Gawain was in no hurry to rush into the area ahead. Just looking at the massive cluster of gravestones gave him a bad feeling. He summoned Ashmi first, then layered a stack of buffs on himself to ensure no accidents would occur in the coming moments.
"Hm? Why are you so pathetic today? You're actually shaking. Don't tell me you're scared?"
Ashmi let out a couple of indignant huffs but still took two steps back, positioning itself behind its host.
"I sense a massive concentration of the Frenzied Flame ahead. That stuff can melt away the soul itself. It's better to be cautious."
"The problem is, isn't your main body back in Nokstella? This is just a clone; if it burns, it burns."
"The problem is that my main consciousness is currently controlling this body! If I get burned, it'll hurt like hell even if the awareness transfers back. No way. You deal with the enemies here yourself."
"It's just soul-burning. Look at you, scared out of your mind as if no one else can do that. Fine, I'll go take a look personally."
Gawain shot Ashmi a look of disdain and left the mimic standing behind Melina. The Frenzied Flame—that universally loathed Law that had never managed to establish an Order—had likely melted fewer souls in all of the Lands Between than Gawain had burned himself. He stepped out of the passage alone.
The moment he set foot into the mist-shrouded, eerie clearing, the elderly Hornsent figure he had spotted earlier vanished. From all directions came the sound of low, chilling laughter that made one's skin crawl.
It seemed the hunter had seen the prey enter the killing field. What followed was a relentless barrage of golden, barbed arcs lunging from the shadows.
In an instant, Gawain was surrounded by golden arcs. It was clear that regardless of why he had come, the Hornsent guarding this place had no intention of talking. They only intended to kill anyone who set foot here.
He let out a short laugh as he watched the attacks fill his vision. Though numerous, these golden arcs were essentially the same basic incantations he had encountered back in Belurat.
He whipped up a storm of falling bolts that rippled outward. With a casual ease, he shattered every golden arc screaming through the air.
Simultaneously, the gale continued to expand. Before setting out last night, Gawain had used Melina's help to consume every Scadutree Fragment they could find in Castle Ensis. Compared to when he first arrived, the power of the shadows was gradually merging with him rather than suppressing him.
For a moment, the wind surged with lightning, forming a tornado that bridged the sky and the earth. As the surrounding mist was swept away, the enemies hidden in the corners were laid bare.
A dozen spectral figures manifested among the gravestones on the hillside. Among them, however, was only one physical, withered, and slender figure. The rest were all spirits surrounding the gaunt Hornsent. It seemed he was the source of the laughter.
The spirits had been hiding in the mist, firing arcs from all sides. The scene was somewhat surprising to Gawain—he hadn't expected a living Hornsent to still be in this god-forsaken place. He had assumed that anyone guarding this for so long would have become a spirit by now.
Gawain looked closer. The Hornsent was draped in heavy yellow robes, his face entirely obscured by hanging yellow cloth. Atop his head grew massive, twisted horns—the result of several horns spiraling and tangling together. Even on his shoulders, clusters of spiraling, mixed horns pierced through his robes.
"Hmm. Looks like this guy is a higher rank than those Hornsent Warriors in Belurat. Interesting."
The Hornsent worshipped horns as symbols of glory. The man before him had horns that were both massive and dense; he was clearly no ordinary individual.
In fact, within Hornsent civilization, there existed a special class of officials: the Inquisitors.
Much like the inquisitors of Volcano Manor, the Hornsent's Purge-Inquisitors were not kind souls. Their methods of handling prisoners were even more "creative" than those used against the Albinaurics at Mt. Gelmir.
Unlike those in the Lands Between who performed such acts for mere pleasure, the act of torture itself was one of the Hornsent's sacrificial rituals for their gods. Because of this, the Inquisitors often possessed great power and held high status as messengers of the divine.
Among them, the elders—experienced and ancient Inquisitors—held a position of extreme reverence.
The one appearing here in the Abyssal Woods was the most formidable of them all: Jori. He was the Hornsent among Hornsent, the Inquisitor among Inquisitors. His mastery in the field was so great that even his peers felt inferior.
