Chapter 187
Daniel moved swiftly toward the looming factory, his boots hammering against the fractured stone of the industrial district. The ground itself seemed to resist him, trembling with unnatural pulses as if the very street was the heartbeat of something vast stirring beneath. Overhead, the floating illumination artifacts burned with steady brilliance, their radiant glow chasing away the suffocating dark. The night sky should have been black, yet under that enchantment it was painted in false daylight like a haunting midday that refused to let the shadows fully claim the ruins.
The industrial district stretched out before him in jagged silhouettes: skeletal smokestacks clawing at the sky, conveyor belts snapped and twisted like the bones of some colossal beast, and rust-streaked iron walls towering on either side of the main avenue. Shattered glass glittered across the road, catching the light of the hovering orbs, scattering it into a thousand fractured reflections. Every building whispered of decay, the air thick with the ghost of oil and ash.
As Daniel advanced, the vibrations grew stronger. A deep rumble coursed through the metal frames of the factories, sending showers of rust down from ancient pipes. Shadows writhed behind the broken windows, stretching unnaturally long as if something inside pressed against the boundaries of the world itself. Each tremor shook loose more fragments of steel, which clanged and rang in discordant echoes like a warning bell.
The atmosphere was suffocating. Despite the false brightness above, the streets bled with an eerie gloom, corners warped by the creeping presence of the Warden. The closer Daniel drew to the factory, the more the air seemed to bend, heavy with static, every breath tasting faintly of iron and rot. The illusions of safety that the artifacts provided only heightened the surreal terror daylight above, yet the world below unraveling into a nightmare.
And then came the sound. A hollow, thunderous clang from within the factory walls, reverberating through the entire district. The chains rattled, an iron chorus, deep and uneven. It was not just the building groaning with age it was the Warden awakening.
Daniel did not slow. His eyes narrowed, every sense sharpened. The battlefield ahead was clear to him: a labyrinth of broken machinery, skeletal catwalks, and smoke-choked courtyards. A graveyard of industry that would soon become the Warden's stage.
Daniel slipped into the shadow of the factory, his steps silent but deliberate. The massive iron doors groaned at the slightest touch, their hinges shrieking like dying things, but he forced his way through the gap. Inside, the air shifted—thicker, denser, as if the building itself was holding its breath.
The factory's interior was a cathedral of rust and ruin. Towers of machinery loomed like monuments to a dead age, gears the size of wagons frozen in place, catwalks hanging broken above bottomless pits of darkness. Steam hissed in ghostly bursts from ruptured pipes, clouding the light from the floating artifacts outside and draping the interior in a pall of shifting fog. Every corner groaned, every chain quivered, every shadow writhed in anticipation.
Daniel's hand tightened on his blade, his senses spreading outward, probing the oppressive dark. He could feel it now—the pulse of something vast and malevolent deeper inside, like a heart beating beneath the metal skin of the world. The Warden.
He moved forward, step after step, weaving between shattered machines and collapsed scaffolding, when...
"Daniel."
The voice cut through the silence, soft but steady, a ripple across the storm.
He froze, his blade angled low but ready, eyes scanning the shadows. Out from between two collapsed steel girders stepped a figure he knew well. Melgil.
Her cloak was torn, streaked with ash, her hair damp with sweat and clinging to her face. She looked at him with that same sharp steadiness that always carried a question and a challenge.
"You really mean to face it alone?" she asked, her voice quiet but carrying in the stillness. Her eyes flicked past him, toward the deeper blackness where chains rattled like distant thunder. "The Warden isn't just another monster. You know that. It won't just break your body—it will break your mind. Even you."
Her words echoed in the hollow belly of the factory, mixing with the distant groans of awakening metal.
Daniel didn't turn his head. His eyes stayed fixed on the dark ahead, though a flicker of tension passed his jaw. "I expected you'd show up," he said evenly. "But I don't have time to argue. The longer we wait, the more it wakes. And if it fully wakes…"
The ground trembled beneath them, dust raining down from above. Somewhere in the depths, something massive shifted, dragging chains like mountains grinding together.
"…then everyone out there dies," Daniel finished.
