Maximus opened his eyes with great effort, then spat out a mouthful of blood in a miserable mess. Lucius dragged him along, paying no mind to the blood staining his own body, and set him down against the base of a wall.
Borrowing the holy light radiating from his own body, Lucius could clearly see a ghastly wound on Maximus’s chest, the rotting flesh at its edges continuously emitting black vapor.
Through the wound, Lucius could also see that Maximus’s ribs had already grown into a single solid plate of bone.
That layer of bone plate had blocked a fatal attack for Maximus, but the price was that the once-solid plate was now shattered into fragments.
Lucius could even see his friend’s powerful heart still pounding steadily.
But with each beat, Maximus spat out another mouthful of blood.
Lucius had no choice but to reluctantly conjure another beam of holy light down upon Maximus.
Maximus’s complexion improved somewhat, but Lucius’s own face grew paler.
In truth, with Maximus this badly wounded, Lucius himself wasn’t faring well either.
What made things worse was that this accursed place seemed unable to establish contact with the deities, as if something had severed their connection to the divine.
That was a rare occurrence, but Lucius, whose body was in terrible shape, had no desire to investigate it. He only wanted to take Maximus and leave the way they came.
After observing that Maximus’s injuries were initially stabilized, Lucius ceased his output of holy light.
Unable to contact the All-Father, the holy light within him was a dwindling resource. He had to conserve it.
He raised his head to look at the pitch-black sky where something seemed to churn within the darkness, then withdrew his gaze and hoisted Maximus onto his back once more to continue forward. His beautiful silver-white hair was already caked with mud, and his usually saintly face was etched with exhaustion. But something burned in his violet eyes, and whatever radiated from them kept the world-filling black vapor at bay.
Reaching the edge of a crumbling structure, Lucius hefted his straight sword, already beginning to dull at the edge, and faced the black-vapor-emitting creatures closing in around him.
He smiled bitterly but did not set down the barely-breathing Maximus.
He took another step forward and swung his sword. Battle!
The dark sewer stretched on endlessly. Astraea had no idea how long she and Luo En had been walking through these tunnels.
Guided by their goddess, the little elf and her knight worked in tandem to explore deeper into the sewers, and the goblins along the way couldn’t stop them at all.
Not even those large goblins shrouded in black vapor could.
The little elf hesitated as she looked at her own fingers. “Um, ninety… Luo En, what day is it today? No fatigue at all… days? Or how many days has it been?”
Astraea’s lighting spell had been maintained continuously. She wasn’t even sure she’d ever sustained a spell for this long.
“Day ninety-one.”
Luo En answered precisely, stating the time they’d spent in this pitch-black sewer since the Elven Goddess teleported them back.
Astraea glanced around at their surroundings.
She felt no fatigue whatsoever, no hunger either, and her mana reserves remained at a constant full state. Luo En on the other side was the same as her. The little elf had no idea what was going on. Her azure armor with emerald-green trim didn’t even have a single stain on it.
Astraea and Luo En had offered prayers to all Five Deities, and Astraea had even tried using the goblins they’d killed as sacrifices to the All-Father. But none of the deities responded to them—only that faint, elusive thread of guidance from the Elven Goddess lingered in their hearts.
The little elf could only chalk this up to a miracle. If the deities were watching over them, why wouldn’t they respond to their prayers? But then…
“AHHHH! Luo En, I’m so bored!”
Her body was in perfect condition and her mana was full, but staying in this lightless sewer all day with goblin-slaying and kissing as her only entertainment…
Astraea, deprived of further amusement, was going absolutely stir-crazy.
She’d flashed heart-shaped eyes at Luo En more times than she could count. The first time was on day fifteen, after he’d given the little elf her customary kiss. Through the lighting spell, Luo En saw hearts well up in her eyes as she looked at him.
Fortunately, he managed to suppress it that time, or Astraea wouldn’t be so energetic right now.
But since then, the frequency of Astraea’s heart-eyed gaze had only increased, until now she was doing it at least once a day as a baseline.
Kisses alone could no longer satisfy the hungry little elf. Even though Luo En could kiss her senseless every time—she had terrible stamina—the fire of desire in her heart refused to be quenched.
Astraea wanted the real thing!
But in truth, Luo En himself was enduring tremendous hardship. He was a normal human, with all the desires a human possessed.
