Inside a long, dark corridor, Ethan stood with his hand gripped tightly around the handle of a long blade, blood dripping steadily from its edge onto the stone floor beneath him. The air hung thick with the smell of iron and something fouler underneath it, a rot that clung to the back of the throat.
Behind him, a group of eight guards held their spears and weapons close, their formation tight, their breathing uneven, eyes darting toward every shadow the torchlight failed to reach.
If Ethan had been enlisted in the kingdom’s military, a tier 7 summoner of his caliber could have long since risen to a high-ranking commander, overseeing dozens of soldiers under his direct command.
His age didn’t reflect the weight of his power. That much was obvious to anyone watching. But the absence of a title didn’t mean the power itself was absent. Standing in this hall, watching grown men with years of hardened experience visibly cower behind him, was proof enough of that on its own.
Through the corner of his eyes as they advanced, Ethan noticed another set of corrupted guardsmen shuffling forward in a daze, their movements stiff and mechanical, eyes glassy and unfocused, jaws hanging slack as though the muscles controlling them had forgotten their purpose.
The corruption spreading from the Serpent God didn’t simply strip away someone’s mind. It planted a seed deep within, a foothold through which something from the god’s domain could exert control from a distance, patient and invisible until it chose to act.
So although the individuals themselves remained physically weak, the seed inside them granted a strength that shouldn’t have belonged to ordinary guardsmen.
"First stance." Ethan barked the command, and his silhouette shifted instantly, reappearing directly before the two corrupted guards with his sword already drawn and moving.
In less than a second he cut them both down with clean, deliberate precision, the force of his tyrant might carrying through the blade without resistance.
"Hmm." Ethan looked down at the corpses and exhaled slowly.
With each kill, he could feel himself growing stronger, undeniably so. It was as if he were absorbing something of the Blood Serpent God’s essence with every corrupted body that fell, refining the edges of his own Blood Tyrant Blade class in the process, each death sharpening something that had been dull before.
Something deep inside him felt like it was straining, close to breaking through into something new, a pressure building behind his ribs that had nothing to do with exhaustion.
Elsewhere, the fighting grew more intense as Kang and Hela, who had ascended to tier 6 during the earlier skirmishes, led the charge forward, steadily cutting through both corrupted and ordinary guards blocking their path, the corridors behind them littered with the fallen.
But the closer they pushed toward the grand hall at the building’s center, the harder the resistance became, each room bringing tougher opposition than the last, as though whatever controlled the corrupted was concentrating its strongest pieces near the source.
"Ethan, Fin, your summons are far more mobile than ours. We’ll need them for the next push."
Somewhere in the middle of the chaos, the scattered groups converged, facing down a substantial wave of corrupted guards blocking the corridor ahead.
"Understood." Ethan nodded and summoned both Vlad and Morgana in quick succession, their forms materializing beside him.
They were humanoid summons, well suited to the tight confines of a building like this. Summoning Hela’s dragon, by contrast, would have been an outright disaster given the limited space.
The structure was already crumbling in several places from the earlier breach. Accelerating that collapse, or allowing corrupted guards to break free into the streets beyond, would only serve the Blood Serpent God’s broader plan.
"For the more advanced corrupted, stay out of our range. Getting involved will do you more harm than good." Kang issued the command sharply to the city guard, his eyes flicking briefly toward their dwindling numbers.
Even a few members of the Punishment Hall itself had already fallen in the fighting.
"First." Hela’s voice cut through sharply, and the room filled almost instantly with a thick, creeping miasma that curled along the floor and up the walls. The moment she’d crossed into tier 6, she’d stopped being ordinary in any meaningful sense.
Every one of her abilities had been enhanced several times over, the difference immediately apparent in how she moved, faster and more precise than the corrupted guards had any hope of tracking.
Capitalizing on the opening, the group surged forward into the mass of corrupted guards defending the hall, while a smaller, select few peeled off to pursue the more advanced threats scattered through the building.
"You smell like one of mine. Why don’t you join?" As Ethan cut toward one of the corrupted, it dodged with unnatural fluidity and spoke to him, its voice carrying a distinct slither beneath the words, something patient and coaxing layered over the wrongness of it.
The Blood Serpent God wasn’t known solely for cruelty and ruthlessness. Its ability to tempt, to whisper exactly what someone wanted to hear until the offer sounded reasonable, was just as central to its reputation as the bloodshed that followed.
If not for that gift, convincing two nobles to carry out something this horrific would have been nearly impossible on threats alone.
"I smell like you because I killed one of your descendants. Do you still want me?" Ethan sneered, moving in a smooth, practiced flow as he pressed his sword toward the creature in front of him.
He was fully aware this wasn’t the true Blood Serpent God speaking through the corrupted guard. If it had been, these clumsy, mechanical attempts at temptation would have long since curdled into open rage.
There was nothing the god valued more than its direct bloodline, its true descendants scattered across the kingdoms, hidden behind generations of changed names and severed ties.
It wouldn’t have hesitated to abandon this entire elaborate plot for the sole chance to kill Ethan personally, to reclaim what it saw as an insult against its own blood.
But that reckoning wasn’t happening here, not yet. The thing standing in front of him was barely stronger than a tier 7 opponent, nowhere near powerful enough to embody the true will of the Blood Serpent God itself, just another puppet speaking borrowed words with none of the weight behind them.
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