Melgil stepped closer, her boots crunching on shattered glass. The faint blue glow of her weapon pulsed against the gloom, spilling ripples of light that danced across rusted steel beams and shattered gears. Her voice, sharp and unyielding, cut through the heavy silence.
"And if you fall in here alone? What then? They'll never stand a chance without you. That thing will tear through the barrier, through their sleep, through their minds." Her tone hardened, her eyes burning into him with a fire that refused to be dimmed. "You're not the only one who can fight. Stop carrying this weight like you're the only one strong enough to hold it."
She lifted her chin, her voice rising, echoing against the hollow ribs of the factory. "Have you forgotten who I am?"
The glow of her weapon flared, casting her in pale azure fire as she took another step forward. "My domain lies only days from this cursed city. The Twin Peaks of Karion—mountains crowned in eternal snow, their spires so high they scrape the heavens themselves. From here, even in the heart of this broken empire, you can see their silhouette piercing the horizon."
Her eyes gleamed with pride, fierce and unshakable. "That is my home. My bloodline runs deeper than these ruins, older than this empire's walls. Long before these streets were carved, my ancestors walked the ridges of Karion, binding storms and bending frost to their will. That legacy is mine, Daniel. I will not stand aside while you alone dare the Defiler's shadow."
The words lingered like thunder in the cavernous dark. Above them, a chain snapped loose with a deafening crack, slamming into the steel floor with enough force to shatter stone. Dust plumed around them, and the factory itself seemed to groan in acknowledgment of her vow.
Daniel and Melgil pressed deeper into the bowels of the factory. The path spiraled downward, iron stairwells groaning beneath their weight, each step echoing like a drumbeat against the hollow lungs of the ruin. The air thickened with every descent, growing damp and acrid, stinking of rust, oil, and something fouler rot that was not natural, a stench that clung like tar to their lungs.
The floating artifact light above could no longer pierce this depth. Down here, the only illumination came from the faint blue of Melgil's weapon and the thin arc of electricity sparking along Daniel's hand. Together their light carved narrow tunnels of visibility through the abyss. Around them, shadows clung to rusted vats and chains dangling like skeletal vines, the entire underbelly of the factory groaning as though it were alive.
The tremors grew violent, shaking rust from beams, splitting cracked tiles. Chains rattled with a rhythm too deliberate to be random, it was breathing. Waiting.
At last, they reached the lowest chamber.
The walls expanded into a cavern of steel and ruin, a sunken pit where broken machinery and collapsed platforms ringed a central abyss. From that pit rose the Warden.
It was a towering abomination, ten meters of twisted flesh and iron, a grotesque half-born calamity. Its lower body was a spider's frame, but not natural—an infernal lattice of blackened metal, pistons pumping like diseased organs, legs spiked and jointed wrong, their tips piercing deep into the stone floor with every tremor. Veins of glowing red mana pulsed through its metallic limbs, like arteries grafted to a corpse that refused to stay dead.
Above that horrid chassis, its torso was a nightmare of humanity spliced together—arms, too many arms, some shriveled, others stretched impossibly long, twitching as if each one still remembered the people they once belonged to. The main head—if it could be called that—was a fused visage of countless women. Faces pressed together, their features overlapping grotesquely: too many eyes staring, too many mouths whispering. Their pale skin looked melted, pulled taut across a cracked skull, their hair tangled into a crown of screaming shadows.
But it was the likeness that froze Daniel.
In the weave of twisted flesh, in the arrangement of its stolen faces—there was her. The contours of Melgil's own features, distorted, replicated, carved into the monster's visage as though mocking her. It wasn't the full form, not yet it was only half of what it wanted to be.
Because Daniel knew this shape.
The word slithered through the chamber like poison. Mother. It wasn't just a whisper—it was a chorus of hundreds of voices overlapping, each one echoing from a different mouth on the Warden's fractured head. The sound clawed at the air, vibrating against the walls until rust and stone peeled away like dead skin.
Daniel's eyes narrowed. Mother. Not a coincidence. Not a mistake. The Warden wasn't just mimicking, it recognized.
