Chapter 187
Do-Jin kept the pressure on at a breathless pace because he didn’t want to give the enemy a single second to respond properly. He wanted to squeeze every last drop out of the ambush advantage, and he meant to drag out that window as long as he possibly could. That choice cranked the damage dealt to the Cult of Ruin straight through the roof. That window wasn’t infinite, though, as even one-sided beatdowns had their limits.
“For the will of Laves!”
Holy Knights burst onto the battlefield with a thunderous roar. These were the ones who had pulled out after hearing the first explosion, and now they had come running back in.
The Holy Knights of the Cult of Ruin might have been holy in name only and built around insanely aggressive skill sets, but the raw durability of the knight class was still very real. Once a solid tank line joined the enemy formation, the fight locked up for several tense seconds before collapsing into a full-blown chaotic brawl.
“If we start getting pushed back, we are fucked, so put your lives on the line and shove forward!”
Do-Jin moved at that exact moment. He had been holding his strength in reserve, and now he cut loose. He triggered a spell that was completed ahead of time. After breaking past Level 150 and becoming a Tier 6 mage, he’d gained access to Fire Cannon, and this was exactly the kind of situation it was made for.
The fire compressed down so hard it stopped looking like fire at all. A red beam ripped through the air, dense and violent as if it were solid. The shot carried the effects of the Ultimate Rune and the Destruction Rune stacked together, turning it into a strip of high-pressure, high-heat crimson that drilled straight through everything in its path.
Three Holy Knights and two Cult of Ruin priests dropped on the spot, dead before they even had time to scream.
Fuck.
Do-Jin swore under his breath even as both sides froze in shock. His aim had slipped, and the target he actually wanted dead hadn’t taken the hit. He had been aiming for the commander in the obnoxiously flashy armor who had led the Holy Knights into the fight. That plan had gone to hell, so Do-Jin shoved his way forward while the enemy stood there rattled.
“Oh no, Do-Jin!!” Theresa screamed.
Anyone would react that way after seeing a mage jump out in front of the tank line like a psycho. The Cult of Ruin was just as stunned. This deranged mage had now charged straight into their formation.
“What the hell is this shit?!”
“Kill him before he casts again!”
Enemies rushed him. In a few seconds, their blades were going to carve him up from every direction. However, Do-Jin stayed calm and slammed his foot into the ground. At the same time, wind thick with fog surged out from his position, and sparks ripped across the area. Mist, Whirlwind, and Discharge overlapped and exploded in a single move. He had focused on range and visual impact instead of raw power, so the whole thing looked like some absurdly over-the-top spell at first glance.
“Ugh!”
The image of people getting erased by his Fire Cannon was still burned into the cultists’ minds, so it was only natural for them to back off.
Of course, not everyone reacted that way, especially the commander. “Tch, you bunch of cowardly pieces of shit!”
His faith had rotted past thought and sunk straight into instinct. God’s glory mattered more to him than his own life. He was, in plain terms, a full-blown fanatic. This was the same man who hurled himself into the opaque vortex with exploding sparks, as if he didn’t value his life one bit.
Do-Jin caught sight of the commander forcing his way through the invisible zone he had created by using Silent Night. With Shadow Thorn in one hand and black spikes coiled tight around the other, he sent the spells toward the Holy Knight who came tearing through the wind.
“Aaaargh!”
Before the commander could even finish reacting, Do-Jin had driven the Shadow Thorn straight into his thigh. Do-Jin would have loved to drive it straight into the heart, but the shield shoved in his way left him no better option.
“In the name of Laves!” the Holy Knight shouted the prayer.
It was one of those skills that burned up HP just to force their power past the limit. He was fully set on dragging Do-Jin down to hell with him, even if it meant his own death.
Is it too late to back off?
Do-Jin figured the guy would freeze up, but he had countered right away. Trying to step back meant getting skewered by that sword, so Do-Jin decided to just take the hit.
