Chapter 91- The Sacrifice.
The fight broke out in the central square. It erupted through out the town of Ironhaven.
The walls of the town was already painted in red.
Leo charged forward.
A cultist’s blade swung for Leo’s neck the second he stepped into the fray. He got his guard up in time, but the impact still rattled up his arms and knocked him back a full step.
[Attack Blocked]
[Damage Received: 0]
A second cultist came at him low from the side, blade scraping across his blood-chanter armor.
[Blood-Chanter Armor absorbed most of the impact.]
[Damage Received: -34 HP]
[Leo HP: 3,366/3,400]
Leo tracked them both without thinking. Forge sight caught it all — the twitch of a shoulder, the shift of a hip, the drag of a foot a half-second before the strike came.
He moved first. His elbow caught the nearer cultist square in the chest and sent him flying, while his sword opened the other one up in the same smooth motion, straight through the chest.
[Elbow Strike]
[Damage Dealt: 184]
[Tempered Strike]
[Damage Dealt: 642]
[Critical Weakness Hit]
[Ironhaven Cultist defeated.]
One dropped. The other staggered back, gasping.
Leo didn’t bother finishing him off — he used the opening instead, cutting the ropes off a woman bound at the nearest post.
"Run!"
She stumbled toward the guards, who caught her between them and closed ranks.
Nearby, Rook was cutting down two more attackers at another post.
[Damage Dealt: 511]
[Enemy HP: 109/620]
His movements were short, economical, nothing wasted — every strike meant to end something.
He carved through one cultist’s guard, then drove a thrust straight into the next one’s charge.
[Damage Dealt: 174]
[Enemy HP: 0/620]
Leo reached the next captive and cut her free too, but she didn’t move. A red symbol pulsed on the ground beneath her, pinning her in place.
He tried to force her loose, grabbing her by the shoulders and pulling.
"Forcing it won’t work!" Mira who was keeping an eye on all the evens happening around shouted.
He stopped and studied the symbol instead. Forge sight picked apart the threads of energy running through it, and he fed a thin line of qi into the pattern until the strand feeding it snapped.
[Qi Infusion]
[Binding Formation disrupted.]
[Hostage restraint removed.]
She bolted towards the guards, crying.
He freed another. Then another.
[Civilians Rescued: 3/10]
Every rescue cost him seconds he didn’t have. The cultists kept closing in, and Hugh and Rook were burning through everything they had just to hold the line.
The guards pushed into the square to help — some of them looking for revenge on behalf of their fallen brothers — but the fanatics fought in frenzy like men with nothing left to lose.
Due to constant bombardment from the cultist numbering in almost hundreds, Hugh’s barrier flickered and dropped for half a breath.
Three cultists slipped through the gap before he could seal it again. Hugh slammed a sheet of black flame across the opening, leaving the civilians untouched but scorching every one of them trying to force their way in.
[Ashen Flame Control]
[Fanatic A: -286 HP]
[Enemy HP: 334/620]
[Fanatic B: -301 HP]
[Enemy HP: 319/620]
[Fanatic C: -278 HP]
[Enemy HP: 342/620]
"I can’t hold this forever," Hugh called. "You might want to hurry."
Leo cut the seventh captive loose.
[Civilians Rescued: 7/10]
Three more cultists broke through and converged on the eighth post.
[Cultist Level: 22]
[Estimated HP: 900]
Leo charged in without waiting. The second he engaged one, the other two hit him from both sides — a shield slammed into his chest while a ritual blade found his ribs. Leo’s armor held, but the force still threw him sideways.
[Shield Bash]
[Damage Received: -71 HP]
[Leo HP: 3,295/3,400]
[Ritual Blade]
[Damage Received: -41 HP]
[Leo HP: 3,254/3,400]
[Total Damage Received: -112 HP]
Pain flared through his ribs. He got up anyway.
Rook reached him a heartbeat later, sword qi flaring as he cut clean through the shield. Hugh’s flame wrapped around the second cultist’s leg and held it in place.
[Qi-Infused Slash]
[Damage Dealt to Shield Bearer: 438]
[Ashen Flame Restraint]
[Damage Dealt: 217]
That was all the room Leo needed. He cut the last captive loose and turned to finish the third cultist himself.
[Slash]
[Damage Dealt: 392]
[Enemy HP: 508/900]
The woman made it to the guards safely.