He turned to Melgil, but her gaze was fixed on the creature, pupils dilated, breath shallow. The faint blue glow of her weapon faltered, dimming as if the weapon itself recoiled. Her lips moved, barely audible: "It remembers… it shouldn't, but it does."
The Warden shifted, legs stabbing into the stone, pistons screaming, its grotesque body unfolding to its full height. Ten meters of twisted divinity and machinery loomed over them, its patchwork faces turning, aligning, fixing all its endless eyes on her. The chains binding it strained, then snapped one by one, the sound like bones shattering.
"Mo…ther… return… complete…" the voices groaned, broken syllables spilling into the air like blood.
Daniel felt the oppressive wave of its presence press down, the same corruptive weight he had sensed in the guild, but magnified, raw and directed. It clawed at his thoughts, a gnawing hunger that demanded submission. He grounded himself with will, forcing the static of his resonant perception to hum around him, anchoring his mind.
"Melgil," he said sharply, cutting through the suffocating weight. "What is it seeing in you? Why does it call you that?"
Her jaw tightened. For a moment she looked ready to deny, to deflect. But the Warden's voices overlapped again, whispering with her face among theirs, a chorus of herself screaming from its skull.
"Because," she finally breathed, her voice trembling, "that thing was born from me. From my kind. A shard of what I am… twisted, bound, and made into a prison warden." She lifted her weapon, the glow returning, stronger now with a pulse that echoed her heartbeat. Her eyes were alight with both fury and grief. "It is my reflection, Daniel. A parasite that remembers the Queen I could become. And it will not stop until it makes me whole again, or drags me down with it."
The Warden screeched, the many mouths opening at once, the sound a wave of anguish and hunger that rattled the steel cavern. Sparks burst from machinery long dead, the ground split with heat, and Daniel knew the moment of stalling was over.
The Defiler Warden was awake.
The chamber exploded into motion.
The Warden's chains snapped apart like brittle twigs, each shackle bursting with sparks as the abomination hauled its mass upright. The screech of steel on stone reverberated through the cavernous underbelly of the factory, rattling the broken pipes that snaked along the walls. Its mechanical spider legs slammed down one by one, gouging fissures into the ground, while its twisted head—a grotesque fusion of female visages, lips stitched into smiles and eyes rolling in opposite directions—twisted unnaturally to lock onto Melgil.
"Mo…ther…" the stitched voices hissed again, warping the air.
Daniel didn't wait. His body blurred forward, boots slamming against the steel walkway until sparks trailed in his wake. His blade ignited, a sickle of radiant fire searing into existence as he vaulted high, striking at the Warden's foremost leg. The impact rang like a cathedral bell. Metal screamed, ichor hissed as flame licked across the joint, forcing the beast to stagger a half-step back.
"Melgil, now!"
Her response was thunder. Blue radiance unfurled from her, not just light but a domain a crushing weight of ancient bloodline and sovereign power. The chamber warped around her presence, shadows recoiling, pipes bending as though kneeling. She thrust her glaive downward, the weapon elongating in a violent cascade of light, its edge carving runes in the air as it descended.
The blow struck the Warden's torso, carving through grafted flesh where human ribcages had been welded into its carapace. A wail erupted from its many mouths, half mechanical shriek, half maternal sob, rattling dust from the ceiling.
The monster reeled but did not falter. Its legs skittered in a blur, the bulk of its body slamming sideways. Iron mandibles snapped open, coughing a torrent of molten shrapnel into the chamber. Daniel caught the brunt, raising his blazing blade in a defensive arc. Fire and shards washed against his barrier, cracking it, searing across his arms. He gritted his teeth, forcing his will outward—threads of mental dominance splitting the storm so Melgil could advance unharmed.
She did not hesitate. The blue glow around her pulsed violently, like a heartbeat magnified into a storm. "You dare mimic me my blood, my form? Then die as nothing more than a mockery!"
She drove her glaive in an upward arc. The blade cut through the air with a sound like tearing silk and embedded itself into the Warden's central chest, sending rivulets of blue fire spiderwebbing across its frame.
The Warden retaliated instantly. One grotesque arm, sculpted from several fused torsos, whipped outward and smashed into the ground where they had stood. The impact cratered the steel plating, shockwaves launching chunks of debris into the air. Daniel grabbed Melgil's arm and yanked her aside just as the massive appendage struck, molten sparks igniting where stone met steel.
