The moment the mask was ripped from the cultist's face, both Leo and Ray froze dead in their tracks. Under the dim, ethereal moonlight, the visage revealed to them was nothing short of a living nightmare.
The cultist's face was horribly half-burned. The entire left side was completely charred and melted, leaving his left eye deformed and ghastly. Even on the right side, deep, jagged scars marred his flesh. Then, the cultist spoke. But this time, the bizarre, childish cadence was entirely gone, replaced by a chillingly serious, gravelly tone.
"What's the matter?" the cultist asked, his voice cutting through the night. "Why did you stop dead in your tracks just from looking at my burned face? A scar is a mark of honor for a cultist who wishes to serve the Demon Lord. This is who we are... we have no names, we have no identities. We exist in this world solely to live for Demon Lord Null."
Leo's knuckles turned white as he clenched his fists in sheer rage. "Then why?! Why are you doing all of this? What drives you monsters to cause such mindless destruction?!"
"Because we have nothing else," the cultist cut Leo off, his eyes gleaming with a twisted, fanatic devotion. "We have nothing but our worship for our Lord. Our lives have no other purpose anymore."
With those words, the cultist lunged forward without warning, driving a deadly, straight punch aimed directly at Leo's face.
"Leo, move!" Ray shouted from behind, swiftly throwing Leo's katana toward him.
Jumping to the side, Leo caught the hilt of his katana mid-air. In one fluid, seamless motion, he delivered a blinding counter-slash.
Swish!
The blade sliced through the air, cleanly severing the cultist's thumb, which thudded onto the dirt. The cultist leaped backward, creating distance, and stared down at his bleeding, mutilated hand. Yet, not a single line of agony crossed his face. Instead, a manic, twisted grin stretched across his lips.
"This pain... this pain is nothing to me anymore. My pain can no longer stop me from achieving my goals. This is a minor scratch. I felt a pain far greater than this back when I was still a human."
Ray yelled from the rear, "You are still a human! There is no difference between you and us!"
The cultist stared at the crimson blood dripping from his severed thumb and spoke in a chillingly hollow voice, "There is no turning back for me. There is no path left that can ever make me human again."
With that final declaration, the cultist brought his hands together in a prayer-like gesture. Instantly, a sinister, blood-red Magic Circle erupted beneath his feet. The atmosphere warped violently. Sudden, fierce gusts of wind began to howl, ripping leaves from the surrounding trees and sending them swirling into the air as the cultist's hair whipped upward.
The crimson glow of the magic circle intensified, turning a deeper, more malevolent shade of red. Suddenly, a blinding pillar of light erupted from the circle, tearing through the pitch-black night. The radiance was so piercing that Leo and Ray were forced to shield their eyes.
When Leo finally forced his eyes open, his breath caught in his throat.
The cultist's body was now enveloped in a swirling shroud of darkness and burning demonic energy, looking as if living shadows were writhing directly out of his flesh. A small, crooked horn protruded from his forehead—the unmistakable brand of his fiendish transformation. His eyes glowed a fierce, predatory crimson, burning with an insatiable bloodlust, while his fingers had elongated into claws as sharp and dark as obsidian. The tattered cult robes and the glowing crimson cracks pulsing across his skin turned him into a terrifying, otherworldly warrior.
Seeing the Dark Purple Aura radiating from the cultist's body, Steven's warnings flashed across Leo's mind—an aura like this only manifests when someone is completely Demon Possessed.
"What have you done to yourself... you've become a demon!" Leo breathed out, a mix of horror and shock gripping his voice.
The cultist's voice was no longer human. It was deep, guttural, and echoed with immense weight. "I am a demon now."
In a flash, the demon-cultist raised his lethal claws and blitzed toward Leo with terrifying speed, aiming straight for his throat. But before those obsidian claws could slice flesh, Ray intervened. Leaping into the fray, Ray delivered a powerful kick to deflect the cultist's claw, simultaneously channeling his Fire Element to hurl a massive fireball dead-center at the cultist.
