The Battle of the Sanctuary (1)
A deep rumble echoed as Dalen’s body trembled with newfound power. Feeling a surge of exhilaration, he opened his status window.
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Name: Dalen
Level: 14
[Strength: 33] [Dexterity: 23] [Stamina: 28]
[Perception: 21] [Intelligence: 22] [Magic: 20]
Skills:
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“Wow.”
The rewards were more than just generous—they were unprecedented. From a single corpse, he had gained four attribute points, an item, and even a B-rank skill.
Typically, acquiring a high-rank skill meant fewer attribute points, making this an extraordinary reward. Especially since a B-rank skill was considered ‘mystical’ in the game’s lore, a boundary that blurred the line between the impossible and the possible.
“This will require a lot of training,” Dalen mused, stroking his chin. The greater the power, the harder it was to control. It wasn’t just about having the qualifications; it would take a significant amount of effort.
He invested his newly acquired attribute points into stamina, raising it to 29. Strength had begun to integrate into his domain once it reached 30, and stamina was not far behind. It was time to consider how to incorporate it into his domain.
“In the end, it’s all about my own mental landscape,” Dalen thought. He understood that the true power lay not in the numbers and letter grades of the status window, but in the living, breathing world around him.
The key to overcoming the countless failures of past cycles, the endless defeats that spanned thousands of hours, might not lie in mere numbers or inherited options. It was the power of the domain, the realm of possibilities that could manifest the impossible and resurrect futures that should have perished.
His intuition whispered that this power could be the raw material to forge a blade capable of slaying the evil gods.
“But that’s a story for another day,” Dalen shook his head, turning his gaze to the demon. The immortal demon Arvor lay sprawled on the altar. Dalen prodded it with the tip of his holy sword.
“Ouch! Ow! That hurts, master!”
“If you’re done eating, you should think about getting up, don’t you think?”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry… truly sorry…” The demon quickly knelt and begged. It had grown considerably larger from absorbing souls, almost twice the size of a human, even while kneeling, it was slightly taller than Dalen.
Dalen looked up at the demon with a nonchalant expression. “Hey, shrink back down.”
“What? But I—”
“Shrink. Can’t you do it?”
The demon’s eyes darted around. It had regained some strength, but not enough to challenge Dalen. The Chains of Halman, though corrupted, were still a powerful relic. Resisting them required at least a high-ranking demon, preferably one directly under an evil god.
Besides, hadn’t the master beaten it senseless even when it was much larger? Judging by the aura around him, the master’s strength had grown even more since then. Was he really human? The humans it knew weren’t like this.
“Look at you, rolling your eyes. It’s an order. Shrink.”
“I, I can’t… ack! Ugh!”
The Chains of Halman glowed, and the demon was forced to shrink back to its original size, a small, fluffy mass barely reaching Dalen’s knee. Dalen nodded in satisfaction. Yes, this size was just right for a good beating.
The demon, seemingly reading his thoughts, quickly clasped its hands together and lowered its eyes in submission.
“We’ll continue your education later. We don’t have much time right now,” Dalen said with a grin, raising his left hand. A transparent orb floated above it, containing a blue metallic arrow that spun like a compass needle.
“The Seeker’s Left Eye Fragment.”
Dalen smiled at the second item reward. It seemed the stronger the corpse, the higher the chance of receiving an item. And judging by the rewards so far, it was clear that low-quality items like rusty swords weren’t part of the deal.
The Seeker’s Left Eye Fragment was a powerful artifact. It allowed the user to track the location of any target they had met before, regardless of where they were—underground, underwater, or in the sky. As long as they weren’t in a completely different dimension, the artifact’s tracking was infallible.
“Just one condition: you must have met the target at least once.”
Once activated, the ability persisted until physical contact with the target was made. Even in a crowded plaza with thousands of masked attendees, it could pinpoint the target with precision. Among tracking magical items, the Seeker’s Left Eye Fragment was one of the most powerful.
“And it’s exactly what I need right now.”
Dalen only knew the way to the tomb. Following the archaeologist’s markings had been straightforward enough. But finding the way out was another matter. He had only learned the symbol for the tomb, and the hieroglyphs of the Sandstorm Dynasty were indecipherable to him.
