Chapter 79: The Sacrifice

The mental pressure hit like a physical sledgehammer.

"Surrender your souls to the Sun. Offer yourselves to the Sun. Offer your flesh to the Sun. Offer your world to the Sun."

The insidious chant vibrated inside their skulls, growing louder with every heartbeat, overlapping into a deafening, psychotic roar. Lucas clamped his jaw so hard his back teeth groaned, his hand flying to his temple as the psychic venom tried to dissolve his mind. Beside him, his element-caster dropped to both knees, clawing frantically at his own ears as blood trickled down his neck.

Then, a sickening snap echoed through the air.

The squad’s vanguard—a man who had survived dozens of high-tier breach clearings—suddenly went completely rigid. The agony on his face melted away into a blank, euphoric expression. His eyes rolled into the back of his head, and with a guttural, terrifying scream, white-hot flames erupted from his chest cavity.

"No!" Lucas roared.

Before Lucas or the element-caster could move to pull him back, the silk-winged aberration moved. The heavy, crimson silk draped over its body unravelled, revealing hundreds of razor-thin, glowing threads woven from condensed blood-fire. With a flick of the creature’s single, sickeningly calm eye, the silk strands shot forward like living tendrils, expanding instantly to skewer both Lucas and his remaining comrade.

CRACK!

Lucas slammed his palms against the fractured stone, summoning a thick wall of dark, absolute-zero ice. The crimson silk struck the barrier with pneumatic force, spider-webbing the black ice and leaving charred, smoking gouges where the silk made contact. The heat radiating off the tendrils was so severe that the ice began to hiss and liquefy almost instantly.

"Move!" Lucas barked, grabbing the element-caster by his collar and dragging him back as the wall collapsed.

The element-caster snapped out of his daze, sweeping both hands upward to channel a swirling torrent of high-pressure water. The aquatic barrier collided with the incoming crimson silk, creating a blinding cloud of scalding steam that obscured the cliffside. The silk cut through the water like hot wire through butter, but the brief reaction bought them just enough room to dodge.

They backed away in a desperate, synchronized dance—Lucas dropping flash-frozen zones to slow the tendrils while the element-caster redirected the kinetic force with pressurized blasts. But the creature was merely toying with them. The crimson silk lengthened endlessly, spreading across the terrain like a spider’s web, cutting off their escape routes one by one.

To make matters worse, the surrounding battlefield was collapsing into absolute catastrophe.

The dozen Aberrant beasts Lucas had frozen earlier had finally broken free, their light-fire wings melting the black ice into steam. Drawn by the scent of human blood and the psychic command of the silk-winged leader, the feral husks swarmed toward the cliff, completely encircling Lucas and his remaining squad member. The newly turned vanguard—his body now fully mutated, with wings of light-fire tearing out of his spine—joined the swarm, his hollow gaze locked onto his former captain.

Look at the sky... offer your soul... burn away your weakness...

The psychic chorus inside Lucas’s mind amplified to a fever pitch. His vision blurred, swimming with streaks of blinding white light. The air in his lungs felt like molten lead.

"Vice Captain..." the element-caster gasped, his knees shaking as he tried to maintain a water shield. "We’re... we’re boxed in..."

They were backed completely against the edge of the precipice. Behind them lay a sheer drop into the chaotic depths of the dome array; before them stood an army of light-winged abominations, flanked by the crimson-silk entity.

The silk-winged creature slowly floated into the air, its crimson tendrils retracting and weaving into a halo above its single, glowing eye. The surrounding beasts froze, opening their jaws in unison as they began to gather raw, condensed light-fire into their throats.

The primary creature opened its jaw, a sphere of blinding, white-hot solar energy expanding at the center of its maw—aimed directly at the two trapped contractors.

There was nowhere left to run. The ice was gone, the water was evaporating into steam, and the voices in their minds were screaming for their complete surrender.

With the sphere of blinding, white-hot solar energy expanding in the creature’s maw and the voices hammering mercilessly against his sanity, Lucas knew he had reached the absolute end of the line. Standard abilities wouldn’t cut it. Black ice wouldn’t save them.

He had no choice left.

Lucas reached into his dimensional storage, his fingers wrapping around the cold, ornate hilt of an artifact he had prayed he would never have to draw. A Saintess Tier blade materialized in his right hand, its edge humming with a low, terrifying resonance that caused the surrounding air to ripple violently. Silently, he offered a brief word of gratitude to Rain, who had forced the weapon into his hands before they had ever fallen into the depths of the breach.

He looked at the blade’s terrifying glow. He had hated the idea of using it, knowing the horrific toll Saint-grade armaments demanded from a contracted or unprepared vessel. But looking at the sole surviving member of his squad, he knew what he had to do.

Lucas turned to his element-caster and smiled—a calm, gentle expression that looked entirely out of place amidst the roaring hellfire. Before the man could react, Lucas pulled him into a brief, firm hug.

"Live," Lucas muttered.

With a powerful shove, Lucas hurled his comrade backward over the precipice, sending the man plummeting down into the air of the lower dome, clear of the blast zone.

The moment his squad member fell out of reach, Lucas raised the Saintess blade directly toward the sky and activated its true core.

VRRRRRRRRR—!

Instantly, a horrifying weight slammed down on Lucas’s flesh. His body began to crack and disintegrate from the inside out, the unchecked power of the Saintess tier unspooling his physical form like thread.

As the surviving element-caster fell through the air, looking back up in utter horror, he watched the swarm of winged abominations and the silk-winged creature plunge directly onto Lucas’s position. The blinding solar beam detonated, completely engulfing the cliff edge in a blinding pillar of light.

Through the falling man’s tears, a cold, mechanical voice echoed directly in his mind:

[ SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT ]

You have received a Saintess-tier weapon transfer. Warning: Be careful what you wish for.

Up on the mountain, Lucas didn’t scream. He simply closed his eyes as his physical shell dissolved completely into a dark, pulsing pool of absolute void. The light-fire hit the dark pool, but instead of burning it, the entire region shuddered.

Out of the puddle of dark void where Lucas had just disintegrated, a tiny, shadowy creature materialized—an entity birthed from the blade’s horrific cost.

The silk-winged creature lowered its single glowing eye, its dark grin fading as it stared at the bizarre, miniature manifestation. But before it or the swarming beasts could strike, the spatial fabric of the phantom island violently buckled.

The entire world fractured.

With a deafening sound like shattering glass, the island itself was simply erased from reality, collapsing into the void alongside the swarming creatures, the silk-winged beast, and the tiny black creature born from Lucas’s sacrifice.

Where three phantom islands had hovered just moments before in the deep ocean, now only two remained. The third island—and every nightmare upon it—was completely gone.