Low-Fantasy Occultist

The Arachne’s laughter echoed through the cavern, causing the hairs on Eugene’s neck to stand up.

“Oh, so much hunger, in such a pitiful package,” it hissed, its many eyes blinking in mismatched patterns. “You mortals reach for the heavens, but your roots lie in the dirt, and you shall never truly escape them, no matter how much you grow. Let me show you true power, so that you might know what you truly are.”

Eugene’s instincts flared, and he didn’t try to track the beast with his eyes. He flooded his sword with mana and unleashed a torrent of white-hot flame, sweeping it in a wide arc to create a barrier between the demon and his men.

That won't be enough to stop it, but they weren’t its targets to begin with. We just need to keep its attention on us.

The demon crashed through the secondary gout and came his way without hesitation.

Its chitin withstood the heat, as the abyssal taint acted as a localized domain that weakened the fire long enough for it to pass through. One of its spiked forelegs lashed out, entirely bypassing Leon and aiming straight for Eugene, correctly viewing him as the bigger threat.

He raised his blade, putting his weight and aura into the block.

His boots shattered the stone beneath him, carving trenches into the floor as he was pushed back. Any mortal’s block would have broken, as the sheer physical density of the fully manifested demon far outstripped anything they had faced in the dwarven tunnels so far, but Eugene was no longer so constrained and managed to hold.

“Leon! The legs!” he roared, twisting his blade to parry a second strike, and forcing the demon to shift its weight.

Leon didn't need to be told twice. He slipped past the monster's guard, focusing kinetic mana into his greatsword, and drove it into the joint of the beast’s leg.

Enchanted steel collided with chitin with a deafening crack, and while the joint buckled, it didn't break apart.

The demon’s human-like torso twisted as it unhinged its jaw to spit a stream of black venom directly at Leon at point-blank range.

“Keep moving!” Eugene shouted, unleashing a concentrated gout directly into the creature’s face to blind it.

Leon threw himself backward, but he wasn't quick enough. The venom struck his shoulder and chest plate, and the enchanted steel, designed to resist even high-grade magic, began to hiss and bubble, melting like wax. Leon grunted as the acid ate through his gambeson, forcing him to remove it before it reached his skin.

The Lesser Demon recovered from Eugene's blast, shrieking in anger, and began to weave its forelegs, spinning violet strands of silk as it chanted. “It Skitters in the Dark, Sending Insects in its Web…”

The ambient mana in the cavern grew dark and suffocating, pressing down on Eugene’s chest and turning his white flames into a sickly yellow. Gods protect us; that thing can cast Abyssal spells.

“I’ll buy you a moment!” he shouted, preparing to face the brunt of it head-on. “You have to be the one to kill it!”

Under any other circumstances, he wouldn’t have placed one of his subordinates in such a dangerous situation. He was the only one with the power needed to confront such a being, and just having a mortal on the battlefield would complicate things for him.

But this was a Trial. Leon had a chance to achieve Prestige here, and if he succeeded, not only the current drive into the underworld but the entire campaign and beyond would change.

This was just too good of an opportunity to pass up.

Still, that meant he needed to fully occupy the demon’s attention, and Eugene couldn’t do that if he held anything back. He tapped deeply into his reserves, unleashing much more power than he’d ever needed before. His armor glowed cherry-red, and his blood surged like liquid fire as he abandoned defense entirely, charging the beast and unleashing a roaring corona of flame that turned the rock around them to slag.

He became the anvil, absorbing the demon's attention, taking glancing blows that cracked his ribs and made him stagger, but he never stopped pouring fire onto the creature’s weaving, burning the silk as fast as it was produced, doing everything he could to prevent the completion of the Abyssal Invocation.

It wasn’t enough to kill it, since the demon was too resilient and cunning to face his wrath directly, but he didn’t need to. Across the hellscape that the battlefield had become, he sensed Leon preparing something.

The knight looked terrible. Half of his armor was melted or missing, his left arm hung uselessly at his side, and his mana couldn’t be at more than half. But his eyes... his eyes burned with determination, and Eugene decided to trust him.

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He’d sparred with the man during the campaign many times, fought beside him against monsters, demons, and dwarves, and throughout it all, he had the strange sense that he was holding something back.

Looks like I’ll finally get to see what that is. Do not disappoint me.

Leon lifted his greatsword with his good arm and shifted his focus inward.

Something about that stance tickled the back of Eugene’s mind, and a hazy memory of his father’s attempts to recreate a move he had seen during past wars surfaced. In the end, the old man decided it wasn’t worth pursuing because it was too dangerous to test, and the risks it posed to the wielder outweighed what a Prestige warrior could achieve on his own.

White fire burned away the demon's attempt to trap him in its silk, and although it cost more mana than it should have, Eugene didn’t begrudge the expenditure. It allowed him to press the abomination once more, roaring his anger and burning off another part of its web.

Golden light began to glow through Leon’s veins, and Eugene knew he had it right. This was the [Martyr’s Crucible], a forbidden art taught to Royal Knights in case they absolutely needed to bring down an enemy, even at the cost of their own life.

Since he simply didn’t have enough mana to power the skill enough to hurt the Lesser Demon, Leon used his own vitality as fuel. The light intensified until it shone so brightly that even the demon’s darkness seemed to recoil, surpassing the abomination’s constant disruption.

But the cost for the power to face a Prestige being as a mortal was great. To generate that much energy, the skill burned the user from the inside out, and Eugene watched in grim silence as Leon’s skin began to blister and peel away, flaying his flesh to allow the raw, unadulterated light of his soul to manifest physically.