He had pumped his hand with Psychokinetic Enhancement, but the blade pierced right through it like it was nothing. Although his HP took a massive hit, it didn’t matter as long as Do-Jin wasn’t one-shotted.
Lightning Sword shot from his fingertips with a flash of blue light. Since he had compressed the electricity to its absolute limit, its explosiveness was just like the Fire Cannon from earlier. Because the electricity was much harder to control, it didn’t have the range or massive spread of Fire Cannon, but its concentrated power was marginally higher.
“Kuh—”
Do-Jin watched the Holy Knight’s body lock up from the shock and detonated Lightning Sword’s power without hesitation. He kicked off and pulled back as the Holy Knight’s eyes rolled back and his body crashed to the ground behind him. The damage-over-time effects stacked by Do-Jin’s traits triggered all at once, tearing through the last sliver of the Holy Knight’s health and finishing him on the spot.
He checked through his Magic Eye and confirmed that the commander’s life had completely burned out, then he immediately began forming his next spell. The mist Do-Jin had laid across the area thinned rapidly, and the swirling wind followed as it slowly dissipated.
“Sir Dimendal!”
So that’s his name...
The moment the shout reached him, Do-Jin immediately forced the name out of his head and focused on the ground, forcing several slabs of rock to surge upward. He kicked them off in quick succession and vaulted himself clear of the danger zone. It was the kind of movement that was only possible thanks to Psychokinetic Artistry.
Of course, the enemies weren’t about to let Do-Jin just slip away that easily. Crimson-dark Laves energy packed itself into attack spells, and those spells ripped through the air as they zeroed in on Do-Jin like a pack of rabid dogs.
“That bastard’s the most dangerous one. Kill him!”
“Don’t let him get away!”
Landing a hit on Do-Jin in the middle of that mess was never going to be easy, and the bastards learned that the hard way. His movements stayed fast enough to be a problem already, but he made things even worse by weaving in a deliberately twisted rhythm that refused to settle down.
When the enemy fired clean, straightforward shots, Do-Jin dodged them cleanly and slipped straight through the gaps like he was mocking them. When they tried to lead him and fire based on prediction, he shattered their timing again and slid past those attacks as well, leaving them swinging at empty air.
Do-Jin kept jumping and repositioning while mixing perfect beats with vicious off-beats, and he avoided every single spell with an ease that made the whole thing feel insulting to anyone trying to kill him.
“Get back here, you slippery little rat!”
“You bastard!”
Ignoring the colorful praise flying at him from every direction, Do-Jin finally made it back to his spot. The second his boots hit the dirt, he cracked open a vial of Holy Water and dumped the whole thing over his head.
“I need a cleanse over here,” he called to the healers.
Even though he had dodged every direct hit, there was no way to completely avoid the splash damage and the nasty curses lingering in the air. Do-Jin acted like it was no big deal, but he’d been playing chicken with the Grim Reaper himself, and his health had actually dropped dangerously low back there.
Fuck, that was way too close.
“Hey! Are you out of your mind?!” Theresa came charging over, ditching the tank line just to scream her lungs out at him.
“What are you doing here? Get back to the front. We need that shield of yours,” Do-Jin said calmly.
Theresa looked like she was about to have a heart attack. “Ugh! Do you have any idea how much you just freaked me out?!”
“I’m still breathing, aren’t I?”
As he brushed her off, Do-Jin scanned the field. His plan worked like a charm. Since he had played the bait and drawn all the aggro, the momentum had swung hard in their favor. The rest of the raid hadn’t been sitting on their hands while he was busy raising hell in the enemy lines.
“Save the lecture for later. Let’s just focus on winning for now,” he said while pushing her back toward the fight.
He went right back to providing cover fire. Every time his Destruction Rune topped off, he picked off the high-value targets. After a few rounds of that, the Cult of Ruin started folding fast. The casualties piled up until they hit a breaking point, and the battle turned into a total landslide victory.
