Chapter 1014: Evolved Sinners

Calypso hit the pinned front rank while it was still fighting Bastet’s dominion. The first hooked limb opened her shoulder, and Carnage answered with smoke boiling from the wound.

Kaiden poured escalation down her bond. Her second swing went through the limb, the chest behind it, and half of the creature beside that.

"They bite almost as hard as our feisty gremlin!" Calypso ripped her axe free in a fan of black blood.

Alice had no warmth coming through a lover’s bond. The Light That Destroys simply chose a target beyond Aria’s row and burned through its head, its spine, and the terrace wall behind it in one ruler-straight beam.

Three Templebreakers tore themselves out of Bastet’s hold. One went for Aria. Luna read the threat, broke off her own kill, and wrapped its hooked limb in lightning before it reached the Moon Valkyrie.

Nyx folded the limb’s momentum sideways; Calypso’s axe was waiting where space delivered the neck.

Every woman left her own opening to protect the next, and every attack made the following one crueler.

Kaiden gave them the battlefield, then took the center for himself; he let Lust go and chose Wrath.

"GGRRRAAAAKH!!" the exposed horde bellowed at Kaiden.

The Blood Monarch’s Gauntlet spilled a greatsword into his hand as he crossed the terrace. Heat rolled off the first step and cracked the wet ground under the second. By the third, the blade was burning dark red and the air screamed around its edge.

The first Templebreaker opened its chest-mouth over him. Kaiden drove the greatsword up through its palate and detonated Wrath inside the skull. The whole upper body burst across the terrace in black blood, teeth, and chunks of white meat.

His gauntlet caught the blood before it landed. The blade thickened.

He turned through the second monster’s hooked strike and took all six legs with one sweep. The explosion under the cut ripped the body off its own severed limbs. It hit the ground shrieking, and Kaiden stamped its chest-mouth shut hard enough to cave the skull into the terrace.

The third tried to fire at the Ninth from within arm’s reach.

He caught one loaded vent in his gauntlet, ripped the organ out by its roots, and rammed it down the creature’s open throat. His burning greatsword followed. The detonation blew its back apart from the inside and sent pieces of its armor through the horde behind it.

The Ninth stared.

"Captain, what am I watching?"

"I didn’t know these creatures could make you hallucinate."

Every soldier in the formation had watched Eclipse through an awakened interface.

They had followed the defensive war against the Claimant, replayed the famous battles, and argued over each girl’s powers. On the interface, all that might had still fit inside a translucent pane.

Across the terrace, Luna’s thunder struck through their teeth. Bastet’s Dominion drove their shield rims deeper into the mud. Heat from Kaiden’s greatsword blistered exposed skin, and every detonation threw pieces of monsters across the shield wall.

The shield-bearer with the split shield lowered what remained of it. "I watched every round of the Claimant fight," he said in Japanese. "They are nothing like back then."

"They were already monsters then."

One of the ranged fighters watched Nyx fold three survivors into the path of Aria’s descending moonlight. "They evolved again."

"Again?"

"What level are they now?"

"What level is he? He’s hitting like an S-tier in the level 120s..."

Kaiden tore his burning greatsword out of the third Templebreaker; black blood crawled off his armor and joined the blade. He did not look back at the soldiers because there were still living things uphill.

Their captain ripped his spear from a monster’s jaw. "Ask him after we survive keeping up! Move! Back up our allies!"

Twelve soldiers charged into the ruin Eclipse had made.

Their formation stayed tight under Alexandra’s gold. They pinned severed limbs, drove spears through opened throats, and killed every Templebreaker that tried to rebuild its armor.

[You’ve slain Templebreaker (Level 88). +32,000 XP.]

[You’ve gained 12 DMP.]

[You’ve slain Templebreaker (Level 91). +38,000 XP.]

[You’ve gained 13 DMP.]

The kill column kept climbing.

The first terrace lay under shattered armor and butchered white flesh. The central stair through the second was clogged with bodies from the wave Nyx had trapped there, and Eclipse climbed through the ruin toward the third.

At the next retaining wall, Kaiden stepped over the visible edge of the stain and onto the third terrace. Violet water closed around his boot, and the corrupted mountain above answered with another chorus of grinding vents.

"GGRRRAAAAKH!!" The Templebreakers screamed the same challenge ahead of every fresh rush, its echoes rolling downhill through the flooded paddies.

Hozumi fought them for every terrace. Templebreakers erupted from irrigation walls, dropped from the stained cedar line, and buried themselves in the slope whenever Eclipse opened their flesh.

The Ninth answered every rush at full strength. Their shields locked, their spears found joints, and their wounded returned from Alexandra’s hands before the blood on their armor dried.

Eclipse turned each formation into a slaughterhouse.

Nyx folded charging packs across Bastet’s killing ground.

Aria filled the folds with silver crescents, and Luna chased anything fast enough to escape them.

Calypso gathered every monster that wanted the front line and grew more terrible each time one managed to hurt her.

Above Kaiden’s head, Alice marked the stubborn ones in gold for Kaiden to target with Envy.

Kaiden kept the rotation spinning. Lust raised his women past their limits. Envy robbed a select few enemies of the powers that made them dangerous. Wrath carried him through whatever survived, and the Blood Monarch’s greatsword grew heavier with every body it opened.

By the sixth terrace, the Ninth understood the rhythm.

They still raised their spears every time. They braced under Alexandra’s shield, survived the first impossible second, then charged through the devastation to finish what Eclipse left twitching.

The joint feed had stopped calling Hozumi ordinary.

- TerraceTwo: The Ninth built a full kill box for those things. They turned it into a butcher’s floor.

- BrotherInNinth: My brother’s unit has bled on that hill for a week straight. I’m shaking.

- CatCamPlease: Bastet made an entire siege pack kneel, and Calypso butchered them while laughing. This is insane!

- GateTheory: I won’t be able to enjoy normal awakened content after watching the Sinners fight...

The gate at the top of the terraces obeyed every law Kawanami had broken. Violet light widened across the hillside, and Hozumi’s boss crawled through to defend it.

Eight legs carried the Templebreaker Sovereign through the gate.

Its back rose above the cedars in tiers of black armor, with the broken shapes of arches and pillars buried in plates thick enough to build houses from.

Four hooked forelimbs guarded three vertical mouths. Behind them, a crown of shrapnel vents opened and closed around a pulsing throat of violet light.

Its first step split the top terrace from end to end as all three mouths drew breath together.

"GGGRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKH!!!"

The Sovereign’s three-voiced roar flattened the cedar canopy behind it and blasted water from every paddy below.

The shockwave threw Luna backward.

"Damn, that’s one hell of a baby rage!" she crowed. "Are you mad that we killed all your minions, big guy?"

"You’re having too much fun, bestie. This is not a game, you know that, right?" Nyx purred.

Luna twirled her Stormblade playfully and began walking forward.

"I know, Fatty. That’s why it’s so good! No game could ever compare to a fight like this!" she shouted, lunging forward.

It was time to face down a high-tier dungeon’s final boss properly now!