"Stay sharp!" he barked, eyes glowing as he layered telepathic threads across the battlefield, sensing every twitch of the monster's immense form.
Above them, the factory groaned under the strain of their battle. Machinery burst, spilling oil down like black rain. Sparks rained from severed power lines, turning the air into a chaotic storm of light and shadow.
And in the heart of it, Daniel and Melgil moved as one, fire and abyssal blue weaving together in the opening cadence of their war against the Defiler Warden.
The Warden lunged.
Its spider legs clattered against the steel, driving holes through the plating with each strike, sparks and shards flying. Its central body convulsed, skin stretched too tight, tearing as fresh limbs burst through in a spray of blood and black ichor. Human arms—dozens—jutting out at wrong angles, clutching at nothing, fingers twitching as if desperate for life. One of them grabbed Melgil's shoulder, nails digging deep into her armor before Daniel's blade severed it at the elbow. The limb twitched on the floor, still clawing.
The heads stitched into the creature's torso writhed. One mouth unhinged, vomiting a flood of jagged teeth and bone fragments like shrapnel. Another let out a scream so sharp it split pipes open, blood leaking from Daniel's ear as he gritted his teeth and forced his mind into focus.
"Burn."
His blade roared with hellfire, cleaving through one of the Warden's legs. The steel-like limb cracked, bone marrow spilling from within where metal and flesh had fused. The monster shrieked, ichor spraying across Daniel's face, sizzling where it touched skin.
Melgil charged low, her glaive dragging sparks along the ground before she thrust upward. The blade pierced into one of the fused torsos grafted to the Warden's abdomen, splitting ribs open. The torso screamed as if alive, blood pouring down the glaive's shaft. With a wrenching twist, she tore free, ripping half of it from the main body.
The Warden convulsed, spider legs slamming down. One caught Daniel, slashing across his ribs, tearing flesh and sending him crashing into the wall. He spat blood, his vision swimming, but rolled aside as another leg stabbed down, piercing the steel wall where his skull had been.
"Damn it…" he growled, dragging himself up, blood soaking his side.
The Warden's main head loomed over Melgil now, the stitched female faces merging and splitting, eyes rolling back as jaws snapped open. Rows of serrated teeth unfolded like gears. It screeched:
"Mo…ther…stay."
It struck. Mandibles clamped down, tearing across Melgil's shoulder and breastplate, biting through. Blood sprayed, sizzling as it touched the monster's hot, grinding metal. Melgil roared, not in fear but in rage.
She drove her glaive inside its mouth, piercing through one jaw and exploding out the back of its neck in a shower of gore. The Warden shrieked, thrashing violently. Two of its human arms latched onto her waist, pulling, trying to drag her into the grinding maw. Bones cracked as they squeezed.
Daniel was already moving. He sprinted, his blade blazing brighter, his will threads reaching out to strangle the parasite's mind. "Let. Her. GO!"
He drove his sword into the joint of another leg, cutting it clean off. The limb fell with a wet thud, spewing oil and bone fragments. Then he launched himself onto the Warden's back, stabbing downward again and again. Each strike ripped through flesh, tearing into human torsos welded together, their screams echoing like a chorus of the damned.
The beast convulsed, slammed itself against the walls, trying to crush him. Daniel clung on, blade buried deep, his teeth bared as blood ran down his face.
Melgil tore herself free with a savage twist, glaive carving through the arms gripping her. Flesh split, fingers dropped twitching, and she stumbled back, her blood painting the floor beneath her boots. Her eyes glowed with cold fire. "Daniel… we end this. NOW!"
The Warden reared back, half of its faces screaming, half laughing, blood gushing from torn seams. Its massive frame twitched as new growths bulged beneath its skin, ready to erupt.
The chamber smelled of rust, burning oil, and fresh blood.
The fight was only beginning.
Above the factory's rumbling depths, where Daniel and Melgil clashed against the Defiler Warden, the surface battle was shifting.
