That was not the act of a berserk monster.
That was the instinct of an Exorcist working with an ally to escape a domain.
Those instincts were deeply rooted.
They told Valen that Saint Maverick and Judy were allies.
Which ant, in theory, that Valen would not use lethal force against them.
In theory.
Reality was far less forgiving.
The battle was brutal.
Valen moved like a natural disaster.
Every strike carried overwhelming force, even when he clearly restrained himself.
A backhand ant to push Saint Maverick away shattered the ground and sent his body skidding across broken stone.
Judy fired suppression pulses in controlled intervals, adjusting frequency every second.
"Evaluating resistance. Hostile output exceeds projection. Finding alternative solution," she said.
Her chanical calm did nothing to reduce the violence.
Saint Maverick blocked one blow and failed to fully deflect another.
His lower body was crushed under a descending mass of hardened blood, his armor folding inward with a screech of tal.
He tore himself free, only to have his right arm caught and pulverized monts later.
Pain registers scread through his systems, warnings overlapping.
By the ti Judy finally established a stable connection with Valen’s soul, Saint Maverick’s entire lower body was gone.
One arm hung useless, and all reconstruction materials had been expended.
There was no way to rebuild on the fly.
Judy fared worse.
Valen’s final sweep obliterated her fra completely.
tal, circuits, and reinforcent plating were torn apart in an instant.
Only her Core remained.
It rolled across the ground and ca to a stop near Saint Maverick, faintly glowing.
The part that housed her soul was intact.
Everything else was gone.
Valen stopped moving.
For the first ti since the fight began, there was stillness.
Runes rose into the air around Judy’s Core, forming a loose ring.
They flickered unevenly, but they held.
Judy could no longer speak aloud. Her speaker was gone. Her caras were destroyed.
But she could still communicate.
The runes pulsed.
Saint Maverick could not hear her words, but he could tell she was speaking to Valen’s soul directly.
Her mana output was minimal, barely enough to sustain the runic interface.
He stayed still, watching.
Above them, the air shifted.
A deep, oppressive pressure rolled across the domain.
The hamrs had begun to fall.
"Judy, ask Vampire King Prince to help us stop the hamrs. The Cursed Spirit God is attacking everyone," Saint Maverick said, forcing his voice to remain steady.
He knew she could not see.
He spoke clearly, feeding her information she could not gather on her own.
The runes flickered faster.
Saint Maverick counted the seconds in his head.
If the ssage did not get through soon, none of this would matter.
Then Valen moved.
He reached down, picked up Judy’s Core, and grabbed Saint Maverick with his other hand.
Blood burst from his back, forming crude wings that stretched wide.
They shot into the sky.
The sudden acceleration pressed Saint Maverick against Valen’s grip.
Below them, the city shrank rapidly.
From above, the situation was clear.
Nine hamrs were falling.
Each one was aid with precision.
’Soone found the lantern,’ Saint Maverick realized.
’And since exorcism is now possible, the Cursed Spirit God is trying to kill everyone before it happens.’
Five massive Blood Spears ford around Valen.
They were refined weapons.... is what Saint Maverick would’ve liked to say.
They were rough, uneven, and pulsed violently with condensed power.
The blood composing them churned constantly, as if struggling to remain stable.
Saint Maverick studied them quickly.
Only five spears.
"We have six groups on our side, and we have to protect the temple too," he muttered.
There were six groups to protect if he excluded the Cursed Spirits from New Order, who had betrayed them earlier.
And one hamr was aid at the temple itself.
If the temple was destroyed, the ritual could not even start.
’Vampire Prince is too exhausted.’
’He can’t make more blood spears than this,’ Saint Maverick thought grimly.
Valen could not form more spears.
Without a mouth, he could not chant or regulate his output properly.
Each spear needed enough power to destroy a hamr.
Splitting his strength further would make them useless.
Saint Maverick forced his thoughts into order.
’Valen can fly That ans we can dodge the hamr aid at us,’ he reasoned.
That left five spears for five targets.
But there were six things that needed saving.
Soone would be sacrificed.
His jaw tightened.
There was no ti to hesitate.
Saint Maverick activated his comm.
"Caelum¸ please confirm your coordinates," he said,
There was a brief pause.
"What?" Caelum replied.
"We will stop the hamrs. Now. Location. There isn’t enough ti," Saint Maverick said.
Caelum did not have a drone, and his location could not be tracked.
Saint Maverick needed to make sure he would save Caelum instead of the Cursed Spirits from New Order.
