REAPER SCANS
Surviving as a Broken Hero
[Author – Farlight]
[Proofreader – Harley]
Chapter 116 - Unleashed (3)
I stood next to Koise and quietly observed the phenomenon in silence with him for a few moments.
Far above Londo’s sky hovered a dark sphere of… something.
The light around it warped and bent in a faint shimmer in the same way the sun’s heat warped the air on the hottest summer days. Instead of heat, however, there was a strange coldness—felt even as far from Londo as Koise and I still were.
Blocking the sunlight overhead, the sphere, easily big enough to encompass the entire city if it descended, sucked in the area’s warmth as well.
Had it truly been a black hole, the entire city and world would have already ended, of course. Still, it was an ominous sight. As far as I knew, the demons wanted to corrupt and take over human cities, not obliterate them outright.
What purpose, then, did that strange sphere hold? I had many guesses, and none were good.
“What do you think it is…?” Koise finally asked, turning his gaze from the sphere to give me a sidelong look.
“I think…” I said, recalling my previous experiences with the demons. “I think it might be the start of a dungeon.”
“That thing? It looks like it’s going to devour the city at any moment.”
I gave a reluctant nod. “That’s probably the point. Devour it and turn it into a demon dungeon, inhabitants and all.”
“Holy hell…” Koise cursed. “We have to stop it. It’s a city full of Awakeners, what are they all doing?!”
Shrugging lightly in response, I said, “Well, let’s get in there and see.”
* * *
Not long prior…
Gregor met the hag. That wretched old woman…
The ritual Henry performed did more than even he had been told. Henry believed it would simply save his daughter, Gregor believed it would save the girl and trap Henry…
In reality, he still only had some of the truth. While the ritual had, as promised, trapped Henry and saved the man’s daughter, it had also done more…
All of his anxiety and nervousness about meeting the hag and the deal was already done. She greeted him in the throne room with a simple, crooked smile and a nod.
“It’s complete. Go and look at your prize again, Gregor, and enjoy your new city,” the woman rasped at him before turning and vanishing into the shadows.
‘My new prize…?’ Of course, the hag could only have been talking about one thing. Save for the city itself, the only other prize had been Henry’s daughter.
‘Damn it…’ He rushed back through the door to the near-empty guest wing and down the hallway.
Stopping before the door he’d locked through the system prompt, he paused to take in the purple glow leaking beneath the doorframe. Whatever price the hag had extracted… it lay in that room.
He reached for the door handle, half-expecting the system to prompt him to unlock it, but it swung open, already unlocked.
Inside, he saw the advisor he’d been wondering about, kneeling over Jen’s body and sobbing as he twisted the hilt of the ornate knife he’d plunged into her chest. Purple light leaked from the young woman’s mouth, and the stone walls of the room wriggled in anticipation.
“Jacob…?” Gregor asked, horrified by the sight. “What have you done?”
The man, still kneeling before the bedside where he’d stabbed the knife through Jen’s chest, turned his head and smiled at Gregor.
“No, Gregor. What have you done? This isn’t what the Lion Guild is about. Do you even care about the guild anymore? What happened to glory and hunting? This is all… wrong.” The man sighed and looked up at the flat stone ceiling.
“You, the city lord… you both made deals with that… that thing,” he said, talking about the hag. “Well. I made a deal, too.”
“What sort of deal, Jacob? What did you do?”
“I made a deal for you to realize your mistake. It’s too late for the Lion Guild, this city, and even us… but at least I won’t have to see you turn into this… this monster that you’ve become.”
Finally, Jacob gave him a slight smile. “Goodbye, Gregor. It was fun.”
He twisted the knife again, and the purple light exploded upward and outward, devouring him, the girl, and everything in its path toward the sky, where it gathered far above the city into a ball of dark energy and slowly expanded.
* * *
Reaper Scans
[Author – Farlight]
[Proofreader – Harley]
Join our discord for updates on releases! https://dsc.gg/reapercomics
* * *
Koise and I cautiously jogged toward the city gate, abandoned by the guards and left wide open. I would have expected a stream of people to be leaving the city, but we instead saw… nothing.
