Beguiling the Enemy’s Patriarch - Chapter 135

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 135
I had to leave. My mind refused to process anything beyond that singular imperative. It was complete cognitive overload.
“….”
I stumbled forward into the lamplight with faltering steps. If not now, I would never escape. My reason had been consumed entirely by circumstances beyond my capacity to endure. What remained was pure instinct—the primal drive to survive.
I began running again, through the endless, winding Underground Cavern that resembled the entrails of some great beast.
“Hah….”
Even as I ran, my vision flickered between perspectives. Through Raulus’s eyes, the distant light grew steadily closer, expanding with each moment. With my sight shifting every few seconds, it felt as though fireworks were detonating before my eyes. I surrendered my senses entirely to Raulus’s perception.
Raulus bounded across the twisted terrain, leaping upward with increasing vigor. Though she had appeared strained at first, she soon moved with remarkable ease. The distance between us widened, which should have constrained her movements, yet she seemed unaffected. Raulus launched herself upward again, her small frame landing lightly before propelling herself skyward once more.
And then, finally, the vista opened.
“Ah….”
What appeared before me was the sky. The dim dawn sky. Raulus had ascended. To the Surface.
“Find someone.”
I forced out the words, scraping together my last reserves of strength.
“Anyone. Find them….”
That longed-for silver hair shimmered before me as though I could grasp it in my hands. I spoke through the anguish of desperation.
“Send them down. I’m truly at my limit now.”
Thud. I could not tell if my words reached Raulus. The tenuous sensory connection I had maintained with her severed abruptly. The earring vibrated with anxious trembling.
Sacred power remaining.
“Ugh….”
Five percent…. The path grew steeper with each step. This was the final incline to the Surface. As I climbed, a single thought consumed my mind: I should have returned to Belgot the day I reunited with Auredhian.
“Ugh. Truly….”
If only I had escaped Lebovni just a week earlier—or even a single day—could I have avoided being driven to such extremes? Why did the calm before the storm prove so seductively treacherous, lulling me into complacency?
“….”
Yet even had I returned to Belgot, there was no guarantee I could have escaped Hades’s abduction. So every thought I harbored now was nothing but futile regret—thoughts that did nothing whatsoever to help me escape this place.
“I won’t let go. Not anymore….”
Tears streamed down my cheeks and jaw before my vision could even blur. The incline was far steeper than it had appeared through Raulus’s eyes.
“Ah.”
And then I glimpsed a light above, no larger than a pinky nail. A sigh of relief escaped me.
“Almost there….”
Crack. That fragile sigh was swallowed in an instant.
“…!”
I spun around. Nothing was there.
But.
Screech, screeeech—a sound that made my eardrums crawl with dread. The mana saturating the space rippled with unstable turbulence. My spine stiffened with horror. Mana far denser, more humid, and oppressive than Soleia’s. Hades’s mana.
“Damn.”
I still had a considerable distance to climb before breaking free to the Surface. I pushed myself to maintain focus as I ran, desperate to sense anything—anything at all besides mana. Please. Some other presence. Some other force to sustain me.
“Please… just!”
And the moment I released that anguished cry, something miraculous manifested above.
“…!”
An unfamiliar yet somehow familiar aura. Sacred power not quite as formidable or pristine as Auredhian’s, yet sufficient to save me now. I knew instinctively. It was Diego Schmart’s sacred power. Diego Schmart. The Vice-Bishop of Barishard. A priest whose sacred power ranked among the five strongest on the Surface….
“Then… from here on out…”
The Purified Land. In an instant, everything clicked into place. Why the path Raulus had traversed lay in such utter ruin. Why the hole leading to the Surface was half-blocked. Why Raulus had suddenly recovered midway through.
A red warning flared to life, and with it, a spark of hope ignited. Holy ground, sanctified by divine power. Raulus’s Sanctuary. My refuge!
