Aslan gripped the handle of the double-headed axe, precisely the handle connecting to the blade.
The banshee was charging at Aslan with all its might. Its speed wasn’t slow enough for him to draw his axe and swing it in defense.
Quite substantial speed. He would certainly take a hit before being able to pull out his axe. That would be the case for an ordinary warrior.
But Aslan was no ordinary warrior.
“Shadow Flip.”
At the whispered command in his mind, the shadow swirling beneath Aslan’s feet vanished. Seeing the shadow disappear cleanly, Ereta flinched, while Angie lifted her six-foot staff.
Swish!
The Shadow Flip was a two-hit strike that transcended cognition. There was no starting point for that combo. Only the result remained.
Even without drawing a weapon, even if he couldn’t swing one due to his stance, it happened in an instant like shadows thickening under the descending sunlight—two attacks were launched.
That was the Shadow Flip.
The technique erupted from Aslan’s hands.
The problem was that physical attacks were not particularly effective against the banshee.
With a stance that suggested he had already swung his axe, the daughter of sorrow, her body scattered by two strikes, reformed again. Their eyes met.
“Did it not work after all?”
In those eyes, there was neither fear nor sense of crisis. Only a chilling malice was felt.
Aslan clicked his tongue as light erupted from the tattoo that climbed up to his shoulder.
One of the effective means of attack against a banshee was attributes. Fortunately, Aslan had a magic that could grant attributes—Metal Heating—stored within his tattoo.
The issue was that Metal Heating was not strong enough to be used solely for attribute granting.
As a named banshee, she possessed a greater physical resistance than normal banshees. Aslan couldn’t be sure if Metal Heating would be enough to defeat such a foe.
“But other measures…”
At that moment, Ereta, who was glancing back, came into his view, and an idea flashed in Aslan’s mind.
[!!饮捶岺!!’s effect?]
[It can sever the connection between the deity and the priest.]
[As long as the user’s will remains, it will not extinguish.]
[怨좊?邑좎쓽 賃섏뿉 恁몄쓳壬섏뿬 淫깆옣壬⑸땲宥ｌ]
A technique that could sever the connection between a deity and a priest suddenly came to mind.
Its name was unrecognizable, its effects dubious, unclear who gifted it or how he obtained it—the source of that power was ambiguous.
But the technique had definitively severed the link between Ereta and her deity.
Aslan focused on that point.
The connection between a deity and priest was not something that could be severed physically.
If it could be severed physically, then there would be no need for such struggle.
Clearly, that nameless technique must act on something non-physical.
Aslan’s eyes moved quickly. He acknowledged the incoming banshee and retrieved the axe he had put aside.
He gripped it immediately, concentrating on the sensation he had felt when transforming Ereta into a human. The otherworldly vitality resonating from within him.
Something existing beyond mana.
As soon as he felt that sensation, he drew it forth. Having become accustomed to harnessing the intangible forces within him due to mana, his response came instantly.
Fwoosh!
At last, the axe’s blade ignited with a white glow. It was alight with light, not heat.
It was the time of validation.
The moment Aslan lifted the brightly burning axe, the staggering priest raised his head sharply.
“Grrrraaah!”
And then he charged with a shriek.
A sudden rush. From the gash in his side, blood and entrails plummeted with a splattering sound. Seeing that scene, Angie cursed.
“What the hell…!”
Aslan saw the priest approaching late and grimaced as he lowered the axe he had raised.
He planned to swing it broadly to either push back or cleave through both the priest and the banshee.
Ereta stood behind Aslan, gripping two daggers, while Angie swung her six-foot staff.
But before them, the banshee acted first. The woman-like specter, twisting in midair, spiraled toward the charging priest.
Pash!
It slammed its hand into him.
The hand stained a sickly green pierced through his chest.
The priest’s heart, pushed out by the claws, dropped with a thud to the ground.
The heart, rolling on the floor, throbbed with the same colored blood and corroded the ground beneath. The priest stared wide-eyed and groaned.
“Ugh…”
With a stench of burning flesh, the priest was dying, blood gurgling from his mouth.
“What is… this?”
A named banshee, a dungeon boss serving the god of sorrow and death, the daughter of sorrow.
That monster stood still, having pierced through the priest’s chest.
Even as Angie’s earlier attack failed to retract, the banshee remained unmoving.
Aslan frowned, unable to grasp the situation, while Angie awkwardly pulled back her staff.
The banshee gazed at Aslan with a grotesquely rotting, twisted face that bore little resemblance to a human. The lifeless priest hung from its arm, swaying as it did.
This was a situation utterly unimaginable in-game. While trying to understand, Aslan saw the daughter of sorrow extend a hand.
And with the remaining half of its index finger, it pointed at the axe.
To be precise, it pointed at Aslan’s brightly burning axe.
“Huh, what?”
In response to Aslan’s question, the banshee quietly reversed its outstretched finger to point at its own head.
Drawing a line with its finger across its own brow.
“Are you asking me to kill you…?”
“It looks that way…”
The banshee smiled as though that was the correct answer.
With a hideous face, it raised its rotten cheeks, stretching its lips in a wide grin.
A terrifying sight that sent chills down his spine, yet despite Aslan’s clear grimace, the banshee only hung its head silently.
The banshee had no sign of threat in its odd behavior. Aslan, watching the monster, approached.
Seeing him approach the monster defenseless, Angie gasped.
“Aslan? Are you serious?”
“Yeah. It feels suspicious, but it’s actually a good thing.”
He couldn’t grasp the situation. He didn’t know its intentions. He had never heard of a monster wanting to die.
