Novel Full Chapter 455: Mission Fail
Chapter 455: Mission Fail
The barrier rattled under the strain, the black surface shivering with fractures that spread like spiderwebs across glass. Each impact boomed like thunder trapped beneath the earth. The sound was deafening, not the crash of stone or steel but something deeper, the galvanizing force of raw mana tearing through the atmosphere itself. The very air screamed as Van Dijk pressed. It was the kind of power that could not be mistaken. He was an Eight Circle mage, just a step beneath the peak of human magical mastery. To call him destructive was an understatement. An Eight Circle could match an army alone, could reduce kingdoms to ash if unopposed. And now all of that fury was concentrated against one fragile dome.
On the other side, Titania’s clash never stopped and with each swing against the Werewolf more Holy Magic spread out to clash against where Ludwig and Mot Stood.
Mot’s barrier groaned as if alive. Black glyphs crawled across its surface, tentacles shifting faintly in its texture, but each blow from Titania’s clash made them twitch more erratically.
But comparing the blasts coming from Titania and Van Dijk, the later was far more terrifying to stand in front of. Ludwig felt the pressure radiating from Van Dijk’s strikes and clenched his jaw. The mage’s wrath was so dense it pressed into everyone’s bones. There was so much hate in his eyes that it almost matched the rage in Celine.
For the first time since he had entered the capital, the werewolf’s grin faltered. Its expression curled from cynical amusement to something harsher, closer to irritation. His yellow eyes cut upward through the light and dust at the shadow hammering the barrier, and his lips pulled back to reveal teeth.
“It’s like an overly attached ex,” the beast growled, voice carrying above the storm. “Always coming back…” His tone was still mocking, but the edge was thinner now, stretched over something less sure. He tilted his head lazily, but his claws flexed against the dirt. “Still, it should take him some time before he breaks through.”
He threw back his head and howled. The sound ripped through the battlefield, deeper than anything Ludwig had heard yet. The earth itself seemed to convulse, loose stones clattering as though in panic, dust and ash leaping from the ground. It was not just sound, it was intent, violence shaped into a note that sank into marrow.
A new notification flickered across Ludwig’s vision. His eyes snapped to it, and his heart, or what stood in its place, clenched.
The counter. The number of civilian deaths. It was rising fast. Faster than before.
“Fuck,” Ludwig hissed. The digits kept climbing. “The monsters are killing civilians!” His voice was hoarse, cut raw by the awareness that every scream carried weight, every slaughter fed into the enemy’s plan.
Mot’s reply was steady, unhurried, almost detached, though a frown cut into his brow. “Nothing much we can do there, Davon. The soldiers of the capital abandoned their posts hours ago. The King himself is nowhere to be seen. And what remains of the Order here is only a handful of bishops and clerics, scattered, overwhelmed.” He shook his head faintly. “This city was already lost.”
Ludwig snapped back, his voice sharp with urgency. “It’s not about what we can do in the moment. It doesn’t matter if the city burns. If they hit their mark, none of us walk away. The moment they achieve the needed death count,” his hand clenched around Oathcarver’s hilt, “none of us will live.”
Mot’s eyes flicked toward him, pale, searching. “Why? Do you know something?”
“He told me.” Ludwig’s voice was flat now, each word ground out like stone against steel. “The werewolf mentioned it to me before. They’re going to summon the Wrathful Death here.”
The words seemed to thicken the air inside the barrier.
Mot frowned, his expression uncharacteristically serious. “The Wrathful Death…?” He repeated the phrase slowly, as if tasting it. It was clear he had no reference for it.
Ludwig’s eyes hardened. “Morde’Xander. From Solania. They’ll drag it here through the rift. If that thing descends, it’s over. For all of us.” He looked upward at Van Dijk, still hammering, still locked outside. The barrier held, but how long? And even if it broke, Van Dijk’s fury would drown the city as surely as the werewolf’s ritual. The counter on Ludwig’s screen surged higher still.
The silence broke with Titania’s voice, cutting like a whip across the battlefield. “Stop right now!” Her body flared with renewed light as she charged at the fanged Apostle, her blade trailing arcs of white brilliance.
