Free Web NovelChapter 54: Starlight
Juli hurriedly closed in on the fourth man with the same overhead cut. Eli watched her arm come down, but the blade was... off. It failed to reach his head before it landed.
"...What?" Juli muttered.
The fourth Moon caught the blade on his bracer, knocked it aside, and stepped inside her guard. Juli grunted and shoved him back with her shoulder, but the fifth had already used the opening to slip into her left flank in a low crouch.
He was through, heading straight toward Eli.
"Come at me, bastard!"
Eli’s body moved before his mind caught up, a wide grin appeared on his face.
[Maid’s Intuition] fire a single warning, and his body felt it as a flash of cold down his spine. His sword came up across his chest the moment the Moon’s knife flashed. It slid off the flat of his blade, but that didn’t slow down the hooded man.
He pivoted on his back foot, reversing his grip, and then he forcefully stabbed low at Eli’s hip.
Eli read the predictable move instantly. He let the knife pass through empty space, then brought his sword down across the Moon’s wrist with all the force he could muster.
Bone snapped, and the knife clattered to the floor. The Moon’s mouth opened to scream, but it never made a sound; Eli had already reversed the blade and driven it up under his chin.
The body sagged against him. Eli immediately swung his arm to shake off the dead weight.
That was when he felt it.
An invisible pressure settled on his shoulders, as if a hand was pressing down from above. His arms felt heavier on the way back, and black mist had already crept up to his ankles; he just hadn’t noticed.
’Devotion Mark.’
The phrase surfaced from time to time in the game’s story. The Red Moon’s lowest acolytes could not fight on their own, but what they could do was offer themselves. By sacrificing their life force and chanting near a mana-rich zone, they could call dark mana to answer them.
It was like the Devil Star Formation, only much weaker. Those "unblessed" by the dark mana would be slightly weakened, but it was enough to make a difference.
In the game, it was a constant debuff during stages with these Moons, and characters would often miss their attacks or deal slightly reduced damage.
Here, in a corridor where a fraction of a second decided who lived, that small debuff turned lethal.
And these two acolytes were not the only ones who could do it. Eli could already hear the same chant picking up further away from the tunnel, from the Moons who had not yet reached them. If there or four of them stacked the chant, even Juli would struggle against one measly Moonmarked.
After fighting one of them, Eli concluded they were Marked at best. If they were Watchers, he would have struggled mightily before the smoke killed him.
In any case, he had to break the formation now before it deepened.
"Juli! Use your aura and clear the smoke!"
Juli was still trading blows with the fourth Moon, proof of how effective the smoke was. She nodded without looking back at him.
She caught the fourth Moon’s next swing on her cross guard, kicked him hard in the gut hard to break the bind, and stepped back.
Then she let go.
Her aura snapped outward in a controlled pulse.
The pulse looked beautiful in the dark. It was like starlight cutting through the air on a winter night, rolling down the corridor in a single visible wave and washing over the floor and walls.
The black mist hissed in pain. It boiled away wherever Juli’s aura touched it, dispersing into nothing and leaving the bare stone clean behind it. The pressure on Eli’s shoulders lifted immediately. His arms felt his own again.
’Heroine of Starlight, huh... Certainly fits her.’ freewёbnoνel.com
It made sense the moment Eli saw it happen. Juli’s aura was starlight, plain and silver. Dark mana was its direct opposite. Where shadow pressed down, starlight lifted. Where shadow corrupted, starlight cleansed. Her aura simply unmade whatever tricks this cult had.
Eli realized her importance: she was the Red Moon’s direct nemesis. With her dead before the story even began, this world had already gone to shit. The irony was so sharp that he couldn’t help but laugh.
’What do you mean the story was already doomed from the start? Such bullshit...’
But he had no time to ruminate.
Further down the tunnel, the chanting broke.
Juli did not give them time to understand what had broken.
She was already moving forward with confidence.
She glanced back at him with a wink.
"Elise, that guy is yours. I’ll handle the rest, okay?"
She did not wait for an answer. She vaulted past the fourth Moon while he was still folded against the wall. The tip of her blade scored his shoulder on the way by as a parting greeting, and she broke into a sprint down the corridor.
Eli turned to face the fourth Moon alone.
The man had already begun pushing himself off the wall but failed miserably. His breath was ragged, and the blood on his teeth made him look like a cannibal.
’Huh... feels familiar.’
For just a moment, Eli was somewhere else.
He was back in a moonlit clearing in the Crystine Forest. A Frostfang Alpha had slumped against a cracked tree trunk in the exact posture this Moon was now folding back into. He had closed that distance in less than a second.
’Aha.’
His grip tightened on the sword. The Moon’s eyes were just starting to refocus, but Eli wouldn’t give him another chance to see.
[Rapid Step].
His legs fired off. The corridor blurred, and the Moon’s slumped form went from ten feet away to inside arm’s reach in a heartbeat.
Eli’s blade lunged in. He drove it under the man’s ribs, then slashed up toward the heart.
The blade came free, and the Moon died with his head still turned toward Juli.