Thus, after "that incident" occurred, he was dispatched to carry out a vital mission.
He was to seal away Midra, the sage who had touched the Frenzied Flame, purge the manse, and blockade the Abyssal Woods to prevent the flame's power from leaking. Jori was supposed to stay until a replacement arrived, at which point he could return in glory to the spiral tower of Enir-Ilim.
However, for some reason, no replacement ever came. He had no choice but to wait here, watching his subordinates die one by one and turn into spirits. Those who remained by his side were the lucky ones; many more had been captured by the frenzied creatures roaming the woods, their souls melted alongside their bodies.
At this moment, the venerable Elder Inquisitor looked quite disheveled. The "table-flipping" attack Gawain had just unleashed had caught him completely off guard.
His robes, once adorned with magnificent symbols, had long since turned into tattered rags wrapped around his body like dishcloths. Jori thrust his glowing, golden barbed staff-spear into the ground with both hands—partly to steady himself, and partly to command his spectral subordinates to reform their formation.
Staring at the stranger approaching step by step, Jori felt a wave of disbelief. Ever since the mist was dispersed, he had sensed a trace of power from the Divine Beasts within the man's storm.
However, after a brief moment of shock, Jori identified that the opponent was no "hero." The man didn't have a single horn on his head—how could he have performed the Rite of Divine Invocation?
Jori wasn't like the old crone hiding in the storehouse of Belurat; his eyes still worked perfectly. He could see the man for what he was. If he wasn't a Hornsent hero...
His gaze turned dangerous. The man had likely stolen a Divine Beast Dancing Lion talisman or a similar artifact from Belurat to obtain such power. He was a loathsome thief.
As for the possibility of the man having directly killed a Divine Beast? Such a thought never even crossed his mind.
Jori gnashed his teeth, glaring at the intruder. Trespassing into a forbidden land was a capital offense; now, he had an additional reason to kill. In his mind, he had already decided to make Gawain an object of torture. He would use his agonized screams to please the Divine Beasts. It had been a long time since a fresh life had arrived for him to torment.
Gawain, seeing the opponent standing still, recalled what Messmer had told him. This Hornsent was preventing him from entering the woods and nearing the Lord of Frenzied Flame. In a way, he was acting as a guardian. Despite his wretched appearance, he had contributed to suppressing the Frenzied Flame.
With that in mind, Gawain tried to address him.
"Are you the one sealing and guarding the Lord of Frenzied Flame? Tell me what you know about this place, and I'll overlook your earlier attack."
Jori let out a cold sneer and replied indifferently: "All who step into the forbidden land must die. Including you, you wretched thief. Become my sacrifice to the gods."
The moment he finished speaking, he swung his great golden staff.
The golden barbs at the end of the staff—symbols of the Inquisition—began to fire golden arcs incessantly. These arcs, fired by Jori himself, were incredibly fast. They were a completely different caliber of attack compared to the ones fired by the spirits in the mist earlier.
Simultaneously, from the spectral void, more spirits appeared. The ghosts of Elder Inquisitor hags held their barbed candlesticks high, performing the unique sorceries of Belurat. These spells restored health while boosting the attack power of all Inquisitors on the field.
A continuous onslaught of golden arcs rained down like a violent storm toward Gawain at the center of the clearing.
"Good grief, is this attack density for real? You aren't a boss; you're a bullet-hell game."
After a silent complaint, Gawain decided to meet magic with magic. Ranni's Great Rune within his chest began to operate at full capacity. With the Crystal Sage's Staff in one hand and the Crystal Chime in the other, his casting speed was so fast he blurred into an afterimage.
"Ora ora ora ora ora!"
Jori only heard a series of strange battle cries before his head was enveloped by a downpour of countless Crystal Hails falling like rain. The density was even more exaggerated than the combined efforts of his spectral subordinates. A man of his frail build wouldn't dare take that head-on.
He managed to use an incantation to teleport to the side, narrowly avoiding the most violent wave of the attack behind a few sturdy gravestones. He immediately commanded his spirits to counterattack.
A massive Hornsent with an oversized, bloated stomach lunged forward, trying to pin Gawain with his belly. Gawain delivered a Storm Stomp, kicking the creature into a wall.
