City of Sin

Endless Corridor

As the corridor starting shaking, all Richard could hear was the rhythm of a heartbeat. Three hearts were pulsing at the same pace as the corridor, leaving him extremely uncomfortable. The regular beats were only interrupted when Tiramisu jumped out, swinging his hammer to kill a few lesser demons that were about to pounce on Richard, “What happened, Master?”

Richard snapped out of his daze, “Don’t you hear the heartbeat?”

“Huh?” Both of the ogre’s heads frowned in confusion, “What heartbeat? I only hear the demons”

“You really don’t hear it?” Richard asked again, consulting with his two other minds to make sure. In the meanwhile, the rune knights and winter soldiers rushed in and rapidly formed a defensive line to block out the waves of lesser demons.

The broad corridor allowed Tiramisu to fight comfortably, but the strange thing was that nobody could see the end of it behind them. There was the passage they had come in through on one side, and demons were surging out from in front, but the other end seemed to have no stop to it. As for the demons themselves, there were so many of them that their numbers quickly grew overwhelming. Even the rune knights couldn’t withstand them for more than a few minutes, slowly starting to retreat.

Demonic corpses covered the floor of the corridor, but new lesser demons just stepped over their kin’s corpses and attacked from above. In only minutes, an army that could sweep through all of Faelor was actually forced to retreat.

Asiris quickly headed over to Richard’s side, “Your Grace, this is the Endless Corridor of the abyss, connected to one of the layers. We’re taking on an entire layer’s output of demons!”

Richard nodded, but made no move to order the retreat as he attentively observed  His eyes lit aglow as his vision pierced through the illusory fog and detected some strange movements, demonic sculptures on the walls of the corridor that were moving. He felt a fluctuation in space whenever a part of the corridor was emptied, the sculptures sending a new batch of lesser demons to fill the gaps.

His face sank as he realised that Asiris was right, “Will we face any greater demons or demon lords?”

Asiris shook his head, “This isn’t a planar portal, just a way to connect the abyss to a number of specific planes or secret places. Greater demons shouldn’t be coming to one that connects to a secondary plane.”

“And how are we supposed to go through?”

Asiris pointed in the directions the demons were surging out form, ”Just follow the corridor this way, and we’ll reach the exit eventually.”

“And the other way?” Richard looked behind him and frowned.

“There is no end in that direction.”

Richard nodded and started to examine the situation closely. While his army was slowly retreating, there hadn’t been any casualties yet. The rune knights and winter soldiers had formed a tight line of defence, shifting in and out to make sure they never exhausted themselves. In the meanwhile, Richard’s followers stood right behind the defensive lines and killed any demons that managed to slip through.

The army was efficient as ever, minimising damage while killing the maximum number of enemies, but the formation was slowly being pushed back by the endless tide. No matter how many demons were killed, another batch just took their place; morale wasn’t sagging yet, but even the strongest of warriors couldn’t find it in themselves to battle a truly endless horde.

Kellac just finished a spell, a glob of black light appearing over the lesser demons that magnified his scream to everything within a ten-metre radius. Their souls were all shocked out of their bodies and shattered by this divine version of Death’s Decree, killing more than 300 in one go. However, even more demons rushed in and promptly filled the empty space, while his expression darkened. This was a grade 9 spell he could only use thrice in a day, and he was still needed as a backup healer.

Richard stopped the other followers who were about to make their moves and walked towards the front of the formation himself, standing just behind the line of rune knights. Taking out the Book of Destruction, he flipped through to the page containing the blood inquisitors. A single blood inquisitor was more than enough to power the entire battlefield here, so he could summon them one by one to freeze the lines.

As his mana brought the book to its designated page, Richard caught a single glimpse of the strange tetrahedron and felt a chill in his heart. After some hesitation, he flipped back to that page and poured in his mana and the power of his truename, summoning the strange object from the tome.

He didn’t know just why he wanted to summon the tetrahedron, but he had a gut feeling that it would be different from previous summons. Was it Intuition again? He wasn’t sure himself.

Four orbs of light floated out from the book and into the passage, connecting together to form the mysterious glowing object once more. Richard suddenly felt a strand of consciousness connecting to him, almost asking for orders, and he glared at the endless wave of lesser demons, “Kill them all!”

This was an impossible order; Richard wasn’t sure if he could accomplish such a thing himself. Theoretically, there was a limit to the number of lesser demons in a single layer of the abyss, but he didn’t know how big that number was.

Once it received his orders, the tetrahedron started glowing and shot out a beam of plasma from each of its corners. These beams were unimaginably hot, cutting deep into the walls of the passage and slicing the demons in two like they were made of air. The beams seemed to move randomly, but the corridor turned into a slaughterhouse where dozens of demons died every second without a single splatter of blood.

However, this wasn’t the end. The tetrahedron suddenly started rotating, the pace completely random just like that of the beams. The four attacks seemed to form a random web of destruction within ten metres, and the strange object buzzed before shooting down the corridor.

The Endless Corridor suddenly went quiet, so quiet that it was frightening. The annoying chittering of the lesser demons had disappeared completely, and the rune knights that were still in battle position just stared in front of them with shock. A thick pile of demon parts had been formed on the ground, the cut surfaces as smooth as mirrors. The four walls of the corridor were filled with deep cuts as well, but they were secreting a black liquid to start repairing the damage. There was a soft buzz with every cut that recovered, almost like someone crying. At the very least, no new demons were being spawned.

Richard himself was shocked by the results, but he was also the first one to recover. He pointed to the depths of the corridor and started moving forward, “Let’s go.”

It proved difficult to clear out the numerous chunks of flesh, so the rune knights used their shields like shovels to push them all to the sides of the corridor and make a path down the middle. The number of demons in the passage reduced as they ventured further in before finally disappearing, but from the looks of it there were tens of thousands of corpses in total.

The mysterious tetrahedron had disappeared as well, but Richard opened the Book of Destruction to find it back on the page. It was much lighter now, looking like a shadow of itself, but an attempt to pour in the power of his truename made the image sharper and brighter. The tetrahedron formed once more, starting to rotate on its own.

Richard wasn’t sure whether he could control such great power, especially when he didn’t even know what exactly it was, but this wasn’t the time to worry about that. He had the troop speed up and rush towards the depths of the Endless Corridor.

For some reason, the corridor itself seemed to be on his side after that display of power; not only did it not spawn more demons, but it had also secretly reduced the distance to only a third of his initial estimate. It only took a few minutes before they were standing in front of an ancient bronze door.

A few rune knights walked forward and pushed the heavy door open in tandem, revealing a majestic hall behind it. There seemed to be no one within, but the moment Richard stepped in a thunderous voice rang through every corner of the underground building, “Who dares disturb a greater lord of the abyss?”