Chapter 165: One Hour
Ken’s entire body was covered in markings that looked extremely ancient. They gave off an energy that Ren could not even understand. But that was not the scariest part of the situation. It was the fact that there was a hole right in the chest of Ken. The hole started from the front and made it all the way to the back.
It did not look like some wound, but rather like it had been a part of Ken all his life. It looked natural.
Ken saw Ren looking at the hole. He smiled and stretched apart his hands with an evil look in his eyes.
"Shocked, are we? This is how far you pushed me, how far my hate for you has driven me. It has pushed me up to the point where I gave my heart for the sake of power."
As soon as those words left his mouth, he coughed a huge amount of black blood. It painted the floor. He wiped the side of his mouth and smiled.
"Sorry about that. The deal was I was not meant to tell anyone what I did, but I could not help myself but tell you." He smiled as he said it to Ren.
"You gave your heart to gain power to kill me? How desperate are you?" Ren asked.
"You are about to find out," Ken declared as he pressed his foot hard against the ground. The black flames surged as he shot forwards, moving so fast he left a streak of flames. He slammed into Ren. Ren grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed back against him, doing his best to ensure that he did not allow the hand with the sword to get closer.
"Hahahahahahaha, this time I’ll end you, Ren. I’ll kill you," Ken spoke like a madman. He twisted his body and spun Ren around before hurling Ren to the ground with all his strength. Ren slammed into the ground and rolled. He pushed himself back up immediately but was met with the tip of the flaming blade. He crossed his arms fast, and the blade stabbed into his arms with an explosive force that hurled him back several meters.
"Come on, Ren, fight me," Ken yelled as he walked closer. He pointed his sword backwards. "I’m sure you think you will win, and so will your subordinates, that you will somehow come out victorious in this situation, but you would be dead wrong, hahaha," Ken said. He looked at the hands that had blocked the attack. Sure, they were covered in scales, but because the blade carried Dragon’s Bane, it managed to weaken the scales and get through, and now the hand was bleeding.
"My blade cut into you, hahaha. That’s the end for you, Ren. You cannot stop what will happen now."
Ren also felt that something was wrong. He looked at his hands and saw the blood. He could feel that something had been injected into him and was now taking him out from the inside. It was still extremely subtle, but it was there, and it was working.
"You have felt it, right? Hahaha, but that’s not all. Look at your subordinates. See how they will suffer their own worse fate at the hands of death itself."
Ren looked past him immediately.
The ground began to move.
Not from impact, not from anything above it, but from something beneath it, pushing upward from the inside, the earth splitting in multiple points simultaneously across the mountain pass. Green formations burned into existence on the surface first, geometric and deliberate, the kind of pattern that did not happen by accident.
Then the hands came through.
Skeletal fingers broke the surface at every formation point, digging outward, and the rest followed, one after another after another, pulling themselves up from the earth with the particular patience of things that had been waiting down there for exactly this moment. Full armor on every one of them, ancient and rusted and wrong in the way of things that should have rotted long ago, green flames burning in the hollow of every eye socket, swords already gripped and ready.
Ren watched them come out of the ground.
Undead, he thought. The first time I have seen this in this world.
They kept coming.
Past thirty. Past forty. Past fifty, and still more formations were burning green across the pass floor, still more hands were breaking through, until the count had gone somewhere beyond what he could track quickly.
Then one came up differently.
Larger than the others, wrapped in a dark cloak that moved without wind, a staff clutched in one hand, and it did not stand when it emerged but floated, rising above the ground and turning its empty eyes across the pass with the particular attention of something that had been given a specific task and was already thinking about how to begin it.
A lich.
Another followed it up. Then another.
And then the wolves came.
Skeletal, massive, green flames where eyes should have been, pulling themselves from the earth around the edges of the formation, surrounding his subordinates from multiple angles before anyone had fully processed what was already in the center.
Ren gritted his teeth.
He looked at Ezra, at Remu, at Silas and Lia and Leon and all of them already reading the situation, already adjusting, but adjusting to something that had surrounded them before the adjustment began.
"You want me," Ren said, turning back to Ken. "Why go this far to drag them into it?"
Ken laughed.
It came from somewhere that had stopped being entirely stable.
"You still do not get it," he said, walking forward slowly. "I do not just want your pain. I want to break you. Break your pride, your confidence, everything you have built in this forest and everything you think makes you untouchable." His eyes were bright with something that had moved past rage into something more absolute. "Get on your knees. Beg me. Do it now and I will make every death here quick. Theirs and yours."
Ren took a breath.
[Quest Update: Save Your Subordinates]
[Time Frame: 1 Hour]
[Penalty: Death of All Subordinates Upon Failure]
The timer started.
He moved toward them immediately, and Ken was already there, the flaming blade swinging in a wide arc that forced Ren to crouch behind his arm and wings, the explosion of flames washing over him. Ken came through the dying flames with a punch aimed at his face, the impact connecting and hurling him back, the ground tearing beneath him as he dragged to a stop.
"You think stopping me is that easy?" Ken screamed, his voice cracking with the force of it. "Today you meet your doom, Ren. Today is the end."