Chapter 34: Escape (b)
Midnight.
Ellie tilted her head toward the sky, eyes fixed on the empty dark above. She drew in a final breath, deep, measured, held it for a moment, then released it slowly through her nose. No shaking. No second thoughts.
"Let's begin."
She knelt at the foot of the gravestone, centered at the heart of the ritual site. Yu-na took position to her right, Hye-jin to her left, and Ji-yoon behind her, forming the four-pointed shape required by the spell. All of them silent. All of them focused. There was no more room for doubt.
Ellie opened her mouth.
"Ghel'thra…sa'rukk…naat…Nehh'Zuhl…"
Every syllable landed clean. No hitch. No catch. Her throat was already raw, but the words came smooth. Practiced. She'd drilled this for weeks. Night after night until her lips moved without thought.
"Farokh…ka-ruum…dezzak…"
A sick language. Heavy. Built to scrape. The sound twisted the air around her, gave it weight. She didn't flinch. She didn't stumble. The words weren't hers, but her mouth knew them now.
[Perfect start. Continue. Reading speed steady. Pitch holding.]
She didn't nod. Didn't blink. She stared forward, eyes fixed on the UI. Each line unspooled one beat at a time, gentle green letters floating in the dark. Her voice moved through them like a thread pulled through silk.
"Syr'thil…thrall'naah…"
Still perfect.
No nerves. No mistakes. Her hands were still. Her posture set.
And that's when it started.
It wasn't fear. Not at first. Not quite. Just pressure. Something low. A lean, like her body wanted to sway forward. Like the air had a slope to it.
She didn't look up. She didn't stop. Her chest felt strange. Hollow. Like something inside had pulled back to make room. Her lungs felt tight. Her breath shortened, then caught again. The dirt beneath her knees buzzed. The tips of her fingers twitched.
[Line nine. Continue at pace.]
She could barely hear Noona, but she listened. She didn't slow. The chant took her. And from somewhere far away, another voice slipped in.
Hye-jin.
Not louder. Just layered. This was the signal. Still chanting, Ellie grabbed the dagger. Drove the tip into the dirt. And began to carve.
Not at first, but slowly, almost unnoticed, her hand started to move without her.
The rune curved under the dagger's tip, lines folding into loops, punctured angles, teeth-shaped slashes. Her body worked like muscle memory. Knees rooted. Wrist sure. Lips still moving.
"Kaaz…vrel…Nehl'ka…"
She was chanting. Still chanting. But it was like watching someone else do it. Like she'd stepped back, watching her own skull from just behind her eyes.
Then she saw it.
The soft green light. Flickering in her chest. Not real light–system light. Her shard. Noona.
It pulsed. Panicked. Like it was trying to break through something. She could almost feel its tiny hands pressing against the inside of her ribs.
[Hold on, Ellie. You're doing great. Keep your tempo steady. Let the others match you.]
She didn't nod. Couldn't. Her body kept going, carving, chanting. But her thoughts drifted.
Noona. Her only real companion.
Most shards gave strength. Power. F-Rank gave stats. Just numbers. No skills, no flash, just enough to keep you from dying right away.
E-Rank? Maybe a skill or two, if you were lucky. Basic stuff. Skin tougher than average. A punch that hit harder than it should. Nothing life-changing.
D-Rank was where things started to split.
That's where the system took your desire, chewed it up, and gave it back to you as something personal. A tailored skill. A passive. A mutation. Some kind of edge.
But not for her. She didn't get a blade or a blast, didn't get a shield or a buff. She got Noona. While others got weapons, Ellie got a voice. A presence in her head that wasn't cruel or cold. Something that listened. Something that stayed.
When her dad died, no one came. No cousins. No neighbors. Nothing but static and silence. Noona was born in that quiet. Not from strength, but from that loneliness. That absolute need.
People used to laugh when she told them. Called it defective. Weak. A useless shard for a useless girl. Noona never argued. Never fought back. Just stayed with her. In time, Ellie stopped telling anyone. Kept Noona to herself. Quiet. Hidden. But even that, being the only one who knew, felt special in its own, lonely way.
Ellie never regretted it.
Not once.
She stared at the system light pulsing harder now. Struggling. It was doing everything it could to help her, to hold her steady as her body worked.
"Uhr'thall…drah-maat…"
Yu-na joined next. Ellie didn't look. Didn't need to. She could feel the second voice, low and steady, layer into hers.
Then Ji-yoon. Soft. Almost whispering.
All of them carving. Chanting. The four of them, in sync. Knees in the dirt. Eyes forward. Breath timed.
But Ellie wasn't there.
Not really.
She was floating. Watching the light. Watching Noona struggle. Watching the only thing that ever truly gave a damn about her fight to hold her soul in place.
And for a second, just a second...she wondered if she'd make it.
Even as she felt it building. Even outside herself, watching her lips move, her hand finish the curve of the rune, the knife trembling in her grip, she knew. The moment was close.
She couldn't move her gaze from the pulsing green glow of her shard. Not just for strength, but for what came after. A future with someone who'd never leave.
The knife in her hand twitched. Her palm tightened. Her thoughts stayed fixed on that glow.
And then—
Something hit her.
Not physically, not in any way that made sense, but it tore her loose from the quiet drift she'd slipped into. Like getting shoved underwater. The chant finished on her lips just as her lungs seized. Her chest expanded, breath exploding back in, sharp and hot.
The knife lifted.
She didn't think. Didn't hesitate.
The sisters beside her mirrored the movement. Four blades raised.
'I love you!'
She screamed it inside, desperate, aching.
Noona's voice burst through, jagged and terrified.
[I love you too!]
Four blades came down.
Steel punched through flesh. Ellie's dagger drove into the mark. A scream ripped free—but just one.
