I leaped toward them at the absolute fastest speed I was capable of. The stunned, blank expressions stemming from their failed collective attacks hadn't even had the time to leave their faces before my fist connected, crushing one of them directly like a ripe watermelon.
I looked down at my hand in mild surprise. There was a faint, lingering tingle radiating across my knuckles.
I had felt a distinct layer of resistance just a fraction of a second before my fist connected—most likely a specialized type of magic shield destined to compensate for the natural physical frailties of a mage's body. Unfortunately for the poor lad, it hadn't been nearly powerful enough to stop me.
The remaining fellows looked at me in stark horror before hurriedly surrounding me and resuming their relentless spell barrage. I waved fluidly through their frantic movements, effortlessly removing a few more heads before cleanly leaping out of their tight encirclement.
The mages looked at each other with visible dread written across their features. Finally, one of them stepped forward and spoke, his tone heavy with finality.
"Fellow brothers, this intruder is far too powerful. We won't be able to deal with him conventionally. We need to initiate Plan B." His voice carried an ominous, weighty resonance.
A low murmur spread anxiously through the gathered crowd before they seemingly reached a consensus, nodding in grim agreement with the man's proposition.
They rapidly assumed various geometric positions around the primary spellcaster, locking into what was clearly an intricate arcane formation. Speaking in a unified, chillingly synchronized voice, they began chanting an incantation.
The cadence of the words sounded like a thousand overlapping whispers rising directly out of the freezing void, carrying untold, forbidden dark secrets.
An immediate, suffocating sense of foulness overtook my senses, and I nearly gagged in sheer physical repulsion. Whatever foul ritual they were undertaking was fundamentally wrong against the natural order of existence. I didn't know how else to describe it.
I need to stop them right now.
The second that thought flashed through my mind, I forced down my visceral discomfort and bolted directly toward them.
If I shatter this formation, it should forcefully interrupt whatever they're building up. Right?
With that tactical objective in mind, I accelerated toward one of the chanters chosen completely at random. I lacked the deep magical know-how required to identify which specific node I needed to target to cleanly sabotage their machinations. Therefore, my brute-force strategy was simply to tear through them one by one until the ritual collapsed.
Sadly, before I could close the distance, the environment shifted violently. The cadence of their alien chant spiked dramatically, and an invisible kinetic shockwave repulsed me forcefully backward across the room.
The lead mage at the center of the initiative suddenly flared with a terrifying, blinding glow. A monumental, oppressive presence radiated outward from his frame as he thrust a hand rigidly toward the empty air.
Dropped heavily onto my knees, I watched as the ambient lighting dimmed instantly. The atmosphere grew heavy, and I felt an involuntary solemnity settle over my mind. The very texture of baseline reality suddenly thickened before instantly growing desperately frail.
Rip.
A terrifying, fabric-tearing sound rebounded harshly off the sterile white walls, forming an ominous, echoing shockwave.
What on earth is this suffocating presence? And what is that ungodly noise?
That immense pressure isn't something a single mortal being could ever exude. It is incomparably vast, yet simultaneously entirely devoid of conscious sentience.
Then, horrifying clarity struck me. The spatial tear had originated directly from the man stationed at the center of the formation. A massive opening had split open right across the center of his chest. Surprisingly, thick blood failed to spill from the wound; instead, it resembled a raw, jagged crack bleeding directly into the fabric of space itself.
Sudden, blood-curdling screams violently diverted my focus away from the lead mage and toward the surrounding cultists. Blood began weeping simultaneously from every single one of their facial orifices. Within seconds, their flesh began to rapidly dry out and shrivel, as though an invisible straw had been jammed into their bodies to slurp out their internal fluids.
Before long, their agonizing screams choked off, and they were entirely reduced to scattered heaps of dry, grey human flakes. It was profoundly chilling. At least twenty individuals had just perished in the exact same horrifying manner—and it was entirely self-inflicted via a ritual of their own meticulous design.
These people aren't just unhinged lunatics; they are absolute, radical extremists. I now fully understand why Chloe issued the unsparing order to massacre them all on sight without wasting time attempting to interrogate them or extract information.
This specific breed of zealot would never crack, even under the most extreme, unimaginable torture. They would infinitely prefer to embrace agonizing death rather than betray the dark object of their warped worship.
As those grim realizations raced through my mind, a fresh shift occurred within the ongoing ritual. The lone surviving cultist standing apart from the formation suddenly burst into hysterical, booming laughter—a jarring mix of manic glee and absolute madness.
"You will perish here today. The sole regret I harbor is that I won't remain conscious to personally spectate your demise."
I arched a single brow, catching the unsettling, absolute certainty woven into his tone.
Why on earth am I merely kneeling here on the floor like a helpless idiot instead of lunging forward to run him through?
