Warlock Apprentice

“We only have one single minute in each month that we can use to escape,” Shan murmured and grimaced, “and that woman chose such timing to fight Angor so that we can’t get away. Damn it all!”

“Stop complaining. Let’s find that core and kill Erdus. Otherwise, we are all gonna die in here,” said Keely.

“We don’t even know where it is! And we don’t have near enough time to look around randomly.”

“Meow!”

Angor heard Luna’s voice and remembered that the cat was unaffected by the illusion.

Maybe Luna can help us?

He thought Luna meant to tell them something, but when he looked that way, he noticed that Luna was busy hanging on Keely’s clothes so that it wouldn’t get flushed away by water currents. The creature just meowed out of panic.

Angor reached out a hand to grab the small feline. With a stable footing, Luna slowly calmed down and huddled up into a ball in Angor’s arm.

They found themselves standing in a giant chamber where a huge heart hung in the middle of the room. It was connected to countless blood vessels while it pumped the energy of life in all directions.

They already felt a deadly and murderous aura looming in toward where they were standing.

Without hesitating, Keely unleashed her strongest embers from her oil lamp, which instantly covered up the giant heart and slowly charred a great portion of the magnificent organ into its lifeless form.

When Nausica grabbed her right wrist using her left hand, a powerful spinning tornado emerged from her mechanical palm and hit the heart in the center.

When the attack connected, Nausica was knocked back by recoil and crashed into a wall. Her attack earlier had opened up a hole on the surface of the heart, and now, both blood and concentrated energy streams came leaking out of it.

Shan was doing her strange dance again, which caused Gank’s already huge body to gain even more in size. Enhanced by Shan’s magic, Gank wielded his fists and relentlessly slammed at the fresh wound ripped by Nausica.

In a matter of a second, the hole on the heart grew terribly larger.

The monster’s aura was upon them. In the next second, they felt their legs give in as they fell flat on the ground.

Using what she could manage, Shiliew gazed at the surging blood and called out, “Grease of the Underworld!”

Erdus’ blood instantly turned into a green, flammable substance. It was then ignited by Keely’s embers.

The enhanced flames added with fuel quickly turned more than half of the organ into a black crisp.

What remained of the heart was still working. Also, Erdus’ aura was getting maddened and uncontrolled, which pressed more pressure on everyone.

They all felt something breaking in their bodies as blood moved up their throats.

Angor was in the worst condition among all. His untrained body failed faster than anyone. Upon receiving the aura shock, he instantly lost most of his consciousness.

“It’s not dead yet…”

Angor mustered his remaining strength and chanted Spirit Mantra.

This was a dangerous move as his body would get destroyed even faster without a soul. However, he had to take the risk. He had to finish off the beating heart before something worse happened.

He briefly checked his soul and realized that after the various encounters in the past few days, he no longer had enough soul energy to use a “sure shot” gravity attack now.

Without minding his safety threshold, he braced himself and began to gather his remaining soul energy.

“Here goes nothing!!”

That was the last attack they could manage, and their last hope.

Wham!

A gray gravity bullet sank into the healthy part of the beating heart, and following Erdus’ deafening bellow, the heart shattered apart, showering everyone and the area around them with red rain.

The ground was soon covered in ankle-deep blood.

“Did… did we do it?” Shiliew asked as she watched more blood fall with her typical plain expression.

“The aura is gone so… yes?” Keely stood up and stretched her limbs.

“Hooray!” Shan hopped about joyfully despite Angor’s mind-manipulation effect. “We’re saved! We’re saved!”

Angor returned to his body and wanted to enjoy the happy moments with his team. A moment later, he quickly decided not to move too much when he felt searing pain coming from every inch of his body.

Aw, gods… Well, at least we have enough time to reach the altar—

“Wait… no. The illusion nodes are still here!”