REAPER SCANS
Surviving as a Broken Hero
[Author – Farlight]
[Proofreader – Harley]
Chapter 117 - Unleashed (4)
“Something angry, huh…?” Koise mumbled, scrunching his nose against the tangible, sour reek of corruption wafting from the nearby castle. He tightened his grip on his bow, the leather gloves on his hands creaking faintly with tension. “Well… that narrows it down to just about everything here.”
True, the information wasn’t too helpful, but at least we knew there was something malicious assaulting the Awakeners entering the castle. As for what… we’d have to find out.
Leaving the other Awakener behind, Koise and I approached the castle. What had once been a towering fortress of polished stone and fluttering banners resembled instead a festering wound.
Purple growths pulsed faintly, veins of light throbbing just below the surface, and the corruption there was intense enough to even taste in the air—like blood. Far above, the dark sphere churned, its edges fraying the sky as it slowly consumed even the particles in the air.
“We should stay close,” I whispered quietly to Koise before stepping through the torn-open gate in front of the castle.
The moment we fully entered the castle courtyard, the veiny corrupted tendrils lacing the castle writhed, as if angered by our presence.
“Shit!” Koise cursed as a tendril lashed out at his ankle from a crumbling archway.
Without the time to draw his bow, he activated a skill and launched an arrow from his hand, pinning the tendril to the ground before drawing a knife and cutting it apart.
“What a warm welcome,” I sighed. I wasn’t too worried about a few tendrils. Rather, the ‘angry’ thing lurking in the castle caused more concern.
Nothing else assaulted us on our way across the courtyard, though purple tendrils writhed here and there, seeming to watch us with unseen eyes.
Splintered and torn off their hinges, the castle’s grand doors lay broken.
‘They fell outward?’ Curiously enough, it seemed that something inside had broken the doors.
Beyond the doors stretched a hallway swallowed by darkness.
Koise nocked an arrow tipped with a faintly glowing rune and let it fly. Streaking ahead into the hallway, it illuminated the entry corridor in a burst of light. That was enough for us to see that something had twisted the walls into faces of stone and purple rot, their mouths agape, eyes hollow and dark.
‘Some of them look too human…’
Whether they were the remnants of the castle’s inhabitants consumed in the dungeon creation or some sick visage created to instill horror in whoever saw them, I didn’t want to find out.
I forced myself not to look too closely and walked forward through the hallway. Judging by his shallow breathing, Koise was doing the same.
Still, we had to keep an eye out.
Up ahead, the arrow of light had clattered to the ground to reveal a spiral staircase twisting upward.
“Was the castle always like this?” I whispered to Koise. A spiral staircase at the end of the grand entryway? It seemed an odd choice.
He shrugged in response, pointedly avoiding looking at the faces on the walls.
Regardless, we had no choice but to ascend, the air growing colder with every step. By the time we reached the next floor, each quiet breath puffed vapor into the air, and I ended up using my «Heat Manipulation» to draw whatever warmth I could into a small bubble around us.
Wet, gurgled growling followed by claws on stone echoed from somewhere above us.
‘Where the hell is the throne room supposed to be?’ I wondered. The layout of the castle was becoming more and more suspect with each passing moment.
“What the hell was that?” Koise whispered.
Flexing my left hand and ready to use my wristblade at any moment, I replied, “That’s our ‘something’.”
* * *
Reaper Scans
[Author – Farlight]
[Proofreader – Harley]
Join our discord for updates on releases! https://dsc.gg/reapercomics
* * *
The second floor showed more signs of ruin—a maze of collapsed corridors and crumbling ceilings. From the looks of it, the structure could crash inward at any time.
Purple veins of corruption faintly illuminated the hallways, quivering as we passed.
The farther we went, the louder the scratches and ragged breathing echoed through the darkness, followed by the occasional dripping of something splashing against stone.
Suddenly, we found silence.
Koise stopped me mid-step and pointed ahead to a glistening thread, barely visible in the gloom.
‘The demons are setting traps now?’ I wondered. I’d only ever seen them brazenly trying to destroy everything in their path.
The glistening thread looked to be made of the same fleshy material as the tendrils of corruption pulsing along the walls.
We edged around the trap and straight into an ambush.
