Chapter 69: Prelude!
The air around the Gate of Grudge thickened drastically, the mangroves surrounding it beginning to wither rapidly as black ichor dripped from the elongated blades where its hands should’ve been, and from one crooked branch, a body hung unnaturally still, dressed in crimson priest robes, its face obscured by shadow.
Then the monster moved, its head turning with a creek as it stared at Albedo.
"Who dares disturb the Gate of Grudge?"
Albedo didn’t flinch at its words, wielding Havoc and Ruin as he readied for battle, "Your nemesis," he responded to the monster.
The corpse laughed, a horrible, warbling sound that echoed in both the air and in his mind. Its limbs snapped backward as if its bones had reversed. Then it fell from the tree... but did not land.
Instead, it hovered midair, its spine elongating, limbs stretching into blade-like tendrils, its priestly robes fusing into flowing tatters of spirit-fire. Its face remained veiled in shadow, but its aura twisted like a cyclone of wrath and malice.
"Domain Expansion: Memory Graveyard!"The creature roared, and the entire marsh darkened extensively.
From the twisted roots of nearby trees, pale hands began to rise, bodies forming from mud and memory.
Spectral warriors in ruined armor with hollow eyes. Their bodies were only half-formed. Phantoms of a thousand regrets, called forth from the swamp’s grudge-laden soil.
More and more appeared until it was a full blown horde. Albedo dived into a roll, clicking Havoc into Infernal and Ruin into Graviton mode as he fired.
~BANG~BANG!~
A bullet of crimson apocalypse flames exploded mid air, raining down fire like a meteor. The closest three specters were caught in the blast, their incorporeal forms bursting into shrieking sparks
At the same time, Ruin’s shot pulsed with compressed gravity. It curved through the air unnaturally before striking the ground beneath five others, pulling them inward violently into a collapsing black sphere.
"Crimson Eruption!" He casted, and an eruption of flames appeared right in the middle of the black sphere, burning all of the Spectral Warriors down instantly.
~GRUNT!~
More of them were still coming however, grunting as they felt the environmental impact of Albedo’s attacks.
Albedo flipped backward, twin barrels glowing. He crossed the pistols in front of him, then uncrossed, shooting in perfect rhythm, fire and gravity converging in deadly arcs as he mowed down attacker after attacker.
"Solar Annihilation," Albedo casted, and six miniature flame suns appeared around him, before immediately hurling themselves at the spectral warriors.
~BOOM~BOOM!~
As soon as the first orb hit, it caused a gigantic explosion, vaporizing everything around it, and causing a chain reaction that caused the other orbs to all explode, burning a monstrous amount of the environment with heat so intense it left molten craters.
"ROARRR!" The monster roared and spawned more creatures, keeping the endless horde of monsters coming.
However, a variety of the monsters injured themselves just trying to attack Albedo, as they had to walk through the ignited floor from the Solar Annihilation.
During all of this, Albedo kept moving quickly, dodging a leaping revenant with a side twist, and unloading a point-black into its skull with a double tap from both Havoc and Ruin.
One shot burned it from within. The other pulled its exploding core into two more nearby.
The Sentinel howled above, still watching, then opened its chest cavity, revealing a twisted altar of bone and cursed mirrors. A pulse erupted outward.
[ Curse of Reflection: Activated! ]
Suddenly, one of the specters wore not only Albedo’s face, but also his stance and his weapons. It was replicating all his movements, trying to be just as fast and efficient, like a dark doppelgänger.
It leapt forward, copying his combat pattern, but Albedo could quickly see the flaws in this copy.
He dropped low as the doppelgänger fired both pistols, Infernal and Graviton shots screaming past his shoulders. He countered with a spinning roll, kicking up a burst of mud as he switched Ruin to Mana-Drain Mode.
Their barrels shimmered as he aimed, the clone blinking but it was just way too late.
He shot Ruin directly into a phantom trying to flank him, siphoning the mana as it disintegrated, and redirected that flow into a chained burst from Havoc.
The Infernal bullets carving their way through the clone’s shoulder and igniting a ravenous flame that could never be put out, it was just too painful.
"AAAAHHHHHHH!"
The dark doppelgänger screamed painfully, and even the scream mimicked Albedo’s voice.
Albedo scowled, "You poor imitation."
The doppelgänger vanished, only to reappear behind him, trying to mirror his movement again, but Albedo wasn’t interested in playing tag.
He fired both pistols straight down.
[ Firepath Technique: Twin Serpent Recoil. ]
The ground erupted in twin jets, one of fire, one of force, and the combined detonation launched him skyward, flipping through the air above the battlefield. The revenants howled below, scrambling to follow.
Suspended high above the battlefield, Albedo hung in freefall for just a moment, time stretching thin like the pull of gravity was hesitating to reclaim him.
Below him, the battlefield was a theater of carnage. Firestorms still raged across the molten floor, spectral corpses howled as they melted, and the Sentinel’s altar-heart pulsed like a beating wound in the air.