The werewolf chuckled low in his chest, unbothered, almost bored. His head tilted, gaze slipping briefly toward the bloodied stones at the edge of the field. “You’ve been awfully lazy, Sister Gallows,” he said with a cruel smile. “Shouldn’t you help?”
The voice that answered did not come from Titania, but from the half-crushed head lying abandoned on the ground nearby. It twitched once, the lips curving into a sardonic grin even as it oozed blood. “You’re a slave driver,” Sister Gallows hissed through broken teeth. “Do know I don’t work for you.”
And then the blood pooled outward, flowing like water across the cracked stones. It gathered, seethed, then surged upward, forming limbs, torso, the shape of a woman. Before their eyes, the Shrike’s body reformed, whole, restored, as though the devastation Titania had wrought meant nothing at all. The head joined the new flesh seamlessly. Within seconds, she stood reborn.
“Everyone gets their own trick…” Ludwig muttered, a bitter taste rising in his throat. Amazement mingled with dread as the cycle of resurrection continued. “Everyone’s got their own regeneration.”
The Shrike laughed, high-pitched, maddened, as iron rose out of the seeping blood to coil into two wicked sickles. She twirled them once, the sound of metal scraping against metal ringing sharp and shrill, then launched forward. Her laughter echoed through the streets as she closed the gap on Titania and struck at her back.
Titania’s blade swung in reflex, intercepting the twin sickles. Sparks and holy light collided, flaring bright enough to blind those nearest. Titania twisted her body and returned the blow, but the Shrike only reeled back, teeth flashing as though the clash itself delighted her.
The advantage was clear. Titania’s strikes carried more weight, her holy aura carved deeper, her blows left real wounds. But it didn’t matter. The Shrike didn’t need to win. She needed only to stall, to waste Titania’s strength, to buy the werewolf time. And she succeeded.
Each clash was another second lost, another digit rising on Ludwig’s screen. The counter accelerated, climbing at a pace that made Ludwig’s throat constrict. Screams rang from distant streets, growing thinner, weaker, before cutting off altogether.
He grit his teeth, frustration biting down harder than pain. His fingers dug into Oathcarver’s hilt until the leather creaked. “Shit…” he muttered. “We’re too late.”
And then the number froze. Ten thousand.
The screen burned the message across his vision.
***
[You have Failed the Quest: Descending Wrath]
The Treacherous Fanged Apostle has succeeded in attaining the needed 10,000 sacrifices.
Urgent Quest!
Stop the Wrathful Death from corrupting Celine Bastos.
Your Death Point has been saved to: Descending Wrath.
***
Ludwig’s entire body shivered, not from fear, not from cold, but from the gravity of what was about to come. His chest hollowed as if the marrow itself recoiled.
And above it all, the werewolf laughed.
“HAHAHA! It is done!” His voice boomed with savage glee. His claws dug into his chest, tearing through muscle as if it were paper. He reached inside, and when he pulled his hand free, it clutched a heart that was not his own. Twisted vines and pale blossoms clung to it, blooming obscenely along its surface. It throbbed once in his palm, a grotesque parody of life.
Ludwig’s eyes widened. Recognition struck like a blow. “That’s the Queen’s heart. That’s what he took from her corpse at the Dawn Isles…”
The werewolf crushed it in his claws. Blood sprayed downward, soaking into the cracked stones.
The earth shuddered. A fissure split the ground wide, tearing reality apart. A rift formed, its edges jagged and writhing, as though the world itself rejected its presence.
Ludwig’s jaw tightened, his stomach knotting. He could feel despair trying to creep into him. This was beyond him, beyond all of them. He knew it. And yet he also knew the truth: if none stood, all would fall.
The stones beneath their feet split like rotten wood, groaning as if the foundations of the city itself were being peeled apart. A line of darkness crawled outward from the crushed heart’s blood, a vein of night that pulsed and spread until it widened into a gaping wound in reality. The rift yawned open with a sound that was neither earth nor air, but something deeper, a tearing of the unseen fabric that kept their world intact.
Truly, the worst-case scenario has just begun.