(Third POV)
Paul gritted his teeth as he parried yet another cleaver strike from the Executioner before him, the clang of metal-on-metal vibrating through his bones. The momentary clash rattled more than his sword arm—it jarred his thoughts loose, forcing him to face a grim truth: they were stuck in a nightmare loop.
No matter how many they cut down, the undead got back up.
They had to kill the source—the Wraith.
But even if they found it, killing a Wraith wasn't a simple matter. Only Divine Strike Magic could fully purge its soul from the world. They lacked anyone capable of such a feat... or so Paul thought.
He ducked beneath a skeleton's strike, slashing it across the ribs, sending bone shards scattering. Then, a realization began to form—a spark in the fog of battle.
White fire. Rudeus's blessing. The very thing shaping this labyrinth... and the same thing consuming the monsters they'd fought before.
He remembered, vaguely, being told he'd used it once. During the assassins' incidents on Lilia and Aisha, there was something on his sword that he has no recollection of ever using.
According to Kagami, those white flames were something from Rudeus's blessing, a power considered a higher form of Divine Strike Magic. The power to manipulate souls.
Another Executioner's attack caught him off guard, slamming into his shoulder. His Touki dulled the blow, but the impact drove him back several paces. His boots slid against the stone.
He hissed through his teeth, pain lancing down his arm.
'Have I gotten weaker?' The thought gnawed at him.
Since the Water God incident, he had felt different—slower in reaction, less resilient in pain, like some of the edge he once wielded had been dulled. The Executioners shouldn't have been able to overpower him this easily, not him. Yet, here, lately, he has a strange gap in his past performances.
But now wasn't the time for doubt. He shoved it aside.
Paul stepped back, exhaled sharply, and sheathed his short sword. He closed his eyes, reaching inward, past the battle fatigue and the pain, searching for that spark. That flame.
He tried to remember how it felt before—like a roaring heat that didn't burn, like a torch in the dark, pure and white and silent. He focused, pulling it forward.
His longsword trembled in his grip.
Then, a brilliant white flame erupted across the blade, no heat, no crackling, just an unnatural silence—one that demanded reverence. The fire licked along the steel, and Paul's eyes snapped open—no longer green, but a gleaming, unnatural golden yellow.
His heartbeat surged. His senses sharpened so that he could locate his target with his sharper detection. The presence hidden in the dark. The puppeteer. The Wraith.
"There," he growled under his breath.
Paul exploded forward, the ground fracturing beneath his boots as he surged with blinding speed. His blade moved before thought, guided by instinct, sharpened into something more.
Each skeleton that stepped into his path was already dead the moment it moved. He didn't see enemies—he saw openings, patterns, weaknesses in motion. His sword swings cut not just through bodies but through the very essence binding them together, reducing them to ash afterward.
He moved like a reaper wrapped in light, every swing a calculated execution. One skeleton raised a sword—he was already inside its guard. Another lunged—a half-step, a pivot, and its spine shattered beneath a whisper-quick slash. Every movement was refined, efficient, surgical. The white flame didn't just burn; they were wiped out of existence.
But then—
*CLANG!*
Black claws intercepted him.
Paul's sword collided with them and shattered them outright, but the impact forced him to twist mid-air and land in a skid, boots dragging against the stone.
He looked up—eyes narrowing.
From the fog, the beast emerged: a massive undead dragon—two-headed, one maw larger than the other, a broken stone lance still lodged into its eye socket. One of its tails severed. A dragon from another time, another war, long past its death.
"Damn it..." Paul muttered.
The undead dragon stomped forward, snarling, broken wings twitching.
But before it could lunge—
*CLANG!*
Ruijerd slammed into its side with his full force, spear flashing. The dragon snarled, turning to meet him, giving Paul the opening he needed.
"Paul, go!" Ghislaine barked from the left, holding both Executioners at bay with furious strength.
He nodded once and surged forward again, charging toward the Wraith.
But then Zenith's voice called out—calm but commanding.
"Light, come forth."
From one of her bracelets, a shimmer of gold burst forth—first a sphere, then something else. Something... human-shaped.
A figure emerged—slender and cloaked in radiant light, a fox mask concealing its face. In its hand, a wide dagger made of pure luminance.
It dashed forward in a blur, tearing through skeletal warriors with divine precision, clearing the path ahead.
Paul's eyes widened in disbelief. "What in the—?"
Ruijerd, mid-duel, had eyes go wide open in surprise, the breath caught in his chest.
"Arumanfi of the Bright..." he whispered, recognizing that stance and fox mask anytime. "That's one of the Armored Dragon King's familiars… But how?"
No one had known what Zenith's item truly housed—not even her. But here it was—Arumanfi, cutting a glowing path for Paul.
He didn't waste the chance. Paul pushed forward, cutting through the last of the skeletal defenses, and there—finally—he saw it.
The Wraith.
Its form stood still among the carnage, now revealed in the light as it hissed in a defensive pose: a bird skull for a head, scraps of tattered cloth fluttering like wings, a skeletal body so thin it was barely more than a shadow.
'This isn't a Wraith... is it?' Paul couldn't help but wonder.
Wraiths were supposed to be legless humanoid ghosts that hovered over the ground, but the monster in his sight was nothing he had read about in the books.
With a screech that split the air, the supposed Wraith raised its hands—and bones from the fallen soldiers rushed to it, spiraling, twisting, forming massive arms made of jumbled bone and fragments.
