Free Web NovelChapter 10: Aurelia Solis
The agonizing bone-deep exhaustion of surviving a vanguard wave didn’t hit immediately.
It crept into the squad’s muscles like a slow-acting poison, taking full effect only after they had dragged their battered, blood-soaked bodies back into the dim suffocating interior of the dugout.
The atmosphere was entirely defeated.
There were no cheers of victory... There were no celebrations of survival...
They had just barely survived a skirmish, and in less than three days, a Gore-Tide of ten thousand monsters was going to wipe this entire sector off the map.
The disgraced noble was huddled in a corner, weeping silently as a field medic hastily wrapped the bleeding stumps of his missing fingers in dirty gauze.
The surviving mercenaries slumped against the damp dirt walls, staring blankly at the flickering oil lantern with their minds slowly snapping under the crushing weight of their impending doom.
Caius sat in his usual spot in the darkest corner of the room.
He didn’t look like the rest of them...
His face and expensive silk clothes were completely caked in thick, dark mud and gray ash, but his posture was calm.
Beneath the layer of filth, his newly forged muscles hummed with raw, stolen kinetic power.
He had consumed over forty corrupted mana cores during the chaos of the trenches... His physical vessel was vibrating with a terrifying vitality that kept his breathing perfectly smooth and effortless.
Caius was resting his hands on his knees, mentally cataloging the sheer magnitude of his physical upgrades, when the heavy leather curtain of the dugout was violently ripped open.
The freezing sulfur-choked wind howled into the small room.
Sergeant Vance stepped inside with his massive frame completely blocking the doorway.
The towering veteran didn’t look at the wounded and he didn’t offer any words of comfort. fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm
He simply reached behind him and violently shoved a bound, hooded figure into the center of the damp dirt room.
The figure stumbled with their heavy leather boots slipping slightly in the mud before they caught their balance.
Their hands were tightly bound behind their back with thick, magically reinforced iron chains... the kind that was used exclusively for high-risk prisoners.
"Listen up," Vance barked with his voice grinding like heavy stones. "High Command just dropped off a reinforcement for your meat-grinder squad."
The burly mercenary, who was currently tying a tourniquet around his bleeding thigh, let out a harsh, incredibly bitter laugh.
"A reinforcement?" the mercenary spat. "One single prisoner against a Gore-Tide? Command is really spoiling us, Sergeant."
Vance ignored the sarcasm. He reached out with a massive, gauntleted hand and violently yanked the heavy burlap hood off the prisoner’s head.
"She’s your problem now..." Vance grunted.
The hood fell to the dirt floor.
The flickering, unstable light of the dying oil lantern washed over the new arrival as the entire dugout went completely silent.
The weeping noble stopped crying. The mercenaries froze, their exhausted, hollow eyes widening to the absolute limit.
It was a young woman and she did not belong in the mud.
She possessed cascading, incredibly vibrant blond hair that seemed to catch and amplify the pathetic light of the lantern, falling in thick waves down her back.
But it was her face that completely arrested the room.
She had piercing, glowing crimson eyes that looked entirely devoid of human empathy, set into a face of peerless perfection.
Her features were sculpted with an aristocratic sharpness that commanded immediate unquestioning obedience.
Even though her pale skin and tattered, dark prisoner’s clothes were heavily caked in trench soot and black mud, it did absolutely nothing to hide her physical form.
She possessed flawless, breathtaking proportions.
The tight, torn fabric of her top clung desperately to the perfect, full curves of her breasts, while the heavy leather trousers accentuated the incredibly round, firm shape of her hips and thighs.
In any empire, in any capital city on the continent, she would be hailed as an absolute, unquestionable Jade Beauty... a woman whose mere appearance could incite wars among the high nobility.
But here, in the darkest, filthiest corner of the Carrion Front, she looked like an angel that had been violently dragged down into hell.
The mercenaries immediately began to stare.
The sheer, suffocating dread of the Gore-Tide was momentarily overwritten by a wave of raw lust.
They were starving, doomed men looking at a feast they had absolutely no right to touch but in the dark corner of the dugout, Caius didn’t feel lust.
His entire body violently stiffened.
The blood completely drained from his face, leaving his skin as pale as a corpse as his crimson eyes dilated in pure horror.
He didn’t just see a beautiful woman.
He recognized her...
’No...’ Caius thought, his heart suddenly hammering against his ribs with terrifying, explosive force. ’No, no, no. What the hell is she doing here?!’
"Who is she, Sergeant?" the burly mercenary asked, his voice suddenly thick, his eyes shamelessly raking over the woman’s mud-stained curves.
Vance sneered, entirely unaffected by her appearance.
"She’s a nobody," the Sergeant stated coldly. "A nameless, disgraced exile dumped here by the Imperial Court to die in the mud with the rest of you. I don’t care what you do with her, as long as she’s holding a sword when the Tide hits."
Vance didn’t linger. He violently turned on his heel and marched back out into the trenches with the heavy leather curtain falling shut behind him.
The dugout was left in an incredibly tense silence.
The woman didn’t move.
She stood perfectly upright in the center of the room, her bound hands resting behind her back, her glowing crimson eyes staring blankly at the dirt wall.
She didn’t look afraid... She didn’t look disgusted by the mercenaries... She looked entirely indifferent.
In Caius’s mind, the cool, abyssal presence of the Goddess suddenly shifted.
Ereba had instantly felt the massive dangerous spike in Caius’s heart rate.