Blood vaporized the moment it left his body, and Leon let out a scream of pure pain mixed with unwavering defiance as he charged.

The Lesser Demon sensed the existential threat of that pure light and, for the first time since the fight began, abandoned Eugene, turning its massive bulk to swat Leon away.

In a move that likely surprised even its alien mind, Leon didn't try to dodge and took the spiked leg straight in the midsection.

Using the impaling leg as a bridge, the glowing knight launched himself forward, sliding his body up the chitinous limb until he was face-to-face with the Arachne’s human torso.

“Begone,” Leon rasped, blood bubbling past his lips, and drove his greatsword, now a pillar of blinding light, directly into the demon's chest.

The purification light surged like a bomb through the creature's body, causing it to shriek. The sound shattered the remaining stalactites as it violently disintegrated from the inside, transforming into thick, black ash.

Eugene summoned flames around his body to withstand the shockwave, while Leon was thrown backward by the blast, hitting the cavern wall and sliding down in a broken, bleeding heap.

The last of the Lesser Demons turned to dust, its mind returning to the hell it was spawned from.

CONGRATULATIONS!You have participated in the defeat of [Kiktikakikit, Spawn of That Which Skitters In The Dark - Lv 137]

+417,300 Exp

CONGRATULATIONS!

You have achieved a Minor Feat! You have prevented a Minor Demonic Incursion!

• 2 to all stats
• 250,000 Exp

Eugene ignored the rewards and the few remaining spider demons—they were scattered and weakened by the purification, and his men were already moving to eliminate the nest once and for all—and rushed to Leon’s side.

The knight was a ruin. His armor was gone, his flesh burned and flayed, and his breathing was a wet, shallow rattle. It was clear he was dying, and the damage was too severe for even an elixir to heal.

Then, something shifted in the air.

Eugene halted, sensing the sudden stillness that settled over the cavern. It was a feeling he knew well from his own ascent: the System was active.

The world seemed to hold its breath as a pillar of pure energy descended through the solid rock of the ceiling, completely ignoring physical barriers, and struck Leon’s broken body.

Eugene watched, with a proud smile, fighting through his exhaustion to see his friend’s rise to Prestige. He understood what it was like to have your very soul torn apart and reformed into something stronger, something denser. The mortal body would need to be stretched to accommodate a higher concept of reality, which was beyond a human’s understanding, causing tremendous pain.

Within the golden light, Leon’s flayed flesh began to knit together. New skin, pale and flawless, formed over his ruined muscles. The gaping hole in his midsection sealed, leaving behind a smooth, silver scar.

But the physical healing was only a small part. A pressure started to form in the room, pushing against Eugene’s fiery aura and growing into an immovable bulwark.

For a few seconds, the sheer magnitude of Leon’s new presence was suffocating, as more and more power surged through him, transforming a mortal into something greater.

Then, the light faded, and the pressure snapped back, retreating into Leon’s body as he gasped, his eyes flying open.

Eugene didn’t need spells or mystical artifacts to know that the process was successful. The sheer presence of another Prestige warrior was confirmation enough.

Leon slowly pushed himself up, looking at his hands and flexing the fingers that had been burned to the bone just moments ago.

“You did it, you crazy bastard,” Eugene breathed, leaning heavily on his sword. “I don’t think I’ve heard of anyone reckless enough to use a suicide skill to defeat their Trial, but I shouldn’t have expected anything else. Welcome to the big boys’ club, Leon.”

Leon, showing that despite all the changes, he was still himself, chuckled. “It seems logical to me. Everyone knows that crossing into Prestige heals you, so why wouldn’t you use it all?”

Eugene gave him a moment to process everything that had just happened before shifting focus to the most urgent matter. “Is it any good?”

Usually, asking another man about his class was a faux pas, and asking a Prestige being for theirs was likely to end badly, but he had long since shared his own skills with the man, and Leon had done the same for him. Now was not the time to be shy.

I understand now why the bond between my father and Master Xander never broke, despite the years of separation.

Leon closed his eyes, reading a prompt only he could see. A slow, exhausted smile spread across his face. “[Luminant Justicar],” he finally said. “It’s still a knight class in build, but it comes close to being a Paladin, while focusing on enhancing my martial skills with light mana.”

“A heavy-hitter,” Eugene grunted approvingly. “The generals would kill to have you join their efforts. Which is exactly why they can’t know.”

Leon frowned, looking around the cavern at the scattered ashes of the Lesser Demon and the silk cocoons hanging from the ceiling. “You want to hide my rank up? Eugene, high command needs to know the frontline has stabilized.”

“High command,” Eugene spat, openly showing his disgust, “is giving us poor intel, cutting off our supplies, and letting us suffer in these tunnels while they barely get involved. If they know about our new Prestige Knight, they will either reassign you to protect some important general or send us further into the danger, believing we can survive it.”

Leon’s frown deepened, but he didn't argue. He had seen the condition of the supply wagons. He knew how many men they had lost due to administrative oversights.

“We’ll keep this between us. The fourteenth can be trusted, and my men have no contact with the rest of the army,” Eugene instructed. “It won’t be for long, since I expect things to start moving faster now that we’ve eradicated the demonic nest.”

Leon looked down at his hands and then up at Eugene before giving a firm nod. “Understood, Commander.”

“Good,” Eugene grunted, turning toward the silk cocoons. “Now put a damn shirt on, Captain. We still have a job to do.”