Chapter Two-Hundred-and-One

Loopshard

Adam wanted to throw the ring away, but he knew from Emelia that the true flame’s crown would reappear in the forlorn castle’s arena even if it was somehow discarded. He was willing to bet the ring was no different, because it had the same final line in its description as the crown.

We’ll have to avoid fighting the Forlorn Shadow.

The Godstone wasn’t kept on the Forlorn King’s person, according to what both Emelia and Beck had said, but to access the crypt where it could be found, the king had to be defeated first. Unfortunately, this would trigger the Forlorn Shadow fight if conditions were met.

Which, thanks to my foolish curiosity, seem to be the case.

Agitated melodies pulled Adam out of his dark thoughts. A second later, Chien was shoved out through the doorway of the potion vendor’s house by Diwa. He quickly recovered and got to his feet, but Diwa had her spear out, raised above her head.

Adam immediately launched his gauntlet towards her, wrapping their fingers around her wrists and pulling her away by force.

“Let me go!” Diwa screamed.

As he saw her exposed face and hair, Adam realised what must’ve happened.

They killed her amalgam helmet.

“I told you not to do it,” Seo-Yoon remarked.

“I do not wish for anyone else to die,” Chien said, before turning to Diwa. “Your helmet was killing you.”

“Tagpi was my only friend!” she screamed, her voice raw and her melody full of fury and sorrow.

Adam knew that Chien hadn’t made a bad choice, but even when doing the right thing, there were bad ways of going about it.

Killing her ‘friend’ while she was paralysed is probably the worst thing he could’ve done…

Natalia didn’t say anything, but her melody told Adam she pitied Diwa.

Seo-Yoon was amused, and Chien blindly believed he had done nothing wrong.

Adam brought Diwa over to where he stood, releasing the gauntlets from her wrists.

Diwa sunk down to her knees, dropping her weapons.

Natalia came over to them, placing her hand on Diwa’s back and massaging her gently.

Adam looked over to Chien. “What the fuck is wrong with you? We just barely survived, and your first instinct is to destroy her helmet? We had already agreed to handle this later, like when a replacement becomes available.”

“She will die if I had not intervened,” Chien replied.

For a moment, Adam wished he was able to inject his blood into the zealot’s head and force him to see the faulty ways he applied his morals.

“We’ve already lost one team member to infighting and suspicion. What you just did isn’t fucking helping. If you do anything like that again, I will make sure you regret it,” Adam promised.

“I am not afraid of death,” Chien replied.

“It’s not death you should be afraid of,” Adam told him.

“Let’s not all kill each other yet,” Seo-Yoon said cheerfully.

“I’m not planning on killing anyone,” Adam responded. “My goal is to save us all. I’ll do it, even if I have to drag all of your bodies across the finish line.”

Adam sent his gauntlet out to grab the ring he’d left by the metal box. None of the others had noticed it until now.

“Given that Natalia saved us all, she deserves this the most,” he said.

He turned the gauntlet around so the palm faced her. Within it lay the golden ring.

“What is that?” she asked.

“I combined the ring with a true flame, like you guessed might be possible,” Adam explained. “It will likely trigger a secret fight that we must avoid, but its power to create a true flame attack is going to be invaluable. Just don’t use it until we decide it’s a good idea.”

Natalia lifted her hand with the ring and looked into the gem. She had swapped the snap gauntlet out for it. Her other hand was still rubbing Diwa’s back.

“Seeing as our tank has lost one of her primary means of defence, we should prioritise finding her a replacement,” Adam said.

Diwa sobbed at the mention.

“I think the first thing we should do…” Adam started, before the sudden appearance of a new melody stopped him.

“What?” Seo-Yoon asked, a playful smile on her lips.

Adam turned to look towards the lake where the melody had appeared. It didn’t belong to a forlorn knight, but it was a strangely singular and overpowering thing.

It was filled with hunger.

In the dark of night, Silt was lit only by a few lanterns here and there, as well as some of the people patrolling the perimeter with torches. A few had been brought out of their houses because of their team’s loud argument, but when a strange pressure and pulsating tremor rolled across the village, lights were lit in almost every building.

“What are you sensing?” Chien asked.

“I don’t know,” Adam replied. “But it’s coming towards the settlement.”

The pressure spiked and it felt like a weight landed on top of Adam’s shoulders. The others must’ve felt it too, given how their melodies changed at the same time.

< < Emergent Stage Objective > >

< Defend the village of Silt from the Hunger Demon >

“What the fuck is a hunger demon?” Natalia asked.

