Chapter 271: Ritual Completed
The cavern trembled as the wave of darkness surged outward, washing over Adrian and his team like a living tide of malice. The very air grew heavier, thick with the oppressive energy of the ritual. The cultists roared in unholy unison, their bodies warping further, grotesque and unstable, as the ritual's power fed into them.
Adrian grit his teeth and steadied his stance, crimson eyes locking onto the cult leader, whose violet gaze remained calm—almost amused. The bastard wasn't worried. That meant one thing.
He was buying time.
"We must break through!" Seraphina shouted, her golden aura flaring as she hurled another blast of holy fire. It burned through a mass of cultists, reducing several to ash, but more surged forward to take their place.
The leader's lips curled into a smirk as he extended his hand, fingers curling. "Your resistance is meaningless," he murmured.
Shadowy tendrils erupted from the floor, lashing toward the team like serpents.
Sophia reacted first. With a sharp exhale, she blurred forward, her twin blades flashing as she cut through the tendrils before they could entangle them. The severed tendrils writhed like dying worms before dissipating into smoke, but the attack had done its job—stalling them.
Adrian surged forward, his sword igniting once more with golden flames. He cut down a robed cultist in one swift motion, then another. "Eve! Status?"
Eve's voice came through the communication link, breathless. "We're handling the outer perimeter, but there are too many of them. These bastards keep summoning more creatures!"
As if to confirm her words, a horrifying screech filled the cavern.
From the summoning circles embedded into the ritual's core, more monstrous figures emerged. Twisted aberrations, their flesh pulsating with unnatural growths, their limbs elongated and tipped with razor-sharp claws. Their hollow eyes glowed crimson, locked onto their prey.
"Shit," Isabella hissed. "They're throwing everything at us."
The ground cracked beneath them as an armored cultist lunged at Adrian with inhuman speed. He barely had time to react before Seraphina intercepted, a golden shield forming in an instant. The impact sent tremors through the cavern as the cultist was repelled backward.
"Stay sharp!" Seraphina warned.
Adrian's instincts screamed at him. Something worse was coming.
The cult leader hadn't even begun to fight seriously.
The Battle Escalates
The mob of cultists and summoned horrors pressed in, relentless in their assault.
Sophia danced between them, her blades an extension of her will. A summoned beast lunged at her, its gaping maw lined with jagged teeth—she spun mid-air, slashing through its skull in a single fluid motion. Yet, another replaced it instantly.
Isabella, a beacon of radiant destruction, stood her ground. With each swing of her greatsword, divine energy erupted, carving through her enemies with terrifying force. But even as she felled them, the cultists barely flinched, sacrificing their own to empower their dark magic.
One of the mutated cultists rushed her, its muscles bulging grotesquely from ritual enhancements. Isabella met its charge with a fierce roar, swinging her greatsword upward in a powerful cleave. The creature's body split in two, but before its corpse even hit the ground, another lunged at her.
"Damn it! They won't stop!" she snarled.
From above, Seraphina hovered in midair, wreathed in golden light. Her hands moved in intricate patterns as she prepared another large-scale spell. "Holy Conflagration!"
The cavern shook violently as pillars of divine fire erupted across the battlefield, incinerating waves of cultists. The lesser ones screamed as they were reduced to cinders, their bodies unable to withstand the purging flames.
But the stronger ones endured.
From the corner of his eye, Adrian saw the cult leader still standing near the monolith, untouched.
His chanting had not stopped.
His ritual was still progressing.
Adrian clenched his jaw, frustration boiling in his chest. No matter how many cultists they cut down, more surged forward, their twisted bodies fueled by the dark ritual. Every second wasted meant the cult leader grew closer to completing his summoning.
"We have to stop him now!" Adrian shouted, driving his sword through the chest of a hulking cultist whose flesh twisted unnaturally from the blood magic enhancements. The creature gurgled, a sickening mix of agony and reverence in its dying breath, before crumbling into dust.
Seraphina's golden eyes burned with urgency as she landed beside him, her robes smoldering from the divine energy she had unleashed. "He's nearly done. The monolith is reacting!"
Adrian glanced at the towering obsidian monolith at the center of the chamber. Crimson veins of dark energy pulsed across its surface, growing more erratic. The runes inscribed upon it burned with a malevolent glow, and the air itself warped with sheer magical pressure.
The cult leader remained untouched, his eyes filled with amusement as his chant reached a fevered pitch.
And then—
The monolith cracked.
A deafening boom echoed through the chamber as a shockwave of dark energy exploded outward. Adrian and his team braced themselves as the ground beneath them trembled violently. The remaining cultists screamed in unholy ecstasy, their bodies convulsing as tendrils of dark energy shot from the monolith and pierced into them.
They weren't being sacrificed. They were being used as fuel.
One by one, the cultists shrieked, their bodies bloating grotesquely before they burst into clouds of black mist. The mist swirled toward the center of the chamber, converging into a single point above the monolith.
Adrian's crimson eyes widened. "No… he's already begun the summoning!"
The Third-Class Creature Awakens
From the vortex of dark mist, something began to emerge.
A massive clawed hand, covered in onyx scales, broke through first. Then another. Soon, a monstrous form began to materialize, its size eclipsing everything in the chamber.
A deep, guttural growl reverberated through the cavern as the creature pulled itself fully into the mortal plane. Its body was grotesquely large, its spine lined with jagged protrusions of bone. Twin sets of crimson eyes gleamed from its horned skull, and a mouth filled with rows of jagged fangs curled into a disturbing semblance of a grin.
Seraphina took an involuntary step back, her voice tight. "A Third-Class abomination… we’re in trouble."
The cult leader spread his arms wide, his voice dripping with satisfaction. "Behold, the Harbinger of the Abyss. This world is unworthy of its presence, but it shall feast upon your souls nonetheless."
The creature threw back its head and unleashed a scream—a sound so horrifying it felt as if reality itself was being torn apart. The sheer force of the sound sent shockwaves through the cavern, cracking the stone walls and shattering any remaining stalactites.