Chapter 214: Outmatched, Partner

(A brief, swift update!)

Intense, ghostly green flames incinerated everything in the room above into nothingness within a heartbeat, sending a cascade of sparks raining down.

The fine, lethal drizzle of fire was impossible to evade; Xiu-Geng could only brace himself against it with his aura armor, and Charles did the same, the shield of the Chariot tarot card enveloping his body to deflect the highly corrosive flames.

"Find an opening to crush it outright. We cannot outlast a demon with such tenacious vitality."

Feeling his internal aura rapidly depleting, Xiu-Geng warned Charles.

"Understood, Captain. Create an opening for me, and I will bind it long enough for you to deliver the finishing blow."

Charles replied with a grim face. Using the "Fool" ability—which channels the power of every tarot card into himself—was not only limited to once a year, but the cost was also terrifyingly high.

Void energy and the mana within his magic vortex were hemorrhaging; using his power only accelerated the drain. They could not afford to drag this out.

"Right..." Casting his longsword aside, Xiu-Geng realized the blade was useless against such a demon; only by pinning it down and utilizing his aura could he inflict sufficient damage.

"Roar!" With a sharp, piercing shriek, the Abyssal Lesser Demon, wreathed in ghostly green flames, lunged down from the fire above, targeting Charles.

To the outside world, those flames were a terrifying weapon, but to the demon, they caused no harm, even serving to slowly cauterize and knit its wounds.

"Bang!" Aura erupted. Xiu-Geng shifted his weight, his left leg driving forward, the externalized aura creating a powerful thrust that propelled him sideways at blinding speed.

Aura condensed upon his right shoulder, forming a spiked pauldron that slammed violently into the diving demon.

"Clang!" The aura armor shattered under the immense impact, but it stripped away the flames covering the demon's hide at the point of contact.

This allowed Xiu-Geng to immediately follow up with a thunderous punch against the exposed flesh.

Pivoting and striking, Xiu-Geng’s battle-hardened technique flowed like water. His fist tore through the air with a dull thud, unleashing his full strength upon the lesser demon.

"Agh! Sizzle, sizzle!" The demon was sent flying by the sudden assault. Possessing great strength but a fixed weight, it was impossible for it to take such a blow without being launched. It dug its claws into the floor, carving two deep furrows before coming to a halt.

It shook its head, opened its maw, and spat out a stream of burning, scalding liquid. A series of faint, crunching sounds emanated from its chest—it had suffered a fracture.

Xiu-Geng’s full-force strike had indeed dealt significant damage to the thick-skinned beast.

"Sizzle, sizzle..."

As its claws scraped the floor, the demon’s cruel gaze locked onto the poised Xiu-Geng. It realized that as long as he stood there, it had little chance of reaching the entity with the alluring scent. It decided to eliminate Xiu-Geng first.

"Where are you looking?! You think I’m not worth your attention?"

Charles shouted this in his mind; he had no habit of speaking aloud and giving his opponent a chance to react.

Seizing the brief moment of the demon's distraction, mana surged. The Star (Upright). Charles’s figure flickered, appearing instantly behind the demon.

Without pause, he invoked the power of a second tarot card. A translucent spear shimmering with pale silver light materialized in his hand, which he thrust with all his might toward the nearby demon. Judgment (Upright).

The Abyssal Lesser Demon reacted with lightning speed. Without turning its head, it lashed out with a claw, attempting to finish off the mage, who lacked the constitution of a knight.

"Cling!" The spear of Judgment and the demon’s claw struck their respective targets almost simultaneously.

Having used the power of two tarot cards in such a short time, Charles lacked the capacity to use another, and there was no time to construct a spell model; being struck was a certainty.

For a mage lacking a robust physique, a blow from a Grand Knight-level entity would likely result in being cleaved in two, or worse, pulverized entirely.

