Chapter 97: Saint Hilarius Hospital (28)
The moment he finished his sentence...
Click!
A massive mechanical sound came from the pristine white tiles beneath Alpha Squad’s feet!
The floor wasn’t solid.
The entire white hall was a gigantic hydraulic trap!
The white tiles split open at lightning speed, dividing into two massive gates that slid downward, leaving the squad standing on open air!
"Trap!" Valisera shouted.
She had no energy left to fold space or use gravity. She was exhausted to the brink of death.
The four fell into the dark gap that suddenly opened, plunging toward the sixth and final floor — B6.
"Ropes!" Eva roared midair.
Despite her right shoulder having been dislocated and crudely reset, her instincts were sharp.
She pulled her tactical rope with her left hand and fired the hook, which embedded into the edge of the white tile before the trap fully closed.
With her injured arm, she stretched as far as she could, enduring the pain of tearing tendons, and grabbed the collar of Kyle’s coat as he fell beneath her, halting his free fall with a violent jerk that nearly tore her arm from its socket.
Sia, the healer who saw death approaching, was no less quick.
She possessed a copy of Eva’s tactical rope.
She fired her hook, anchoring it into the wall of the dark shaft, and with her other hand, she lunged midair and grabbed Valisera’s torn coat.
The four swung in the pitch-black darkness.
Eva held Kyle, and Sia held Valisera.
The tactical ropes groaned under their weight.
But the elevator shaft wasn’t very long.
"Slide down!" Eva ordered, loosening her rope device to descend slowly.
Sia did the same.
They slid through the darkness until their feet began touching solid ground.
But it wasn’t cold concrete. It wasn’t ceramic tiles.
The ground was... warm. And disgustingly soft.
They released the ropes and stood in terrifying silence.
They turned around, their minds trying to comprehend where they had arrived.
They had descended to the sixth basement.
"The Cathedral of Flesh." The heart of the Folders’ slaughterhouse, and the personal domain of Saint Hilarius.
The place was vast enough that the ceiling wasn’t clearly visible, disappearing into dark red shadows.
But what made their skin crawl was that this place wasn’t built from stone or steel.
The walls, the massive pillars, the ceiling, even the ground they stood on... were all made of living flesh tissue!
Exposed red muscles, as thick as ancient tree trunks, twisted around each other to form the cathedral’s pillars.
Blue and black veins, the size of sewage pipes, pulsed slowly, pumping blood that glowed with faint golden light through the living walls.
The scent of sacred incense, pure and fragrant, mixed with the smell of fresh blood and raw meat, creating a nightmarish perfume that confused the senses.
At the end of this terrifying biological cathedral... stood an elevated platform resembling the altar of ancient churches, made entirely of polished white human bones that gleamed like marble.
Upon that altar... there was no army.
There were no aberrations.
There was only one man.
He sat on a modest wooden chair, reading an ancient icy book.
He wore a pristine white priestly robe embroidered with threads of pure gold.
His features were handsome, calm, radiating inner peace that completely contradicted the fleshy hell surrounding him.
His golden hair fell over his shoulders, and his eyes were closed in total reverence, as if listening to angelic hymns only he could hear.
"Saint... Hilarius..." Sia muttered, feeling an immense Eitra pressure she had never felt in her life flowing from this calm man.
A pressure unlike Valisera’s violent gravitational force — but a "holy" pressure that forced knees to weaken and submit.
Valisera spat a mass of black blood onto the fleshy floor.
Despite her shattered body and her arm still bearing the scars of cosmic cracks, she stepped forward and raised her head with her usual pride.
"You finally appeared... you bastard," Valisera spoke in a hoarse, exhausted voice dripping with concentrated hatred.
"You hid behind your dogs, behind your nightmares, behind your empty labyrinths. Did you think we’d die above?"
Saint Hilarius slowly closed his book.
He opened his eyes. They weren’t human eyes.
They radiated bright golden light, pure, without pupil or iris, like two miniature suns.
Hilarius smiled a warm, fatherly smile, and looked at them with compassion that made Kyle’s stomach churn.
"I never hid, my daughter," Hilarius spoke. His voice was melodious, echoing through the cathedral like a choir of angels.
"I do not leave my post here, in the heart of sin, to purify it. You are the ones who insisted on descending into hell instead of accepting salvation above. You destroyed great endeavors today... you killed my guardians and ruined years of theological research. But... I see in you a will worthy of appreciation."
"We’ll appreciate your will when we skin you and hang it on your guild’s gates!" Eva roared, raising her tactical pistol and emptying the remaining bullets in her magazine directly into the saint’s chest.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
The armor-piercing bullets fired... but before touching his white robe by even a centimeter, they struck a barrier of solid golden light and disintegrated into white ash that fell onto the bone altar without making a sound.
"Violence is the language of the ignorant, Eva Blackwood," Hilarius said calmly, not even blinking.
"And blood is the language of the Folders, isn’t it?" Kyle shouted, stepping beside Valisera, his magnum pistol aimed at Hilarius’s face.
"We have a long score to settle. A score that began years ago at Dawn Hope Orphanage... and ends here today!"
Hilarius sighed and slowly rose from his chair.
"Alpha Squad. The rebel elite. You came seeking a monster to kill, yet you see only light. Very well... if you insist on sin, then the saint’s duty is to purify you with sacred fire."
"Kill him!" Valisera shouted, despite being unable to use her power — but she was still the commander.
The charge was simultaneous.
Eva ran from the left to flank him. Sia rushed from the right, her daggers gleaming with blue poison.
And Kyle lunged from the center, his pistol roaring, his right hand squeezing the phantom of the Forgotten Blade, ready to tear apart the shadow of this false Ascendant.
It was a desperate, suicidal assault — four shattered people fighting an S+ rank entity.
Saint Hilarius did not move.
He did not look at Valisera.
He did not look at Sia. He did not care about Eva.
His glowing golden eyes focused entirely, with terrifying precision, on only one thing...
On "Kyle."