Chapter 83: Pink Divine Might, Ultimate Healing

The Stitched Abomination’s roar was a dull thunder, a physical force that rolled back and forth through the narrow confines of Ash Canyon, making eardrums throb and teeth ache.

Its mountain-like body lurched forward. Each footfall was a minor earthquake, shaking the very ground beneath them and sending cascades of gravel rattling down from the cliffs on either side.

The Necromancer’s hoarse, sharp shriek cut through the din, drilling into the ears of every survivor.

“Seize her! Her soul… her power… will be the ultimate sacrifice for our ascension to immortality!”

In an instant, every gaze in the canyon snapped to Celeste. The expressions were a complex cocktail of emotions: the deep relief of surviving a catastrophe, a lingering awe at the pink miracle they had just witnessed, and a dawning horror that she was now the primary target of this undead army.

The Stout Captain hefted his mountain-cleaving axe, spitting a glob of bloody saliva onto the dusty ground.

“Damn it, these bags of bones have good taste, I’ll give ’em that!”

He glanced back at the Old Priest, who was still in a daze, his entire faith system having been violently rebooted. Then, his eyes landed on Celeste, his voice a rough rumble.

“Little lady, that trick of yours is… something else! But what’s the plan? That big bastard is coming for us!”

Su Wan’s expression was as cold and placid as a frozen lake. To her, the charging, mountain-sized monstrosity might as well have been a complex magical formula in need of solving. Her ice-blue eyes calmly calculated the Abomination’s size and speed while the tip of her staff began to glow with a piercing, frigid light.

“Path of Frost!”

She chanted in a low, measured tone, striking the butt of her staff against the ground. A visible wave of ice-blue frost shot forward from her feet at astonishing speed, instantly blanketing the ground in the Stitched Abomination’s path with a wide, frozen zone. From the thick layer of ice, countless razor-sharp thorns erupted.

This was her signature control spell, a technique powerful enough to shatter the charge of an entire heavy cavalry regiment.

However, the Stitched Abomination’s lumbering charge barely paused.

Its colossal feet crunched down on the ice, producing a teeth-grinding shriek of protest. The sharp ice thorns shattered against the flesh of its legs—a grotesque patchwork of countless corpses—splintering into harmless fragments without even piercing its hide. Its terrifying weight and raw strength rendered this level of ground control utterly ineffective.

“Deceleration effect is negligible,” Su Wan stated, her voice steady and devoid of any emotional fluctuation, as if she were simply reporting an experimental result. “The target’s mass is too great, and it possesses high magic resistance. I recommend switching to attacks targeting structural weaknesses or employing high-penetration, single-target spells.”

Even as she spoke, she was already constructing a new spell model in her mind. She spared a glance at Celeste, a flicker of pure, academic curiosity in her eyes.

“Alternatively, we could try using your ‘Healing Spell’ directly on its face?”

It seemed witnessing the pink miracle had made the ice-cold mage’s thought processes considerably more… flexible.

“Xia Lian, aim for its eyes and the stitches!” Celeste’s calm voice cut in, answering Su Wan’s unasked question. They would try the conventional weaknesses first.

Xia Lian was already in motion. Her form was a blur, leaping agilely across the rugged terrain as she sought the perfect firing angle. The shortbow was back in her hands, three enchanted arrows flickering with a faint silver light already nocked on the string.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

Three silver streaks of light shot out in a tight triangular formation, flying true toward the variously sized, turbid eyeballs dotting the Stitched Abomination’s body.

The creature simply raised an arm in a casual, almost lazy gesture. The limb, a thick cudgel of flesh stitched together from the arms of seven or eight different creatures, served as a perfect meat shield. The three enchanted arrows, each capable of piercing steel plate, buried themselves deep in the rotting flesh and stopped dead.

This minor harassment seemed to be the final straw. It stopped, and the terrifying, oversized maw on its abdomen gaped open.

A deafening roar erupted, but it was not just sound. A tidal wave of dark green vapor, thick with the cloying stench of rot and decay, billowed from its maw and surged toward the convoy.

“Hold your breath! Fall back!” Celeste yelled.

“Holy Light Barrier!”

Selene shouted, slamming her heavy shield into the ground. A golden curtain of light instantly unfurled before them, forming a solid wall that held the deadly poison mist at bay. The toxic cloud slammed into the barrier with a sizzling, corrosive hiss. The curtain of light wavered violently under the assault but, ultimately, held firm.

“I’ll hold it off!” Selene gritted her teeth, her gaze locked on the colossal monster. As the team’s sole tank, it was her duty to stand at the front.

“No!” Celeste immediately shot her down. “You can’t! Its power is too immense; you’ll be sent flying!”

She knew the kind of impact force a monster of this scale could generate. It wasn’t something that could be negated by pure defense stats. Even if Selene’s shield could block the blow, the kinetic energy would launch her like a cannonball.

As the two sisters argued, a burly figure roared and charged past them.

It was the Stout Captain.

