Chapter 211: Malevolent Possession; A Battle to the Death
Hugin could feel the writhing demons lodged within his body, squirming just beneath the surface. Once, long ago, they had been forcibly sealed inside him, their presence intended to awaken a potential deep within—a cursed potential capable of adapting to, even commanding, those very monsters.
But now, the demons were resisting his control. Even as he pushed his fighting spirit to its limits, his Malevolent Possession struggled to restrain the dozen or so demons all stirring at once.
"Without the smoke demon here, it's a challenge to suppress these demons," Hugin muttered to himself. "I've waited ten years for this day. Perhaps the moment these creatures break free will be the moment that I—or rather, we—are at our strongest."
A tremor rippled across the shadows clinging to his skin. With a sudden jolt, a grotesque head tore itself free from the darkness on his body, its face a nightmarish patchwork of mismatched features. Its mouth opened wide in a silent, maniacal laugh.
Hugin didn't flinch. A spectral arm formed from pure fighting spirit burst forth from his body, clamping down on the twisted face and forced it back inside.
But that act of force seemed to provoke the others. Instead of settling down, the demons within him erupted into full rebellion.
Grotesque mouths opened across his skin. Eyes emerged on the back of his neck, rolling and darting wildly. Nails and hair grew at an uncontrollable rate, and his body twisted with malformed growths—manifestations of the demons' attempt to break free.
In mere moments, Hugin's condition deteriorated. The bizarre mutations significantly hindered his movements.
Several phantom arms of fighting spirit emerged from his body, grabbing hold of the aberrations and dragging them back within. His potential surged, circulating faster and faster throughout his body. It had been born from the very presence of those wraiths, and it knew just how to subdue them.
"Settle down," Hugin growled, more to the demons than to himself. "I'm going to die here today. When I do, you'll all be free. You'll return to your infernal plane, or whatever abyss you crawled out of. Don't think I want to share this body with you..."
His voice was low and grim, each word resonating with bitter resolve. He wasn't trying to tame them, nor claim dominion. He just needed them to stay put until he was dead.
His words seemed to have an effect. The riot quelled as the demons fell quiet. He no longer needed to pour so much energy into keeping his potential active.
With a snap of his fingers, Malevolent Possession stirred. The power of one of the demons responded to the call—suddenly, every sound he made was erased from existence.
Then came the shadows. The power of the shadow demon took hold. His form melted into darkness, his physical body dissolving into intangible shadow. With ease, he slipped through the crack beneath the wooden door before him.
"Welcome, Hugin Smokes," came a voice from beyond. "I've been waiting a long time."
Though the room should have been occupied by Hugin's target, only a single figure stood within: a tall man clad in armor, both hands resting on a longsword planted into the floor. He stood motionless, silent, his gaze locked on Hugin's shadowed form through the visor of his helm.
The familiar voice echoed through the chamber, calm and composed, seeming to come from every direction at once. The room resembled a study—but the atmosphere was all wrong. It was a stage. A trap.
Hugin materialized from the shadow, reverting to flesh. Clearly, his attempt at stealth was meaningless. His enemy had known he was coming.
It fit with what Hugin remembered of the marquis: crafty, cold, and always two steps ahead.
"Surprised?" the voice continued lightly. "You shouldn't be. Credit where it's due: it was Rudolf who gave you away. He was subtle, but he told me enough. That shadowy figure killing nobles may not have been you, but you were certainly involved.
"You were too hasty. Those nobles all had ties to that incident in the past. With enough data, it was easy to reconstruct the pattern. Hugin, leader of the Nightblades... do you really intend to fight me here and now?
"Your father let go of the past," the marquis said gently. "He left the capital behind. He might not have met a good end, but at least he didn't let vengeance consume him. Isn't that worth something?"
Marquis Engel's tone was soft, persuasive—almost kind.
"You should forgive and forget, too. I'll even apologize for what I did, if that helps. The capital is in danger—shouldn't we set aside our grudges and work together for Aleisterre?"
Marquis Engel's stance was clear. He didn't want to have to safeguard himself against a grand knight like Hugin.
"He didn't drop his grudges," Hugin replied coldly. "He was just tired. Tired of wading through this filthy, stinking swamp of a capital.
"As for me—I don't mind dropping the matter, but not until every last one of the guilty lies dead. And now, thanks to those old friends of mine who feel the same way, you're the only one left."