Barely managing to invoke a fraction of the Chariot’s power, the thin shield that appeared on Charles’s skin shattered instantly, doing nothing but negating the flames on the claw. But that was enough.

The moment before impact, Charles’s eyes shifted. The devil "One" took control of his body, and a spell was instantly constructed: Third-tier defensive spell—Turning to Quagmire.

His body dispersed and exploded upon contact with the claw—not because it was crushed, but because Charles’s form turned into a puddle of muck, scattering in all directions the instant he was struck.

And as he narrowly dodged the lethal blow, the power of the light spear he had thrust into the demon erupted.

Invisible spears rose from the ground, their glowing, translucent forms piercing the demon’s solid body without resistance, pinning it in place.

"Phew, that was a close one, One. I couldn't even track its movements; the preemptive prediction saved me. Thank goodness, otherwise I’d be dead—not even the God of Light could have saved me."

The quagmire converged, slowly reconstructing Charles, who muttered to himself with a lingering sense of dread.

His constitution could not keep up with a Grand Knight’s speed, and his eyes could not capture the demon’s movements. Every action had been based on prediction; the slightest error would have meant certain death.

The power of the Judgment tarot was exceptionally potent; the invisible spears pierced the demon’s body, leaving the roaring, Grand Knight-level creature temporarily immobilized.

"Well done."

Xiu-Geng praised him, sprinting to the side of the bound demon. Lowering his center of gravity, he braced his waist and gathered his strength, pouring aura into his right arm until his muscles began to tear and throb with pain.

"Haaah!" With a roar, he unleashed everything. Having had a second and a half to fully charge, his powerful punch—Aura Technique: Explosive Penetration—was launched, slamming down hard against the head of the immobilized demon.

"Bang! Crack!" The violent sound made Charles’s scalp tingle, and the subsequent sound of shattering bone made him shudder.

The demon’s hard skull was crushed against the Void Blade gauntlet, its head suffering a horrific deformation.

The light spears shattered simultaneously, and the demon, with strange fluids leaking from its seven orifices, was slammed violently into the ground.

"Boom!" The demon’s head struck the floor, instantly blasting a crater into the wood and stone, sending debris flying everywhere.

The demon’s head, rebounding from the immense force of the impact, snapped back, its jaw joint dislocating, its mouth gaping unnaturally wide.

"Captain, shove this into its mouth!"

The object reached Xiu-Geng even before Charles’s words did, thrown by Charles and arriving at his side.

Before the words had even landed, Xiu-Geng caught it—it was scorching hot, hard, and vibrating incessantly.

Xiu-Geng did not hesitate, shoving the item into the mouth of the demon, which was currently in a state of cognitive shutdown from the Grand Knight’s full-force blow.

He followed up with a knee strike, slamming the creature's jaw shut while kicking it high into the air.

"Hide!" Charles shouted, diving to the side.

"BOOM!" A deafening explosion and shockwave swept through the room, causing the floor above to collapse, burying the room where Xiu-Geng and Charles stood in a mountain of rubble.

The item Charles had thrown was a Furnace’s Wrath—or rather, an overloaded Furnace’s Wrath. Though not an expert in alchemy, Charles knew enough to tamper with the magic circuits, connecting the charging and discharging ports.

This formidable alchemical weapon, manually overloaded by Charles, had become a devastating bomb, detonating with terrifying power inside the demon’s maw.

"Terrifying. The power of that... well, it must be dead now. What a waste of a good weapon."

Charles crawled out from the rubble, his Chariot shield flickering, tongue-clicking in regret over the precious alchemical revolver while scanning the surroundings vigilantly.

There was no sign of the demon; it had likely been blown to dust. He did, however, see Xiu-Geng crawling out of the debris, clutching his right arm.

That final, full-force punch had not only deformed the demon’s skull but had also shattered the bones in Xiu-Geng’s right arm due to the shocking recoil.

His aura was bottomed out, and his body appeared frail, but fortunately, the demon—the Grand Knight—had been dealt with. That left only Marquis Enkai...