Looking at the still-unscathed enemy, Gawain hadn't expected the man to be able to teleport like that. But while Gawain could afford to make countless mistakes, Jori couldn't afford a single one.
Seeing that his position was relatively safe, Jori waved his staff again, and an incredibly dense wave of golden arcs erupted from it.
Gawain manifested a Twisted Wall of Light before him, reflecting the vast majority of the arcs.
"Magic! Magic! Magic! Magic!"
As he closed the distance, the staff in his hand began to unleash its power. A "rain" of Farron Flashswords—with a spell density that was even higher than Jori's—was unleashed almost directly into Jori's face.
After taking several rounds of the magic rain, Jori was forced to teleport away again, now visibly wounded.
The moment he reappeared, dense rays of light from all directions interwove like a birdcage closing around him. This time, his teleportation ability hadn't finished cooling down. He was forced to rely on his sheer physical agility to dodge. Amidst the dense blue magic, Jori displayed the unreasonable skill of a "formidable old man."
He dodged the Crystal Hail from above without even looking. He managed to dance along the very edge of the Farron blade-rain. Amidst his maneuvers, he even found the room to counterattack, firing a massive, wide golden arc from his staff to clear a large swath of space.
However, despite his agility and the fact that he dodged most of the rays, the overwhelming and illogical volume of fire meant that the space he could move in was shrinking, even with his teleportation.
Under such pressure, he didn't even have the window of time to summon more spirits. Even when his subordinates tried to launch a sneak attack on their own, they fell the moment they revealed themselves. Who knew what this ghost-magic was? It seemed to directly damage the soul itself.
Finally, his increasingly exhausted body faltered. Gawain seized the opening, and several Homing Soulmasses pierced straight through his torso.
It was then that Jori realized with horror that the areas hit were collapsing before his eyes. That eerie crystal magic was destroying his soul along with his body—and he couldn't even feel the pain.
In his long career as an Inquisitor, Jori had never encountered such an anomaly. Faced with a power more sinister than even the Frenzied Flame, he let out a scream of terror.
"Now you know what pain feels like? I liked you better when you were being arrogant."
Gawain took two sips from his Cerulean Flask to recover his mana, a villainous smile touching his lips as he slowly approached Jori, who lay incapacitated on the ground.
"You... stay away from me! AAAAH!"
Gawain ignored his pleas. A Hornsent actually has the nerve to talk tough to me? Thinking of the Shamans he had rescued, he decided to vent his anger on the man. Jori wasn't going to get a quick death.
He stepped on Jori's right hand as the man reached for his staff. Switching to Pyromancy, a spiral of Profaned Flame began to burn upward from Jori's leg. This fire would not stop until the soul was incinerated.
The once-mighty Inquisitor could only watch helplessly as his body was consumed by the flame. This fire wasn't chaotic like the Frenzied Flame; it was controlled, which made it all the more terrifying.
Realizing he couldn't escape, Jori's fear turned into fury. He glared at the intruder, snarling:
"Whatever you plan to do... trespassing into the forbidden land and attacking an Inquisitor is a death sentence! Even if the Aged Ones do not melt your soul, the Inquisitors will come to avenge me! The furious Divine Beasts of Belurat will not let you go!"
Gawain gave him a strange look, then asked:
"So you really don't know anything about the outside world? Belurat has been burned to the ground. Your race, the Hornsent, is on the verge of being wiped out."
Jori's furious expression froze for a moment. Recalling that he hadn't received word from Belurat in a very long time, he shouted in terror:
"What are you saying!? Impossible! You must be lying!"
"Lying? I don't have the time for that. You were lucky enough to escape because you were stuck in this god-forsaken hole. Now, go down and reunite with your kin. You can ask them for the details yourself."
"Oh wait. For someone like you, it seems there won't be a 'going down' anymore."
Watching Jori slowly turn to ash under the Profaned Flame, Gawain pursed his lips. He wondered how it felt for these Hornsent when the same things they did to others happened to them. Personally, he found it very satisfying.
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Elden Ring: In the Name of Ash
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