Leo scrambled backward. The cultist had blocked Ray's fireball barehanded. Even as the flames scorched and blistered his flesh, he didn't even flinch. With a casual flick of his wrist, he snuffed out the residual fire and raised his palm toward the sky.
Slowly, a massive, catastrophic fireball began to materialize above his hand.
"This is the disparity between you and me," the cultist sneered, slowly licking his lips. "You two are nothing but fragile chicks who have barely hatched from your eggs, pretending to be heroes in some story... or desperately wishing to become one. But let me tell you this—it is your foolish desire to be heroes that will get you killed."
The fireball grew exponentially, its intense heat warping and scorching the very air around them. Sensing the impending doom, Leo and Ray began to sprint backward in retreat.
"Here, humans. A gift from us!"
With a crazed smirk, the cultist slammed the massive fireball directly into the ground. BOOM!
A violent explosion rocked the forest. The ground shattered, and an inferno erupted, spreading with terrifying speed. Trees turned to ash within seconds. Leo and Ray ran at breakneck speed, pushing their bodies to the absolute limit to stay ahead of the encroaching wave of fire.
Glancing back as they fled, a spine-chilling presence washed over them. Emerging unscathed from the roaring flames was the cultist, pursuing them with a deeply unsettling, creepy smile. The raging fire didn't harm a single strand of his hair.
"To think I had to unleash this power just to overpower two brats..." the cultist laughed mockingly. "And where is that arrogant Chris of yours anyway? I don't see him anywhere. He was talking so big earlier. I honestly thought he came here to kill me... after all, I am the one who drenched the 6th Division in blood!" He burst into a psychotic fit of laughter.
The Wrath of Chris
Suddenly, Leo and Ray sensed an overwhelmingly heavy, frigid presence standing directly ahead of them.
It was Chris. He stood there completely motionless, neither running nor flinching. Having heard the cultist's mocking words, the rage consuming him had transcended beyond mere words. His eyes were dead and hollow, yet they carried the unmistakable aura of absolute death.
"Chris!" Leo screamed out. But Chris was in no state to listen to anyone.
Slowly, Chris raised his hand. In an instant, swirling dark smoke coalesced in his palm, solidifying into a sinister, ethereal Spear. Without a word, Chris slammed the butt of the spear violently into the ground.
Thud!
A dense, dark-greyish smoke erupted from the spear, expanding rapidly to form a massive, indestructible barrier that ground the roaring inferno to an absolute halt.
Chris's voice was dropping to sub-zero temperatures as he spoke: "So, it was you... the one who destroyed my base."
The cultist nodded with arrogant pride.
"Very well then." Chris's eyes flashed with a lethal glint. "I will grant you an agonizing death. And before you die, I am going to completely cripple you."
The moment the words left his mouth, Chris moved. It wasn't a sprint—it was a blinding burst of speed so extreme that neither Leo nor Ray's eyes could even register his trajectory.
SLASH!
By the time Leo's vision could catch up, Chris had already cleanly severed one of the cultist's arms, sending it flying through the air. In a desperate, panicked reflex, the cultist swung his remaining claws at Chris, but against Chris's monstrous speed, he was like a toddler swinging at shadows.
SLASH!
In the blink of an eye, Chris mercilessly sliced off one of the cultist's legs. As the demon-cultist lost his balance and began to plummet toward the dirt, Chris didn't even give him the luxury of hitting the ground.
Chris unleashed a brutal, rapid-fire volley of punches straight into the cultist's face. The air filled with the sickening, repetitive thuds of impact, blasting demonic blood into the air with every strike.
Finally, pinning the cultist to the shattered earth, Chris drove his foot heavily onto the demon's chest, anchoring him down. With a cold, merciless stare, he plunged his smoke-spear completely through the cultist's chest, pinning him to the ground.