The first to stir were the vanguards of the Ironblood Guild, blinking awake, sweat dripping down their temples as the haze of rage and paranoia finally ebbed. They remembered—every vicious thought, every sudden desire to betray their comrades—and the shame burned hotter than any wound. Around them, the barrier dome Daniel had set still shimmered, battered by claw and fang as hordes of undead pressed in.
But at its center, the White Devil guild stood unyielding.
Natasha Sokolov knelt behind a broken cart turned barricade, her pale hands glowing as she drew back the string of a crossbow etched with runes. The weapon shimmered as ice bloomed across its limbs, each arrow crystallizing into a jagged shard of frost. With a whispered incantation, she loosed three in rapid succession. They split mid-flight into dozens of shards, piercing through the advancing undead in a storm of frozen spikes. Limbs shattered, torsos cracked apart, and the street became littered with twitching corpses covered in frost.
Beside her, Alexsei commanded his golems like a conductor leading an orchestra. The five towering stone guardians moved in perfect unison, each blow of their colossal fists reducing undead to pulp. Their bodies glowed faintly with runic carvings—wards of endurance, strength, and elemental resistance—that allowed them to weather the relentless assault. When a tide of armored ghouls slammed into them, Alexsei clenched his fist, and the golems answered: their stony frames erupted with jagged spines, impaling dozens in an instant.
"Hold the line!" Alexsei's voice thundered over the din. His tone was calm, but his eyes betrayed the weight of command. "We protect the barrier until Daniel returns!"
Natasha's gaze flickered briefly toward the factory's looming silhouette, her crossbow glowing with another incantation. "And pray he makes it out alive," she muttered, before unleashing a volley of water bolts that ripped through a swarm of bone wolves mid-leap.
One by one, the waking guild members shook free from the Warden's lingering curse. Some dropped to their knees in shame, others staggered as they grabbed for their fallen weapons. But when they saw the White Devil mages standing firm against impossible odds—Natasha's eyes cold as ice, Alexsei's golems shattering wave after wave—they felt the guilt burn into resolve.
The first to rise was Jacob, Charlottë's sub-captain, who slammed his shield against his chestplate with a roar. "Get up, all of you! Enough lying in the dirt—Daniel gave us another chance, and I'll be damned if we waste it!"
His rallying cry cut through the fog of humiliation. One after another, warriors, rogues, and healers surged back into motion. Shields locked, blades flared with enchantments, and chants of restoration began weaving across the battlefield.
The undead hordes faltered. Where only eight mages had stood defiant, now three entire guilds roared back into the fight, their fury no longer tainted but sharpened into purpose. The shame of their weakness became fuel, and their eyes burned with a single unspoken vow: Never again will we falter.
Natasha loosed another frozen volley, smirking faintly as the ranks filled beside her. "About time you woke up."
Alexsei's golems slammed their fists in unison, sending a shockwave down the blood-slick street. His gaze swept across the newly risen fighters, his voice ironclad. "Then prove it. Hold the line until the Warden falls."
The battlefield ignited anew.
The chamber was chaos incarnate.
The Defiler Warden lunged, its spider-legs of rusted steel spearing through walls as if they were parchment. Each strike cracked the floor, each hiss of its many heads a chorus of madness. The stitched-together faces on its primary skull split open in a scream that was both mechanical and human, the sound making the ceiling vibrate.
Daniel slid under its strike, sparks exploding as a serrated leg scraped the floor behind him. His gun blade hummed with charged current, he flipped it in his hand, slammed it upward, and drove a line of lightning straight into the Warden's underbelly. The blast carved a glowing scar across its fused chitin and flesh, smoke rising where burnt sinew met rusted plates.
"Move!" he barked—just as Melgil's silhouette blurred.
She vaulted high, her glaive leaving a comet trail of blue fire as she spun midair. With a cry that shook the walls, she brought it down on one of the Warden's spindly legs. Metal and bone cracked together, ichor spraying in a sizzling arc as the limb buckled.
But the monster retaliated instantly. Its many faces twisted, mouths opening wide, vomiting a stream of black bile that splattered across the floor. Where it landed, bone claws erupted upward like jagged spears. Daniel grabbed Melgil by the arm mid-landing and dragged her out of the eruption's radius, the claws snapping shut where her torso had been seconds before.