Her breath caught as she stared at it. Her forearm, pinned, trembling. Her blade sunk clean through to the ground beneath. Her system screamed warnings she couldn't read. Noona's voice had vanished into the distance.
But it wasn't the pain that made her numb. It wasn't the blood.
It was the other blades.
Three more. All driven through the same arm, from the opposite side. From below. Piercing up through the very mark she'd carved.
Her body refused to move. She didn't want to look. Couldn't.
She did anyway.
The sisters stood. Calm. Still. Smiling. Their blades left driven in the ground.
"Idiot."
Behind her, the portal to Hell opened.
----
Pain.
Every joint felt splintered, every tendon tight and twisted. His skin had hardened at the edges, cracked, blood drying into stiff, gluey patches. Still, the imp stood. Hidden among the swaying horde that circled the gate. Masked by rot. By stillness.
Even Skaal'ar hadn't noticed him.
Hadn't noticed the pressure his own aura was exerting.
Each heartbeat threatened to buckle the imps knees. His ears rang, roared with the rush of blood. Every organ felt swollen, heavy, like molten metal sloshed inside him. He clenched his jaw, kept breathing. If he passed out now, it was over.
'No—!'
Schplat!
A single swat of Skaal'ar's hand turned half a dozen corpses into shrapnel. Bursting open midair, their guts whipped across the imp's face, hot entrails slapping his skull, coiling over his eye sockets.
No lids to shut. No flesh to flinch.
The rot burned into his vision. He couldn't scream. Couldn't twitch. Couldn't show anything.
Skaal'ar raved above them, voice booming across the courtyard. The sound didn't register, but the effect did. Every syllable made the imp's chest tighten. His lungs felt empty. His heart shriveled behind his ribs.
'I'm not gonna make it...help!'
[Recommendation: Do not move. Not yet. Wait for signal. When given, immediately position at the soul stone opposite Warlord, maintain disguise.]
He focused on the words. Focused on anything that wasn't pain. Each syllable from the system became a rope. Something to grip.
Then Skaal'ar raised his arms–
And his aura detonated.
The imp's legs gave out.
CRACK!
His body hit stone like a dropped glass. One leg snapped under the weight in multiple places.
[-18HP]
[!! WARNING !!]
[HP // 8 / 100]
[Health Below 10% // !! CRITICAL !!]
Then something shifted.
The pain didn't fade, it simply stopped mattering. The snapped bone, the flayed skin, the rot chewing through his muscles, all of it drowned beneath something greater.
Awe.
True, unfiltered power. Not the kind he'd tasted before. Not the scraps or echoes. This was real. Raw. Absolute. And for a moment, he felt it. The scale of it.
He started to smile.
He hadn't known. Not really. He'd guessed. Hoped. Caught glimpses. But those had been drops. This was the ocean.
Skaal'ar stepped forward, one hand, holding a floating shard rising toward the gate. The aura dropped off, but the relief didn't help much. Another pressure pressed behind his eyes, deep and hot. Ambition. Something beyond survival.
A raging desire for dominance, and power.
Suddenly, everything slammed back into focus. His body, broken. The ground, vibrating. The air, thick with growing pressure as a voice echoed out from the gate. Then another. Guttural, ancient. Chanting.
[Now. Move to designated spot.]
'Now?!'
One leg shattered. No leverage. No balance. He drove his claws into the ground, dug in the other foot, and dragged himself forward. Every inch cost him.
But the path was open. Most of the undead were pulp. The few that remained didn't move. Couldn't.
Skaal'ar didn't look. Didn't sense. Or if he did, he didn't care. He was a true demon on the verge of success, brimming with confidence, a crawling, broken poxling meant nothing.
The imp reached the soul stone.
Kneeling beside it, he felt it immediately, the raw force, pulsing, pushing outward as it fed the ritual.
Another voice joined the chant. Then another. Four in total now, feminine, ragged, drilling each word of demonic script into the world.
'What do I do?! It's gonna be too big!'
[Use Inventory.]
Lightning! He'd forgotten! The system had unlocked it long ago, but he never had to use it.
'How?!'
The world shook. A sound like a hammer on the sky. Nerves frayed to threads.
[Touch desired object with intent.]
An agonized scream tore through the air. Human.
[Retrieve. Now. Next, run through gate immediately.]
The way to Earth tore open.
His chest felt like it would rupture. Every instinct shrieked–Flee! He slammed his hand onto the soul stone, with the only word he could think of screaming through his mind:
'Mine!'
The stone vanished.
[Soul Stone x1 Acquired]
Chaos exploded.
The gate pulsed, faltered. Skaal'ar staggered, skeletal features twisting. Confusion. Rage.
"THIEF! What have you done?!"
He saw the imp. Half-flayed, soaked in rot, thinking it one of his own. Then his mind buckled, watching the imp's claws grow freely, long and jagged, like something no imp should possess. And the poxling, using them to grip the ground, launched forward like a bolt, straight at the gate.
"Impossible!"
Skaal'ar rose above it all, body swelling. Time warped as the imp flew. The warlord moved like a flash of light. One hand ripped a length of stitching from his gut and flung it forward like a whip.
"Rotglogh!"
[Rotlfow // Active]
[Physical Damage Resistance // +100%]
Even without lips, the skill fired. Flesh unraveled. The imp dissolved. A scream clawed from a mind cracking under strain. Bones melted. Muscles liquefied. But the whip missed.
It passed through sludge, and all of him made it through.
Skaal'ar roared, reaching...but too late.
The puddle slammed through the gate like spilled meat, splashing into another world.
And then, something no one predicted—two outcomes collapsed into one.
The soul stones cracked.
Everything turned white.
And the gate exploded.