Paul didn't stop. He met those bone arms head-on, cleaving through them with terrifying grace. One. Two. Three swings. Each hit rang with holy finality, the white fire devouring the necrotic filth.
He was close. So close.
But then the ground trembled.
The undead dragon, escaping from Ruijerd's persistent attacks, bleeding rot and black blood, leapt into the air and slammed down between them.
Paul dropped low in a fluid motion, evading the dragon's lunging jaw a heartbeat before it struck. Not because he saw it—but because he felt it. His detection flared like a sixth sense, outlining the creature's trajectory before it moved.
He pivoted with eerie calm, dragging his blade along the stone to create friction, slowing his retreat just enough to prime a counterstrike. When the beast's head dipped, Paul was already moving to strike again, a ghost weaving through death.
But something was wrong.
The Wraith's body began to rise—its bird skull tilting back unnaturally—and the dragon's remains surged toward it.
They began to fuse.
The two heads of the dragon twisted and slammed into the Wraith's shoulders, becoming arms with crushing jaws for hands. Its wings clung to the Wraith's back. The flesh of the dragon wrapped around the Wraith's thin frame, swelling it in size and feeding it. Even the bird skull began to mutate—flesh climbing over bone.
It screamed, a sound like death incarnate.
Paul narrowed his eyes, his golden irises gleaming.
"Damn bastard," he muttered. "Don't think can scare me."
He tightened his grip on his sword, white fire roaring brighter, casting long shadows across the chamber.
The Wraith's monstrous fusion howled—a grotesque symphony of bone, fire, and rage. It towered now, nearly scraping the labyrinth ceiling, two dragon-head arms snapping with wet crunches and gnashing teeth. Black ichor oozed from its seams where the undead dragon's flesh tried to bind with the Wraith's ghostly form.
Paul took his stance with lethal grace, every inch of his posture honed, intentional. The white flame no longer flickered—it flowed, serpentine and serene, wrapping the blade like a living soul. His eyes, golden and burning, scanned the beast with clarity that bordered on foresight. He didn't just see the creature—he dissected it.
He saw its faltering balance, its mismatched fusion, the slight hitch in its movement when the left jaw-arm twitched. Even as Arumanfi hovered beside him, Paul was already ahead of it.
Then, the monster lunged.
*CRASH!*
A jagged maw-arm slammed down—but before it could reach Paul, a motion blur cut across the field.
Ruijerd. His spear flashed, slamming upward with the force of a cannon blast, intercepting the massive jaw and shattering half its bone structure in one blow. The shockwave of the impact cracked the surrounding stone.
"I'll hold the arms!" Ruijerd barked, bracing his stance.
The Wraith turned, now focused on the Superd warrior. Its second jaw-arm shot forward like a serpent, but Ruijerd twisted mid-step, caught the attack on his spear's haft, and redirected the force, using it to vault over the creature's head. While airborne, he stabbed down with a cry of effort, his spear piercing just beneath the fusion's base neck.
It shrieked, flailing—and Ruijerd flipped free, landing beside Paul.
"Go. I'll keep it moving," he said with a grim nod.
Paul didn't hesitate. He darted forward again as Roxy rained down [Flameslice] from behind, searing the creature's back. Ruijerd followed in a spiral, keeping its left side busy—every jab of his spear precise, anchoring the Wraith's attention to him. He was the wall, the pressure, the fury that wouldn't let it recover.
When the Wraith tried to spin and swipe its tail, Ruijerd caught it. He grabbed the appendage with a grunt, digging his heels into the ground, and yanked, pulling with supernatural strength.
The beast stumbled, thrown off balance.
"Now, Roxy!"
BOOM!
[Sonic Boom] slammed into the Wraith's temple, snapping its head sideways. The Light Spirit struck next, dagger flashing like a falling star, carving through its shoulder.
Ruijerd surged in again, this time sliding low, his spear sweeping under the creature's leg to trip it while Paul slashed in from above, white fire blazing.
Then—his biggest move.
The Wraith roared, lifting both maw-arms for a devastating slam. But Ruijerd was already moving.
He leapt, and slammed his spear against one head to make it crash at the side of the other.
The beast reeled. It was off-balance. Its posture failed.
Roxy's [Stone Cannon] struck next—slamming into its lower back, forcing it down to one knee. Its body, from being heavily malformed, struggled to get back up, giving an opportunity for them to strike the monstrosity.
"Do it, Paul!" Ruijerd shouted.
Paul's golden eyes gleamed with unshakable resolve as he launched forward, his form a streak of incandescent brilliance. He no longer moved like a man—he moved like judgment incarnate. The white fire wrapped around him like armor, his sword blazing with holy conviction. Every inch of his strike was deliberate, aimed with soul-piercing precision.
Time seemed to slow as he brought his blade down—not a slash, but a sentence delivered from on high.
And the Wraith, at that moment, ceased to be a threat. It became an ending waiting to be fulfilled.
For a moment, the world held its breath.
Then the white fire erupted from the gash, devouring the Wraith from within. The fusion screamed as it crumbled, and the light spread—consuming its soldiers, the Executioners, the last remnants of the undead.
One by one, they burned. And fell. And were no more.
Silence, followed by the group catching their breath.
While some were virtually glad the nightmare from the undead was over, Paul had to withstand screaming the one thing in his head as he used his longsword as a cane to keep himself upright. The golden glow in his eyes vanished, and the white fire extinguished.
'What kind of fucked up imagination does my son have to create such monsters?!'
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