“I’ll be damned if I let a couple of young ladies do all the fighting!” he bellowed, his eyes bloodshot and his muscles bulging. The pink heart mark on his bicep was shockingly conspicuous in the grim light.

“HRAAAGH!”

He leaped high into the air, the mountain-cleaving axe in his hands whistling as it carved a vicious arc toward the Stitched Abomination’s calf.

SQUELCH!

The axe blade sank deep into the putrid flesh, gouging out a terrifying wound over half a meter long and deep enough to reveal the bone beneath. A foul-smelling spray of multicolored tissue fluid and pus erupted from the gash.

A blow like that would have crippled any normal creature on the spot.

The Stitched Abomination, however, merely lowered its head, glancing at the wound on its leg with the same level of concern one might give a toothpick scratch. A flicker of something disturbingly human—raw irritation—flashed in its murky eyes.

It was now completely enraged.

The giant club, a massive animal bone comparable to a house beam, swept toward the captain, its passage tearing at the very air with a deafening whistle.

“Bring it on!”

The Stout Captain, feeling a boundless strength coursing through his veins, advanced instead of retreating. He braced the mountain-cleaving axe across his chest, preparing to meet the blow head-on.

KRRRAAAANG—!!!

The ear-splitting shriek of protesting metal numbed the senses. The ground beneath the Stout Captain’s feet fractured and spiderwebbed as the immense force drove him backward, sliding for several meters. The bones in his arms groaned, threatening to shatter under the unbearable load.

But he held. He actually held it.

“Come on! Again!” He grinned, a wild, bloody laugh tearing from his throat.

The Stitched Abomination seemed genuinely surprised that this tiny insect had managed to block its attack. It roared again, and its free arm—moving with even greater speed—swung around to swat him like a fly.

This time, the captain’s strength was spent, and he had no time to recover. There was no way to dodge.

BANG!

A sickeningly loud impact echoed through the canyon.

The Stout Captain was flung away like a discarded ragdoll, a spray of blood erupting from his mouth. He flew for more than ten meters before crashing into a carriage, shattering the sturdy wooden planks into splinters. He struggled to rise, only to cough up another mouthful of blood before his body went limp.

But his fearless, suicidal charge had successfully brought the Stitched Abomination’s advance to a complete halt.

“Nicely done!” Celeste praised, her staff already aimed at the fallen captain.

A thick, viscous beam of Pepto-Bismol-pink light shot from her staff, landing squarely on him.

“Ahhh—”

The Stout Captain let out a groan even more blissful than the last. The caved-in bones of his chest were visibly rising and resetting themselves. The wounds all over his body knitted themselves shut at a frantic pace. Even the bloodstains at the corner of his mouth were “purified” away by the pink holy light.

A heart mark—bigger, pinker, and somehow even more adorable than the one on his arm—slowly materialized on his bronze chest, pulsing with a gentle light.

With a single, powerful kip-up, the Stout Captain sprang to his feet from the wreckage. He touched his chest, finding it completely healed, and then looked down at the new, priestess-approved tattoo. His expression twisted into a mask of deep confusion.

‘Who am I? Where am I? Wasn’t I just about to die? Why do I feel… like there’s a power about to explode inside me?’

He squeezed his fist, and his knuckles let out a series of crisp pops, like firecrackers. He could feel the explosive power practically overflowing from his muscles. In the end, he swallowed the complaint he had about the cutesy new pattern on his chest.

Whatever. As long as it worked, who cared what it looked like?

“Sister Celeste! New enemies!”

Xia Lian’s nervous cry was like a bucket of ice water dumped over their heads.

Everyone’s heart clenched. They all spun to look toward the other end of the canyon.

There, where nothing had been moments before, a new contingent of undead had appeared. At their head was a knight mounted on a skeletal warhorse. He was clad from head to toe in pitch-black heavy armor, with only two points of scarlet soulfire burning from within the slits of his helmet.

The massive runeblade in his grasp no longer pulsed with ordinary death energy. Instead, it radiated a chilling aura of absolute decay, a cold that seeped past the flesh to freeze the very soul. The temperature of the entire canyon seemed to plummet in an instant.

[Death Knight Lord Lv.???]!

Putting aside the unreadable level, the restrained, abyss-like pressure rolling off him was on a completely different scale from the one Celeste and her sister had faced in their entrance exam domain.

Behind him stood a phalanx of [Apprentice Death Knights Lv.30]. A gray, miasmic death energy swirled around them, dimming the very light of the canyon.

In front of them stood the Stitched Abomination and the Necromancer.

Behind them, the Death Knight Lord and his retinue.

The convoy was trapped, pinned in this canyon of despair.

Clatter.

The longsword slipped from an adventurer’s numb fingers, clattering against the rocky ground. His face was a perfect, slack-jawed mask of horror.

Despair was no longer just an atmosphere.

It was the cold, hard reality gripping everyone by the throat.

[Elysian’s Note:

Having a good time with the story?

Every single bit helps immensely:

Thanks a ton for making this journey possible!]