Chapter 30: Rise Again, My Demon!
Chapter 30: Rise Again, My Demon!
Are you insane?
This man—he must be mad!
Iresha stared at the country boy before her, terror etched across her face.
Just hearing the words “revive a Evil God” was enough to send chills down anyone’s spine. But this wasn’t empty bravado—he truly meant it. He was actually preparing to resurrect the Evil God the goblins had captured.
“Y-you… Are you serious?”
She’d been proud and haughty when they first met, but now, as things spiraled out of control, even Iresha couldn’t suppress her mounting dread.
She was the mage of the Hero’s Party, the most devout follower of the goddess Alicia!
Wasn’t this an act of betrayal against the goddess?
Of course it was! This was nothing short of defiling the goddess’s name!
“What other choice do we have right now?”
The broken corpses piled high around them reeked of blood and rot. Even the goblin bodies had been tossed in, used as mere fodder.
Faced with a disaster that couldn’t be solved by normal means, Lin Wei made his choice. He forced a decision—help this rookie build some confidence, or let her fend for herself.
“A small-scale sacrifice won’t bring about a full resurrection. Not only that, it’ll end the goblin disaster and save the world.”
“So, you can either follow my plan, or you can jump down there and try your luck against the goblins one-on-one. Your call.”
Then again, goblins were evil creatures to begin with. Using evil to destroy evil… wasn’t that, in some twisted way, in line with the teachings too?
Facing the seething green tide below—a sight that made her scalp crawl—Iresha didn’t hesitate for long. Between betraying the goddess Alicia and heading down alone to face the goblins, she decisively chose the former.
“So… what exactly do we do next?” she asked, her voice utterly devoid of resolve.
Such was the spirit of a spineless, cowardly mage.
“It’s simple. See those unlucky adventurers down there?” Lin Wei said, pointing with a look of disdain.
Lying beside the goblins were over a dozen adventurers, their eyes hollow, as if their souls had been drained—yet still clinging to life.
“First, you need to make a big enough commotion to draw the goblins’ attention. While that’s happening, I’ll charge in and use those goblin whelps as the sacrifice.”
“After that, the Evil God’s power will spiral out of control. While the goblins are all focused on me, you’ll use flight magic to get all those adventurers up here to safety.”
“Once that’s done, it’ll be between the Evil God and the goblins. All we need to do is hold this passage and keep ourselves alive. Got it?”
It sounded simple enough—but actually pulling it off was another matter entirely.
Especially when this country bumpkin was volunteering to throw himself straight into a horde of goblins. Just imagining it felt like a one-way trip to hell.
“You… you’re not going to die, are you?” Iresha asked, a hint of genuine worry creeping into her voice. She remembered his feats so far, but still… her expression darkened.
Lin Wei looked at her, genuinely surprised. “Are you actually worried about me, city girl?”
“Have the goblins knocked your brains loose? Why would I say something like that?”
“I just mean, if you get surrounded, there’s no way I’ll be able to save anyone.”
“Wait, what do you mean, ‘knocked your brains loose’? Are you seriously trying to start an argument now, country boy?!”
Seeing Iresha’s face flush bright red with rage, nearly shaking with fury, Lin Wei couldn’t help but smile. What a petty, narrow-minded excuse for a mage, he thought.
And to think, this is the sort of person who intends to slay the Demon Lord? For some reason, that actually made him feel a bit safer. How strange.
“All right, just stick to the plan and leave the rest to me,” he said, reassuringly.
Still, it seemed this little spat had eased her nerves. Lin Wei slipped behind her, gently lifting her hand and guiding it to point her staff toward the goblins lurking beyond the passage, all while discreetly weaving an amplification sigil beneath his breath.
“Come on, come on, wave that staff of yours. Decide what spell you want to use… We’re about to begin!”
“I got it already!” she snapped.
Since he’d put it that way, there was no point hesitating—or worrying about him anymore.
The moment the words left her lips, Iresha’s expression hardened with focus. She swept her staff in a wide arc, her concentration absolute.
A surge of raw mana erupted as her incantation took hold, gathering at a terrifying speed and spiraling upward toward the cavern’s ceiling.
Even in the darkness, the spectacle was dazzling—molten fire, like magma, began to swirl madly in midair. Heat and blinding light flooded the entire cave in an instant.
Even the goblins who had been crawling over the Evil God’s body, lost in their primal frenzy, paused and looked up at the blazing sky.
“Hyaah!”
“Falling Star!”
With the final words of her spell, the ritual was complete.
The whole cavern began to tremble violently, the ground shuddering beneath their feet.
From within the swirling magma above, a rain of burning meteorites came screaming down, each one wreathed in flame as it hurtled toward earth.
This was a spell of indiscriminate destruction—friend or foe, it didn’t matter. The relentless barrage of falling stars struck the goblin horde with earth-shaking force, the flames casting wild, twisted shadows across their terror-stricken faces.
Agonized screams echoed through the entire cavern, so shrill and violent it seemed even the earth itself might be torn apart by the barrage of falling stars.
“Did my spell just get stronger…?” Iresha muttered, pale and nearly spent, staring in disbelief at the devastation her magic had wrought.
But there was no time to think. The instant the meteors struck, Lin Wei—who’d been watching with easy confidence—suddenly dove into action with impossible speed.
Mana surged around him, and as he sprinted forward, it exploded into a raging whirlwind. Goblins in his path were cut down in an instant, while every scattered goblin whelp on the ground was swept up in the storm, their tiny green forms—nearly a thousand, each no larger than a fist—caught up and spinning wildly.
To Iresha, it was as if some monstrous figure was rampaging through the heart of the goblin horde.
The cyclone, now swirling with goblin whelps, took on a sickly green hue. As it soared upward, Lin Wei clenched his fist with all his might.
A chorus of shrill, panicked squeals rang out.
One after another, the goblin whelps were crushed to pulp, their remains splattering onto the waiting sculpture below.
Blood and mangled flesh rained down from above, soaking the already gruesome statue until it was drenched in crimson.
And then—
The once-lifeless statue began to stir.
Anyone could sense it: the petrified eyes of the sculpture slowly gained a sinister gleam, and an endless darkness began to seep outward, spreading through the air.
Cold. Evil. Instinctively repulsive.
As a devout follower of the goddess Alicia, Iresha felt it immediately—down to her very soul.
A sharp, stinging pain shot across Iresha’s skin, her magic trembling so violently that she could no longer keep it steady.
The darkness swallowed all light, smothering every sense and sensation.
The goblins sprawled atop the statue, their bodies drenched in fresh blood, didn’t even realize what was happening. Even as they sensed the chaos erupting in the cavern, their base instincts kept them locked in their mindless rut.
But the moment that sinister energy brushed against them, their bodies began to wither and rot at a speed visible to the naked eye.
In the span of a heartbeat, the once-vigorous goblins decayed into nothing but putrid flesh.
And the darkness kept spreading, turning the entire chamber into a grotesque abattoir—a slaughterhouse for goblins.
“Huh?”
It was only then that Lin Wei noticed the adventurers still lying motionless on the ground. He froze for a split second, then spun around and shouted at the top of his lungs,
“What are you waiting for?”
“Hurry up, you idiot mage up there!”