"Demon spawns! Stay behind me, my Worship! I'll protect you!"
Asleroc staggered backward, feet crunching against fractured pieces of his shattered coffin as Astensia and Thor stepped in front of him.
A golden energy shone from the orb at the hilt of Astensia's sword while blue lightning crackled around Thor's hammer.
The demon spawns advanced, snarling, hissing, dragging their grotesque limbs over the ruined stone with a sound like chains grating through bone. Their eyes were voids, glaring through the Heroines and right at him.
Seo-joon swallowed hard.
'Their health bars are all full and—" He saw Astensia's and Thor's health bars appear above their heads, both of them nearly half empty.
'Shit.'
As he slowly backpedaled, making sure his entire frame was covered by the Heroine's bodies, a chime sang in his head.
Ding!
Before him, a translucent golden interface, designed like a scroll, blinked to life.
「New Quest:」
「Successfully escape the Ruins of Valorend」
「Reward: System Activation」
「Time Limit: None」
Seo-joon stared.
'Okay,' he pondered, his thoughts shaky. 'An interface. That's nothing out of the ordinary. Standard isekai stuff.'
Then he read the reward again.
He could activate a system but it was a reward that came only after escape?
His eyes widened. 'What the hell? Why not now?!'
He almost shouted it.
What if he died before escaping? What then? Would he just respawn in hell? Game over? Main character deleted?
'This system sucks!'
He had no time to think further, mostly because his thoughts had been intruded by the sound of a repulsive thump near his feet.
A demon spawn's severed head rolled to a stop, its sliced neck smoking from the heat of Astensia's sword. For a second, Asleroc was certain that it was dead. Then…
It snarled.
Its mouth opened like a blooming flower, exposing rows of sharp teeth as it lunged for his ankle with a shriek like tearing flesh.
"GAH!"
He shrieked louder, stomping down on it with all the panic in his soul. One stomp. Two. Three.
He kept stomping the head until it was nothing left but demon pudding.
A sickening crack and spray of black sludge told him it wasn't going to bite anything again.
He panted. 'I don't know if that counts as my first kill. Astensia did most of the job.'
Ahead of him, Astensia's war cry cut through the chaos. She leaped high from the back of a slain demon spawn and yelled at the top of her voice:
"BLESSED BLADE FORM— SPEAR!"
Her greatsword split and shimmered, light refracting around it before reforming into a radiant spear of gold. She hurled it in a perfect arc. It soared through two advancing spawns, impaling them mid-lunge before exploding into a dozen shards of holy light.
They disintegrated on impact.
Before she touched the ground, Astensia extended her hand and the spear landed on her grasp before transforming back into a greatsword.
At the right flank, Thor had just uppercut someone with the head of her hammer as she jumped high, elevated by bolts of lightning.
"Mjölnir! Engage Storm Cycle."
Thor's mallet ignited with crackling storm-energy. She spun it with its handle then slammed it into the ground.
KRAKOOM!!!
A powerful web of electricity spidered across the broken floor, and the three nearest demon spawns were caught by its charge.
Their limbs locked up, and they began to convulse.
"Hah!" Thor charged forward, dragging the mallet that had suddenly turned to a ball of hot lightning. "Thunder ball!"
She struck it with a swing of her wielding arm, detonating the air itself as the bodies of the demons were flung backward into the others. Shattered teeth, bones and skin rained down around her after like hail.
Seo-joon stared. 'I almost forgot how powerful she was. If I want to survive I have to get her on my side. Quick!'
When it seemed like they were finally getting rid of the demon spawns, more came.
Dozens more.
They burst from the walls, fell down from the ceiling. Some even crawled out of the shattered ground below, screeching as they landed in a hunched gallop.
"Argghh!!!" Astensia growled, throwing her greatsword into the air. "BLESSED BLADE FORM— RAINING DAGGERS!"
The sword exploded in the air into tiny, sharp daggers and began to fall, sinking into the heads of many demons.
Thor fought more close combat, hitting them hard with her hammer and lightning bolts.
But even with all their might and powers, demon spawns — especially in these numbers — were more difficult than normal beasts.
Asleroc saw the health bars of the Heroines dwindling massively, and they grew weaker as the fight continued.
"The demon essence," Astensia muttered. "It's corrupting our mana."
They retreated backwards as the demons advanced, each time one sent an attack, Astensia or Thor would block.
"We're surrounded!" The Heroine of War shouted, her blade shifting again — this time into a chained whip-sword. "My Worship, stay close!"
She lunged, slicing five small spawns in one beautiful spin.
Thor stayed beside him, hammer ready, teeth clenched. But even she was breathing harder.