The players pushed through the entrance, cleared the main hall, and funneled into the next tunnel. As they tore deeper into the hideout, the priests of the Cult of Ruin started losing their minds.
“Don’t let them through! Hold the line at all costs!”
“The Great Ritual cannot be interrupted!”
With them screaming like that, there was no way the raid was stopping. Without a single word from Do-Jin, the team was still hyped up on pure adrenaline and tore through them like a freight train.
The Cult of Ruin stood no chance against a group where even the tankers were shredding scrolls to dump magic on them. They had already taken massive losses, and there was absolutely nothing left for those bastards to do.
After they reached an incredibly vast space, the players assumed this was the end of the dungeon. However, everyone froze the second they saw the shocking horror show waiting for them.
“Wait, what?”
“What... what the hell is this?”
Someone actually let their shield clatter to the ground. A few people with weak stomachs started retching and vomiting right on the spot.
So this is where all the high priests were gathered, Do-Jin thought.
That was why the outside had been so poorly defended. All the powerful priests had been tied up in this room to conduct the ritual. Dozens of these priests of the Cult of Ruin sat on a massive Magic Circle with their eyes shut, chanting their prayers. Since they were locked into the ritual, they probably wouldn’t even realize what was happening here right now.
But it wasn’t just the ritual itself that made everyone freeze. The real problem was the people who’d been kidnapped and sold, now being used as fuel. The real nightmare was the men, women, and children of all ages crammed into glass tubes, packed so tightly they made the vast space feel claustrophobic.
The whole structure is designed to pull HP and foul energy out of these humans and store it.
It wasn’t a system that killed them instantly to extract what they needed. It was a terribly inefficient method that inflicted constant pain and squeezed out every drop of misery that resulted from it. As the ritual progressed, the victims thrashed in agony from the pain of their bodies slowly rotting away.
The majority of them had parts of their bodies amputated. In extreme cases, not only were their limbs gone, but significant chunks of flesh had been carved from their torsos. Those sick cultists had been amputating the rotting parts just to keep them alive a little longer. It was all to squeeze the absolute maximum amount of HP and suffering out of a single human being.
“You sick sons of bitches!” someone roared at the priests.
They had treated this as just another dungeon raid, but they were filled with pure rage once they realized these bastards were doing things even worse than the Nazis or Japan’s Unit 731 ever had.
The Cult of Ruin bastards fought like cornered animals to protect the high priests tied to the ritual, but they stood no chance against the total onslaught of a pissed-off raid. It wasn’t a fight but a massacre.
Is it even safe to touch this shit? Do-Jin thought with hesitation. But I can’t just leave it like this.
After no one alive remained on the cultists’ side, Do-Jin looked at the priests who were still chanting with their eyes closed and felt conflicted. He was worried that if he poked the circle carelessly, the whole thing might blow up.
He turned to the others and said, “It might get really dangerous from here on out. Anyone who doesn’t want to get caught in it can leave now.”
A few people looked like they were considering it for a second. But after they looked around at the room again, they stayed put with determined eyes.
“Alright. Then let’s start by getting these victims out.”
Do-Jin warned everyone to be careful since they had no idea how the ritual would react once it was sabotaged. The rescue operation began as they carefully pulled the victims from the glass tubes to send them outside. Do-Jin took on the role of monitoring the Magic Circle and the statuses of the priests.
Just then, a familiar voice came from beside him. “Hey.”
It was Orfen. Do-Jin had told him to wait quietly, but the kid had slipped in before anyone noticed. The boy was staring blankly in one direction.
Do-Jin followed Orfen’s gaze, and his eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Isn’t that... you?!”
There was another Orfen right there. He was bound inside a glass tube with his eyes closed as if he were dead. However, the boy who was the center of all the wraiths was actually still alive.
“Do-Jin! Look! One of those bastards is awake!” reported a nearby player.
Before the shock could even settle, the priest occupying the most critical point of the ritual snapped his eyes open. Judging by his position, he had to be at least a bishop within the cult.