Chapter 214: A Partner's Bond
Scorching emerald flames consumed the room above in an instant, reducing everything within to ash. Sparks and burning cinders cascaded downward like a meteor shower.
The fiery rain was too dense to dodge. Hugin had no choice but to defend against it with a layer of fighting spirit. Charles did the same, conjuring a barrier with The Chariot.
"Find a chance to pin it down and kill it fast. We can't afford to drag this out with a demon this resilient," Hugin warned, feeling his fighting spirit draining away by the second.
"Understood, Captain. Give me an opening. I can lock it down for a short time—long enough for you to deliver the finishing blow."
Charles's voice was rigid with focus. To invoke The Fool, which simultaneously activated all his tarot cards' powers, was no small matter. It could only be used once per year and demanded a heavy price.
His reserves of void energy and mana were diminishing at an alarming rate, and use of his powers would only accelerate this decline. Time wasn't on their side.
Hugin tossed aside his longsword, which was useless against a fiend. Only a direct strike empowered by his fighting spirit could even leave a mark. The fiend would have to be restrained first.
With a piercing shriek, the infernal fiend, wreathed entirely in ghostly green fire,lunged at Charles from the burning ruins above.
The flames that made it so lethal were no danger to the fiend itself. On the contrary, those flames were even able to staunch its bleeding and mend its wounds.
Fighting spirit erupted from Hugin as he pivoted to the side. His left leg pushed off with explosive power as he launched into a horizontal charge.
His right shoulder glowed as he condensed spiked armor from fighting spirit right before a head-on collision with the infernal fiend.
The armor shattered under the immense impact, but it also dispelled the flames clinging to the demon's skin for a brief instant of vulnerability.
Seizing the moment, Hugin struck.
A spin, followed by a punch. Thanks to relentless training, his movement was as fluid as water. His fist tore through the air with a whir. He poured every ounce of strength he had into the blow.
The demon was sent hurtling backward, too heavy to remain grounded under such force. Its claws dug twin furrows into the floor as it skidded before finally grinding to a halt.
It shook its head and opened its maw, spitting out searing, flaming ichor. A crackling sound came from its chest—its ribs had fractured.
Despite its armor-like flesh, Hugin's strike had caused real damage.
The demon's claws scraped across the ground. It glared murderously at Hugin, clearly aware that it couldn't attack its true target Charles while this man still stood. Hugin had to die first.
"Not paying attention to me, huh?" Charles murmured inwardly. He would never say such a thing out loud and give the enemy the luxury of a warning.
Taking advantage of the fiend's momentary distraction, he too struck. Mana surged as he activated The Star, upright. Charles blinked out of existence, reappearing behind the demon.
Without pause, he drew upon a second tarot card. A translucent silver spear appeared in his hand, glowing faintly—The Judgment, upright. He thrust it forward with all his might.
The demon's reflexes were astonishing. Without even looking back, it lashed out with a claw aimed to kill.
The spear met the claw mid-strike.
But Charles had already used two tarot cards in quick succession. He had no strength left to conjure a third, and no time to cast a spell. The fiend's blow was sure to land.
A blow from a fiend, with the strength of a grand knight, was all but guaranteed to cleave Charles in half. More likely, he'd be crushed into paste.
He forced out a sliver of power from The Chariot card. A thin shield flickered into being—but it shattered at once, barely managing to burn away the flame clinging to the claw.
That was enough. In the instant before the strike landed, Charles's gaze shifted. The demon "One" seized control of his body and cast the third-tier defensive spell Mire instantly.
His body exploded into a burst of oozing mud—not pulverized by impact, but dispersed by magical transformation. The fiend's claw scattered nothing but mud.
And just as Charles narrowly escaped death, the spear lodged in the fiend's back activated.
From the ground, spectral spears erupted, shimmering and unseen. They pierced the demon's body, holding it in place.
"Hah... Thanks for the save, One. I couldn't see a damn thing—it was all based on prediction. If that had failed, not even the God of Light could've saved me."
Charles reformed from the puddle of slime, muttering shakily to himself.
He lacked the physical strength to keep up with a grand knight. His eyes couldn't track the demon's movements. He could rely only on his foresight, and a single mistake would've meant instant death.
The Judgment's power was immense. Invisible spears locked the roaring fiend in place, despite its overwhelming strength.
"Well done," Hugin praised, charging forward. He closed the distance in a flash. Lowering his stance, he gathered his strength. Fighting spirit flooded his right arm, swelling until his muscles strained and ached.
With a roar, Hugin unleashed the full might of his punch straight at the fiend's skull, the result of his fighting-spirit technique Penetrating Burst.
