Chapter 774

Chapter 774

The Sacrifice of the Forbidden Arts
“By the authority of the Red Foot.” The sorceress hissed the incantation five times without pause, her pupils darting frantically. The pressure exerted by the two warriors was suffocating. Panic clawed at her throat. Was her fate to mirror her sister’s demise? No. She refused to accept such an end. Memories of their shared reputation as the Twin Witches flickered in her mind, but she ruthlessly suppressed them, focusing every ounce of her malice into the ritual.

She invoked the Starving Bowels, a transgression of magical law. “Perish, every last one of you.” The price for such power was a portion of her own vitality—specifically, her internal organs. Although she had surgically and magically altered her anatomy to accommodate such horrors, the agony remained excruciating. Dark, viscous blood seeped from her lips. The sensation of her innards tearing made her mouth twitch in a violent spasm, yet she clung to the logic that torment was infinitely preferable to the void of death.

As Enkrid lunged forward, the floor beneath him betrayed his weight. This spell lacked the explosive velocity of her previous pyromancy, but its area of effect was staggering. The dirt undulated and split, birthing jagged fissures lined with rows of ivory fangs. To fall into those gaps would mean more than just shredded skin; it would mean the total pulverization of bone. The terrain became a living, thrashing predator, desperate to consume him.

Reacting to the predatory instinct of the earth, Enkrid leaped away. Yet, as soon as his boots touched a new patch of ground, more monstrous maws erupted beneath him. The sound of their snapping teeth echoed like heavy iron plates slamming together.

He glanced at Veina briefly, calculating. The landscape was now infested with dozens of these mouths. It wasn’t an opponent he could simply decapitate; there was no central core to strike. He understood instinctively that to be caught in those gnashing teeth was to be dragged into a bottomless, demonic abyss of eternal hunger. He didn’t need the theory of the spell to recognize a forbidden curse when he saw one.

From Walking Fire to Firestorm, and now this—the intensity was escalating. As he maneuvered to evade, the jaws proliferated, covering a radius that could have easily swallowed a small company of men. He drove Dawnforge downward, cleaving through a rising set of teeth. It dissipated into mist, but before he could stabilize his stance, another emerged in its place.

The magic was relentless and predatory. Enkrid analyzed the structure: it was a sustained manifestation. He was the locked-on prey. Whatever life-force the witch had traded, the spell would persist until it had fed. Since it could regenerate indefinitely, he realized this wasn’t a puzzle to solve with logic, but a contest of endurance.

He stepped into a narrow opening and swung Dawnforge in a relentless arc. If the earth continued to sprout teeth, he would continue to harvest them. It became a cold calculation: her mana reserves against the iron of his Will.

In truth, the sorceress had miscalculated. She had already exhausted half of her prepared components and mutilated her own body for this. The Starving Bowels was a spell of attrition, designed to slowly grind a target into exhaustion before the final swallow.

However, her opponent was an anomaly. Enkrid had carved a path through the depths of the Demon Realm just to reach this point. By any standard, his mental and physical reserves should have been spent. Yet, as the battle stretched on, he showed no signs of faltering. His face remained a mask of indifference as he performed the repetitive, lethal motions of a man dedicated to a singular task.

The witch’s composure shattered. How could he still be moving? Even when she unleashed grotesque, writhing appendages from the depths of the spell, Enkrid simply adjusted his footing and sheared them away. He used the momentum of his pivots to turn his blade into a sweeping whip of steel, creating the terrifying impression that his reach had doubled. It wasn’t a trick of the light; his strikes were physically expanding his zone of control, shattering every jaw that dared to snap.

“Aaaaagh!” The witch let out a harrowing cry. Perhaps it was her connection to the spirit world or just the clarity of impending doom, but she saw the conclusion of this fight. She saw herself being dismantled just as her twin had been. Her scream was the sound of pure, unadulterated dread.

“Allow me to assist with that,” a heavy voice boomed. Audin entered the strike zone. Enkrid had already dismantled the witch’s psychological defenses by negating her ultimate spell. Now, while she struggled to fend off Jaxon’s relentless pressure, she was forced to confront the holy strength of a man built like a mountain. Even with her magically reinforced physique, she was no match for him.

The air filled with the sounds of snapping bone and tearing sinew. Audin, channeling his sacred power, seized a limb she had manifested, twisted it until it splintered, and closed the distance. He slammed a heavy, iron-hard fist directly into her forehead.

The impact was cataclysmic. Her skull fractured instantly, spraying dark ichor. Before her supernatural healing could even begin to knit the bone back together, another radiant strike followed. Then another. The rhythmic thumping of his fists drowned out all other noise.

