Becoming a Monster

Chapter 489: Chapter 488: Heaven Can’t Save You Now

The archon’s ability to control the flow of battle was quickly reaching its limits.

This time, Ava’s claws found success again as the archon prioritized intercepting Diablo’s blade and redirecting Eve’s follow-up, and the second strike landed deeper than the first.

Again, more energy was taken. And in the distance, a man’s pained cry was heard.

Within that exchange, the archon processed the flaw in its earlier conclusion. It learned that it had not failed to strike the phantoms, nor had its attacks been ineffective. It had been cutting them the entire time.

The inconsistency lay in the result. The damage it inflicted did not stabilize within their forms. Where its blade passed through them, the effect failed to anchor, as though their structure could not fully sustain the interaction.

They were similar to living ghosts. But a ghost that couldn’t be purified was akin to a Holy Spirit, which the two beings weren’t either, leaving them in limbo between the two categories.

Only the areas where their energy condensed into defined forms produced consistent results. Those points revealed themselves through their methods of attack, leaving Diablo’s sword and Ava’s claws as the only stable points it could fully interact with.

It adjusted immediately. Instead of attempting to cleave through their bodies, the archon refined its movements to intercept those points of manifestation.

Its blade met Diablo’s directly, while it redirected Eve’s strikes at the moment they formed. Barriers followed with exact timing to intercept Ava before her claws could fully connect.

Even with that adjustment, the trio pressed forward without giving it space to disengage.

Within that pressure, the archon found an opening. Its blade slipped along Diablo’s guard and cut across Eve’s side before either of them could fully intercept. The strike landed cleanly as blood followed immediately from the wound.

However, the result did not hold because the energy taken during that same exchange flowed back into her at once, and the damage began to mend before the moment had fully passed as the wound closed.

Without hesitation, the archon continued its sequence, carrying its next strike from a lower angle with greater control. Its blade cut across her shoulder before Diablo could fully re-engage and before Ava could force it off line, resulting in a second successful hit within the same exchange.

Once again, the damage surfaced only to vanish as the stolen energy reinforced her body, restoring what had been lost and further strengthening her through the very act of striking her.

At the same time, the archon registered the changes within its own structure with a mechanical insight. Each clash, the loss it experienced was no longer negligible as its mana began to decline at a measurable rate.

Even so, its movements did not falter or accelerate, as it continued to maintain the same calculated rhythm.

It sought to maintain complete control over its actions, allowing the exchange to continue while it waited for the exact moment when a single action would produce a definitive result without further loss.

That moment wasn’t far off.

It could already sense that its summoner was near his death. The next "lethal" strike to it could possibly end the cleric’s agony while also releasing it from this realm.

The shift in power had already favored its opponents, and within that change, it accounted for the likelihood that they would press forward without restraint, which allowed it to determine its final course of action.

When the trio advanced again, the archon did not evade their attacks and instead allowed their blades to reach it while committing fully to its own strike in the same motion.

Its sword drove forward and pierced directly through Eve’s core, the blade passing through the exact point where her energy condensed most densely, ensuring that the strike would not be capable of being healed, as the other attempts before it.

Noah saw it happen, with even greater quality than he would have liked.

And in that instant, his perception narrowed to a single point, because even the flow of mana around him seemed to slow as his attention locked onto the blade lodged within her.

His presence exploded, and every creature that was in the vicinity of his aura was forced to stop, not out of hesitation, but because his aura imposed itself on them, overriding their movement entirely as if their bodies no longer belonged to them.

He moved immediately, driving his hand into the barrier once more. The same scene played out; the barrier didn’t budge even without his desire to get through.

"Move out of my way."

His voice carried through both the battlefield and his soul; his will carried the obsession and the dominion, as if he were going to reach his goal no matter the cost.

The runes etched into his soul reacted in response, as if answering to his will.

Within his soul realm, the inscriptions rotated around his core. The energy they released forced its way into his mana, pushing directly against the structure.

When the energy came into contact with the barrier, the otherworldly energy became disconnected from the space that had been preventing its breach.

Cracks sounded without a visible cue of something being destroyed. There was a soft shatter as the invisible field no longer impeded Noah’s advance. All that was left was the actual barrier itself.

It didn’t even take a moment. As soon as Noah’s hand touched it, the entire barrier dissolved into the air, leaving nothing behind to separate him from the others.

At the center of it, Eve remained standing with blood running from her lips, and the hand gripping the blade at her chest was not attempting to remove it, but to hold it in place, preventing the archon from withdrawing it.

At the same time, her own sword had already been driven into the archon’s sternum, and the flames surrounding it fed directly on the source, causing the rate of its dissipation to increase with each passing moment.

Eve wasn’t like her phantoms; her eyes had already begun to dull, her skin had grown pale, yet her stance did not falter. The energy she continued to draw into herself was stabilizing her just enough to keep her standing.

The archon registered the outcome with certainty, although under normal conditions, the damage to her core would have ensured her immediate death; the archon was assured that it had achieved its mission.

Off to the side, the cleric had already collapsed face-first onto the ground. The damage accumulated through the connection reached its limit.

The transformation that had been progressing within him was completed as his body hardened entirely into marble. Veins of the holy energy left within him filled in the cracks of his broken state.

The process did not end with his death, because what remained of him no longer resembled a living being, leaving behind a corpse of a hollow seraph.

The connection between them severed in that instant, and without the summoner to sustain it, the archon’s form began to break apart at a faster rate than before, because the energy maintaining its presence no longer had a source to draw from.

Light distorted behind it as a rift formed, and the pull from that space intensified as its body lost its physical hold, drawing each fragment of its form toward its origin.

Its physical structure was scattered, piece by piece, and faded, leaving only its spirit as the process continued.

Because only that portion of its existence could return now that it had lost the power to sustain its form until it reached the other side.

The pull strengthened further, and under normal conditions, nothing within this realm would have been able to interfere with that transition once it had begun.

But something did.

The archon, even in its spiritual state, was aware that something had stopped it.

Its movement stopped despite the continued force attempting to pull it away, and the resistance did not originate from the rift behind it, nor from a mysterious force preventing it from leaving.

It was being held in place by a hand.

It couldn’t process how such a thing was possible. It wasn’t the act of catching its soul with his bare hands that it found disbelieving.

The very fact that Noah could stop it from being pulled by heaven’s gate was what it found impossible to understand.

The fact didn’t change that it was incapable of feeling emotions. But now it began to believe that it had chosen the wrong target.

——

Noah looked toward the creature with murder in his eyes, and for a moment, the thought of dragging out its end and tearing apart its soul piece by piece crossed his mind more than once, because a quick death did not feel sufficient for what it had done.

Even so, that intent did not remain, because Eve came first, and the moment he turned his attention toward her, the killing intent surrounding him faded as if it had never been there.

Noah did not allow himself to question why she was still standing, and instead forced himself to believe that she had not removed the blade because doing so would result in her immediate death.

His eyes glistened at the thought of what she might have been thinking all this time. But now wasn’t the time to be emotional when the window to saving her was closing.