Another pause followed, shorter this ti.
"My location is near the forest strip behind the eastern market, close to the broken watchtower. Don’t save or the inn girl. Save the Cursed Spirits from New Order instead. Don’t worry about the temple either."
Saint Maverick did not argue.
"Understood," he said.
He cut the connection imdiately.
Turning his focus back to Judy, he began relaying coordinates out loud.
She could not hear the comms, but the runes around her Core reacted to his voice and intent.
"Three spears to the crewmate groups. Two to the Cursed Spirits from New Order."
The runes flickered sharply.
Judy processed the information.
"New directives received. Reassigning targets. Optimizing strike paths. Solution identified," she spoke in her mind.
The runes flared.
Valen raised his arm.
He swung it down.
The Blood Spears launched.
They cut through the air like red cots, leaving glowing trails behind them.
Each spear struck its target monts before impact.
Explosions tore through the sky.
Hamrs shattered.
Fragnts burned away before they could reach the ground.
Saint Maverick did not look back to confirm the results.
Valen was already moving, wings beating hard as he veered sharply to the side.
The hamr aid at them scread past, missing by ters, and slamd into the market below.
The shockwave rippled outward.
Saint Maverick closed his eyes for a brief mont.
He hoped Caelum had a plan.
For himself.
For the inn girl.
For the temple.
...
MC’s POV
Red lines stretched into the sky.
They were spears, tearing upward, eting the falling hamrs head-on.
The air shook in distant bursts, and fragnts burned out before they could reach the ground.
Before the hamr above could strike, I reached up and pulled out my earpiece comm. I crushed it in my palm.
"I don’t think this has a location tracker, but you can never be too sure."
I opened a portal and stepped through.
A mont later, I was standing at the temple.
The hamr ant for this place was already falling.
The temple sat on top of a mountain, exposed, with nowhere to hide and no structure strong enough to endure a direct hit.
For the first ti since the hamrs appeared, I raised my head fully.
It was enormous.
Calling it a hamr almost felt wrong.
It was more like a piece of the sky itself, torn loose and shaped into a weapon.
Just looking at it made my stomach twist.
My vision blurred slightly, and a dull, throbbing pain spread behind my eyes.
Sothing like that shouldn’t exist.
"Yuna, the ti limit on the cursecraft the inn girl used on is up, right?"
"Yes, Lord of Shadows," Yuna replied imdiately.
I nodded.
I was under two effects.
One was Yuna’s skill, which amplified both my good luck and my bad luck.
The other was the curse the inn girl had placed on .
It had taken an entire week’s worth of my bad luck and compressed it into thirty minutes.
That was why everything had gone wrong at once. Why the enemies found the lantern first. Why the hamrs were falling now.
But there was a reason I asked her to place the curse on .
’Now that the curse has ended, all my bad luck for this week has already been spent.’
Which ant—
’I only have good luck left.’
I activated my Hollow Eyes and turned my gaze toward Dante.
The hamr descended steadily, its presence crushing the air around the temple.
Stone creaked beneath my feet.
When the hamr was only a few hundred ters away, I spoke.
"Dante, release combat form."
He reached into his uniform and pressed a hidden button.
The fabric was pulled inward, vanishing into storage, and his true form was revealed.
Dante’s true form was never the sa for everyone.
What you saw depended on you.
Right now, he was being influenced by my luck.
Which ant that the form the Cursed Spirit God in the sky would see would be the one most favorable to .
And I could see it.
Through my Hollow Eyes, Dante’s form began to warp.
His shape twisted and changed.
From the perspective of the Cursed Spirit God, a simple eldritch horror ford.
Mud.
Sothing formless, endless, and impossible to grasp.
Dante began to grow.
And grow.
His body expanded past the temple walls, past the mountain itself.
His limbs thickened, stretching upward until he was larger than the peak he stood on.
Until he was large enough to et the falling hamr.
A shockwave burst outward as Dante caught it.
Both of his hands slamd into the hamr’s underside, stopping it mid-descent.
The impact sent a violent tremor through the mountain.
I felt the ground dip beneath my feet.
A low grunt escaped Dante’s lips.
The Cursed Spirit God in the sky responded instantly.
The pressure increased.
The hamr pushed downward with greater force.
Dante’s knees bent.
The hamr began to move again, inch by inch, pressing closer to the temple.
He couldn’t stop it completely.
But he had slowed it.
By a lot.
I asured the descent with my eyes, calculating the rate at which it was moving.
’I have about five minutes before the hamr reaches the temple.’
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