Student Chief, had responded to his call.
She vaulted over the railing, falling fifty feet with the grace of a leaf, landing silently on the sand opposite him.
A moment after she landed, the Colosseum began to hum.
Golden light swept across the floor. The melted glass turned back into sand, the craters filled themselves in, and the cracks in the walls sealed.
It was like watching time reverse instead of the Colosseum just being fixed.
But the two siblings didn’t watch the spell.
They stared at each other.
"Hey, sister, it’s good to see you like this~."
Ignotus smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes.
"How have you been? Busy?"
Rosa smoothed her pristine green skirt.
"Yes."
"That’s good. I like to be busy too."
"..."
"How’s BIG brother by the way?"
Ignotus asked, emphasizing the ’big.’
"Is he broken? I might have kicked him a little too hard."
Rosa’s eyes twitched.
"..."
"Imagine I win here, huh?"
Ignotus continued, tilting his head.
"How would that look on our family?"
Rosa remained silent, her hands balling into fists at her sides.
"The family disappointment!"
Ignotus began to list off on his fingers.
"A spoiled brat. A useless lump. Deadweight. A local—maybe even a stratum-level—disgrace. Didn’t I once call myself that?"
His grin widened.
"Well, if one with these titles wins against the ’Perfect Daughter’... she won’t be so perfect anymore, would she?"
That hit a nerve.
Rosa’s composure cracked.
Her Divinity exploded outward, a verdant storm of green.
"Shut up."
A hand was raised.
"BEG—!"
"SYNAXIS!"
Both siblings shouted it at the same time.
Neither was going to give the other a moment.
Rosa transformed first, her hair turning a vibrant green.
Vines wrapped around her head like a crown, leaves sprouting from her shoulders.
The ground beneath her bloomed instantly, flowers erupting in a wave of color as if nature itself were bowing to its queen.
Ignotus’s white hair turned a blinding white, while his eyes bled crimson streaks down his cheeks. But midway through, his transformation paused a moment as he activated [Fortune’s Wheel].
Now that it was reset, it allowed him to get a new Element.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick—
DING!
—
[Plant!]
—
Ignotus blinked.
A laugh bubbled up in his throat.
’You have got to be kidding me.’
It reminded him of the last time he pulled this Element, which was when he was up against the Mimicry Demon in the dungeon. A poetic fight—fighting a mirror with a mirror.
Now? Ignotus was fighting his sister, a master of the Plant Element, using their own family’s signature Element against her.
’Dual Fated works in mysterious ways.’
Slamming his hands together, he resumed his transformation, activating [Living Ligature].
Green, thorny vines erupted from his skin, weaving into his clothes, turning his outfit into a dark, organic armor.
That was when the crowd finally caught up and went absolutely feral.
Two Partial Transformations right out of the gate!
There was no warm-up.
This was war!
Rosa moved first, swiping her hand.
The ground before her turned into a sea of three-foot spikes.
Ignotus didn’t dodge.
Thick, brown roots shot out of his boots, acting like stilts, allowing him to run over the needles. Rather, his root legs crushed her attack before it could even shoot out.
Yet Rosa was ready for his aggression.
She lashed out with a single, massive vine. It moved faster than sound, cracking the air.
Ignotus raised his hands.
Click.
Using his Hands of Lethe, he stole the whip itself and fired it back without pause.
Rosa deflected it with a wall of petals, but Ignotus, expecting that, was already closing in.
He swung his sword, which was now extended by a living creeper vine wrapped around the hilt, giving it the range of a spear.
CLANG.
Rosa blocked with a hardened wood shield.
"Why do you fight?!"
She pushed him back with a burst of pollen.
"You helped with nothing! You were a failure, so I was forced to be the success!"
She launched a volley of [Seed Bombs].
Ignotus weaved through the explosions, using [Wise Fool] to throw enhanced rubble on the seeds, exploding them before they reached him.
"I didn’t ask for your expectations!"
Ignotus shouted back, firing a cluster of thorns from his palm.
"I’ll make you see!"
***
Rosa blocked the thorns, her heart pounding hard.
Ignotus, her brother, didn’t understand.
He couldn’t.
She was the Perfect Daughter. The genius. But while that might seem like a gift to those watching her, it was nothing but a sentence.
Her older brother, Acer, was talented but a failure as well—too arrogant, too lazy.
Meanwhile, her younger brother was talentless.
That left only her.
The weight of the entire House Plant rested on her spine. She had to be strong. She had to be elegant. She had to be perfect.
Did she want this?
Yes. Part of her loved the adoration. She liked being known as the "Perfect Daughter." Anyone would.
But everything else?
The endless training? The politics? The pressure that felt like a collar around her throat?
That was forced upon her!
And now, it was too late to take it away.
It was a part of her. It was her armor. If she lost here, to the brother who had escaped that burden... she would shatter.
So that was why, though she really didn’t want to lash out at him, it was unbecoming; she couldn’t help it.
Her entire identity was at stake!
"I will not lose to a disgrace, no matter how much you changed!"
Rosa slammed both hands into the ground.
A colossal tree root, thick as a train, erupted from the center of the arena, much bigger than any before it.
It split into thousands of tendrils, turning the air into a cage of wood.
"You will fall!"
The roots converged on Ignotus from every angle. Up, down, left, right. There was no escape.
Ignotus looked at the encroaching doom.
"I was waiting for you to commit."
His grin softened.
"I hope no one will complain now."
