Chapter 136
Do-Jin infiltrated the city to embark on a full-fledged quest. However, his methods made it embarrassing to even call it “infiltration.” The outer walls had gaping holes everywhere, and all he had to do was slip in through one of them when no one was looking. Once he was inside, though, the whole thing really did turn into a stealth mission.
This feels like trying to survive a zombie apocalypse.
The city inside the walls was teeming with the undead, staggering around like extras from some zombie movie. They wandered slowly, aimlessly, but the moment they spotted the “protagonist,” they would go wild and rush in as a mob.
Do-Jin moved carefully through the alleys, keeping low as he slipped between piles of rubble. The longer he crept, the tighter his shoulders got, until his neck started to ache from how stiff he was holding himself.
How the hell am I supposed to cross this whole damn city like this?
The goal sounded simple, but it was a complete nightmare. He had to reach six different spires scattered across the city and activate the Magic Circles built inside them. On the surface, the towers had been old prison facilities that once held the empire’s sinners, but the truth was nastier. They were storage rooms for living sacrifices, connected to one another to form a giant hexagram across the city. Whoever had come up with this layout deserved to burn in hell.
Matthew appeared beside him, floating like some janky GPS ghost as he pointed into the distance. “You need to cross that main avenue. Think you can handle it?”
“Main avenue?” Do-Jin muttered quietly. He leaned forward and poked his head out of the alley, only to immediately pull back. “Fuck.”
Beyond the dim alley was a completely exposed boulevard, a wide stretch of broken stone where hundreds of undead were wandering aimlessly.
He pressed his back against the wall and shut his eyes for a second. If he got caught in that crowd, it wouldn’t end with just that group swarming him. He’d be running from hundreds of screaming freaks, dragging more and more of them behind him in one endless train.
Great. If they keep this up, we’d really be shooting a full-on zombie movie...
“Is there another way?” he asked in a low voice.
Matthew shrugged. “Sure. Problem is, no matter which route you take, you’re going to hit a main road or a plaza at some point. You can’t avoid them completely.”
Do-Jin ground his teeth. If the buildings were still standing, I could just hop rooftops, but there’s more rubble here than actual buildings.
As he searched for a better option, he spotted a staircase on the opposite side of the street. It wasn’t attached to any building; it looked exactly like the entrance to a subway station.
“What about that staircase over there?”
Matthew shot off to check, then came flailing back, excited. “Bingo! It’s a tunnel. Looks like some kind of waterway.”
Figures. Stuff like that almost always leads somewhere useful, Do-Jin thought, breaking into a run.
When he reached the entrance, his brief relief evaporated. A massive iron door blocked the way, wrapped in chains and locked with a rusted padlock. Nothing in this cursed place ever came easy.
“Ah. Right. Sorry. I forgot about that. Been a ghost too long,” Matthew said.
Do-Jin let out a slow breath and started casting. The lock was so corroded it practically begged to be destroyed. A quick Ignition followed by Wind Blade was all it took to snap it apart.
The door was the real problem. The hinges were rusted solid, and it took the full strength of his Psychokinetic Artistry just to force it open. Without that boost, he probably would’ve wrecked his shoulders before it even budged.
He squeezed through at last and stepped into a bone-dry canal running through a pitch-black tunnel that stretched into the dark. The air was stale and dead, thick with silence. Do-Jin shut the door again behind him, then swept the darkness with eyes that didn’t care about the absence of light.
Not even a single rat in here, huh?
He’d half expected some nightmare version of a rat or cockroach to show up, upgraded into undead abominations, but that fear turned out to be pointless.
Guess the ritual wiped them all out.
The emperor’s sacrificial ritual, which nearly ended the world, had supposedly continued until the people were so broken they were closer to death than life. By that point, anything physically or spiritually weaker than a human, including practically every other living thing, had already been wiped out completely.
The quiet’s nice, though. Since everything’s dried out, it doesn’t reek down here either.
He glanced at Matthew, who was floating around in his glowing form, twisting through the narrow passage and looking around like a kid in a museum.
“Didn’t you say you fought the Empire?” Do-Jin asked. “I figured you’d have scouted stuff like this back then.”