"Sizzle, sizzle..." A strange sound echoed through the room, accompanied by the sudden darkening of Xiu-Geng and Charles’s expressions.

...

Marquis Enkai felt the tremor of the entire mansion from the explosion and the subtle shift in the contract within his body; his expression grew solemn.

"Who would have thought the boy from the Lyde family would be so difficult to handle? Paired with Xiu-Geng, who is practically a cripple without his internal potential, they actually pushed the demon to this point. Good thing I prepared a fail-safe for this demon. Their expressions will surely be exquisite."

"But I’ve exhausted almost all my preparations. Damn it, even with prior intelligence, Xiu-Geng is still this troublesome."

"The Blade of the Night is truly the Blade of the Night. Those fools in the royal family underestimate these 'too quiet' existences. They will pay dearly sooner or later."

"No, I must prepare in advance—prepare for the possibility that even this fail-safe won't finish them off."

Marquis Enkai quickly pulled out a magic-engraving stylus, tore open his ornate clothing, and with a grimace of agony, began to carve a bloody formation into his own chest.

...

Like the sound of water boiling into steam, under the horrified gaze of Xiu-Geng and Charles, thin threads of flame slowly traced themselves in the air at the site of the explosion, gradually forming the shape of a door.

The imp’s talons reached out, shoving aside the gate of flame that had manifested from thin air, and then, with a skull hideously deformed and a jaw hanging loose, the Pit Imp crawled out, dripping with grotesque fluids.

It was clearly wounded, yet it lived; the cataclysmic explosion from the furnace’s fury had failed to claim the demon, for the fiery portal had carved a pocket of space into which the creature had retreated, narrowly escaping the blast.

"Damn it, how could I not know that Pit Imps possessed such an ability?"

Xier gritted his teeth, cursing the wretched situation; he could not fathom how the demon held such power, for if it did, the devil "One" would never have kept it from him.

"Marquis Enkai is a scholar of demonology and a professor at the Royal Institute; his knowledge of demons likely transcends what is written in books. He must have performed some additional, perverse modifications on this imp."

Shugen’s grave reply reached him, sinking Xier’s spirits even further.

"My ability foresaw that Captain Shugen would die for vengeance, and that Marquis Enkai would never be seen again. But given the power the Marquis has displayed, how could the Captain have possibly succeeded in killing him?"

Xier began to doubt the fate his ability had revealed; if the Captain had faced this imp alone, without the internal subversion, he would have stood no chance of victory.

"Wait..."

A chilling conjecture took root in Xier’s mind: what if the prophecy of the Captain’s death was true, but the Marquis, having never appeared again, had simply vanished after the deed was done?

"To hell with it all, I truly am a cursed playwright."

Xier spat out the words, not pausing as he tapped into his nearly depleted mana. What else was there to do but fight? Though he and Shugen were at the end of their tether, the imp was equally battered.

"Giggle, giggle, giggle..." The imp, having fallen from the aerial gate, twisted its mangled head with its claws, forcing its jaw back into place with a bone-grinding sound that set one’s teeth on edge, a sight both distorted and nauseating.

Glancing once at Shugen and Xier, the imp turned and bolted, leaping into a breach in the ceiling above and vanishing from sight.

Shugen and Xier froze for a heartbeat, then realized the gravity of their plight.

The imp had grown clever; a direct confrontation served it no purpose, but by leveraging its formidable command over flame, it could make their situation dire indeed.

"Run!" Shugen shouted. Xier followed without hesitation, diving through a wooden door Shugen had smashed open, spilling into the next room.

They had barely crossed the threshold when ghostly green flames erupted from the hole above, incinerating the room they had just vacated.

"Don't stop!" Shugen roared, urging Xier on as he tore through doors and furniture, carving a path for their flight.

"I know!" Xier replied.

