Chapter 174
Nebetu'u's attacks struck the eleven beings with a force that should have annihilated them, yet instead they produced the opposite effect on something far greater, something unseen yet present everywhere, something that absorbed every wave of destruction released from the prophet's bone staff, the rosary of curses, and the nine mouths that continued to utter words no mortal ears were ever meant to hear.
The resurrection ritual of the One Accursed, which had originally still possessed nine minutes, then eight, then seven minutes remaining, suddenly accelerated, not because it had been designed to do so, but because it was forced to, because the energy unleashed by the battle between Nebetu'u and the eleven beings was far too abundant, too dense, too perfect to serve as fuel for a resurrection that had never truly been asleep.
"No... NO... THE RITUAL HAS BEEN ACCELERATED!" Zhulumat shouted, his voice cracking halfway through as his eyes fixed upon the walls that had begun pulsating like the heart of a colossal beast.
The cracked marble was no longer merely fractured; it had split wide open like countless tiny mouths murmuring alongside Nebetu'u's nine heads.
From every crack seeped a sickening golden light, not the kind that bestowed life, but one that served as a reminder that something which had slumbered for thousands of years was awakening, and it was awakening hungry.
"We have to stop this..."
Agatha tried to step forward, but her foot collided with something that did not exist, something that was nothing more than a shift in atmospheric pressure, a shift declaring that this battlefield no longer belonged to them, that they were merely spectators who happened to still possess bodies with which to witness it.
Before them, both the Holy Beings and the creature of fire began sensing the very same thing.
Their bodies, whose strength continued increasing with every passing second, suddenly felt like vessels far too small, like bottles forced to contain an entire ocean.
Within their widened eyes, even the fire creature that possessed no distinct eyes, there existed the very same realization.
A decision.
The decision that they would not die here, that they still retained enough consciousness to choose escape over destruction.
One after another, they began disappearing, not like smoke carried away by the wind, but like shadows being drawn back into bodies that had never truly existed.
The first Holy Being tore open a rift in the air beside itself and stepped inside before it could close.
But Nebetu'u did not sleep.
Nebetu'u, whose nine heads now stared in different directions, gazing in every direction simultaneously, would never allow his prey to escape so easily.
His left hand, clutching the rosary of curses, moved with impossible speed.
Three infant skull beads detached themselves from the string and shot toward the second, seventh, and tenth Holy Beings, all of whom were attempting to open escape rifts of their own.
"NO ONE LEAVES UNTIL I'M FINISHED," murmured the first Devil's head, its yellow fangs trembling with insatiable rage.
The moment the three beads struck their targets, the half-opened rifts did not close.
They froze.
They remained suspended halfway open, like mouths caught in the middle of a yawn that had suddenly been forbidden from closing.
The second Holy Being found half of its body already inside another dimension while the other half remained trapped within this chamber.
Its body, split between two separate realities, screamed, not through its mouth, but through the boundary where those realities collided, screaming like iron being sawed apart by a blade that never lost its sharpness.
Of the eleven beings attempting to flee, only three succeeded.
The winged creature of fire escaped by burning its own body to create an explosion powerful enough to propel itself beyond Nebetu'u's reach, while two Holy Beings somehow discovered blind spots hidden between the nine pairs of unblinking eyes.
The remaining eight were not so fortunate.
The other eight were captured, not like prisoners of war, but like insects too slow to avoid a frog's tongue.
They became trapped within a web woven from curses, twisted liturgies, and wax that continuously flowed from the eyes of the third God's head.
That wax no longer froze merely human fingers.
Now it also imprisoned the stained wings of fallen angels, wings that struggled to flap yet produced nothing but the sound of paper being torn apart ever so slowly, not fast enough to fly, yet slow enough to hear every single fiber snapping one by one.
"Eight... he's holding eight of them," Shaqar whispered, his voice unable to decide between awe and horror.
Beside him, Zhulumat did not hear those words, not because his ears had failed him, but because his mind had become occupied with calculations.
Not calculations made with numbers, but with burdens.
From the eighty-seven percent they once possessed, to forty-eight percent, then twenty-nine...
And now, after a battle that had lasted only moments yet felt like an entire century...
How much remained?
"Zhulumat."
Agatha's voice was not loud, but it was firm, firm like the hand of someone slapping a hysterical person back to their senses.
"Nine to ten percent. That's all we have left on the third floor."
Zhulumat felt his chest become hollow.
Not hollow with relief, but hollow like a well whose water had been completely drained by a drought that had arrived without warning.
Within that emptiness, he heard Shaqar speak once more, not with the commanding voice of a captain issuing orders, but with the exhausted voice of someone who had grown tired of treating reality politely.
"Zhulumat, listen."
"The ritual is still progressing."
"Even with Nebetu'u here."
"Even with those eight beings captured."
"The ritual continues."
"And if this ritual is truly completed..."
Shaqar stopped.
His breath felt as though he were swallowing shattered glass.
Yet he continued, because there was no longer enough time to swallow carefully.
"If the One Accursed returns to a world that has already been conquered and claimed by the Satanists..."
"It is entirely possible, Zhulumat."
"It is entirely possible that no Satanist High Lord will remain capable of defeating him."
"Even if the Most Honorable Grand Sanse, the very one we have worshipped all this time, the very one we have believed to be our greatest power, were standing upon the same battlefield."
The silence that followed Shaqar's words was unlike ordinary silence.
It was heavy.
It was dense.
It felt like an invisible hand pressing against the chest of everyone still breathing within that chamber, forcing them to remain still and accept the possibility that even the Most Honorable Grand Sanse might not be enough.
"Then... who can even get close to the ritual clock?"
Apathy's voice emerged unlike ever before.
It did not tremble.
It held no despair.
It was flat.
Flat like someone who had already passed beyond fear and arrived at the next station called acceptance.
"We don't even know exactly where the ritual is centered."
"We don't know how many layers of protection surround it."
"And we know that every second we waste arguing here is another second the ritual uses to move closer to completion."
His eyes shifted from Zhulumat to Agatha, then toward Shaqar's remaining nineteen soldiers, who still stood gripping exorcism tools that had begun feeling unbearably heavy in their hands.
Finally, his gaze settled upon Nebetu'u, who remained occupied wrapping the eight captured beings inside cocoons of wax and curses.
From time to time, his nine heads glanced toward them with expressions that could not be deciphered, balanced somewhere between curiosity and indifference, between a desire to help and utter disgust at becoming involved.
To be continued...