The shadows faded from Hugin's body. In their place came something far more horrific.
Charred claws, burning with hellfire. Rows of jagged fangs. Mutations that twisted his form in unnatural ways—echoes of the demons within him.
But this time, they weren't rebelling. They were rejoicing. They felt that flame of vengeance that had burned in Hugin for over a decade, now roaring to life. Bloodthirsty and cruel by nature, the demons found themselves aligned with their host.
Hugin sought vengeance. They sought carnage.
"How tragic," said the marquis. "Look at you—drawing power from monsters for the sake of revenge. Doesn't that seem pathetic? Why not let go of the past? Embrace the power, but use it properly.
"I'll admit the price was steep, but that's the overarching law of the infernal planes. One soul, one demon. To create a being like you, those deaths were unavoidable."
Hugin ignored him. He retrieved a gauntlet from a hidden pocket, one identical to the one Wang Yu had received from the old knight Reynard.
The Voidblade gauntlet was designed specifically for wraiths, forged for close combat, and designed with absolute durability in mind.
"You still want to fight?" the marquis asked, almost regretfully. "Then you're just throwing your life away. You know I was prepared for this. Do you really think you can survive what I've set in motion in this mansion?"
The armored knight across the room now lifted his blade from the floor, pointing its tip toward Hugin. His demonic features twisted and writhed across his body, but his stance remained unmoving.
"Yes," Hugin replied. "I know. If you knew I was coming to kill you, there's no way you'd let someone like me live. You'd wait here. You had to wait here. You wouldn't be anywhere else. You'd never leave this house."
His voice was low, each word carrying the weight of certainty—cold, implacable, and immovable as stone.
The marquis fell silent. Of course, Hugin was right.
Ever since Rudolf's warning, he'd known this day would come. He couldn't let such a dangerous man remain alive—not someone with so much influence in the Nightblades.
That was when he first started laying his trap. He had to kill Hugin, no matter what.
His mansion was now filled with wards attuned to demonic signatures. Servants had hauled in mysterious cargo day after day, parts which could be assembled into a massive formation designed to suppress demonic power. Everything, from the décor to the timing, had been tailored to kill Hugin.
But Hugin had known. And because the marquis couldn't run, he was now within reach.
Beneath the estate, deep in a warded basement lined with protective spells, Marquis Engel observed Hugin's every move through numerous Magician's Eyes scattered throughout the house, "The royal family knows," he murmured. "But they've decided not to interfere. They want us to settle our score ourselves. In the end, the kingdom can't afford to lose the Nightblades, but we nobles are more than expendable."
He let out a sigh. "After this, even I'll have to leave the capital. The Nightblades... they're disgustingly loyal to their own. So let's end this quickly. Kill him, then disappear."
His lips curled into a smirk as he saw the final pieces falling into place. The last segment of the suppression array was being lowered into position.
Hugin would never escape. That was why the marquis had stalled and wasted so much time on nonsense. Reconciliation? The very thought of it was laughable. He just needed time to finish the trap, to eliminate the one who had climbed so far up the Nightblades' ranks.
Then—through his Magician's Eyes, the marquis saw Hugin pull something from his coat: a jagged, black stone, riddled with cracks, glowing faintly with violet light from within.
"You—! Stop him!"
The marquis's voice rose in alarm. The knight immediately moved, sword raised, cutting through the air with a surge of fighting spirit. A razor-sharp blade of energy hurtled toward Hugin.
"How pitiful," Hugin whispered. One of the demons inside him began to stir.
His body turned to stone, cracked, pitted, and hardened like ancient rock. As the blade of energy struck him, his body shattered into rubble.
And in the debris, glowing with ominous light, lay the strange black stone.
A clear, melodious chime rang out.
From within the stone, the power of the void surged forth. The instant the stone shattered, the wizardry sealed inside it was unleashed.
Much like a magician's scroll, a wizard's spell could also be stored—but the materials required were exceedingly rare. Only spells of exceptional power would ever be made into spellstones.
The stone in Hugin's hand was a spellstone that contained a sixth-tier void spell.
"I've picked up a few trinkets here and there. Never knew when one might come in handy. Turns out, now's the time," Hugin muttered, charging toward the charging grand knight with frightening nonchalance.
