Chapter 202: Passage to Hell (3)
Just a few minutes before Ketal appeared, holding the demon’s head and seeking out Karin, a very different scene was unfolding—one that would have changed the fate of the elven sacred ground forever if not for a single, unexpected interruption.
While Karin was locked in a desperate battle against the named demons outside, the winds and darkness tearing at the boundaries of the sacred ground, there was a man standing in the shadow of the storm.
At first glance, there was nothing remarkable about him. He was so nondescript that, had one passed him on the road, one might forget his face before one would even walk a dozen paces. Not a hint of demonic horns adorned his brow, not even the faintest trace of demonic energy showed in his eyes.
He didn’t even give off the usual aura of magic or corruption. Yet this man was none other than Bruno, the Demon of Shadows—one of the most insidious beings Hell had ever produced. He had infiltrated the chaos, slipping through the hellish gateway by blending in with the monstrous hordes.
Bruno watched as Karin’s storm raged, her power carving a cyclone through the battlefield. The other three named demons—Abaddon, Stheno, and Bael—were locked in combat with her, their every ounce of strength and cunning bent on holding her at bay. Bruno smiled, almost with pity as he gazed at his struggling kin.
“They’re having a hard time,” he mused, his expression that of someone watching old friends play their roles a bit too enthusiastically. “But that’s the way it has to be—for my own performance to shine.”
He stepped into the very heart of the tempest. The truth was, every great force arrayed on the field today—every monster, the demons themselves, the blazing avatar of hellfire, even the floating Quiklon fortresses—had all been bait. They were there to keep Karin busy, to draw her attention outward, away from the sacred ground’s most vulnerable core.
In any other circumstance, Karin would have sensed Bruno’s presence in an instant. However, now, every fiber of her being was committed to keeping the invaders at bay. Bruno’s existence, so subtle as to be invisible, slipped past the edge of her perception and through the tempest as if he were nothing more than a shadow flitting through the wind.
So, with almost laughable ease, the sanctity of Elfo Sagrado was breached by a demon. He set foot upon the sacred grounds, feeling the slight tingle of the spiritual barrier—no longer as strong as it once was.
“As I expected,” Bruno whispered to himself, “the spirits’ barrier is weakening.”
He advanced at a leisurely pace, unhurried and unchallenged, approaching the mighty World Tree at the sacred ground’s center. Even from a distance, he could sense the elves gathered in hiding nearby, their prayers directed to the Spirit God and their High Elf Queen.
For a moment, a cruel glint flashed across Bruno’s face. The urge to seek out those helpless elves and tear them apart welled up inside him, hot and violent.