If there were exit markers, he couldn’t read or follow them. “I could have easily gotten lost.”
The underground ruins spanned the entire territory of the Holy Knights. They were as complex and vast as the sewer systems of the labyrinthine city. At least with sewers, you could predict the layout based on water flow, but here, even that was impossible.
Feeling fortunate for once, Dalen infused a bit of magic into the glass orb.
A soft hum emanated from the orb as the needle inside began to spin wildly. Dalen calmly focused on Lucia.
A blonde, blue-eyed apprentice knight. A future inquisitor known as the Demon Slayer. Skilled in cooking, recently less prone to motion sickness, and a hero conflicted by complex thoughts and emotions towards humanity.
The more he thought, the more he visualized her, the more the needle trembled and slowed. Finally, it stopped and pointed in a single direction—roughly diagonally upward.
Dalen gave the demon a firm pat on the back. “Let’s go.”
Having slain the guardian, the traps should have ceased. There was no need to rush. Even in a maze-like ruin, he was confident he could reunite with his party within a day or two.
As he exited the tomb with the demon, he reached out his hand.
A small axe, discarded in the corner, flew into his grasp as if pulled by an invisible string.
Dalen turned his back and left the tomb behind.
“Why the hell isn’t it working?” Lucia fumed, swinging her sword in a diagonal arc.
Clang!
Swords clashed, drawing intricate curves in the air. At the end of her dance, she pushed forward, striking her opponent’s chin with her shield.
Thud!
“Ugh…”
The special forces paladin was lifted off the ground and crashed to the floor. The hole in the earthen wall behind him quickly sealed itself. But soon, another thud sounded, and a paladin squeezed through a gap in the crumbling wall.
Lucia charged forward, and behind her, Paladin Ulston shouted, “It’s working, but—”
“Then why are these bastards still going berserk?”
“The curse core is stronger than we anticipated. This portable device isn’t enough to dispel it!”
A sound like a ballista echoed through the air. No, it was exactly that sound.
A towering knight, over two meters tall, wielded a massive harpoon gun as large as himself, firing it at the mages.
“Then do something! Aren’t you supposed to be engineers?” Lucia shouted, squeezing every ounce of power from her sacred tattoos to deflect the harpoon. The knight brothers, who were supposed to be engineers, fumbled helplessly.
They fiddled with a short dagger-like device, repeatedly inserting and removing it from a dimly glowing crystal core.
“Damn it,” Lucia cursed under her breath. They were in a dire situation.
Just days ago, she hadn’t anticipated this turn of events.
After Dalen had thrown himself at the collapsing ceiling, all the traps had stopped within a couple of hours. It meant he had done something, and thus, he was likely still alive.
But they couldn’t wait for him. This mission was a race against time.
While the knight commander led the troops in a feigned attack on the fortress walls to draw attention, the core of the mission was to disable the cursed core deep within the sanctuary’s armory.
The primary goal was to minimize the sacrifice of the knights.
To achieve that, they had to disable the cursed core before the siege intensified.
“I planned to wrap this up quickly and send a rescue team to the ruins. Why is everything going so wrong?”
Bang!
Lucia deflected the massive metal harpoon with her shield and kicked the giant knight in the groin.
“Ugh!”
The armor protecting his vital area crumpled, and she felt something crack beneath her leather boots.
The giant special forces knight rolled his eyes and collapsed. He might not be able to function as a man anymore, but it was better than dying. Lucia clicked her tongue and pushed off the ground again.
The mission had hit a crisis just a few hours ago.
Everything had been going smoothly as they traversed the ruins over four days and infiltrated the sanctuary’s armory.
They had neutralized a few special forces guards with the help of two mages and inserted the artifact to disable the cursed core in the black crystal deep inside.
If the artifact hadn’t overloaded and stopped working with a pop, the mission would have continued smoothly to the end.
Wulston and Heston, knights and engineers, immediately began repairing the artifact, but as they said, it was no easy task.
Meanwhile, the deputy commander’s forces noticed the anomaly and stormed the armory.
