Chapter 256: No Safe Angle
The Demon Lord crossed the thirty meters in two earth-shattering strides.
It did not swing the rusted halberd. The Calamity recognized the Executioner as the primary threat. It drove its newly regenerated, shadow-forged left arm forward, aiming to crush the First Gun Master beneath a fist the size of a carriage.
The Executioner did not retreat. He walked directly into the entity’s shadow.
His twin revolvers became a blur of dark steel. A relentless sequence of gunshots drowned out the grinding of the shattered bedrock.
The Executioner did not aim for the starlight-forged armor. He fired at the cobblestones, the ruined masonry, and the rusted halberd lying half-buried where the Calamity had dropped it.
The bullets ricocheted.
They bounced through the ruined courtyard at impossible angles, bypassing the Demon Lord’s armored front and striking the corrupted tendrils connecting its core to the dimensional rift.
The Calamity roared and warped the gravity around its body, dragging the incoming bullets toward the ground.
The Executioner immediately shifted his technique. He stopped bouncing his shots and began firing in wide, sweeping arcs. The bullets curved around the warped gravity and repeatedly struck the damaged wrist joint Samantha had opened earlier.
Silver-white Divine Force flared with every impact. The repeated shots forced the Demon Lord to halt its charge and twist its armored body away from the Executioner.
At the edge of the crater, Lucien watched through the sights of the Enforcer.
Every Divine Bullet that entered the Demon Lord’s chest lit the black crystal for a fraction of a second.
Lucien followed those brief flashes through the sights of the Enforcer. The core was not stationary. It shifted inside the Demon Lord’s chest whenever the Executioner’s bullets approached, hiding behind fresh layers of dark mana.
Lucien had one physical crystal bullet. He could not afford a miss, and he could not hit a moving target buried behind layers of armor and shifting dark mana.
He needed to control the bullet mid-flight.
Lucien reached for [Trajectory Override].
The silver filigree along the Enforcer’s barrel remained dark. The feature needed mana to guide the bullet, and his ruined pathways could no longer supply it. Previous attempts had required Lucien to force his mana through the weapon while visualizing the new trajectory.
The Rosary’s chain was still wrapped around his wrist. Lucien pressed the silver cross against the Enforcer’s ivory grip.
The fading Sanctuary flickered. A thin stream of Divine Force flowed directly from the Rosary into the weapon.
The Enforcer’s silver runes lit with a weak golden glow.
[Trajectory Override available at reduced output.]
Lucien fixed his blood-clouded vision on the moving core. The feature was responding, but only barely.
The Executioner noticed the shift in Lucien’s stance. His eyes moved from the golden light surrounding the Enforcer to the boy’s unwavering aim.
The First Gun Master understood the play instantly.
The Executioner changed his firing pattern. He abandoned the damaged wrist and redirected every shot toward the exposed chest cavity. Curved bullets entered from the left, the right, and above.
Every time the black crystal shifted, another curved shot crossed its path.
Left. Right. Above.
The Executioner steadily drove the core back toward the center of the Demon Lord’s chest.
Unable to move the core any farther, the Demon Lord brought both massive gauntlets together over its chest, sealing the cavity behind a wall of abyssal steel.
There was absolutely no line of sight to the core.
Lucien pulled the trigger.
The Enforcer roared. The recoil snapped Lucien’s wrist back, nearly dislocating his shoulder, but the First-Order Divine Bullet tore out of the barrel. The crystal round screamed across the courtyard, leaving a trail of pure white light.
It flew straight toward the center of the Demon Lord’s chest, but the gauntlets were fully closed. The bullet was going to shatter against the starlight-forged armor.
Lucien pulled at [Trajectory Override].
The crystal bullet shuddered and climbed barely an inch. The Rosary’s fading output was too weak to bend the heavy round far enough.
It was not going to clear the gauntlets.
A gunshot rang out to his left.
The Executioner fired one more round.
He did not aim at the Calamity. He aimed at the empty air directly in front of its crossed gauntlets.
The Executioner’s bullet curved across the courtyard and clipped the rear edge of Lucien’s crystal round.
The First-Order Divine Bullet did not shatter. The impact knocked it sharply downward, and Lucien’s weakened [Trajectory Override] seized the new path before the round could spin out of control.
The crystal round dropped through the narrow gap beneath the Demon Lord’s crossed forearms, bypassing the armored gauntlets entirely.
It punched through the dark mana and struck the black crystal core dead center.
The Divine Force sealed inside the crystal bullet detonated.
Pure, blinding white fire erupted from the inside out. The heavy starlight-forged armor bowed outward, then violently ruptured as beams of holy light pierced through the seams.
Behind the Calamity, the corrupted tendrils snapped one after another.
The dimensional rift lost its anchor. The tear above the crater collapsed in on itself and sealed with a thunderous boom. The resulting shockwave raced across the courtyard, throwing loose rubble against the ruined buildings.
The Demon Lord froze.
The abyssal gravity crushing the courtyard instantly vanished. The twisting shadows forming its left arm dissolved into gray smoke. The entity stood perfectly still, its red eyes locked onto Lucien.
Deep inside its chest, the fractured core began to turn to ash.
"The Abyss will remember you," the Calamity said, its grinding voice echoing across the silent courtyard.
Lucien kept the smoking barrel of the Enforcer raised. Blood dripped steadily from his chin.
"Get in line," Lucien said.
The twenty-meter entity crumbled. Cracks spread through its armor as black fire poured from every seam. The entire Calamity collapsed inward and dissolved into thousands of dark embers that drifted into the Capital’s night sky.
In the center of the smoking crater, the enormous rusted halberd remained where the Calamity had dropped it.
A cascade of golden text flooded Lucien’s vision, completely obscuring the ruined Academy.
[Calamity-class Incarnation Defeated.]
[Quest Complete: Despair of the Abyss.]
[Major Contribution Confirmed.]
[Rewards:]
[System Points: +100,000]
[Hidden Achievement Unlocked: Fired Beside the First.]
[Marksmanship proficiency massively increased.]
Lucien stared at the six-figure point total. Only then did the tension holding his ruined body together finally release.
The Enforcer slipped from his blood-slick fingers and clattered onto the stone. His knees buckled, and the dark edges of unconsciousness rapidly closed in around his vision.