The interior of the building was covered in darkness.
“Keep your eyes peeled open….”
Neo stopped speaking when he sensed a presence behind him.
He turned around only to find nothing.
“W-what is it?” Nathan questioned.
“…”
Before Neo could answer, he sensed another presence rushing at him.
Something came out of the wall.
It was the face of a woman with hollow cheek and empty eye sockets.
The woman smiled.
She giggled and disappeared back into the wall.
“Stay sharp!” Neo shouted.
Arthur and Sean took out their weapons.
Suddenly, a hand came out of the floor and grabbed Sean’s neck.
It smashed his face into the floor before disappearing into the wall.
A leg came out of the roof to flatten Sean’s neck.
Arthur arrived at the nick of the time and slashed at the leg.
He planned to cut off the monster’s limb only to find his dagger passing through the leg as if it was air.
The leg returned to where it came from.
“Huh?”
“It’s a wraith. It can make its body tangible and intangible at wish.
“Our attacks won’t connect if it sees them coming.”
Neo’s words made Arthur frown.
“Intangibility? Isn’t that too overpowered?”
“Not really,” Neo answered.
He helped Sean stand.
“You okay?”
“Cough! Y-yes, I was just caught off guard.”
“Good, let’s keep moving.”
The wraith kept harassing them on their way to the Corner.
Whenever they would try to attack, it would make its body intangible and their attacks would pass through its body harmlessly.
Leonora woke up.
She groaned and tried to move.
“Let’s take a break,” Neo said.
They sat at the center of a long corridor.
Neo put down Leonora carefully.
He gave her a bottle of water.
Giving her another recovery elixir, even if it was weaker, was lethal in her current condition.
“Thank you.”
She gulped down the water with trembling arms.
“Neo, the wraith…. Is it okay to sit like this when it can attack us at any moment?” Arthur asked.
“Yeah, it’s fine. Look at this.”
Neo pointed at the ground.
The Darkness beneath his feet was not normal.
Arthur realized they were inside the Coffin of Darkness.
“Monsters follow their instincts.
“The wraith won’t try to attack us through the Coffin of Darkness.”
“Isn’t it hard to maintain something like this for a long time?”
“It is. That’s why I used it only when we had to rest.”
As he answered, Sean spoke up,
“What… what are we doing?
“We’ve been walking for over two hours and we haven’t reached the Corner.
“I should’ve never accepted this mission.
“My sister died and now even I will die, stuck in a damned place that is making us walk in the same place over and over.”
He started to cry.
His voice cracked.
“We aren’t stuck in a loop. We are moving forward.
“It’s just that this ‘space’ couldn’t bear the weight of high amount of elemental leaking from Corner and it ended up being stretched,” Neo explained.
“No! We are in a loop! Can’t you see we’ve been walking in the same corridor!”
“S-Sean, calm down. Shouting will just tire you out.”
Arthur intervened.
He tried to pat Sean’s back, but Sean swatted his hand away and glared at him.
‘Sean is beginning to lose his cool,” Neo thought.
While he was thinking of how to improve the mood of the group, he felt a tug.
Leonora was holding the end of his sleeve.
“…?”
“I’ll deal with the wraith and the Corner.”
Neo frowned.
Leonora, although awake, was in no condition to fight.
She had recovered only a small portion of her Divine Energy.
Her eyes were shaking, unable to focus, and her breaths were short.
“You should rest. We can deal with it ourselves—”
“N-no,” she said as she tried to stand. “The Shadows can return at any moment. Trying to close the Corner while dealing with them will cost us greatly.
“Open the Coffin of Darkness.”
Her gaze was firm.
She used the wall as a support and waited for him.
Neo knew his words wouldn’t change her mind.
He sighed and released the Darkness.
The giggles of wraith returned.
“H-hold your breath,” she said.
The group followed her instructions before she chanted a Spell.
A cry of a whale echoed when suddenly cracks started to appear on the walls.
Water leaked into the corridor through the cracks.
The flow increased.
Like a dam had burst, the corridor was flooded within seconds.
A whip of water held everyone by the waist.
The Grim Reaper’s giggles turned into the screams of banshee.
It came out of the wall.
The monster was no longer smiling.
It tried to attack Leonora.
However, it couldn’t touch her since it had turned intangible to avoid being blown away by the strong water currents.
The wraith pulled at its hair.
Its scream turned into cries when the building started to break.
