Chapter 2979: Baeldum Battle 6
The walls of Dravos had become a grinding mill of slaughter.
Where the magic cannons carved the deepest furrows through the advancing hordes, the dead did not simply accumulate into piles of corpses. Instead, they fused together. Broken bodies melted into one another, flesh and bone twisting into grotesque new forms as dozens of hounds merged into writhing masses of corrupted muscle, snapping jaws, and glowing runes. The resulting horrors rolled toward the city walls under their own crushing weight, devouring both the living and the dead as they advanced.
Each abomination possessed physical strength comparable to a peak full moon magus.
Ballista bolts that would have impaled ordinary monsters barely slowed them. Magic artillery blasted chunks from their bodies only for the surrounding flesh to absorb the damage and continue forward.
The Four Pillars met them at the gates.
Even they were being forced back.
Step by step.
Meter by meter.
Every advance was purchased with blood.
Yet the battle that would ultimately decide the fate of Dravos was not taking place on the walls.
It was happening above them.
Duke Damien Alabaster had not moved in several seconds.
The small creature remained perched atop his head like a grotesque crown. Its tiny fingers had sunk deep into his skull, while its swollen runic head pulsed rhythmically with an eerie violet glow.
To outside observers, the old Duke appeared frozen.
Inside, however, a war was raging.
Golden light convulsed around the Duke as his consciousness rose to meet the invasion. The parasite poured itself into him, a flood of purple corruption seeking to drown every corner of his mind, to hollow him out and wear him as it had worn Lirien.
But Damien was no broken, dying spirit master. He was a spirit champion — one of the greatest souls in the entire Alpha Quadrant — and his will rose against the tide like a fortress wall, beating the invader back inch by inch.
"Move aside—" The Sword Demoness surged forward, blade rising, every instinct screaming at her to cut the thing off its head.
A hand of stellar light clamped around her wrist.
"Don’t." The Star Tower Lord’s voice was low and taut. "It is fused to his skull. Strike it now, and you take the Duke’s head with it."
The Demoness froze, teeth bared, and could only watch.
For a moment, it seemed Damien would win. His golden light flared brighter, surging outward, forcing the corruption back to the very edges of his being. The old man’s whole body shook with the effort — but he was ’winning’, driving the invader toward the door it had crawled in through—
Then the creature stopped fighting him.
Slowly, almost lazily, its swollen head rotated — away from Damien, toward the others — and the massive eye across its skull opened.
"Ki-ki-ki-ki..."
The sound was a thousand insects laughing in unison, layered over fragments of something that had never been language — clicks and shrieks no human throat could ever shape. And yet the meaning bled directly into their skulls, cold and patient and entirely without doubt:
[Do not resist. It is inevitable. Lay down your small, separate selves. Become one. Do not resist. Become part of the hive]
It was not a threat. It was a promise.
Damien’s eyes snapped wide.
Whether it was the message itself or the fresh surge behind it, the Duke threw back his head and screamed — a raw, tearing sound, the cry of a man holding a door shut against the sea. The golden light around him guttered and flared, his control slipping by the second.
At the rear, Hubert’s golden coin flashed in his palm.
He had been waiting the entire time — calculating, and the moment the old man’s resistance surged — the moment the creature’s focus split and its grip faltered by a hair — Hubert flicked the coin.
The gold coin streaked across the sky and punched into the creature’s exposed flank.
It did little.
But Hubert had never needed to wound it.
He only needed it to flinch.
For one heartbeat, the creature’s clawed hand slipped from the Duke’s skull.
The Star Tower Lord did not waste the opening on a wide barrage. Every scrap of his power narrowed to a single point at his fingertip, and a lance of concentrated starlight erupted forth — a beam thin as a needle and bright as a dying sun. It slammed into the creature and hurled it backward, tearing it clear of Damien’s head and ripping open a gap between them at last.
But the thing did not come free.
Threads of corruption, fine and black, still stretched between it and the Duke, straining against the beam — dragging it back toward its half-won host inch by relentless inch.
Then holy fire fell from above.
Saint Stephen’s palm swept up, and a pillar of sacred flame roared down upon the straining threads, searing them where the starlight could not reach. And in the same breath, the Sword Demoness followed, her blade screaming down through the gap to cut the creature in two before it could be hauled back.