Not a single soul was visible, nor was there so much as a single scream of terror at the steadily growing dark sphere in the sky.
Koise and I shared a look again. If the city was turning into a dungeon… where else would the entrance be but the front gate?
We stepped forward together.
[Dungeon Quest
Survive!
Time: -]
A blue-windowed message greeted us both. Survival missions typically had a duration to survive for, but no such thing existed for that hellish place. Instead, it was a hell everyone was meant to die in.
⟬Destroy the city lord.⟭
Meanwhile, the Second System provided me with something more tangible. The problem, of course, would be getting to the city lord’s castle.
Upon stepping through the gate, we found ourselves in a dungeon—a pocket of reality overlaid on the city. Everyone within the city itself appeared to have been dragged there as well, and demons dropped here and there from the sky itself.
Some simply splattered against the stones, some monstrous beings cracked the ground beneath them and went on to wreak havoc, and flying demons emerged to pick off groups of Awakeners who’d banded together for safety.
Those demons to survive the fall went door to door and searched the rest of the city for anyone hiding. Meanwhile, the bodies of those who’d been killed were struck with sickly purple crystals that shortly brought them back to life.
As undead, the Awakeners carried no semblance of thought or skills, but they at least still wore their equipment and were enhanced by the power of corruption.
Immediately, a pair of the undead crystal zombies, calcified growths spurting from their wounds, charged toward us.
Koise fired an arrow at one’s head that simply bounced off of the thing’s hardened skull before he let loose another arrow a moment later that found purchase in the creature’s eye.
The undead Awakener dropped limp and slid forward a short distance before remaining still.
As for the other one, I let it approach and hardened the earth around my hand in a gauntlet.
‘Can I kill it without using a skill?’ I’d used some of my mana during the race with Koise, and we would have to fight through a horde of the things to make it to the castle.
‘This is like Karfana all over again. History repeats itself, huh?’
With demons running rampant and Awakeners fighting for their lives all over the city, at least we weren’t completely alone.
Opening its mouth, the creature closed the distance and lunged at me.
I stepped to the side and brought my earth-empowered hand down in an overhead swing against the undead’s spiny back, driving the creature into the stones below. Next, I drove my other hand forward and activated my wrist-mounted blade.
THUNK—
The enchanted blade shot forward and through the undead’s skull with little resistance, stilling it for good.
Nodding at me and nocking another arrow into his bow, Koise kept a lookout for more danger.
“To the castle then…?” I asked him, shaking the purple liquid from my wristblade.
“The castle…?”
“Let’s call it a hunch, but I think we can end this for good if we find the city lord.”
“What about Gregor? Isn’t he supposed to be the cause of this?”
I shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe he is, but Karfana faced something similar, and the source was the castle. This is a dungeon, after all, so there must be a source.”
His eyes flickered over the chaos and fighting happening just within eyesight of us, not to mention what else was happening in the city.
“Alright. I don’t think we could kill all of these things anyway.”
He was right. Even if we somehow managed it, the portal far above us was just dropping demons here and there seemingly at random. There was no telling if it’d ever end.
Our advance toward the castle was slow and cautious, but undead and demons alike proved to be little match for Koise’s arrows and my fists. Together, we were nearly unstoppable. Anything I couldn’t reach, he shot down, and anything too tough for his arrows was no match for the sheer power behind my blows.
One step after the other, we conserved our mana and let it slowly replenish during our careful advance until we were soaked in purple demon blood and getting closer to the castle itself, where the guards had long abandoned their posts.
“Hey!” someone shouted to us after we finished off another group of demons. “Are you headed into the castle?”
I turned to look at the woman—a warrior-type, judging from the sword and shield she carried.
“Yeah. Has there been any word from the city lord?”
She shook her head. “No. Some of us tried to get into the castle to figure out if he knew anything, but… there’s something roaming the halls.”
“Something…?” I asked, curious as to what it could be. “A demon?”
“I don’t know, but whatever it is… it’s angry.”
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