The power of the void manifested around the manor. In the stunned and stupefied eyes of the servants, the entire estate began to vanish, as if being erased from existence by an invisible hand. Gone from the material world, gone beyond the reach of the array they'd so carefully prepared.
This was the sixth-tier spell Reflected World, which dragged all matter within a vast radius into the liminal space between reality and the void, a space not unlike the Gap. After one hour, everything would return to reality once again. This spell was commonly used to evade large-scale spell attacks or to conceal one's presence.
But now, Hugin had turned it into a cage of death, one that trapped him and Marquis Engel within. In one hour, only one of them would leave alive—or perhaps neither.
Marquis Enkai pressed his hand to his face, peering through the gaps in his fingers at the image transmitted by his Magician's Eyes as he forced himself to regain his composure.
This was merely a slight deviation from his plan. The array outside, meant to suppress demons, had always been just a precaution—an insurance policy, or even mere convenience. What he had prepared inside the manor was more than enough to kill Hugin.
"This isn't like you, Engel," he murmured to himself. "You've aged, sure—but to be this unsettled by a grand knight, half-blinded by vengeance? That's not the man I remember."
He smothered that last ember of doubt. His gaze turned cold and cruel like the "demon" he once was, the one who had sacrificed an entire village for a single line of research.
"Kill him," he commanded the grand knight standing statuqesque in the study. Though the creation was flawed, its strength was real—it was a genuine intermediate grand knight.
The knight moved. His longsword, now sheathed in fighting spirit, came crashing down toward Hugin, whose body had only just reconstituted from shattered stone.
Hugin caught the sword strike between his crossed arms. The Voidblade gauntlets on his forearms shimmered with fighting spirit. Strength collided with strength in a clash of titanic force and raw will.
The ground beneath their feet fractured in all directions. What ordinary citizens considered solid rock was, to grand knights, little more than brittle sand.
Something buzzed. Hugin's eyes narrowed. A force surged down the captured blade—vibration?
A violent, high-frequency tremor traveled from the knight's sword to Hugin's gauntlets. Unstoppable, it pierced through the armor and rattled deep within.
This strange vibration bypassed steel. It ignored flesh and sought out bone.
A subtle fracture sounded. Brutal oscillations targeted the radius, ulna, and humerus.
Fine, spiderwebbing fractures bloomed across his bones as shards began to break loose.
The moment Hugin realized this was the enemy's potential, he understood one thing with icy clarity: he couldn't afford to meet this attack head-on again.
Even as the knight continued pressing down with both hands, attempting to grind Hugin's bones into dust with that devastating potential, Hugin lashed out. His leg shot up as he aimed a fearsome kick at the knight's chest.
But the opponent was no fool. Matching Hugin's strength and speed, the knight blocked the kick with his own leg in a seamless motion.
The instant their limbs met, Hugin's legs shattered into a storm of tiny fragments, just like before.
But this time, the fragments didn't fall to the ground. Instead, they moved. Crawling like living things, they clung to the enemy's leg and anchored it in place.
With a pulse of his potential, the stones binding the knight's leg were yanked back, pulling Hugin's body forward across the floor like a sliding blade.
Another demonic power ignited. From the surface of the Voidblade gauntlets, a pitch-black blade sprang forth, reeking of rust, decay, and corruption.
Hugin's sudden shift in momentum brought him even nearer his enemy. The knight, caught off-guard, failed to redirect his sword in time.
That foul blade seething with demonic malice rushed toward the knight's abdomen. The blade was clearly corrosive. If it landed a direct hit...
But in that instant, the ground beneath Hugin shattered.
From below, a tangle of chains carved from stone shot up and wound around his limbs, halting his strike. The floor gave way, crumbling beneath them both.
Hugin and the grand knight plummeted.
There was no time to examine what lay below. The air howled; mana surged. Dozens of advanced Wind Blade spells tore through the darkness, straight toward him.
Hugin hardened his fighting spirit into a protective barrier, bracing himself. At the same time, he ripped the stone chains apart.
But the momentary distraction was all the grand knight needed. He reached out, his right hand clamping down on Hugin's calf.
A searing pain exploded from within as the knight's potential struck bone.
"Damn it!"
Hugin's brow twisted with pain. A grand knight of this caliber and an entire manor rigged with enchantments—this was going to be much more difficult than he'd anticipated.