Cancelling its intangibility, it lunged at Leonora only to get smashed into the wall by a powerful surge of water.
The wraith wailed as the wall beneath it cracked.
It was crushed to death before it could reactivate the intangibility.
Leonora stopped chanting the Spell.
She triggered another Spell.
The water stopped leaking into the building and it began to turn into the mist.
“Cough! Cough!”
Nathan and Sean doubled over.
Their faces were red from holding their breath for too long.
“Couldn’t you have used an air bubble to let us breath?” Nathan asked as he huffed.
“I haven’t learned that Spell.”
“Why?”
“Cause all of my Clanmates can breathe underwater.”
Nathan flinched when Leonora mentioned her Clanmates.
He looked away.
While they talked, Neo devoured the wraith’s corpse.
[Reflex +2]
He approached Leonora.
“How are you feeling now?”
“I’m o-okay.”
It felt wrong to see Leonora, known for her laziness, push through pain and exhaustion to fight the monsters.
Neo didn’t comment on it and instead told them to continue towards the Corner.
After the wraith died, it was easy for them to move around.
The corridors ended after a long walk and they reached a hall.
There, at the center, was a crack in the air.
Shadow elementals rushed out of it at great speed.
“…”
Neo took out a circular object.
He pressed the button on it and threw it towards the Corner.
The sphere exploded into white sticky substance and covered the crack — the Corner — like a cap.
He pressed the earpiece. freёweɓnovel.com
“We have secured the Corner at the west-side.
“Team 2, report your progress.”
There was a short silence before the earpiece crackled to life and Lucas’ voice flowed through it.
“We need another hour.”
“Got it.”
The group sat in the empty area of the hall.
“Won’t there be more monsters here? I doubt the wraith was the only one,” Arthur questioned.
He looked at Neo.
Neo turned to Leonora.
“M-my attack took them out and R-ruby is guarding the building’s perimeter.”
She pulled her hoodie down and tried to suppress her irregular breathing while she answered.
Her face was pale and she was sweating heavily.
“I don’t think any monster can sneak in here, so w-we should be safe.”
Arthur’s brow furrowed when he heard her.
“What about my Shadow and Lucas’ Shadow?”
“Don’t worry about them,” Neo said.
Neo was covering the hall’s floor with Darkness.
It worked as an impromptu detector.
“I will sense your Shadow as soon as it steps into the hall even if it’s invisible.
“As for Lucas’ Shadow, it can create portals only at places within its visible range.
“The hall is empty and open. It won’t be able to catch us by surprise here.”
His words put them at the ease.
They took a rest until they received an answer from Lucas.
Neo’s earpiece rang.
“We’ve secured the Corner.”
“Good job.”
He heard Lucas cough.
“Now what are we going to do?
“To close the Window, we have to destroy all three Corners at the same time.
“These Stasis Bombs are just a stopgap method.”
Lucas exhaled as he continued.
“The third Corner must be at another Depth Level.
“Who will stay behind and who will go ahead?”
They had to make sure the seal on the Corners was not lifted by the monsters.
And someone had to stay behind and destroy the two Corners at Depth Level 2 when the others destroyed the third Corner.
Neo looked at Nathan.
“They aren’t at Depth Level 2,” Nathan answered.
‘So the Shadows are waiting for us at Depth Level 3 where the last Corner is,’ Neo thought.
The Shadows wanted to fight them after they split into smaller group.
He understood this.
However, they could not all go to the third Corner.
….
Author’s Note:
Thank you to all my readers. It’s been fun to write Hades’ Son and we’ve recently hit 100 chapters mark.
It’s something I could do only because of all my readers who read daily or returned to read the chaps every few days.
With thanks out of the way, I want to talk about ‘Trivia’ section I’m going to start.
After writing 100k words, I’ve noticed I can’t put all information in the novel even if it will add to the world building (since it’s not needed or is useless).
From today, I’ll add ‘Trivia’ to reveal these little world building snippets I’ve been cutting out of the novel.
Trivia #1:
Arthur’s Shadow spoke the name of the Unique Skills since it enhances the effect of the skills.
Mimicked skills and Spells are weaker than the original thus calling out their names to strengthen them is important. It allows the Shadows to use attacks as strong as the original.
(The next Trivia will be all in Author’s Thought and not in the chapter. Make sure to check Author’s Thoughts regularly.)