Chapter 37: Bell-Tower Executioner

The massive iron doors groaned as Jet and Frey pushed them apart, their hinges resisting before the opening became wide enough for both of them to slip through.

Beyond the doors waited a huge underground chamber resembling the buried remains of an older chapel, with rows of rotten wooden pews facing a raised stone platform at the opposite end.

Thick pillars supported the vaulted ceiling, several already split by age, while rusted chains hung from beams overhead. Jet stepped inside first with the Vorpal Blade raised, and the pressure he’d felt on the staircase immediately became heavier.

Frey entered beside him, both curved blades ready, and neither spoke as the doors slowly swung shut behind them. Something moved beyond the altar. A heavy metallic scrape crossed the chamber, followed by the unmistakable sound of an enormous weight shifting across stone.

The creature stepped into view from behind the platform, and Jet immediately understood why the monsters outside refused to approach the chapel. It stood approximately four and a half meters tall, built like a monstrous ancient executioner whose body had been fused with the remains of its own armor.

Dark-grey flesh bulged between sections of corroded plate embedded directly into its shoulders, chest, thighs and arms. Its head was completely enclosed by a huge angular iron hood shaped like an executioner’s cowl, except there was no face beneath the opening, only darkness and two dim green lights staring from deep inside.

In its right hand rested an executioner’s axe large enough that the weapon should have required several men to lift, yet the monster carried it one-handed. Thick chains wrapped its left forearm from wrist to elbow. Most disturbing of all was the cracked church bell fused into its upper back, suspended between iron supports that seemed to grow directly from its spine.

The monster took another step. The bell moved.

DONG.

A pulse of Mana rolled through the room strongly enough for Jet to feel it against his skin.

The universal System appeared before both Raiders.

[Dungeon Boss Encountered.]

[Bell-Tower Executioner.]

[Classification: Green-Class Dungeon Boss.]

[Traits: Extreme Physical Strength / Reinforced Armor / Executioner’s Axe / Toll of Ruin.]

[Warning: Threat Level Exceeds Dungeon Classification.]

Frey’s eyes moved across the information before settling on the enormous axe. "Green-Class. Well, at least they weren’t lying about the Boss being stronger than everything outside."

Jet didn’t answer immediately. His attention remained on the bell. Toll of Ruin. He didn’t know its exact mechanics, but the Mana pulse from that casual movement had already told him enough to be careful.

"Don’t ignore the bell," he warned, shifting his grip.

Frey nodded once. "I wasn’t planning to. Hard to ignore the giant church bell growing out of the bastard’s back."

The Bell-Tower Executioner moved first. Its enormous body crossed the distance much faster than something that size had any right to move, and the axe swept horizontally toward both of them.

Jet immediately dropped backward, but Frey stepped forward and crossed his twin blades in front of his chest. The instant Jet saw it, he knew it was a terrible idea.

The axe struck.

BOOM!

Frey’s boots left the floor. He flew across the chamber like he’d been hit by a speeding vehicle, smashed through one of the wooden pews and rolled through another before disappearing beneath broken timber.

"Frey!" Jet shouted, but a muffled string of curses answered him, enough to confirm his friend was alive.

The Executioner began turning toward the wreckage, and Jet used the opening. He rushed its left side, lowered his body beneath the hanging chains and drove the Vorpal Blade against the joint behind its knee.

The Relic cut through the first layer of corroded armor and bit into the flesh beneath, but the wound was shallow. Jet barely had time to register the difference in durability before the bell on the monster’s back swung.

DOOOOOONG!

Mana erupted outward in a circular shockwave. The force struck Jet before he could retreat, lifting him from his feet and throwing him across the chamber.

His back slammed against a stone pillar hard enough to empty his lungs, and he dropped to one knee with his ears ringing. Across the room, Frey shoved broken wood off himself and stood with blood running from the corner of his mouth.

"Okay," he coughed, rolling one shoulder.

"Blocking that was stupid." Jet forced air back into his lungs.

"Glad you figured that out." Frey spat blood onto the floor. "I was testing it."

Jet stared at the destroyed pews. "You flew through two benches." Frey raised his blades again. "And now we have valuable data."

The Executioner charged again, and this time neither tried meeting it directly. Frey recovered first, watching the monster’s shoulders rather than its axe.

"LEFT!" he shouted.

Jet moved immediately, the axe crashing into the floor where he’d stood and breaking several stones apart.

"Knee!" Frey followed, circling from the opposite side and forcing the Boss to turn.

Jet attacked the damaged joint again, deepening the previous cut before retreating as the bell shifted.

He saw the movement first.

"Bell!"

Frey didn’t question him. He launched sideways just as Toll of Ruin exploded through the chamber, the edge of the shockwave clipping his legs but missing his torso.