The answer was frustratingly simple: I physically couldn't move a muscle. Ever since the spatial wave had repelled me, the abyssal presence summoned by the ritual had locked my body down under a crushing gravitational suppression. It felt precisely as though I were attempting to stand upright while carrying the weight of multiple concrete apartment blocks stacked across my shoulders. I had a strong, lingering intuition that any normal supernatural caught in this radius would have been instantly liquefied—both in body and mind.
Are these fanatics genuinely capable of summoning an entity wielding a presence so overwhelmingly massive that even Thorn Crimson's aura feels like a flickering firefly by comparison?
I violently refused to accept that premise, keeping my locked eyes glued to the unfolding scene. The ritual was fast approaching its absolute climax.
The raw crack splitting across the summoner's chest had violently expanded, stretching downward from his collarbone to completely bisect his entire body into two distinct halves. Miraculously, the man somehow remained alive, hanging by shreds of muscle. I felt as though I were actively hallucinating something simultaneously deeply grotesque and physically impossible.
Of all the bizarre, nightmarish phenomena I had witnessed since stumbling blindly into this unhinged supernatural underworld, this horrific display easily took the crown.
"The preparation is finally completed. Tell me, intruder—have you ever heard of the true horrors of demons?"
His muffled words sent a freezing shiver racing down my spine. A cold, stark understanding finally pierced through the mental fog clouding my brain.
"Am I to understand that you are actively tearing open a pathway to summon a full-fledged demon onto our mortal plane?" My voice sounded chillingly detached, even to my own ears.
Chloe had long since suspected this underground cult to be a demonic syndicate, given that their primary, obsessive agenda centered entirely around harvesting human souls. After all, everyone within the esoteric community knew that no entity craved mortal souls quite like a demon.
"Indeed you are correct, but worry not—I alone possess the precise initiation resonance required to anchor a demon within this specific conclave. This is the ultimate grace granted by the Great One," he rasped, wearing a profoundly dreamy, detached expression across his distorted, blood-streaked face.
"Provided you somehow manage to survive long enough to defeat whatever steps through, your surviving companions aren't likely to stumble across another gate," he continued, his tone dripping with deep, vindictive malice.
"Are you the individual personally calling the shots and managing this entire facility?" I demanded, desperate to salvage any tactical data.
Was my luck genuinely so appalling that I had managed to stumble directly into the final boss encounter the exact microsecond our strike team got separated?
"Oh, heavens no, absolutely not. Our master is infinitely more powerful than I could ever hope to be. I am merely ranking perhaps third in overall authority within the hierarchical structure of this enclave," he answered with unsettling candor.
"If you know you're walking into a fatal trap, why are you being so bizarrely forthcoming with all these answers?" I asked, genuinely puzzled by his sudden willingness to converse.
"Firstly, because you are utterly powerless to stop me. The mere ambient pressure of the Hell realm has forced you to your knees, meaning the summoning process is no longer in any jeopardy. Secondly, I am inevitably going to die anyway. Summoning a high-tier demon without offering adequate biological collateral is sadly a fatal transaction. Therefore, I want you to fully comprehend what is unfolding right before your eyes, while accepting the helpless reality that you can do nothing to alter it."
This guy is deeply, profoundly perverse.
"Without collateral? Take a look at your own dead colleagues scattered across the floor—I think they would strongly beg to differ on that definition," I countered with heavy sarcasm.
"Well, they were fully conscious of the exact price of admission. They willingly accepted their designated roles as consumable sacrifices. And consequently, they are simply dead—at least their individual souls remain untainted and safely their own. My soul, however, is destined to become the permanent, eternal chattel of this summoned demon. That, my inquisitive friend, constitutes true collateral in all matters binding a mortal to a demon: the soul itself."
"Is that the underlying reason why you people have spent centuries systematically collecting human souls? To build an army of hellspawn and... what, conquer the mundane world?" Though I heavily doubted he would hand over their core operational secrets, I couldn't resist pressing for answers.
He narrowed his eyes, his expression tightening.
"To be completely honest with you... I honestly don't know. None of us do. It is entirely sufficient for us to know that it is simply HIS supreme will," he stated simply.
I felt a sudden, heavy urge to throw my hands up in sheer exasperation. They had slaughtered an incalculable number of innocent people throughout history purely to harvest their souls, and the foot soldiers didn't even know the functional why behind the mandate?
Utterly insane people.
"If you knew you required harvested souls for the dimensional anchoring ritual, why on earth didn't you simply utilize the massive stockpiles you've accumulated over the decades?" I asked, genuinely baffled by the logistical redundancy.
"Those collected souls are not ours to spend or utilize. They are exclusively reserved... all for HIM."
I mentally threw my hands up in complete surrender.
I officially give up—these zealots are beyond redemption.
A sudden, sharp scream snapped my gaze back toward the summoner; his upper body had just been entirely swallowed by the widening spatial fissure. Following that violent expulsion, a massive, clawed paw easily the physical size of my entire human torso stepped heavily through the abyssal crack, anchoring itself onto our plane.