For one heartbeat, it truly seemed they had it.
The creature answered before the blade could land, and a wave of mental force erupted outward in a silent shockwave. The Demoness’s slash went wide; the Star Tower Lord’s fire scattered into sparks; both were hurled back, minds reeling, vision washed white with pain.
And in that opening—
The creature abandoned Damien.
It tore a spatial rift and flickered through it in a single heartbeat — out of the Duke, across the sky, reappearing behind the one enemy it could never wear and most needed dead.
Saint Stephen.
The Archbishop reacted instantly, six wings of holy light spreading across the sky as sacred flames erupted outward in every direction, turning the air itself into a sea of golden fire.
Yet the creature was faster.
Before the holy flames could fully close around it, the parasite slipped through the gap and appeared directly behind him. Tiny clawed hands latched onto the sides of Saint Stephen’s back, and corruption flooded into his body with terrifying speed.
The Archbishop’s divine radiance surging through every inch of his body as it collided head-on with the invading corruption. For a brief moment, the two forces appeared evenly matched, sacred power and parasitic influence tearing at one another while the surrounding sky trembled beneath the clash.
Then the parasite’s yellow eyes opened again.
Without Duke Damien’s soul suppressing it, the balance shifted almost immediately.
"ARGGHH!!"
The Archbishop’s scream echoed across the battlefield, filled with pain and disbelief.
Corruption surged through Saint Stephen’s body in a single overwhelming wave. Black veins spread across his neck and face while the magnificent wings behind him darkened at their edges and began to collapse inward, their holy radiance fading beneath the spreading rot.
For a brief moment, it became clear what it was trying to do.
It wanted to wear him.
The Star Tower Lord, the Sword Demoness, reacted instantly, throwing themselves forward in a desperate attempt to reach him.
Hubert’s revolver barked repeatedly, crimson-gold rounds streaking across the sky and exploding near the creature’s body, disturbing its possession.
It seems the creature realized that it no longer had the time required to complete the possession.
The incoming attacks would reach it first.
Faced with the choice, the parasite made its decision instantly.
The creature’s claws tightened around Saint Stephen’s head, and a brutal wrench followed.
Crack.
The sound rang across the battlefield like a thunderclap.
Saint Stephen’s body went rigid.
The holy radiance surrounding him vanished all at once.
No final proclamation.
No desperate counterattack.
No miraculous reversal.
Saint Stephen — Master of Holy Law, a pillar of the Nephilim Church — folded like an emptied robe and dropped from the sky, his body already crawling with corruption before it struck the broken ground far below.
Silence.
"YOU BASTARD!!"
The Sword Demoness erupted in fury.
Her blade descended in a devastating arc that split the heavens themselves, but the creature had no intention of remaining.
It twisted through the air, and its chittering laughter rose once more.
"Ki-ki-ki-ki-ki!"
The sound was louder now.
Almost joyful.
Almost triumphant.
Then it shot away from them, streaking toward the towering walls of Dravos.
"Stop it!" City Lord Cassian roared.
Panic flashed across City Lord Cassian’s face as he immediately issued orders. The five chosen Grand Magus who had been holding in reserve launched into the air at once. Each swallowed an antiviral pill before accelerating toward the creature, hoping to intercept it before it reached the city.
Yet even before they arrived, the parasite made its move.
Space twisted.
A spatial rift tore open directly before the walls of Dravos, its destination clearly set for the city interior. The creature shot toward it without hesitation, attempting to bypass the battlefield entirely and emerge among the millions sheltering behind the defenses.
The instant it touched the rift, however, the city’s defensive formation reacted.
Golden runes erupted across the sky.
The protective barrier surrounding Dravos flared to life, and a massive pillar of light slammed into the unstable portal. The spatial passage shattered instantly, collapsing into fragments of distorted energy before the creature could cross.
The five Grand Magus arrived a heartbeat later.
For a brief moment, it appeared trapped.
Then the creature threw back its swollen head and exhaled.
A vast cloud of purple mist erupted from its tiny body.
The mist expanded with terrifying speed, spreading across the sky like a living storm. Within seconds, it had grown large enough to cover kilometers of airspace, swallowing the battlefield beneath a rolling sea of violet haze.
Unable to enter the city itself, the creature had chosen a different method.