[Civilians Rescued: 8/10]
The ninth post had toppled sideways, its rope tangled around a broken cart wheel, the captive pinned beneath the fallen timber.
Leo shoved the wounded cultist back toward the barrier — Hugh’s black flame caught him first, and Leo’s own eternal flame finished the job.
[Ashen Flame Control]
[Damage Dealt: 263]
[Enemy HP: 199/620]
[Eternal Flame Strike]
[Damage Dealt: 244]
[Enemy HP: 0/620]
He sprinted to the collapsed post and heaved the timber up while Hugh burned through the knot. The woman barely got free when three more cultists tore through the flame wall behind them.
[Civilians Rescued: 9/10]
One hostage left — and she was standing right beside Cardinal Malrec.
Leo tried to read the man’s status. All he got back was a wall of question marks.
[Ding~]
[Name: ???]
[Level: ?????]
[Target analysis failed.]
[Insufficient authority.]
[Warning: Do not engage recklessly.]
That was answer enough. Whatever Malrec was, he was out of Leo’s weight class.
The cardinal drew a ritual knife from his robes, unhurried, and set it against the woman’s throat.
"One more step from any of you," he said, "and she goes straight to hell."
Leo, Hugh, and Rook froze mid-stride.
Then the ground shuddered beneath their feet.
Blood from the fallen — guards and cultists alike — had soaked into the earth, feeding whatever slept below. Bones stirred. A tremor rolled through the square, and for one crucial second, Malrec’s attention split toward it.
Leo didn’t waste the opening. He threw himself between the cardinal and the woman, every defensive measure he had flaring to life at once, Aegis Shield included. He wrapped her in his arms and burned the binding symbol away with a pulse of qi.
Malrec’s knife was already falling, aimed for his back. Even with Aegis up, Leo wasn’t sure it would be enough.
But the blow never landed.
Hugh and Rook’s attacks caught the cardinal a heartbeat before the knife fell, buying Leo just enough time to haul the woman clear.
[Ding~]
[Civilians Rescued: 10/10]
[Available Sacrifices: 0/10]
Leo pulled her behind the guard line. All ten were safe.
"We stopped it," he said.
Malrec laughed — unbothered, almost pleased, like everything was still going exactly to plan.
More cultists stepped forward, a wave of them this time, walking straight through the black flame without flinching. They formed a ring around the ancient stones at the center of the square.
Mira watched from where she stood, and understanding hit her like cold water down her spine.
"What are they doing?" Leo shouted.
Malrec raised the relic overhead.
"The god does not require strangers," he said. "It requires devotion."
He turned to face the circle.
"Offer yourselves."
Everyone present understood exactly what that meant.
Leo bolted toward them, desperate to stop it before it started. Rook and Hugh followed at his back.
Malrec watched the panic cross their faces and smiled, then flicked his wrist. A ring of red symbols rose up and sealed the believers inside.
Leo’s sword crashed against the barrier and did nothing. Not a crack, not even a flicker — like striking a wall that had never been there.
The first believer stepped into the center of the circle and drove her own blade into her chest. Steel flashed silver under the moonlight.
She fell, and the symbols beneath her lit red.
One by one, the others followed before Leo could break through the barrier.
The stones drank every drop of blood that hit them.
Mira watched, sick with horror — and underneath the horror, some small, traitorous part of her leaned in, waiting to see what came next. She caught herself and dug her nails into her palm.
"Get a grip," she muttered. "They’re just codes. Datas. Not real."
Her quest log flashed.
[Final Sacrifice Completed]
[Hidden Quest: The Gathering Darkness — Completed]
Her grip loosened on the pole she’d been holding, then let go entirely.
She ran. If she didn’t get out now, there was a real chance someone would trace her back to being a player — and she had no interest in finding out what that would cost her.
The ground split open beneath Ironhaven.
Ancient stone burst upward from the square, and behind it rose a rib cage vast enough to swallow a house, then a spine blackened by centuries in the dark. A dragon’s skeleton climbed out of the earth around the ritual circle, bone crumbling even as it rose, its substance drained away by the blood-rune burning beneath it.
Energy poured through what remained of it.
Leo felt the devil-mark on his armor flare hot enough to scorch straight through the plating.
[Ding~]
[Buried Ancient Dragon Remains Awakened]
[Buried Ancient Dragon Remains Consumed]
[10 Sacrifices Made.]
[Devil’s Gate Summoned]
The gate tore open.
Something vast and monstrous stepped through.
. . .