Becoming a Monster

Chapter 481: Chapter 480: A Heaven’s Tool

The battlefield was entirely different from before.

For a brief moment after the summoning, everything seemed to hold its breath. It was as if everyone was waiting for the entity to move.

The time it spent motionless finally showed change when the darkness within its helmet shifted, followed by golden slits opening within.

Despite being brought into a world without any forewarning or perceived knowledge, there was no confusion in its gaze, because the conditions of its summoning had already provided it with everything it needed.

It already understood where it was, why it was called. And more importantly, it understood who the enemy was.

Its attention was about to settle on the target the cleric had designated as the primary threat.

Although the others were in danger, Fenrir had been marked as its first target, because aside from Gwen, whose fate remained unknown, the older man stood closest to losing his life.

The entity tightened its grip on its sword as the golden blade began to shine with a steady holy light, and it prepared to act in accordance with that purpose.

Then it stopped. Its gaze shifted upward as a figure was almost directly upon it.

Ava, merged with Eve, descended without hesitation. Her body was wrapped in dense, dark energy the moment she came into contact with the holy field surrounding the area.

The reaction was different from the others as the holy energy failed to take hold around her and instead threatened to unravel upon contact, struggling to maintain its form against the energy that was even darker aligned than even Noah’s.

The path she traveled seemed to distort the field, leaving residual energy behind, almost as if the field was threatening to collapse.

—

The cleric’s complexion was no longer the same.

His body had already begun to pale, and the hand gripping his cross trembled under the strain, his fingers tightening unconsciously until the edges bit into his skin. Even as blood flowed, the pain barely registered as he struggled to maintain both the holy field and the entity he had called forth.

The drain from summoning the entity was unlike the drain of a normal spell. It wasn’t as simple as mana or stamina, because what he invoked was not a spell at all. It was a call to the heavens, and the heavens answered.

But to summon from there as a mortal did not come without a cost. A cost that demanded to be paid no matter what.

For someone like the cleric, whose rank was defined not only by strength but by his connection to divine power. That cost was something he could barely sustain, because his status was far too low to call upon a true being of the heavens, such as a seraphim or a mythical holy beast.

Instead, what he had summoned was something beneath them.

An archon, a being forged from the power of the heavens, created not as an individual but as an extension of divine will, existing solely to carry out judgment against those deemed its enemy, and unlike angels, it wasn’t a creation devoid of sin, its existence formed from remnants of sin taken from both fallen enemies and newly purified souls who became angels, reshaped into a weapon that stood between judgment and execution.

And like any weapon, it required a wielder. The cleric barely met that requirement to use it. Even then, it was only because the current archon was a lesser version. Its form was incomplete; the most noticeable was its lack of wings.

Yet even in that incomplete state, the burden of maintaining it was immense, since in the realm it originated from, heavenly energy served as both power and life, sustaining it with error.

Here, it had no such support, and it could only draw from the source that brought it there. And because the cleric was its only source, his holy energy was not equal to that of the heavens themselves. The Archon fed from him continuously, draining his mana, his divine energy, and something far more vital, his life essence.

Arachne’s gaze shifted toward the cleric, her killing intent locking onto him instantly.

But the moment she focused on him, something felt off.

A barrier of golden light surrounded his body. It seemed to have already been there from the moment the archon was summoned. The barrier surrounding the cleric didn’t resemble the usual flow of holy magic. It locked into place, as though the space around him had been forcibly rewritten.

Despite the uncertainty of that barrier, Arachne no longer cared about her current enemies, bypassing the stunned adventurers as she aimed for her target.

—

Meanwhile, the archon’s gaze didn’t flinch even when the one who summoned it was in danger.

Its sight fixed onto Ava instead without hesitation, and in that instant, its priority shifted completely. The cleric’s concern for his party was discarded, and the presence behind her did not matter.

The enemies of the cleric did not supersede the enemy of God.

That was how it perceived Ava’s energy, even if her raw power was still inferior to Noah’s.

The distance between the two closed instantly.

Her speed was still faster than the majority there. By the time most of them realized what she intended, her elongated, blade-like nails were already inches away from the glowing slits within the Archon’s helmet.

She aimed directly for its eyes as if she knew something that the others didn’t.

The archon didn’t retreat in the slightest. It shifted its position by the smallest margin, just enough to avoid the strike, while its blade rose in a single motion that cut upward faster than the speed at which she flew.

A banshee’s cry immediately followed as her wing was cleanly cut through, causing her to crash violently into the ground.

The pain from the blade alone was not enough to provoke such a reaction from Ava, but the wound it left behind told a different story, because a dark mist poured from it without pause, rising into the air as the energy from the archon’s sword began to purify her.

The archon’s attention was fixed entirely on her even as she fell, because eliminating her had become its highest priority, and the moment its body made the slightest movement forward, intent on finishing what it had started, another presence closed in.

It reacted quickly again. Its sword was brought out in front of it, the golden light along its blade intensifying as a barrier began to form. But before it could fully manifest, a dense sphere of dark energy slammed into it.

The barrier held firm against Noah’s creatures’ expectations. Not even a crack was made despite the oppressive force.

For a brief moment, the adventurers thought that Noah was going to be completely overpowered.

But then the true source of Noah’s attack followed. The energy that exploded against the barrier began to spread, clinging to the surface of the barrier.

One force tried to purify, while the other tried to devour. As the two collided, the flow of energy within the barrier was disrupted until the golden light dimmed from within, and in the end, the unfinished structure collapsed and gave way.

By that time, Noah and the archon had already clashed.

Noah didn’t plan to save anything. His aura flared, fueling his demonic-like armor with enough mana that would give an opponent the illusion that they were attacking a mountain.

Within his hand, slime quickly elongated, morphing into a sword overflowing with his mana, so much so that it was reeking with toxic mist around it.

He did not consider himself a better swordsman because his style was crude and direct, built on instinct and overwhelming force rather than technique, yet even so, he did not intend to take the archon’s blade head-on without first testing it.

The two "swords" quickly intercepted each other.

Noah’s strikes came with more weight and speed, forcing the archon to respond rather than dictate the exchange, and each movement carried enough force to push the smaller figure back by inches at a time.

Yet the archon’s movements were made in a way that did not feel natural, as though every angle, every adjustment, and every interception were being made into mere moments after it was about to be hit.

And although it lacked Noah’s raw strength, its control allowed it to meet each strike at the exact point necessary to redirect it.

With every collision, Noah was sure of it. The creature was more focused on exchanging blades than directly assaulting him.

The energy within that blade was not the same as the barrier it created. It was purer and more lethal.

Each clash sent that energy through his weapon, forcing Noah to have to expunge even more mana to fully prevent his sword from being extinguished.

The archon sensed that sooner or later, Noah would either succumb to its energy or Noah would seek a different alternative.

But during their exchange, Ava, not learning her lesson, moved again.

She forced her way into the middle of their clash in an attempt to strike the archon. And the moment Noah noticed its shift; he was forced to move.

That opening cost him.