A scream from one of the houses furthest out on the piers of Silt announced the arrival of the new threat. There had been a lantern out there, but it was now gone, along with the house.

Chien immediately rushed towards the sound, leaving the mostly stable part of the village where they were standing, and venturing out onto the rickety and old decayed planks.

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Adam couldn’t see exactly what awaited them in the darkness beyond the light, but there was a massive dark shape clawing its way up onto the piers.

Emelia mentioned emergent objectives, but she said they were really difficult to pull off, since their conditions are highly specific. She also warned not to attempt them, given that they often involve demon summonings or other powerful bosses appearing where they normally shouldn’t…

Given how difficult it had been to defeat the Capgras Demon, Adam feared this one would be another serious challenge.

Seo-Yoon reached a hand out to Adam and he offered her a flame to absorb, before preparing to launch his own.

Diwa and Natalia followed them towards the threat, but their tank’s spirit was utterly crushed, and Adam doubted she’d be much use to them right now.

“Should I use the cross attack when I see it?” Natalia asked Adam.

“No, we want to save it for its corpse. I think it’s the shark that ate Heiner and the forlorn ritualist,” Adam replied. “The demon relic must’ve caused the shark to transform.”

“Do you think the same would’ve happened to Heiner if he’d continued to wear it?” Seo-Yoon wondered.

“I don’t know,” Adam replied honestly. “But it’s clear that the demon must’ve been speaking to him. Maybe it even wanted this outcome.”

Chien reached the end of the pier where a house had been. With a swing of his war hammer, he sent out a rolling wave of holy energy that briefly lit up the demon.

All of them froze when they saw it.

Shit…

An inky-black piscine blob with a legion of reflective white eyes dotting its large head was holding on to the pier with double-jointed arms ending in clawed webbed hands. Gills rippled down its sides and tiny fins sprouted from all over its malformed shape, wriggling eagerly.

As Chien’s holy magic flowed towards it, it opened its maw and consumed it with a frog-like gulp that made the air ripple and pulsate all the way back to where Adam and the others were standing. For the brief moment he’d seen its mouth, he’d noticed four rows of shark teeth that ringed around the inside, leading to a deeper mouth within that was much like the lamprey parasites’ in the Floating Sea.

It was, unmistakeably, a misbegotten spawn of Nwetrou, though it couldn’t be the direct offspring of the Absolute, since those were stage-destroying threats that weren’t supposed to appear until the public stages starting from fifteen and up.

Still, it’s tangentially related, since Nwetrou is the Primogenitor of Gluttony.

Seo-Yoon and Adam launched their fire spells. They raced through the darkness, lighting up the settlement as they passed by the many houses where the denizens were packing up in a hurry and running towards the mainland to escape. Adam’s spell took a wide trajectory to avoid being consumed like Chien’s mana, but as the Hunger Demon hopped forward and snatched Seo-Yoon’s spell, it simultaneously opened the gills on its left side, revealing hidden tooth-filled mouths that sucked in his fire as well.

Chien launched forward with an overhead smash of his hammer, and when it struck the top of the demon’s head, it produced a deep gulping sound.

Then it hopped forward with its open mouth, releasing a close-ranged blast of holy and fire magic blended together. Chien was struck and sent flying. His armour released a nova but it collided ineffectually with the decayed boards while he somersaulted towards them uncontrollably.

Natalia rushed over to where he came to a sudden stop, helping him back onto his feet and giving him a healing potion from her potion belt. His body was covered in horrific burns, but he was still alive.

Seo-Yoon switched to her Cloudmaker and Adam produced a puddle of blood for her to stand in. Their teamwork was almost instinctual at this point, but a large part was due to Adam’s ability to sense her intent with his mandate relic.

As she started making a blood mist, Adam created a white-hot flame and cast Heart Lance. The beam quickly tore across the air and he bent its trajectory in an unpredictable way, managing to slice into the top of the demon’s blob-like body where it had no mouths to consume the fire.

It was unfortunately not very effective though, since the demon was clearly very resilient to magic. His venom and bleed afflictions didn’t even trigger, which made him worried.

In fact, the attack seemed to only spur it to go faster, as it suddenly clawed its way along the pier, shoving its large body against the old buildings and collapsing their walls.

Wait, why am I fighting this thing like it’s a forlorn knight?

Adam switched to his crown and started shooting the fingers of his gauntlets at the demon, each one like a bullet as they zipped across the distance. Where they hit, they exploded the black flesh of the demon and he quickly triggered Blood Crystal, but like his bleed and venom, it had no effect.

“It’s immune to afflictions and highly resistant to magic,” Adam told the others.