Throughout the fight, Ignotus hadn’t just been attacking. Every time his root-stilts touched the ground, every time he fired a thorn that missed, he had been seeding the arena with his own [Living Ligature] traces.
The spell he’d gotten from the Rune was the simple creation of roots directly from his skin.
But just because those roots left him didn’t mean that his connection to them disappeared.
After all, his [Fortune’s Wheel] allowed him to store his Divinity into neutral plants, allowing him to extend or extract them at will.
"Boom."
He clenched his fist.
’Parasitic Bloom.’
Suddenly, the massive roots Rosa had summoned stopped moving.
Dark, purple-veined creepers exploded out of her own plants. Ignotus’s spell had latched onto hers, infecting it and hijacking the control.
Rosa’s eyes went wide.
"What—"
The cage she built for him was reversed.
All of the massive roots snapped back, wrapping around her.
"NO!"
She tried to sever the connection, but Ignotus’s parasitic roots were too fast.
They latched onto her ankles, her wrists, and her waist...
The roots pulled.
Within seconds, the Perfect Daughter was trapped in a cocoon of her own Element.
She struggled, her green Will flaring, trying to burn the wood away.
"Let me out!"
Ignotus slowly walked up to the cocoon.
The red streaks on his face made him look like a demon wearing human skin.
"You defended your cage so hard that you locked yourself in it."
He saw a gap in the roots.
The cocoon wasn’t fully sealed yet.
She could still break out if given a few seconds.
Of course, he didn’t give her those seconds.
Ignotus thrust his sword forward.
SHUK.
The black blade pierced the gap.
It went straight through Rosa’s stomach.
She gasped, her eyes bulging. The Divinity around her flared only to die; the green in her hair faded back to white.
Ignotus pulled the sword out.
The roots holding her loosened, just enough to let her fall.
He grabbed her by the collar of her pristine armor, now stained with blood, and lifted her high into the air, showing her to the silent crowd.
"Y-You..."
She looked at him, tears mixing with the blood in her mouth.
"Why..."
"Because I’m not playing your game, sister."
He looked at her with the same soft smile.
Then, casually, he threw her down.
She hit the ground with a hard thud, unmoving.
Ignotus had utterly crushed her with her own Element, there wasn’t much she could do now.
"..."
"..."
"..."
The silence held for one second, two—
"STRANGER!"
"STRANGER!"
"STRANGER!"
The crowd chanted his title until their lungs nearly popped.
It was a deafening worship of the new Star of the first years.
Ignotus stood over his dying sister as healers rushed onto the field to stabilize her.
He watched them carry her away, and only when she was gone did he close his eyes, soaking in the roar.
The vibration of thousands of people screaming his name.
It felt... heavy.
Ignotus opened his eyes.
The red glow faded.
Slowly, he raised a hand.
Almost immediately, the chanting stopped.
The crowd went quiet, waiting for his victory speech, perhaps waiting for him to gloat.
Seemingly about to do just that, Ignotus turned to Lothar, who was still floating high.
"Raise me up."
Lothar took a moment before nodding.
Once he snapped his fingers, a platform of floating stone detached from the arena floor and lifted Ignotus high into the air.
It hovered in the center of the Colosseum so everyone could see him.
"Give me the Relic."
Lothar threw him the amplification crystal—the same Divine Relic he used to make his voice resound across the Colosseum.
Ignotus caught it while looking at the crowd.
The nobles in their boxes.
The parents and the professors.
The students and randoms in the stands.
He could have enraged his fellow students or insulted his family again.
Instead, he chose violence of a different kind.
"They hid this from you."
This was a moment that he could use.
"Hell’s influence is increasing."
Confusion rippled through the crowd.
"The Academy attack that happened not too long ago? That was just an appetizer."
Murmurs started. The Elders in the VIP box stood up, signaling for Ignotus to be stopped, but he gripped the Divine Relic tighter, pouring his Divinity into it to keep the channel open.
"It’ll be a tide. An unending wave."
He looked directly into the projection.
"They’ll blanket the sky and the sun... Heads will roll, and none of us will be able to push them back. Eventually, they’ll arrive at your doorstep as they would at mine. But for now?"
Ignotus pointed a finger down at the Academy grounds.
"We’ll keep them in check."
"They’ll come after me for saying this."
"But I still did it... for your own good."
"Because you, the one listening, could join us in becoming something more..."
A dark chuckle left him.
"Or leave with the rest. Escape this Stratum before it’s too late."
"But this is a message for those staying."
He spread his arms wide.
"Come here. To House Calamity."
"We will protect you."
"The whole world will soon see my evidence."
Ignotus promised.
"Heed my words before it’s too late."
He lowered the crystal, but his voice seemed to linger in the air.
"The Demons..."
Ignotus looked up at the sky, as if seeing something the others couldn’t.
"They are coming."
The Third Epoch’s end was nearing.
High in the stands, Gaia watched her husband with her hands over her mouth.
She couldn’t believe he had just declared war on the status quo.
On the secrecy of the Great Houses.
Or rather, she did believe it.
She just didn’t know what his plan was to stop the apocalypse he had just announced.
On her lap, Eris—in her black Crow form—watched the white-haired boy on the floating platform.
She shook Her little, cute head.
’Oh, Wife of my Soul...’
The Goddess’s crimson eyes gleamed with pride and terrifying affection.
’If there were anything he had to warn of, then nobody in this realm would be safe from it.’
[End Of Volume Three: Demons Are Coming]