Three figures leaped at us from a side chamber, bodies warped by corruption. Not quite fully demon yet and definitely not human, their half-finished transformations showed glistening needle-like teeth and scythe-like blades along the arms.
Koise’s arrow took the one in the lead first, pinning it to the stone wall and eliciting shrieks of pain.
The second one met me head-on, and I parried its bladed arms with an earth-made plating along my right arm, the force of it rattling my bones as I pivoted and drove my wristblade through its rib cage.
It instantly collapsed to the ground and twitched, trying to continue its attack but dead before it could mount a counter.
The final demon-thing lunged at Koise, but he sidestepped and drove an arrow into its throat like a dagger. It gurgled and fell, going still moments later.
“They were Awakeners,” Koise said grimly, staring down at the bodies.
Sure enough, a closer inspection showed the tattered guild insignias on the ruined armor and clothing of the things.
“The corruption…?” I wondered. “Is this how the demons are made?”
Continuing through the hallways, only the glowing tendrils along the walls kept us company until we saw the throne room doors looming ahead, tendrils sprouting from its edges and retreating during our approach.
“Hold on a minute,” Koise said as he drew his bow and loosed arrows into the largest of the retreating tendrils.
Whether the arrows killed anything or not could be left up to debate, but the writhing of the walls at least showed that it served as a warning.
The entryway fully clear, we walked forward into the throne room.
* * *
A room straight out of a nightmare awaited us.
The ceiling arched high above, lined with more glowing tendrils that pulsed like veins, and dried blood decorated the stone floor.
At the far end of the throne room, atop a twisted throne of fleshy corruption and stone, sat a monster of gargantuan size and lopsided features.
Only when it tried to speak did I recognize it for what it was.
“Ahh… Koise… Still can’t stay away, I see.”
“What the hell?” I mumbled under my breath.
Koise took a shaky breath. “G-Gregor…? Is that you? Did you do this?”
The thing, Gregor, let out a wet laugh. “I finally did it, Koise. The guild was weak, and now I have real power. Being a mere city lord? I can’t believe I dreamed so low.”
What was once Gregor lurched to its feet, dripping purple ichor from the wounds on its skin that kept opening and healing. “I’ll soon be lord of the entire world.”
Each step he took trailed purple fluid behind him, and muscles bulged and formed all over his body. What had once been his face was a nearly unrecognizable lump of flesh with two beady eyes and a toothy mouth.
“What chance do two pathetic Awakeners have against the apex predator?” it asked.
Koise’s arrow whistled through the air and plunged into Gregor’s chest.
The monster merely glanced down, plucked the shaft out, and tossed it aside as the wound closed instantly. “Pathetic.”
He lunged forward.
His vendetta seemed to be more against Koise than myself, but since I was in the lead, I took the brunt of his assault head-on.
Barely dodging backward, his malformed hands—tipped with crooked claws—tore apart the stone ground where I’d just stood.
Koise loosed more arrows into Gregor, but his healing factor simply pushed them back out of his skin.
“We need to find the dungeon’s core!” I shouted over to Koise, not caring at that point if Gregor heard me. He likely knew our objective anyway.
Gregor turned and swung his claw in a vicious arc. I blocked with my gauntlet, the stone creaking under the impact as I fell to one knee.
“There is no core…” Gregor hissed, bearing his weight down. “I am the dungeon!”
Rather than ineffectually shoot off more arrows, Koise lunged forward, dagger drawn, and plunged it into one of Gregor’s mutated eyes.
That, at least, was enough to draw a reaction.
Gregor roared and retreated backward, instinctually swinging his arm and sending Koise across the room, where he hit a wall with a sickening thud and slumped to the floor.
“Koise!” I took advantage of the moment to lunge forward and drive my wristblade into Gregor’s gut.
He staggered again and gripped my wrist in an iron-like vise. “Insect…” he spat, tossing me through the air. “I’ll enjoy crushing you.”
I recovered far better than Koise had, using the Second System’s benefits to flip with the momentum and absorb the impact against the wall with my legs before righting myself to land on my feet.
Watching in dismay, I saw Gregor’s eye and the wound I’d made in his gut rapidly heal.
‘At least he still feels pain.’
It was an issue of overcoming his healing factor somehow.
‘I wonder if he can survive without a head.’
Thunder boomed through the cracked mosaic windows of the throne room, and a flash of lightning outside briefly threw blue light across the chamber.
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