“S-stop…” The witch collapsed, her magic fizzling out as her concentration broke. She whimpered for mercy. “Indeed,” Audin replied, his voice devoid of heat. “I shall escort your soul to its master.”

He did not hesitate. With a final, crushing application of force, he brought his fist down. The impact pulverized what remained of the sorceress, leaving only a broken ruin on the stone floor. After a century and a half of malice, the Twin Witches were no more.

In the distance, the Apostle found himself in a desperate retreat against Ragna’s steel. “This cannot be happening!” the Apostle cried out, refusing to accept the collapse of his domain.

With the forbidden curse broken, Enkrid took a moment to steady his breathing, silently agreeing with the Apostle’s shock. The defenses here—the massive fortifications, the specialized units of the Demon Realm, the horde of beasts—should have been insurmountable. Any ordinary group of knights would have been slaughtered.

“Why are you nodding at his complaining?” Pell asked, moving closer as he cleared the remaining stragglers. To Pell, the logic was simple: whether they were elites or common monsters, they all bled the same.

“I am the chosen Apostle of the Red Foot!” The creature made its final stand. His body erupted in a frantic growth of crimson muscle, forming a suit of biological armor. Veins like thick cables pulsed across his skin as his stature increased exponentially. He grew until he towered over even Audin, reaching a height that dwarfed several men. It was a violent, accelerated evolution of flesh.

“PESTS!” the Apostle bellowed. Ragna didn’t respond with words. He simply raised Sunrise. The blade began to glow with a fierce, crimson light, carving a hole through the oppressive gloom of the fortress. In that moment, he embodied the sovereign of the east, the one who consumes the night.

“Hey,” Ragna called out. The Apostle’s eyes were bloodshot and webbed with black necrosis. Instead of speaking, he slammed a massive fist downward with the force of a falling star. The sheer displacement of air created a vacuum, threatening to crush anything in its path.

Ragna didn’t flinch. He braced his legs, grounding himself like an ancient oak, and poured his Will into Sunrise.

The collision sent a shockwave rippling through the ruins. Enkrid observed the sheer magnitude of the Apostle’s raw power; it was superior even to the legendary Minotaur. But it was hollow. There was no refinement in the movement, no strategic follow-through. The Apostle was a creature of overwhelming force but zero combat experience. He was a monster that could have razed cities or wiped out the treefolk, yet he could not overcome the single man standing in his way.

The Apostle’s fist met the edge of Sunrise and stopped dead. His flesh hissed and boiled as it touched the radiant heat of the blade, filling the air with the metallic tang of burnt blood.

Ragna held his ground, his mind focused on his oath. He had sworn to never falter, to push forward until his heart ceased to beat. He knew that while some things came naturally to men like Enkrid, he had to fight for every inch of progress. This was his truth.

The Apostle lashed out with everything he had. Tendrils of black blood whipped through the air; fanged mouths opened on his torso, spitting venomous barbs. Yet the sword of light parried and severed every attempt. Enkrid watched the duel unfold—a clash between a man and a nightmare amidst the rubble. There were moments of genuine peril, where Ragna was slowed by poisoned needles, but the outcome was becoming clear.

“How repulsive,” Shinar remarked, watching the Apostle’s corrupted use of nature-based magic. To a fairy, seeing druidic vines twisted into such filth was an insult.

“Defeated… by a mere human?” the Apostle gasped. His armor was shredded, his skull warped and blistered by the heat of Ragna’s blade. He was a dying titan, struggling for oxygen.

Ragna prepared for the final blow. It had been a grueling ordeal, a test of his limits. But just as he moved to strike, he sensed a projectile whistling through the air. He shifted just enough to let it pass.

The object—a hand axe—slammed into the Apostle’s ruined head with enough force to nearly sever it. “Got him,” a gravelly voice announced. Rem, the barbarian, stepped forward with a smirk. “The one who lands the final hit gets the credit. That’s the rule, isn’t it?”

Rem was battered, covered in the small nicks and scrapes of the journey, but he was alive. The guardian had fallen, and the fortress was silenced.

Enkrid surveyed the destruction. This hadn’t even been the heart of the enemy’s power, yet it was a significant victory. The Red Cloak Knights had failed here many times, but they had leveled it in a single push.

Shinar, tending to her wounds with fairy herbs, looked at the lingering shadows of the spirits. If they left now, the corruption would just regrow. The only solution was a total purge. “Set it ablaze,” she said firmly. Enkrid nodded. Their work here was done, and it was time to signal their progress.

Under the suffocating gray sky, a massive red bonfire began to roar. It wasn’t the dawn, but the flames burned with a heat that promised a new beginning. As the fire climbed toward the clouds, Enkrid felt the weight of his mission lighten, if only for a moment.