That led to the current situation.
“You filthy dogs of the commander! How dare you enter here!”
Clang!
A special forces knight broke through the earthen wall with a multi-pronged sword, engaging Lucia in combat.
Thanks to the two mages from the Elgaia Tower, who had constructed a massive earthen wall reaching the ceiling, they only had to deal with those who broke through.
“Is it done yet?” Lucia shouted after incapacitating another special forces knight.
The young mage was sweating profusely, and it was clear the fragile balance was about to collapse.
“Fall back!” The elder mage’s eyes widened.
He quickly formed a hand sign, and the earthen wall crumbled.
“Elre Rot!”
A blue sword light flashed from beyond, exploding against the massive stalagmites that had risen from the stone floor.
“Ugh…”
Felber Valentino prepared another hand sign, but before he could complete it, a sword light pierced through the dust and struck the old man.
Crash!
The elder was sent flying into a corner of the armory, where shields and spears were lined up.
“Master!” The apprentice’s cry echoed as the dust settled, and a knight with a blue aura around his sword walked forward.
“Everlock!” Lucia muttered under her breath. Deputy Commander Everlock Glastden’s eyes gleamed with a blue light.
“Sir Lucia. Did I teach you to address your superiors so casually?”
“Spare me your nonsense, you traitor to the order!”
“Even as an inquisitor, you haven’t outgrown your childhood habits. I suppose that’s the extent of the commander’s arrangements.”
The deputy commander smirked, a lopsided grin without a sound.
Lucia raised her battered shield. Her left hand held the shield forward, while her right hand angled her sword over it.
Seeing the white flames on her sword and the faint glow of her sacred tattoos, the deputy commander’s expression hardened slightly.
“Ah, I see the resolve of someone who has slain a cherished comrade with their own hands. Are you still bound by the chains of Halman?”
“How do you know about that?”
“The demon Golakap was quite a promising pawn. To empower him further, I sent a young knight with a holy sword.”
To think he’d be killed by a half-baked apprentice knight.
The deputy commander’s sneering words snapped Lucia’s last thread of reason.
Crack!
The stone floor beneath her feet shattered. The white flames engulfed her sword, burning fiercely.
Just as she was about to launch herself like a blazing comet, a sudden thunderclap stopped her in her tracks.
Rumble…
The sound grew louder, and the deputy commander tilted his head in confusion.
“Is the inquisitor Lucia afraid of a little thunder?”
“No,” Lucia lowered her sword.
She shifted from an aggressive stance to a solid defensive posture, as if the provocation moments ago had been nothing.
“This isn’t just any thunder.”
Rumble—
The ground beneath them shook. Lucia stepped back, raising her shield.
As Tommy Valentino, who had tended to his bleeding master, and the two knight brothers turned their heads, the ground between them and the deputy commander exploded like a bursting dough, with light and thunder erupting from within.
Boom!
From the explosion, a figure shot up, piercing through the armory’s ceiling.
Looking down through the hole in the ceiling, Tommy shouted.
“Sir Dalen!”
“Oops. I went up one floor too high.”
The warrior landed lightly on the ground, as if it were nothing.
He glanced around and, spotting Lucia, waved casually.
“Sorry I’m late.”
“No, you arrived at just the right moment,” Lucia smiled. Just then, a blue sword light descended upon Dalen.
Boom!
But he was different from Felber. He had no reason to be struck by a mere sword light.
As it approached, he turned and swung his sword, causing the blue blade and light to explode in a fan shape.
The clash of powerful forces stirred up a cloud of dust.
Dalen waved the dust away with his left hand and spoke.
“Don’t you know it’s bad manners to attack someone in the middle of a conversation?”
“I don’t know what nonsense you’re spouting, but your crude language is enough to rot my ears. A barbarian coveting a holy sword? The world must be ending.”
If King Sejong were alive, you’d be executed, you bastard. The thought made Dalen chuckle.
He lifted the holy sword with both hands, raising it over his shoulder.
Sss…
A swirling energy enveloped the blade from his shoulder.
Facing the deputy commander’s twitching blue eyes, he smirked.
“If you want it, come and take it.”