“What a cursed fate, truly…”
I squeezed every last ounce of strength from my body and climbed the slope. I could distinctly feel the Sanctuary drawing closer. The earth was gradually splitting and warping. Diego Schmart’s divine power surged through with a violent rush. Yet the bone-chilling sounds persisted.
Crack.
“Ugh, black…”
My heart pounded so fiercely I thought it would burst. I clenched my teeth to keep from biting my tongue, but my breath came in gasps. Behind me, a sharp, clawing sensation of mana. Before me, the gentle, billowing caress of holiness.
“Where are you…!”
A sharp, acerbic voice echoed through the cavern at that moment.
“This time, I won’t let you slip away!”
“…!”
A hand as cold as a corpse grazed my shoulder blade with a perilous closeness. In the very next instant, the weight pressing down on me lightened considerably.
“Gasp…”
My body suddenly became light. The mana that had clung so viscously to me melted away in an instant.
“Ugh.”
My body staggered of its own accord. I barely managed to bend at the waist, drawing in the air that rushed toward my nose and mouth in desperate, ragged breaths.
“Gasp… cough…”
The terrible headache that had been gouging at my skull slowly receded. But before my vision could fully recover, my body pressed against the wall. The sharp, stinging mana still pricked at my back.
“What did you do—was that a Sanctuary?”
Hades, who had followed me into the Purified Land, wore an expression of annoyance. He lifted Soleia Elad’s arm and examined it from every angle. Her pale, smooth skin was reddening as if burning in the holiness.
Hades clicked his tongue.
“Right. I recall hearing there were regions destroyed by divine power.”
I watched him with anxious eyes. Soleia Elad’s body seemed to be taking damage from the holiness, but from the way Hades spoke, it seemed her core essence remained unharmed.
“Not a Sanctuary directly proclaimed by Raulus, merely land purified by humans.”
“…”
The situation was truly dire. I had avoided becoming a gutted fish again from the holiness seeping into the earth… but that didn’t mean I possessed any weapon to face that distant absolute being.
I stumbled backward, retreating. My sensory connection with Raulus was already severed, but I had confirmed reaching the Surface earlier. So… if I could just hold on a little longer…
My mouth opened of its own accord.
“Soleia Elad.”
“Mm.”
“Soleia Elad?”
No response came from Soleia Elad. She had clearly been consumed by Hades again. Even in the Sanctuary, I could vividly feel the tingling waves of mana. And in the moment I blinked,
“Gasp.”
Reddish-brown hair swirled before my eyes in an instant. A flawlessly beautiful face pressed close. My heart plummeted. A magic circle that had pierced through the Purified Land snared me from directly beneath my feet.
“Did you kill her?”
I gasped for breath, spilling out whatever words came to mind.
“Soleia Elad, did you kill her?”
“Why? Weren’t you the one who hated this child?”
Hades, wearing Soleia Elad’s body, pulled his mouth wide in a grotesque grin. A bizarre laugh. Flicker, flicker. My vision blinked in and out of focus.
The magic circle woven beneath my feet crept up along my ankles, creeping steadily upward. In mere seconds, the chain of mana had wound tightly from my calves to my thighs, burning with searing heat. It burrowed deep, as though it would scorch my flesh and melt my bones to nothing.
“Ugh….”
I was now on the very precipice of my limit. Once all the sanctity drained from within me, what remained would be truly the me from two years ago. The me who couldn’t even endure a gentle flow of mana. A mere crumb, worthless as a sunfish.
“I shall accept this body graciously, Princess.”
“…!”
A body overflowing with sanctity. Hades murmured between his grotesquely split lips. His voice dripped with longing. And I realized with the force of lightning. Just as before, even now….
“Ah.”
Hades, you’ve misunderstood something.
“…!”
My thoughts could not continue further. From the fingertips extended toward me, withered and desiccated bones creaked and jutted forth.
“-.”
And they burrowed directly into my body.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————