The mirror altar continued summoning clones and curses, the entire domain trembling like it was barely holding together as everything was up in absolute flames.
His eyes snapped to the doppelgänger, which was sprinting across the twisted branches of a nearby tree, copying his Serpent Recoil technique to launch itself into the air.
"You’re a cheap trick," Albedo whispered mid-flight, twisting both pistols as he readied himself to put down the doppelgänger for good.
His body spun once midair as he aligned the barrels, then,
~BOOM~BOOM~BOOM!~
Albedo fired three times, rotating between guns like an unholy metronome of death. The first shot struck the clone mid-chest. A gout of flame exploded outward, igniting its robes in searing red fire.
The second was from Ruin, striking a nearby phantom, ripping its essence apart in a vortex that instantly fed back into Albedo’s core, boosting his mana reserves.
And the third shot? The third shot broke the sky.
Havoc’s Infernal round detonated right behind the clone, catching it mid-air as it tried to dodge.
The clone twisted in agony, eyes wide, identical to Albedo’s own, as flames burst from within its body, liquefying the false flesh and melting the mirrored soul.
"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"
Its death cry was not just one voice, it was dozens if not hundreds of voices combined. All the regrets of the ones who had came here before Albedo and died gruesomely, all of them combined for a scream as they died once again.
The clone exploded in a burst of white flame and black smoke, scattering like ash into the sky.
Albedo landed hard, his boots cracking the scorched earth. He slid backward on molten rock, then rose into a crouch, both pistols leveled. The battlefield had stilled for just a breath, but only a breath.
Because the Revenant Sentinel had descended.
It landed like a meteor, twisting the ground around it into jagged spirals. Its blade-arms scraped the ground with a sound like grinding bone, and its exposed chest-cavity, where the shattered altar still pulsed, began to glow with cursed energy.
"ENOUGH," it roared.
"You’re right," Albedo whispered, "Time to end this."
He didn’t wait.
Mana flared behind his eyes as he cast another spell.
[ Arcane Art: Ashen Blinkstep ]
He vanished mid-lunge, only reappearing behind the Sentinel in a puff of crimson red flames.
~BOOM~BOOM!~
A shot from Ruin struck its left shoulder, cracking its spirit bone where as Havoc fired a flaming arc into the monster’s exposed spine.
The Sentinel roared and spun, swinging a massive tendril-blade at his ribs, but Albedo was already sliding beneath the strike, flipping backward with a midair twist. He fired both pistols again during the spin, creating a crossfire of flames and gravity.
Then he cast again,
[ Flame Technique: Dragon Maw ]
A massive jaw of fire surged upward from the ground, chomping down on the Sentinel’s midsection and holding it in place and igniting its entire body, leaving the sentinel screeching in pain.
Albedo charged, pistols crackling, coat fluttering behind him like wings of ash. With a forward lunge, he fired point-blank into the Sentinel’s heart.
One, Two & Three!
Three shots was all it took to put the creature down for good. The altar inside the creature fractured. A final scream, not one of anger, but of loss and release, erupted from its chest like a bell tolling the end of an era.
And then the Sentinel collapsed, its body disintegrating into shards of bone, mirror, and flame. Its domain began to shatter.
The darkness lifted.
The warped sky cracked open, revealing once more the ashen gray clouds above the Howling Marsh. The whispers faded. The earth exhaled. The Domain Graveyard around him had completely disappeared.
Now Albedo stood amidst a silent battlefield, no monsters around him, and from where the Sentinel had fallen, all he could see was a pulsing soft silver glow,
He approached slowly, Havoc and Ruin still in hand, until he saw it.
A compass.
Elegant, forged of bone and obsidian, its center spinning faintly with a silver flame that burned without heat. The pointer didn’t aim north. It pointed toward something far older. Far deeper.
When he picked it up, it hummed.
A soft voice echoed from the compass, not hostile, not kind, just old.
"Seek the Weeping Catacombs beneath Hollowglass Ridge. The First Key lies buried beneath a grief no time has healed."
Then silence as he heard the voice, tucking the compass back into his coat and sighing with frustration and annoyance.
"So this was just the prelude..." he muttered, thinking.
In the Novel, all it said was the first key would be located here, but it seems that wasn’t the truth, here was just where the location of the first key would be found.
As for where the Weeping Catacombs was located? It would be within the Demon Kingdom, meaning all 3 keys were actually located there.
"Seems this Novel gets less and less true the more I explore this world," Albedo muttered, looking back at the battlefield, at the scarred trees and melted corpses.
Then, he quickly planned to leave and take the return sigil back to the Crimson Hollow.
He’ll have to walk South of the Crimson Hollow for around 2 days before arriving at the next stop, which would finally give him a clear path for reaching the Demon Kingdom.
And, by extension, a clear path towards the first key necessary to locating Seraphyne.
He holstered his pistols, eyes narrowed as he vanished towards the dark edge of the marsh.
***
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