“It doesn’t seem immune to physical attacks,” Natalia said and pulled Chien with her, both of them charging the demon.

Seo-Yoon’s blood mist reached it first, and Adam paused his finger bullet fusillade for long enough to grab the countless droplets of airborne blood, pulling them together to form slashing and rending blades to carve into its black body.

Large chunks of darkened fat were sliced off, but with a heave of air, much of the mist was sucked into its gills and mouth. Its attention snapped towards the pair charging it, and Adam could tell it was about to release the magic it had absorbed.

“Watch out!” Adam yelled to Natalia and Chien.

“Look at me, demon!” Diwa exclaimed suddenly as she moved out and away from Adam and Seo-Yoon, drawing its attention to her with the taunting cape. She held the Gorgon Slayer weapons in her hands and a shimmer passed over her as she activated the reflect skill. Then she swapped to her Shield Wall weapons, just in time to pull the demon’s blood-formed projectile to her shield.

As it struck, her reflect triggered and fired the projectile back. The demon wasn’t quick enough to absorb it and it tore through the side of its head, destroying several of the eyes dotting it.

Diwa held out her green slime glove to Seo-Yoon. “Can you absorb this?” she asked.

“I’ll try! I’ve never used slime magic before,” she said excitedly.

Diwa summoned the glob of slime into her palm, which Adam hadn’t realised was possible, and Seo-Yoon pulled its essence into her Cloudmaker staff.

This time, she created the mist in the air above the demon, making an actual cloud with her weapon, rather than a deadly fog.

“Can you make it rain down?” Adam asked as he fired several of his gauntlet fingers to back up Chien and Natalia who’d just come within melee range.

“Sure can!” Seo-Yoon replied.

“I will pull it towards me,” Diwa said, before pointing at a nearby house. “Move the cloud over to that building.”

Seo-Yoon immediately complied, shifting the terrifying cloud of flesh-dissolving acid.

Adam was happy to note the houses in the area had been successfully evacuated. If anyone had been left, they would’ve been forced to leap from the stilted streets to the silty floor several metres below to avoid melting to death.

Natalia tore her katana across the side of the demon’s body, carving deep into its dark fat, though it just ignored her as it moved towards Diwa, using its bizarre webbed hands to drag and hop towards her.

Chien got in front of it and slammed his hammer into its head, causing it to gulp and immediately blast his holy magic back at him, knocking him away.

While Adam’s finger bullets were making a mess of its large blobby body, the demon didn’t appear to have any important organs, which made his attacks ineffective. He instead sculpted two large clawed hands with the flesh, blood, and bone of his raiment, wrapping his control around each element within them both, allowing him to rapidly tear them through the air, flensing its body into ribbons.

Still, it just kept hopping towards Diwa, its singular focus becoming its main weakness.

“Now!” Diwa yelled and backed away from the house she’d been standing in front of.

Adam rammed his floating clawed hands into the demon’s mass to keep it in place, preventing it from hopping towards Diwa as she got out of the way.

The pitter-patter sound of rain echoed across the area as Seo-Yoon unleashed the acid cloud above the demon. Every drop of the acid sank into its dark fat, boiling it away into steam that smelled of putrid fish and spoiled meat. The demon tore itself free of Adam’s clawed hands as its body fell apart, but he quickly replaced them with simple bone walls to keep it from leaving Seo-Yoon’s acid rain.

It took almost three full minutes until the Hunger Demon was fully dissolved, and the planks and buildings around it had almost collapsed entirely. Thanks to Adam’s quick thinking, a large portion of the area was unscathed because of a thin blanket of bone.

[Hunger Demon defeated.]

< < Emergent Stage Objective Complete > >

< Defended the village of Silt >

Seo-Yoon dispelled her magic and they all approached the remains of the demon. Left behind was a rapidly-evaporating stomach sack that opened to reveal the half-consumed corpses of the ritualist and Heiner, as well as the dissolved remains of two of Adam’s sculpted hands, and a gleaming golden coin.

As the demon’s remains vanished completely, it also left behind a black blob-like chest with pale-white eyes and useless fins dotting its surface.

They shared a glance between each other. It would clearly be another demon relic and they were all painfully aware of what had happened to Heiner after he’d equipped the ring.

Speaking of which. It’s gone.

It appears that devouring a demon relic has horrific consequences.

“I’m not touching that thing,” Natalia said, even though she was on chest duty.

Adam shrugged and went over to push it open. His gauntlets sunk into the lid like it was made of marshmallow.

He frowned as the hologram manifested into exactly the thing they’d been looking for.

< < Demon Relic Available > >

< Demon Helmet (????) — ???? >