Their earlier joking disappeared. Against the White-Class monsters, they had possessed enough room to make mistakes. The Green-Class Boss punished every bad decision with enough force to end the fight.

Frey still read the monster’s conventional attacks faster. Years of training gave him an understanding Jet lacked, allowing him to recognize changes in balance and weapon angles before the axe completed its path.

Jet listened.

Every warning became information, and Asura Physique absorbed that information with frightening efficiency. After several exchanges, Frey no longer needed to yell "left" before Jet recognized the shoulder rotation himself.

Jet stopped retreating too far after dodging and began remaining close enough to attack the joints between fused armor plates. He couldn’t overpower the Executioner, so he stopped trying.

The Vorpal Blade touched the same damaged knee repeatedly, then the elbow, then the narrow opening beneath the armpit. Frey noticed the change but had no time to comment.

Jet called, "High!" and Frey ducked beneath the returning axe without looking toward him.

Moments later Frey shouted, "Back!" and Jet abandoned an attack just before the Boss drove an armored heel into the floor where he’d been standing.

They were learning each other almost as quickly as Jet was learning the monster. Frey attacked aggressively whenever Jet forced the Boss to turn, his curved blades hammering against exposed joints and damaged armor.

Jet moved whenever Frey created space, conserving motion and attacking places they’d already weakened.

Then Frey’s Divine Rune ignited beneath his clothes. Indigo light climbed his neck as he extended one hand toward the Executioner’s right arm.

A spectral serpent coil materialized around the limb holding the axe and tightened violently. The Boss’s arm stopped halfway through its swing. Frey grinned. "Got you." The coil constricted harder. For an instant Jet expected the armored limb to collapse exactly as the Ironbone Sentinel had.

CRACK!

The spectral coil shattered.

Fragments of violet Mana scattered through the chamber before dissolving. Frey’s grin vanished as the Executioner’s arm completed its swing, forcing both of them to throw themselves backward.

"Well," Frey muttered as he landed, "that’s new."

Jet understood immediately. Vritra’s Coil wasn’t absolute. The difference between White-Class monsters and a Green-Class Boss wasn’t merely durability; the Executioner possessed enough raw power to resist Frey’s ability directly.

Frey apparently reached the same conclusion because he manifested another coil around the axe arm, then a second around the elbow. Both tightened. The Boss roared from beneath its iron hood and strained against them. Cracks spread across the first coil, but the arm slowed. It didn’t stop completely, and it certainly wasn’t being crushed, yet its movement became sluggish enough for Jet to see the opening.

That was enough. Jet rushed inside the axe’s shortened arc and drove the Vorpal Blade into the damaged knee. Frey released one failing coil and formed another around the Boss’s wrist.

The Executioner tore through it seconds later, but Jet had already moved to its other side and cut beneath the elbow. They repeated the pattern. Frey couldn’t crush the Boss, but he didn’t need to.

Every coil stole fractions of seconds, ruined the monster’s balance or interrupted an attack just long enough for Jet to reach another joint. Their calls shortened naturally as the fight accelerated.

"Right!"

"Bell!"

"Arm!"

"Move!" Neither wasted breath explaining.

Frey understood Jet’s intentions from where he attacked, while Jet learned to recognize which limb Frey intended to bind from the direction of his raised hand. Their coordination wasn’t perfect, but it was becoming instinctive enough that the Executioner was no longer fighting two separate Raiders.

Then the Bell-Tower Executioner suddenly stopped. Jet immediately retreated, and Frey did the same, both sensing the change before understanding it.

The Boss lowered its axe and slowly raised its chained left arm. The thick links wrapped around its forearm began unwinding by themselves, scraping against fused armor as they spilled onto the stone floor.

Jet’s expression tightened. "Frey."

His friend was already watching the chains. "I see it."

The Executioner seized the loose length and violently ripped the remaining links free from its flesh. Instead of attacking them, it swung the chain over its shoulder and wrapped it around the massive cracked bell fused to its back.

The green lights beneath its iron hood brightened as the Bell-Tower Executioner pulled the chain.

DONG.

The first shockwave tore through the chamber and sent every remaining wooden pew flying.

The Executioner pulled again.

DONG.

The second wave split the nearest pillars, ripped chunks from the vaulted ceiling and sent cracks racing through the stone beneath Jet’s boots. He tried to move toward Frey, but the floor buckled between them as pieces of the ceiling began falling.

Then the chain tightened for the third time.

DONG.

The final shockwave turned the entire underground chapel into collapsing stone.

Jet was thrown toward one side as Frey disappeared behind a falling pillar on the other, dust and shattered masonry swallowing the space between them.

Through the destruction, the Bell-Tower Executioner remained standing beneath the collapsing ceiling, its green eyes burning brighter as it raised its enormous axe.