The sound made Charles's scalp crawl; the follow-up crunch of shattered bone made him flinch.
The demon's reinforced skull fractured under the Voidblade gauntlet. Its face caved in grotesquely.
The spectral spears shattered, and foul fluids streamed from its orifices as it slammed into the floor.
Its head struck the wood hard enough to blow open a crater. Shards and splinters flew everywhere.
The overwhelming force caused its head to bounce back up, its jaw dislocated grotesquely, its maw hanging open.
"Captain, shove this in its mouth!"
Before Charles's voice even reached him, Hugin had already caught the object flying through the air.
It was white-hot and trembling with barely contained force.
Hugin didn't hesitate. While the fiend was still stunned from the blow, he rammed the device into its gaping maw and followed up with a brutal knee strike.
"Down!" Charles shouted, diving for cover.
A deafening explosion rocked the room. The upper floors of the mansion collapsed entirely, burying them beneath a rain of splinters and rubble.
What Charles had thrown Hugin was Fury of the Forge—or rather, a dangerously overcharged version of it.Though he wasn't particularly skilled in alchemy, he knew enough to jury-rig the device by looping its charge and discharge circuits together, transforming it into a volatile bomb.
And inside the fiend's skull, that makeshift bomb detonated with terrifying force.
"Damn... that was terrifying," Charles muttered, crawling out from the wreckage, still shielded by The Chariot. "Guess that thing's dead now... A waste of a good weapon though."
Charles clicked his tongue in regret as he glanced down at the battered remains of his precious alchemical revolver. Even so, his eyes remained alert and he continued to scan his surroundings warily.
There was no sign of the fiend. It had likely been blown to pieces, so completely that there were no bones left to bury. But he did see Hugin emerging from the debris, clutching his right arm.
The terrifying recoil from Hugin's full-force punch just now had managed to shatter the bones in Hugin's right arm.
His reserves of fighting spirit and stamina had run dry; he looked worn out, very much the worse for wear. Still, at least the fiend that had taken over the body of a grand knight was dealt with. All that remained was Marquis Engel...
Then came a strange hissing, like the sizzle of water against a searing forge. Hugin and Charles both froze, their expressions darkening.
Marquis Engel continued observing the scene. He stood in a distant chamber, face solemn, feeling the tremors from the explosion that had rocked the manor. Within him, something stirred: an unnatural shift in the infernal pact etched on his soul.
"To think that brat from the Ryder family would be so troublesome," he muttered. "And Hugin, crippled though he is without his potential—he still managed to push the infernal fiend to this extent?"
A cold chuckle escaped him. "Good thing I prepared a safeguard... Ah, I can't wait to see their faces. But now that I've revealed nearly all my cards—damn it all. How could Hugin be this difficult to handle even with my advanced intel?
"If the royal court continues to underestimate these overly obedient lapdogs, they'll pay dearly, sooner or later."
Marquis Engel grimaced. "This won't be enough. I'll have to make further preparations. Even with backup in place, I can't guarantee that they'll die."
With a grimace of pain, Engel drew a mana-etched dagger, tore open his opulent robes, and began carving a bloody ritual circle into his own chest.
Back in the ruins of the mansion, Hugin and Charles continued to eye their surroundings warily. An ominous hiss rose from the epicenter of the explosion like the sound of water turning to steam. Charles and Hugin looked on with grim anticipation as a fine filament of fire began sketching lines in the air, lines that slowly formed the outline of a door.
A demonic claw emerged, pushing it open. From within the fiery gate, the infernal fiend slithered forth, its skull grotesquely misshapen, jaw dislocated, oozing strange ichor.
It was clearly wounded, but not dead. The hellish blast from the Fury of the Forge hadn't landed a direct hit. It had managed to escape into a pocket space in the nick of time.
"Damn it! No one ever said it could do that,"
Charles cursed through clenched teeth. He couldn't fathom how the fiend had such a power—if it had, wouldn't the devil "One" have told him about it?
"Marquis Engel is a demonologist," Hugin said grimly. "A professor at the Royal Institute. His knowledge of demonology surpasses that in any tome or written record. He must've modified that thing somehow."
That didn't comfort Charles in the slightest. He muttered to himself, "The vision in my ability showed Captain Hugin dying in pursuit of vengeance... and Marquis Engel vanishing without a trace afterward. But at this rate, how could Hugin possibly kill Engel?"
He began to doubt the foresight granted by his own power. Without his potential, how could Hugin defeat such a monster alone?
"Wait..."
A chilling thought crept into his mind.What if Hugin's death was indeed fated—but Engel hadn't died? What if he had simply vanished after killing the captain?
"Bloody hell... I really am the unluckiest playwright alive."