Such a creature couldn’t rightly be called alive, nor could it fit the category of life now that it was a specter, yet it was behaving counter to its very nature.
Nevertheless, Aslan lifted his axe, aiming it at the banshee’s head.
Normally, this would be an adversary he would have to fight with great difficulty. Though not as formidable as Ereta, the daughter of sorrow was still a dungeon boss that needed to be defeated later in the main quest.
With its high physical resistance, effective attacks only possible through attributes, and aggressive combat style, it would surely be a formidable foe.
If he could handle such an enemy in advance, and so easily, it wouldn’t be a loss.
Rather, it would be a gain.
Even if there were plans behind it, Aslan judged that the potential benefits outweighed the risks of such a ploy.
Behind that judgment was another thought.
Since he couldn’t grasp the situation, he thought it would be reasonable to play along with whatever plan this monster had to some extent.
Lowering the axe he had aimed at the banshee’s head, he gripped the axe’s blade again.
Even though there was noise accompanying the motion, the banshee remained quietly bowed with its head down.
“…Should I do it, Aslan?”
Ereta, who had been silent until now, approached, perhaps thinking Aslan was hesitating, and asked.
In response, Aslan gently shook his head.
This was a task that Aslan, who possessed the technique to sever the connection between the deity and the priest, had to undertake. Hesitating over whether this was indeed the right plan, he lifted his axe.
With a crack!
And then, he brought it down.
The descending axe split the banshee’s head, still burning white. The blade plunged deep into the half-split head, and this time, the divided head of the banshee shattered into dust, without rejoining, wearing a smile.
`This feeling is…?!`
The head slowly turned to dust from the top down. As the banshee’s body disintegrated, something fluffy appeared in the place it used to occupy.
An intangible something that held no form.
A dim light invisible to the naked eye.
Aslan realized that the light resembled the feeling of the unidentified technique he had just used on the axe blade.
It felt the same as using the technique on the axe blade.
What remained after severing the connection between deity and priest, or perhaps something that could even sever the connection itself.
Aslan intuited.
`…Divine Power…?`
Crack, crackle.
The moment Aslan understood, the divine power remaining at the site where the axe had struck began to crack.
A fissure appeared, slowly revealing itself. The way it revealed itself was through light. Light was flowing forth.
Is it self-detonation? Aslan thought, but it didn’t seem like that. The light held no heat, nor any common pressure to affect the human body.
Yet it was unsettling. Seeing the unsettling storm, Angie spoke.
“Something seems strange…”
Then, the glowing emission stopped abruptly.
Boom!
Suddenly, it overflowed like water, filling the space like a flood.
*
“…Ugh.”
Angie opened her eyes. When she opened them, she saw nothing.
“What is this?”
Am I closing my eyes? The girl thought, blinking. Then the darkness changed subtly.
When her eyes closed, there was nothing like an afterimage drifting in the dim darkness; when she opened them, there was merely pitch black.
Only then did the girl realize that what she was seeing was something very black.
“What’s here…?”
The girl realized she was lying down and then belatedly got up.
What lay before her was something she had never seen before.
An invisible black floor, black sky, black walls.
The stark sense of dying devoid of perspective conveyed only the odd space of incomprehensibility, one that she could not possibly recognize.
`Why am I here?`
The girl looked around for some time. No change came even after looking around. Even if she turned her body, it felt like she would forget where she had originally been looking in that unified black space.
`Something had clearly burst forth…`
There was a light she could not identify flowing forth, and the girl, caught in it, lost consciousness momentarily.
Having lost her consciousness, she arrived here. The girl, Angie, found that puzzling.
“Hey! Aslan! That crazy woman! Is anyone there?!”
Even as she yelled, there was no response to her words, nor did they resonate. In the stark emptiness devoid of everything, she frowned. She almost looked like she was about to cry.
“What in the world is happening?”
A creeping anxiety and fear grew. With no one witnessing it, she couldn’t pretend to be brave, and so the girl walked around anxiously, looking into the unknown.
Even her steps felt uncertain. While her violated senses conveyed that she was walking, the view wouldn’t change, making her stomach churn.
“Damn it… I hate this kind of stuff…”
After a brief exploration brought no change, the girl gathered a single tear at the corner of her eye.
Thud!
“Ow.”
Something tapped her on the head, causing her to stop.
What hit her was light and small. A jingling sound did echo, but it didn’t seem like a weapon.
The girl raised her head to look at the object that had dropped from the sky, and finding nothing but black, lowered her head again.
It was something square.
Instinctively, the girl picked up the object that had fallen to the ground. She felt the texture of leather, and there was a gap over the bumpy surface that seemed almost instinctive to open.
The square object that she opened would have been recognized as a wallet by Aslan.
Inside the opened wallet were several rectangular objects and some paper.
“Uh…? Aslan?”
Among those rectangles, something thin caught the girl’s eye.
[Student ID]
[Lee Hyun-woo]
[30316]
“Uh, no? Something’s different…”
The rectangular object bore a striking resemblance to Aslan, but somehow different.
The eyes were black, looking a little healthier, somewhat frailer.
“Aslan…? Hey, respond!”
Angie tilted her head and turned the ID over, shook it, and banged on it. However, the picture of Aslan only smiled and showed no movement.
Seeing Aslan’s unresponsive, smiling picture, the girl’s eyes welled up with tears.
“Are you trapped? Damn, I don’t know much about magic…”
Just when she was starting to consider everything to be something magical, light shone down.
With a presence accompanying it, the light dampened around the girl’s ankle. It was an artificial light she had never experienced in her life.
In that artificial light, towering buildings emerged through the cracks in the black space.
“What’s going on?”
Angie hesitated for a moment before walking into the light.