Yet he also knew his current limitations, and the little elf wasn’t as powerful as Aiouwen. If he forced things, the consequences would be unthinkable.
The knight who upheld his virtue suppressed his ever-growing desires, and his gaze toward the little elf teasing him without cease returned to calm.
“Luo En.”
“Hm?”
“You’ll always stay with me, right?”
Damn it! Were all elves succubi?!
Luo En’s suppressed desire faintly stirred to life again.
Within the dim space, a pinkish atmosphere immediately began to fill the air.
But just then—change came without warning.
The two fools who were about to make a mess of things suddenly froze in unison, their eyes instantly turning clear.
“Seriously, why does this have to ruin my moment now?”
In the midst of Astraea’s displeased complaint, the Q-version goddess pendant on her collar burst into emerald light, dispelling the darkness around them.
Astraea and Luo En immediately realized they were now standing in a room made of stone.
Vines climbed the stone walls, suggesting the place was ancient.
And at the very center of the room, there was a vortex emitting black vapor, a massive amount of darkness pouring out from within.
But Astraea and Luo En were currently wreathed in divine radiance, so the black vapor couldn’t touch them.
After brief observation, Luo En discerned the nature of the vortex, and he could sense boundless malice from beyond it.
“Is this telling us to go through this… portal?”
Astraea stepped forward with her hand on her sword, her mood foul from having her fun interrupted just moments ago. She was looking for something to vent on. “Let’s go, Luo En. We’re going in.”
It was a power fundamentally incompatible with their very essence—the force beyond the vortex was either rejecting them or attempting to assimilate them.
In Astraea’s eyes, this portal had been marked by multicolored divine light, and the gods’ intent couldn’t be clearer.
Taking Luo En’s hand—he too understood the deities’ will—the little elf and her knight stepped across the vortex portal in a single stride.
Lucius swung his sword mechanically, each cut sending a black-vapor creature’s head flying.
One, two, three… Though these creatures knew no fear of death, their strength was simply not on Lucius’s level.
Even with Lucius on the verge of collapse and fighting one-handed, they couldn’t break through his defense.
And Lucius, once as pure and holy as an angel, was now covered in black gore.
All he could do was stand in place and keep swinging. He’d nearly lost the ability to advance through the monster horde.
The only comfort he had was that Maximus, whom he gripped tightly, still breathed faintly.
His lungs burned, every breath sending agony through him. Lucius estimated he could barely lift his sword much longer.
How many more monsters could he kill? Hundreds? Thousands?
None of it mattered, because the monsters besieging him had already reached tens of thousands.
At this rate, the First Paladin of humanity would fall in this nameless place!
“Do you crave power?”
Lucius swung again, and a humanoid creature’s head flew from its shoulders.
He thought he heard something, but that was nothing strange. He was exhausted beyond measure; auditory hallucinations were common.
“Do you crave power?”
Lucius’s next swing took a goblin’s head.
Ah, goblins. He and Maximus had ended up in this situation because of those goblins in the Royal Capital Sewers.
“Do you crave power, or not?!”
The white-haired holy knight smiled. Though he could no longer squeeze any more strength from his towering frame, his smile remained beautiful and moving.
This wasn’t a hallucination. He understood now—something in this space between heaven and earth was indeed calling out, luring him.
The world fell silent. Lucius realized he could no longer hear the sounds of the monsters around him.
He looked down at the ground in bewilderment, realizing he was ascending.
But he did not answer that voice. The last dregs of holy light within his body allowed him to sense a hint of blasphemy in that call.
‘No!’
It wasn’t his body ascending—it was his soul!
The blasphemous existence high above, having received no answer, simply tore Lucius’s soul straight out of his body!
Lucius’s soul struggled desperately, but he was merely a great knight. How could he possibly struggle against such a blasphemous existence?
The human path of knighthood did not place much emphasis on strengthening the soul. Paladins under the holy light’s protection fared well enough, but Lucius couldn’t contact the All-Father now!
Relying only on the meager holy light protecting his soul, Lucius could only watch in despair as the distance between himself and that blasphemous existence above grew ever shorter.
Breaking through the dark clouds, Lucius finally caught sight of the existence that sought to extract his soul.
It had no true form—its body shifted constantly between the shapes of various races, and Lucius could sense all manner of complex auras from the ever-changing being.
“Submit… slaughter… eternal life… destruction… change…”