Chapter 142: The Abyssal Urn

The figure that had fallen out of the sky rose from the rubble of the rampart like a thing being born.

Stone dust poured off her shoulders. The vines of her gown shifted and settled, and the blood-red eyes behind the veil of dust swept across the ruined wall, unhurried, unbothered, as if she were inspecting a garden.

Kael had expected her to come eventually. Seeing it was another matter.

Morgwyn, the Thorn Queen.

"Of all the things I feared," he muttered under his breath.

A boss at her level did not need to try. A single idle stroke could end him a dozen times over. He turned to Sir Gareth Thorne and the others on the rampart, voice low and urgent.

"Get the princess out of here. Quietly. Don’t draw its attention."

They moved at once. Gareth swept Elara up in a ring of guards, and the little group began to retreat along the broken parapet as fast as they could go without running.

It was not fast enough.

The Thorn Queen’s head turned. Her eyes passed over the retreating knot of figures, and something in them changed, a strange bright interest, like a hunter catching a scent on the wind.

"Oh," she said, softly, and her voice carried over the din like a bell in a quiet room. "The blood of the Northvale line. How long has it been since I breathed that in?"

Her lips curved.

Her right hand flicked, and the long whip that trailed behind her leapt out as if it had a mind of its own. It cleared the distance in an instant, a blur of red and thorn, and swept toward Elara.

Which fool designed this quest chain? Kael thought, with a chill running down his back.

I’m meant to protect one princess from one of the Ten Great Bosses. Head on.

There was no time for anything but the only choice that remained.

He triggered Bloodbind, linking his life to Void Cataclysm’s enormous pool of health, then wrenched the dragon’s reins and called on the fire in his blood.

Skyborn Awakening.

Crimson flame roared up around him. The Frost Bone Dragon plunged down out of the sky and landed squarely between the Thorn Queen and the princess.

The whip came down.

It was only a casual lash, a stroke made without a skill, without an ounce of effort. But a level 97 Legendary boss was a force of nature, and even her idle blow was an act of devastation.

Kael took it on the shield of his own body, and Bloodbind carried most of the damage across to Void Cataclysm. It was not enough. His health bar vanished in a blink.

The dragon beneath him came apart in the same instant. The lash tore through bone and flame and man together, and they were shredded in midair.

But the Undying Wheel was on his body, and it answered.

In the dark of his chest, one of the pale runes on its surface flickered and went out. A flash of white light shot through the smoke, and Kael stood whole again, at full health, on the broken stones.

Valen came back a moment later, rising out of the dust beside him at half his strength. The Threshold Seal had done its work. After two seconds, the Bone Dragon Knight had returned.

"Hm?"

The Thorn Queen’s brows lifted, and a flicker of surprise passed through the red eyes.

An insect should have been dead. This one had gotten back up.

"Interesting."

A slow smile came to her lips, delighted, cruel. She lifted a single finger and pointed it at Kael.

Around him, a spore of scarlet light bloomed in the empty air. It swelled, unfolded, and in moments had grown into a great blood-red flower, eerily lovely, its petals trembling.

A single thorn shot out of its heart and drove toward his chest.By any rule he knew, it should have been the end.

But the Ring of Infinite Fortune on his finger flared with sudden light, and a bright green word flashed over his head.

MISS.

The thorn passed through him and struck nothing.The Ring’s last guard clause. A ninety percent chance to evade any killing blow, a safeguard that had never failed him yet.

"Oh?"

The Thorn Queen’s eyes sharpened. Her interest deepened visibly. A mere ant had slipped her strike.

She waved her left hand, and two more seeds sprouted in the air around Kael. Two more of the great blood-flowers bloomed, and now three of them surrounded him, shivering with hunger, spitting attacks together.

MISS.

MISS.

-1,256,366

The Ring’s ninety percent was no promise.

Against a gulf in level and attributes this wide, the true odds had been bled away to almost nothing, and it had only bought him two escapes before the third strike found him.

His health bar disappeared again, and the Wheel burned another of its runes to cover him, and he was back.

The Queen’s gaze fixed on him now, and understanding crept across her face.

"I see. You are not what you look like, little one. There is a great deal hidden in you."

She laughed, a soft sound, almost pleased, and a flicker of hunger crossed her features.

She raised her hand again, and another vast blood-flower bloomed around Kael, its petals folding in to close on him like a fist.

At the same time, she lifted her head toward the place where Elara had fled.

Gareth and the guards had carried the princess a hundred meters down the wall. The Queen’s eyes found them, and the amusement drained from them, leaving something cold.

"Running? You will not get far."

She raised her left hand and extended it toward the little group, the way a person reaches for a ripe fruit.

Kael saw it, and his heart seized.

I didn’t come back from the dead three times just to watch her die.

His expression hardened. The whole of his skill, his instincts, his speed of thought, gathered into a single point.

First, Phase Shift.

Elara vanished from the retreating column and reappeared a hundred meters away, safe on the opposite rampart, and in her place, the Hollow Emissary stood in the swirl of dust, scythe lowered, having been waiting in the safe distance for exactly this signal.

Whatever the Queen threw would find the Emissary, not the princess.

Second, Spirit Communion, and he copied Stormwing Sovereign’s skill.

Stormstep.

In the last instant before the blood-flower closed, he became a bolt of golden lightning and shot out between the petals.

He reappeared a few dozen meters away, boots grinding on stone, his eyes ablaze, and fixed the Thorn Queen with a murderous stare.

"Just because I haven’t shown my teeth," he said, voice low and savage, "doesn’t mean I’m harmless."

He reached into his inventory.

"Die."He drew out the one item he had never touched since the day he pulled it from the Astral Spire’s chest, and he turned it on the Thorn Queen.

The Abyssal Urn.

It rose out of his hand and hung in the air, trembling, runes along its surface blazing.

A pressure of boundless wickedness poured off it, and black smoke began to roll out of its mouth in thick, billowing clouds.

The smoke took shape. Spirits and demons boiled out of it by the hundreds, hideous, ragged, their eyes burning with bloodlust, and they uttered a shrieking cry that made the air itself flinch.

Then they flung themselves at the Thorn Queen.