’You are trembling, Champion,’ Ereba said, her smooth voice echoing against his skull laced with sudden intense curiosity.
She looked through his eyes, analyzing the blond woman standing in the center of the room.
’Her mana core is suppressed a bit by those iron chains, but her physical vessel is... adequate. Why does the sight of this mortal female fill your soul with such absolute dread? Do you know her?’
Caius swallowed hard, keeping himself pressed firmly back into the deepest shadows of his corner.
’I do...’ Caius replied mentally with his thoughts racing at a million miles an hour. ’But she doesn’t know me.’
Ereba fell silent, opting to simply watch the scene unfold.
Caius’s mind was violently tearing through the lore of [God Reborn].
This wasn’t just a random disgraced noble... This was not a minor side character...
This was Aurelia Solis.
In the original game, Aurelia was one of the most terrifying, apocalyptic entities on the entire continent. She wasn’t one of the righteous heroines destined to be slaughtered by the Protagonist.
She was a Villainess.
She was the disgraced first daughter of the Solis Empire, born with a mutated, inherently destructive variant of the Sun God’s authority.
Her flames didn’t heal... They didn’t provide warmth... They only consumed... Her entire plotline revolved around her eventual descent into absolute madness, culminating in her burning half the imperial capital to ash before the Protagonist finally struck her down.
She killed millions upon millions of people.
’She shouldn’t be here!’ Caius thought frantically. ’In the game, her exile doesn’t happen until much later! The plot is already completely breaking apart? I didn’t even do much different...’
"Well now," a rough voice broke the silence.
Caius snapped his attention back to the center of the room.
The burly mercenary with the battleaxe was slowly standing up.
His eyes were completely wild, bloodshot, and filled with a disgusting desperate hunger.
The crushing, psychological weight of the impending Gore-Tide had entirely shattered whatever meager moral compass the man had left.
He slowly approached Aurelia with his heavy boots squelching in the damp dirt.
"The Sergeant said you’re a nobody," the mercenary rasped, licking his jagged, scarred lips. "Said you’re just fodder for later."
Aurelia didn’t even turn her head to look at him. She simply continued to stare at the dirt wall, her glowing crimson eyes completely dead.
"We’re all dead men walking," the mercenary continued, stopping just two feet away from her.
His hands were shaking, completely driven mad by the fear of his impending death.
"I’m going to be torn apart by beasts in some days," the mercenary breathed, his eyes raking obsessively over the tight, torn fabric clinging to her perfect breasts. "I need to vent... I need to feel something good before I die in this freezing slop..."
The other mercenaries in the room watched in silence. None of them moved to stop him. Some of them even wore similar expressions.
Caius sat perfectly still in the dark.
’What an absolutely terrible idea...’ Caius thought with a cold sweat breaking out across the back of his neck.
He didn’t say a word and he didn’t intervene.
He knew exactly who was standing in the center of the room, and he knew exactly what happened to people who touched the Mad Sun.
"Come here, sweetheart," the mercenary growled, mistaking her complete silence for defeated submission.
A disgusting, yellow-toothed grin spread across the man’s face.
He reached out with his massive, calloused hand and he forcefully grabbed Aurelia by her bare pale shoulder.
The absolute microsecond his skin made physical contact with hers, reality violently broke.
The heavy magically reinforced iron chains binding her wrists didn’t fail... They were still actively suppressing her core... but Aurelia Solis didn’t need to cast a spell.
Her body was the spell.
"Wait—!" the mercenary suddenly gasped.
FWOOSH!
It wasn’t regular fire.
It was a blinding, terrifying eruption of pure, liquid golden flames that aggressively exploded directly from the pores of her skin.
The golden fire violently surged up the mercenary’s arm with the speed of a striking viper.
"GAAAAAAAH!"
The mercenary violently threw himself backward, releasing her shoulder as he shrieked in blistering agony but the fire didn’t go out.
It clung to his flesh like burning pitch.
The divine heat instantly melted the rusted iron armor on his chest, fusing the molten slag directly into his skin.
He crashed onto the dirt floor, thrashing and screaming as the golden flames completely engulfed his upper body.
The sheer heat radiating from the mercenary was entirely suffocating, instantly vaporizing the damp moisture in the dugout and turning the air into a searing oven.
The man desperately clawed at his own throat, trying to extinguish the fire, but his vocal cords were already violently melting.
His horrific screams turned into a sickening wet bubbling hiss.
Within exactly seven seconds, the burly mercenary stopped thrashing.
His flesh, his bones, and his rusted iron armor were completely burned through.
He collapsed into a pile of charred, smoking ash on the dirt floor, leaving nothing behind but the foul stench of cooked meat.
The dugout was plunged into terrified silence.
The remaining soldiers violently scrambled backward, pressing themselves completely flat against the damp dirt walls in horror.
The disgraced noble was openly sobbing again, staring at the pile of ash in pure disbelief.
In the center of the room, Aurelia finally moved.
She didn’t look at the pile of ash.
She slowly turned her head, her cascading blond hair shifting slightly. freёwebnovel.com
Her glowing crimson eyes slowly swept across the terrified room, entirely devoid of any remorse, pity, or humanity.
It was the gaze of a natural disaster.
From the absolute darkest corner of the dugout, Caius stared back at her. He didn’t move a single muscle...
The flickering heat of the golden flames reflected cleanly in his own crimson eyes.
’Yeah...’ Caius finished his thought, the sheer gritty reality of the progression fantasy cementing itself in his mind.
’...And she’s a Villainess.’