Matthew blinked like the question didn’t make sense. “Me? Why would I? I just smashed straight through everything. Worked every time.”
“Right.”
Of course. A guy who’d literally cut down death itself was never going to bother with sneaking through underground tunnels.
Thinking about it, this whole city being in this state was probably his fault too. The man who’d beaten a demon emperor that fattened himself on the world’s life and souls had no reason to crawl through sewers. He just erased whatever got in his way.
Do-Jin sighed and pointed upward with a finger. “Hey. Look up.”
Matthew tilted his head and floated higher. “What? Something up there?”
“You can phase through walls, right? Go up and down, keep an eye on the path ahead, and guide me from above.”
Once a world-slaying hero, Matthew was now reduced to a ghostly guide dog. At least he was a useful one.
“Holy shit! You’re a genius,” he replied with real admiration.
Apparently, when someone was strong enough to fight gods, creative thinking became optional. The ex-hero shot upward through the ceiling, leaving only his shins visible from below.
“Hey, my head’s sticking through the floor above right now. You can see me from down there, right?” he asked, wiggling his feet like some kind of idiot.
“Yeah, I can see you. Quit flapping around, though. You look like a fucking duck.”
“Perfect. Then I’ll guide you from up here. I move, you follow, and we stay synced that way. Sound good?”
“Just don’t rush it.”
They fell into rhythm quickly, one ghost floating above the ground and one mage walking through the dark below. The sheer size of the city made the journey drag on, and if he’d tried moving across the surface, he probably would’ve spent days running from one screaming horde after another.
Thankfully, the underground route paid off. In just under an hour, they reached the area beneath the first spire. They had to loop around in places where the tunnels didn’t line up with the streets above, but even with all the detours, they’d saved a ridiculous amount of time.
“We’re here,” Matthew said, his glowing face poking back through the ceiling. “Now you just have to offer up a sacrifice at the altar beneath the spire. Keep it there until the Magic Circle fully activates.”
Do-Jin rolled his shoulders and let out a breath that was half a sigh, half a curse. “Great. A human sacrifice puzzle. Because that’s exactly what this night needed.”
The altar’s mechanism was simple and fucked up all at once. A living sacrifice had to die on top of it, and at the exact moment of death, both life and soul would be sucked into the altar. That was it. Matthew added, almost casually, that the key was the intensity and freshness of that final moment. The instant when something alive stopped breathing, that was what fueled the spell.
Do-Jin went back up to the surface, then headed down into the underground chamber beneath the spire. That was where he found countless monsters in priest robes, their tattered vestments and blood-slick blades making their roles obvious even now.
He let out a sharp breath. “Figured this would happen. Doesn’t make it any less annoying.”
These were the priests who had once managed the living sacrifices, the ones who had dragged them to the altar and executed them there. Now they were just twisted dungeon mobs blocking the entrance.
“So all I have to do is kill those things on top of the altar inside, right?”
“Exactly,” Matthew replied, his glowing face flickering like a candle flame. “Make sure they’re still alive when you throw them on it. The ritual only works if they die right there.”
Then there’s no reason to waste time fighting them out here.
Do-Jin looked up as the priest monsters turned their hollow eyes toward him all at once. He wrapped his body in the aura of Psychokinetic Enhancement and braced himself.
Let’s fucking go.
He hurled himself forward, sprinting straight into the pack. The monsters shrieked as one, their screams echoing off the stone as they charged to meet him. Do-Jin slipped through the gaps like a bullet. With his body reinforced by psychokinesis, he was faster than any of them could react.
If I stop even for a second, I’m screwed.
Once the chase began, there was no stopping halfway. It was a straight sprint into hell.
“There’s the path!” he shouted.
Matthew shot ahead, his ghostly form weaving through the air. “Straight ahead! Go straight and you’ll hit the altar! There’s a wooden door... Just smash it open!”
Do-Jin barreled forward, shoving aside anything in his way until he saw a massive wooden door about three meters tall. It was so rotten and dried out it looked like a strong breeze could knock it over.
He didn’t even bother with a spell. He thrust his arm forward and yelled, “Anemone!”
Anemone burst from his arm, her upper body blooming from light. With a single swing of her paw, she smashed the door apart. The impact detonated in a deafening crash as splinters and dust exploded through the corridor.
