Ascension from Dual Professions

Chapter 280: Chapter 262: Ceaseless Raids, a Fiend Reappears

This brief interlude did nothing to cool the men’s fervent will to fight. On the contrary, their gazes toward Jon held even more reverence—to remain so calm and composed in the face of news that his own home was under attack!

A young Monk nearby, clad in a moon-white Sacrificial Robe with gold trim, couldn’t contain his concern. He urged his mount forward a half-step, his voice edged with urgency.

”Lord Jon! Is there anything we can do to help?”

”That is a matter for later.”

Jon cut the Monk off flatly, his unfinished words silenced. Every syllable landed like a heavy hammer on an anvil.

”What we must do now has not changed!”

With that, he flung his arm up, the motion like waving an unseen battle standard, filled with an immense Power capable of tearing everything asunder!

The Mechanical Warhorse beneath him seemed to sense its master’s seething will, and its front hooves reared high.

”Our target—Red Crying Castle! Crush every obstacle! Forward—!”

”ROAR—!”

An even wilder roar rose in response!

The fading daylight was like a rag soaked in filth, smearing Heta County City in a chaotic wash of leaden gray.

The assault team led by Jon was like a lone star falling into an endless black void, flickering as it weaved and surged through the broken ramparts and ruins.

They tore through layers of hastily built barricades and shattered one crumbling defensive line after another.

Wherever the torrent of steel passed, the rebels’ panicked resistance shattered instantly, like dead leaves and withered branches ground into the mud.

Each charge drove like a wedge into the enemy’s most vulnerable points. Each swing of a sword unleashed the chilling gleam of multicolored Battle Qi, reaping the Life of any who dared to stand in their way.

And this unstoppable vanguard, like a red-hot branding iron, finally seared the venomous snakes lurking in the city’s Shadow.

Deep within an abandoned cellar, far from the din of battle, the stench of blood was thick enough to suffocate.

Beneath flickering candlelight, several figures in dark-red hooded robes knelt around a pool of blood that churned with murky bubbles.

Twisted limbs steeped in the pool as a foul Power greedily siphoned the remaining Life Force from them.

They muttered incantations, their dry chanting colliding and overlapping in the narrow space to form a sickening echo.

Suddenly, all sound ceased.

The roiling pool of blood abruptly went still, as if frozen by an unseen hand.

An icy will pierced deep into the minds of every Evil Mage!

”Stop him...”

The will became a cold echo, branded directly upon their souls.

”At any... cost!”

The kneeling figures trembled in unison. From beneath their hoods came a strangled hissing, like beasts with their throats constricted.

Then, as if receiving a supreme command, they violently plunged their withered, claw-like hands into the seething pool of blood!

”SQUELCH! SQUELCH!”

The foul blood coiled around their arms like a living creature, greedily sucking away the casters’ Magic Power and Life Force.

Their already pale faces shriveled at a visible rate. Their eye sockets sank, and a fanatical, inhuman crimson flame ignited deep within their pupils.

”Hhhh... as you command... my master...”

”Sacrifice... summon... stop the blasphemer...”

Along with more twisted, frenzied Spells, the pool of blood began to churn violently, as if brought to a boil!

The foul gore bulged upward, stretching, taking shape!

A sickening cacophony of dislocating bones, tearing muscle, and stretching viscera filled the air as several shadowy forms, radiating intense malice, struggled to crawl out of the blood pool!

One resembled a giant, flayed hound. Viscous, dark-red ooze dripped from its gnarled, muscular body. Its four paws blazed with an eerie green, poisonous fire, and each footstep seared a black scorch mark onto the ground, releasing the stench of sulfur and rot.

Another looked like a giant scorpion with a forcibly twisted exoskeleton. Gray-green pus continuously oozed from the seams of its carapace. Its bone-like tail stinger dragged along the ground, glinting with a deadly, spectral light, and each lash of its tail stirred up a sickening, foul wind.

There was also a writhing, amorphous mass of viscous flesh. Its surface was covered in maws that constantly opened and closed, dripping with ooze. It made a bizarre noise, a mixture of a baby’s wail and a serpent’s hiss. Wherever it passed, the very air grew viscous and foul.

The moment they were formed, these twisted abominations—birthed from a profane ritual and saturated with pain and hatred—ignored the casters, whose Spirit was now withered and whose breath was faint.

They turned in unison toward a single point—the direction of Jon’s assault team, which shone like a blazing beacon in the darkness!

”HSSS—SKREEE!!!”

”AWOOO—!”

With ear-splitting, malicious shrieks and roars, the monsters tore through the ruined structure above the cellar and charged toward the assault team, bringing with them a suffocating, blood-soaked gale!

They moved with incredible speed, their massive bodies plowing through the rubble, aimed squarely at that single, tenacious spark of light in the darkness!

But evil was not the only thing that dwelled in the darkness.

Several figures hidden among the ruins tensed as they witnessed the three profane creations tear out of the cellar and charge away.

Several messages instantly shot through the intelligence network Woven into the shadows of Heta County City.

”Rebel Evil Magic cell discovered, location: West Sector Seven ruins. Three monsters have appeared, heading toward Red Crying Castle!”

”Evil Magic fluctuation at peak levels! Contamination level: ’Crimson’! They’ve breached the third preset cordon!”

...

「Atop the clock tower, the cold wind cut like a knife.」

The gray-robed Bagget stood like a stone statue merged with the mottled bronze bell, the shadow of his hood completely swallowing the hard lines of his jaw.

Countless subtle fluctuations, imperceptible to ordinary people, flowed through a dark-gray prism in his hand and into his Perception. The prism’s cryptic patterns shifted constantly. When the final alert regarding the three abominations’ movements and the ’Crimson’ contamination level entered his consciousness, the eyes hidden in the shadows finally twitched.

His gaze pierced the billowing smoke and gathering dusk, seeming to ignore the distance as it locked precisely onto the roiling vortex of battle in the city’s northwest corner.

He could ’see’ the arrowhead—forged from steel, Holy Light, and an icy will—penetrating layer after layer of obstacles at astonishing speed, driving straight for the heart of Red Crying Castle.

Jon’s figure was the arrowhead’s sharpest, most brilliant tip.

’The Prince of Apollonia... Master of the Giant God Workshop... What an incredible young man.’

His tone held no obvious praise or censure, only a pure, almost cold assessment.

After a brief silence, this influential figure from the Ministry of Internal Affairs issued a command.

”Go tell Paris—assist His Highness Jon with all available power! Clear any and all obstacles!”

In the shadows, the air rippled silently, like the surface of water where a pebble has been dropped.

A shadow deeper than the night itself blurred for an instant at the center of the ripples. There was no reply, only an abrupt withdrawal of a cold presence, as if it had never existed.

Bagget’s gaze did not follow the departing messenger.

He turned his gaze back to the smoke-filled, chaotically seething Heta County City, his eyes sweeping precisely and coldly over every burning block, every twisted, dark alley.

He could ’see’ the Resistance Alliance Soldiers grappling with rebels in the filthy mire, a storm of flying flesh and blood. He could ’perceive’ the numb Soulless, like marionettes pulled by invisible strings, surging silently and desperately toward Red Crying Castle. He could even ’smell’ the air growing thick with the profane stench of sulfur and the cloying sweetness of blood—the sign that an Evil Magic ritual was reaching its peak somewhere deep within the city.

But the mastermind orchestrating this chaos was like mercury that had melted into the shadows, leaving no trace to be found.

’If they can’t catch him, then all this effort, all these sacrifices, will be for nothing.’

’Damn it... where the hell are you hiding...’