Charles spat a curse he'd learned from Wang Yu, and without pause, began drawing up the last reserves of his magic. What else was there to do? Fight, of course. Both he and Hugin were hanging on by a mere thread—but the fiend wasn't faring much better.
The fiend let out a spine-chilling noise as it twisted its malformed head with its claws and set its dislocated jaw back into place with a sickening crack. It turned, locked eyes with them—and bolted.
It shot upward, disappearing through the broken ceiling like a twisted shadow.
Charles and Hugin blinked before realization struck them.
The fiend was actively learning from them. It didn't have the advantage in terms of brute force, but its mastery over flame meant that it could wage a very different kind of war.
"Run!" Hugin barked. Charles obeyed instantly, following Hugin through a shattered wooden door that he had forced open as they both vanished into the next chamber.
No sooner had they entered than did an emerald-green inferno blast down through the hole above, consuming the room they'd just left.
"Keep moving!" Hugin shouted, crashing through furniture to clear a path into the next room.
"On it!" Charles called back.
Despite his frailty, Charles was fast—very fast. Sieg had once mentioned this to Wang Yu. For someone without a knight's physique, Charles could run surprisingly quickly. With Hugin slowed down by the obstacles in their way, Charles was able to keep pace.
But the walls, the ceiling, and even the floor all echoed with the sound of clawed limbs scraping against stone as the fiend tailed them like a ghost.
"One shot," they both thought. "We have one chance—we have to kill Marquis Engel."
It was the only option left. Hugin's arm was broken, his fighting spirit depleted. Charles was low on mana, and The Fool's boon would soon expire. They had no hope of defeating the fiend again unless they killed the one who summoned it.
It was a race against death. Would the demon catch them first, or would they reach Engel in time?
Fate didn't seem to be on the side of these two men, one of whom could even see fate. They had no means to track Engel. They just ran. Within minutes, Charles hit the limit of his stamina.
He gasped, stumbling. If he didn't use some kind of enhancement spell, he wouldn't last another sprint.
He paused a moment to gather the last of his strength, about a third of his remaining mana, and began weaving wind-element magic to ease his strain.
But just as the spell framework began to form, the wall beside him exploded. A monstrous head burst through the rubble. The fiend's claws shot toward his chest.
The fiend had been focused on Charles all along. The strange aura around him drew the fiend's attention and allowed it to track him effortlessly.
"Shit!" Charles cursed again, ducking low and trying to conjure The Star in order to dodge.
He was too late. The fiend had shown itself at just the right time to mess Charles up.
Charles' spell wasn't finished, and his mana was locked up in the spell's framework. Even if "One" took over now, it wouldn't help. They shared the same mana pool.
Bang! Crack!
The pain came after the impact.
Something slammed into Charles, sending him flying. It was Hugin—he had kicked Charles aside and thrown himself straight into the demon's path.
His Voidblade gauntlet clashed with the fiend's claw. Charles hit the ground with a sickening crunch. Agony flared in his arm—without a doubt, it was broken.
Hugin's kick had saved him and simultaneously forced his hand.
Dazed, Charles looked up to see a twisted grin forming on the fiend's face. This had been a trap. The fiend had been holding back until Hugin intervened—then redirected its true attack at him.
With a broken arm and no fighting spirit, Hugin didn't stand a chance.
The fiend roared, unleashed a surge of strength, and hurled Hugin across the hall like a doll. He struck the wall and crumpled.
Then, the fiend lunged, jaws wide, claws extended. This was a killing blow, aimed to take down the one obstacle that stood between it and its true prey.
"Run!" Hugin roared. He knew it was over. All he could do was buy Charles enough time to survive until the Reflected World expired.
Meeting the fiend's gaze with a glare, Hugin made his last gamble. His potential allowed him to command demons. Perhaps, at this range, he would be able to influence it.
He activated his potential... and sensed nothing. There was no response nor resistance.
"If it's not one of the demons Engel implanted into me... my power can't affect it at all."
The claw loomed closer, aiming for his heart. The fiend's fangs neared his throat. Hugin lifted his broken arms, determined to resist even to the last breath.
Then, something shifted. Just before the claw pierced his chest, his eyes widened. His potential had reacted—not to the fiend before him, but to something else. A different presence, one that shouldn't have been around at all.
The moment it sensed that presence, Hugin's potential dragged it into the Reflected World.
A grand knight's potential's influence over the material world trumped that of wizardry and magic.
The fiend's claws clanged against tough, resilient armor. Smoke and dust rose into the air, shrouding Hugin's body.
"Looks like you really are nothing without me, partner!"
The smoke demon's arrogant chatter echoed down the corridor.