The moment Do-Jin stepped through the opening, a massive greatsword came swinging for his head. He didn’t even have time to swear. He blasted psychokinetic force downward and snapped his head back so hard his neck popped. If he hadn’t used his own power to quickly back away, that swing would’ve split his skull open.
“Would it kill you to give me a fucking warning next time?” he yelled.
“My bad! I was too busy panicking and forgot to check ahead!” Matthew’s voice echoed back, flustered but somewhat unapologetic.
Do-Jin ignored it and backed away from the knight-shaped monster that had ambushed him, eyes locking onto the structure beyond.
There it is.
Ahead of him, a staircase about three meters wide rose straight up. At the top stood a massive circular structure of dark stone. He didn’t care if it was pretty or not. Structurally, he loved it. An elevated position that enemies could only reach through a narrow staircase was every mage’s wet dream.
If I just secure the altar, I win this.
Do-Jin broke into a run. Behind him, a knight monster that was bigger and faster than the rest was charging, its armor rattling with every heavy step. Instead of looking back, he fired bursts of psychokinetic propulsion in rapid succession, launching himself up the stairs.
Compressed bursts of air hammered the stone as he accelerated upward. The priest monsters above the altar screeched together and flung themselves down at him, their limbs twisting unnaturally as they leaped.
Do-Jin thrust his hand upward and snarled, “Gale!”
A violent gust exploded from his fingertips, slamming into them and sending them flying off the edge. They fell screaming, their robes whipping like torn flags as they dropped.
He stepped onto the altar and muttered under his breath, “Now this is where the real shit starts.”
The monsters that fell into the pit around the altar hit the bottom with dull, wet thuds. Their broken bodies twitched once, then went still. Do-Jin didn’t waste a second. With the immediate area cleared, he pivoted and began casting again, his voice steady.
“Earth Spear.”
Massive stone lances burst up from the ground, blocking the path and impaling the knight monster as it tried to rush the stairs. He didn’t stop there. The next spell rolled off his tongue without hesitation.
“Flame Spear.”
A blazing projectile shot forward, drilling straight through the knight’s armor and chest. The creature staggered, flames tearing through its torso before it finally collapsed in a heap of melted metal and charred flesh.
It was tough for a normal monster, but still completely defenseless against Do-Jin’s overwhelming firepower.
Finally getting a chance to cool down, Do-Jin exhaled slowly. “Guess all that’s left now is to feed the altar.”
Below him, the remaining creatures that had once been human crawled over one another in a frenzy, desperate to reach him. They clawed at the stone steps and shoved their way up the narrow staircase, trampling their own underfoot. The ones that slipped on blood plunged into the deep, moat-like trench around the altar, where the distant crack of snapping bones echoed up the walls.
Watching the endless swarm push up the stairs, Do-Jin took a step back, his hand already rising. A golden spellbook opened beside him, its pages glowing with power that pulsed like fire.
“Flame Pillar.”
He waited until enough of them had packed the stairs, then unleashed it. A wall of flame roared up from the ground, swallowing the entrance to the altar in blazing heat. The ones who’d even lost the right to die didn’t hesitate. They didn’t scream at first. They just kept charging into the fire like they were racing toward it. And this time, Do-Jin was more than happy to hand their deaths back to them.
The flames ate them in seconds. Their muscles shriveled, strength bled out of their limbs, and they collapsed, writhing across the stone as they finally died. Although they had turned into monsters long ago, the screams that tore out of them in pain were still human.
Bodies began to pile up, smoking and twitching. When the corpses started to block his line of sight, Do-Jin waved his hand. “Whirlwind.”
A violent gust ripped through the altar, scooping up the charred remains and flinging them out into the surrounding pit. Afterward, he sealed the entrance again with another wall of flame, keeping the next wave from getting through.
Within minutes, every monster that had once guarded the spire was dead. Their ashes mixed with the blood on the altar, turning the floor into a dark, glimmering stain. Do-Jin stood over it, surrounded by the smell of smoke and burnt flesh, his face calm as stone. For a mage who now had full control over his battlefield, a fight like this was almost too easy.