They kept pulling him back — covering his escape, shielding him, dragging him — but it wouldn't last.
The demon spawns continuously increased in numbers and they were quickly getting overwhelmed.
"Stay behind me, my Worship! I am bound by duty to protect you even if it costs me my life!" Astensia declared, wielding her sound now in its original form.
Thor gritted her teeth. Certainly, she didn't like the idea of dying here. Not for a hero who abandoned his people.
Asleroc's brain raced. He watched the way the demons moved; slow but relentless, like tidewater on a beach of blood.
'There's no way I'm going to die! I just got here!' his thoughts cried.
His eyes snapped to Thor.
Her face was angry and frustrated, sweat dripped down her body and fell on her glimmering silver armor. The red sigils along her shoulders — those were her celestial limiters, unlocking slowly.
That was when an idea hit him.
He remembered something.
A specific scene in the Heavenly Hero lore.
A desperate battle where Thor first used an escape maneuver.
It was called Star Crash Descent; a powerful AoE mobility spell that let her collapse the battlefield under her own divine gravity, then launch her party skyward in a shockwave of momentum.
It wasn't meant for battle advantage, it was meant for strategic retreat.
But at this point, Thor wouldn't even know she was capable of such an ability. Seo-joon only wondered for a second if it was cheating to use things meant to happen in the future now. Things like that shouldn't matter when his life was at stake.
He leaned forward. "Lady Thor! You have no reason to trust me except that all our lives are presently at stake. I have an idea that I think might work."
Thor glanced at him, eyes narrowed. She shared a glance with Astensia before replying, "I'm listening."
"We're on the highest floor of this building. So raise your hammer to the ceiling and summon as much mana as you can into it, when you sense a click in your chest, strike the hammer on the floor as hard as you can!"
"What?"
"You must trust me, Thor! That's the only way we leave this place alive."
Demons snarled, lunging at them, meeting blade and fists.
Thor hesitated.
"DO IT!" Astensia shouted, blocking three demons with a shield of radiant mana. "If the Heavenly Hero believes it, then I believe it too!"
Thor locked eyes with Asleroc, and her gaze turned serious. She turned toward the horde, raised her mallet, and whispered, "As you command… Heavenly Hero."
Crackles of lightning started to fill the air, building around her lifted hammer.
'Thor's powers capture mana in its most destructive form, raw and unfiltered energy,' Asleroc thought as he watched her. 'Letting her wield one of the most powerful elements — lightning. Once she gathers enough mana on her hammer, hitting the ground compresses gravity and sends her and her selected party into a vertical launch channelled from the rebound.'
"Hyaaaahhhhh!"
Thor brought the hammer down with force and it struck the ground like a meteor.
BOOOOOOM!!!
The ground cracked into pieces around them, but lit up with at the same time wir blue runes. They detonated — upward.
A cylindrical force field of lightning surrounded them, and the earth beneath their feet compressed like a trampoline, just before it—
WHOOOOSSH!!
They were pushed up the cylinder force with a burst of energy. Wind pulled at them. Mana howled around their feet.
Astensia grabbed Seo-joon's arm as Thor threw her hand upward, shattering the ceiling on top as the force pulled them skyward like arrows from a divine bow.
The wind roared, everything blurred. The demons below watched with shock, heads raised.
They exploded through the broken spire's upper rim, soaring into the open sky. Below was the castle of Valorend, and around them were trees.
The Forest of Fyll.
"Stay close, my Worship!" Astensia said as she guarded hers and his fall while Thor used her hammer to control hers.
They dived past the castle and the blackened earth and caves around it, heading for the green forest. Their landing was hard, they rolled through moss and grass, but they were alive.
One by one, they got to their feet, regaining themselves. But a loud shriek sounded from the castle, and a hole was shattered through its wall.
"That sounds like a demon dragon," Thor whispered, gazing into the sky. "We can't stay here."
Asleroc gulped. He knew how deadly demon dragons were after reading some of the bloodiest battles in the novel.
Astensia staggered, catching her breath. "The ambient mana here… is clean."
She frantically reached into her dimension pocket and withdrew a shimmering cube etched with sigils.
A Portal Box.
SCREEEEEEEE!!
"Hurry! It's seen us!" Thor shouted.
Quickly, Astensia slammed it into the ground and a ring of light burst outward.
"My Worship! Get in!"
Asleroc took one final glance at the demon dragon, its scales glistening from the distance with a corruptive purple, then he dove inside the circle.
Thor followed, and finally — just as the dragon descended with jaws wide open — Astensia jumped inside.
The dragon's jaws snapped at that same moment, but the trio had all escaped, and the portal withered in mana particles.