The Warden shrieked, dragging its wounded leg back as new appendages sprouted grotesquely, forming faster than they could destroy them.
"Every strike just feeds it!" Daniel snarled, sweat and blood mixing down his temple. "It's learning your form!"
Melgil's jaw tightened, her glowing eyes never leaving the horror that mirrored her own demon heritage. "Then we'll carve faster than it can remember."
On the Streets Above
The White Devil Guild still held the barricade, but the undead pressed harder now.
Natasha's crossbow twanged in rhythm, every shot conjuring spears of ice that impaled whole clusters of ghouls. She switched elements with a whispered curse, the weapon glowing with deep blue water bolts burst into torrents, sweeping dozens off their feet, only for Alexsei's golems to crush the flailing corpses under stone fists.
But the horde wasn't slowing. Hulking abominations, stitched together from corpses and armored plating, surged forward. One smashed into a golem and actually shoved it back, clawing through its stone shoulders. Alexsei grimaced, veins bulging as he reinforced his control. The damaged golem's arms warped into a hammer, slamming the beast into paste, but three more took its place.
The newly-awakened guilds charged in at last. Jacob's shield line crashed into the tide, blades flashing, steel ringing out. Charlotte shouted battle orders, her voice hoarse but steady. Healers chanted through cracked lips, mending torn flesh as arrows and fire spells rained overhead.
It wasn't a fight—it was survival by inches.
"Hold steady!" Jacob bellowed, driving his sword through a ghoul's chest. "If the White Devils fall, we all fall!"
Natasha fired into the fray, her tone sharp as ice. "Then keep your footing, or you'll be corpses feeding the Warden's spawn!"
Beneath the Factory
The Warden's hulking body smashed through another support pillar. Dust and stone cascaded as its many heads writhed, whispering in a thousand overlapping voices:
"Mo…ther…why resist…? Be whole…"
The words hit like psychic shrapnel. Melgil staggered, her knees buckling as one voice echoed deepest—her own. She saw, for the briefest moment, herself among those twisted faces, smiling with predatory hunger.
Daniel caught her by the wrist, grounding her with a spark of electricity that jolted her mind clear. "Don't you listen! That thing isn't you."
Melgil's fangs bared, fury replacing hesitation. Her glaive erupted in full flame, the floor beneath her feet glowing molten as she surged forward. With a scream, she cleaved one of the Warden's lesser heads clean off—the face shriveled into smoke as it hit the floor.
The Warden roared in pain, half-mechanical voice shaking the chamber. It flailed, stabbing its legs in every direction. One slammed into Daniel's side, sending him crashing into a wall, blood spraying from his mouth.
But even as he staggered to his feet, battered, he lifted his blade and smirked through bloodied lips. "That got its attention. Now let's end this."
On the Streets Above, The barricade cracked.
A wave of undead broke through, forcing the White Devils and their allies back step by step. Natasha's crossbow snapped with a click—empty rune chamber. She cursed, tossing it aside, her hands weaving ice sigils in the air as she conjured jagged spears by raw will alone.
Alexsei's golems faltered, their stone limbs cracking under relentless assault. He bled from his nose, forcing his mana deeper, reshaping them in real time as though carving from living rock.
Then the ground trembled—not from undead claws, but from below.
Every player froze for half a heartbeat. They all felt it: the pulse of something massive shifting in the depths of the factory.
Jacob gritted his teeth, bracing his shield against another strike. "That's him. That's Daniel. And whatever he's fighting… gods help us, it's waking faster."
Natasha hurled her spear of ice through a horde, impaling six in one line. She spat, eyes blazing. "Then all we can do is hold until he finishes it. No one breaks. Not here."
Beneath the Factory
The Warden shrieked, its fractured voices echoing through the pipes and stone, a sound so vast it reached even the streets above.
Daniel's barrier above flickered. The mages screamed as the pressure doubled, their spells cracking under the strain.
And below, with Melgil by his side, Daniel roared, charging the nightmare with lightning ripping down his blade, while Melgil's glaive blazed like a comet.
Both battles now surged toward the same inevitable moment, when the Warden would finally break free.