Though his constitution was poor, Zig had once told Wang Yu that Xier possessed a hidden talent: for a non-knight, he ran with startling speed. Even as Shugen slowed to clear their path, Xier managed to keep pace.

From the surrounding walls, floors, and ceilings came the relentless sound of claws scraping against stone—a shadow that would not be shaken. No matter where they ran, the sound persisted; the Pit Imp was still hunting them.

"Find Marquis Enkai, kill him..." Only one thought remained in their minds; it was their final chance.

Shugen’s arm was broken, his battle aura spent; Xier’s mana was dry, and the "Fool" state was fading. They had no strength left to slay the imp again.

Unless they killed Enkai, the architect of this nightmare, and banished the demon back to the abyss.

A race against death: would the imp find and finish them, or would they reach the Marquis and banish the beast? The outcome would seal their fates.

Fate, it seemed, did not stand with the two men, one of whom could glimpse its threads; they had no way to track the Marquis, and the frantic sprint drained Xier’s remaining stamina within minutes.

"Hah... hah..." Gasping for air, Xier realized he could not continue without a buffing spell.

He slowed for a fraction of a second, drawing on his last third of mana to weave a wind-element spell to lighten his burden.

But in that brief pause, the wall beside him exploded, and the imp’s hideous visage lunged through, sharp claws striking for Xier’s chest.

The creature’s obsession had always been Xier; the strange aura he exuded not only drew its attention but allowed it to track him with ease.

"Damn it!" Xier cursed, using a vulgarity learned from Wang Yu, dropping low and attempting to use the Star Tarot card to evade.

But the timing was catastrophic; the spell model was incomplete, the mana flow stalled halfway through the vortex.

He could not channel the energy for anything else; it was too late. Even if the devil "One" took control, it would be too late, for they shared the same mana vortex, and "One" could not instantly manifest the power of the Star.

"Bang! Crack!"

Before the pain of the claws could register, a massive force slammed into his side.

Xier was sent flying; it was Shugen, who had kicked him out of the path of the strike, throwing himself into the imp’s reach instead.

The Void Blade gauntlet collided with the imp’s forelimb, and as Xier hit the ground, a searing pain shot through his arm.

The sheer force of Shugen’s desperate kick had snapped his bones.

Struggling to turn his head, he saw the wicked, twisted grin on the imp’s face, and his heart turned to ice. It was a trap; the imp had held back its strength, shifting its momentum the moment Shugen charged to meet it.

Shugen, with his broken arm and depleted aura, could not hope to overpower the beast.

As expected, the imp roared, unleashing its power to shove Shugen aside, slamming him against the far wall before pouncing with everything it had.

Jaws wide, claws extended, this calculated strike was meant to eliminate the one obstacle standing between it and its prey.

"Run!" Shugen screamed. He knew he was finished; he could only hope Xier would escape and hold out until the hour of the Reflection World expired.

Staring into the demon’s eyes, Shugen made his final stand. His internal subversion could command demons, and the Pit Imp was a demon; he would try to influence it at this point-blank range.

Yet, it was useless; he felt nothing.

"So, it’s true? If it isn't one of the demons Enkai planted within me, my subversion is powerless?"

Locking his gaze on the claws piercing toward his heart and the jaws snapping at his throat, Shugen raised his arms to block, resisting to the very last.

"Wait... this!"

His pupils fixed as the claws neared his chest; his subversion suddenly sensed something—a demon, not one of the ones rioting in his blood, but a presence that should not have been there.

The subversion flared, and the moment it sensed that presence, it drove its power into it.

The nature of the subversion was more absolute than any spell or sorcery, holding higher priority than the Reflection World, and it dragged that presence directly into the fold.

"Clang!" The sharp claws were halted by a layer of resilient armor. Dust billowed, smoke swirled, and an armor formed of soot encased Shugen’s entire body.

"What did I tell you? You really are useless without me, partner!"

The Smoke Demon’s grating, arrogant voice echoed through the corridor.