It screamed.
It screamed as I was thrown back, a bright flash of light illuminating the otherwise dimly lit night like a white sun.
For the first time in a long while, I was helpless. Helpless as I found myself on the muddy ground, soaking under the heavy rain as the wind battered my body.
My ears rang as blood dripped down my face. My body felt cold, even as white flames burned my skin. I had no protection spell to help. I never needed one for myself, not since I slew the gods. Only they and their angels had the powers to kill me, let alone harm me. Without their blessings, no other power in this world would be able to even lay a scratch on my bare cheeks.
But why?
Why then was my body overwhelmed?
Questions flooded my mind as I tried to understand what happened. Dalinah prayed while holding the magicstone, then placed it inside a powerful and sensitive medium, her staff.
Prayers weren't supposed to happen anymore, let alone work. Without the gods, prayers were useless, the ritual was supposed to die out!
Yet the magicstone reacted. Something like that could only happen if a divine connection was made.
Someone or something answered.
My eyes blurred as I tried to focus, using my keen senses in a desperate attempt to reorient myself. I couldn't sense the adventurers nor the helpers. Not even Frank.
Pieces of rubble fell around me, streaking down in a white haze, consumed by white flames. My eyes were still blurry but I tried my best. After a short while, my vision cleared, and I could see. There was something in the distance where the cottage once stood, something unnatural.
A Breach.
I staggered as I pushed myself up, limping as I stood and looked closer. The cottage was gone, reduced to a pile of rubble. White flames bristled around it, unbothered by the cyclone and its wrath.
White flames only meant one thing, divine magic. Specifically divine attack spells. But they could also be caused as a byproduct of an angel's attack.
If an angel was responsible, then that would explain a lot of things. But that wouldn't explain why an angel was still alive.
Unless there was something else, something new.
I cast a tier 10 healing spell on myself. It was the most powerful and potent of all healing spells, hence its tier. But it was also an inflexible and risky spell, only able to heal one individual at a time, and at great expense to the caster's mana reserve.
The spell is almost instantaneous in its effect, effective and painful. If cast correctly, the body would almost instantly heal any and all wounds and scars, quickly expelling ailments, poisons, and venoms. The body would be renewed into something new yet the same. The old flesh and blood are essentially overwritten and replaced by the spell.
Even though the process would only take 1 to 5 seconds depending on the extent of the injuries and the skill of the caster, the pain it induced would make it seem as if it lasted longer.
However, if cast incorrectly, it could lead to cancerous growths that would overtake the victim in less than ten seconds, transforming them into a malignant tumor of death.
It was a risk I had no trouble taking, for I was the one who designed this spell in the first place. I created it for desperate times, and this was one such a time.
I grunted as the spell did its magic. Pain soared all over my body. Broken bones were made whole. Burnt skin peeled off. Wounds closed and healed. After what felt like an eternity, I was healed. My mana was depleted significantly, which was a problem if I needed to cast more powerful spells back-to-back.
But that was the least of my concerns.
A breach was an unnatural hole between dimensions, a tear in the walls that separated the mortal world and the demonscape. Only demons and the misguided cultists who followed them had the ability to create these breaches, something I was all too familiar with.
Demonic breaches, however, appeared red and oozed with rotten blood. They were malformed portals with a spiraling center.
The breach in front of me was white, cackling with lightning and bristling with white flames. It looked like a crack, a broken pane of glass against the walls of reality.
And it was still growing.
Reality around it shattered as it grew, its unholy tendrils spreading in the air like roots from a tree.
Then I heard it again. That vile, unholy wail. It was an ethereal scream, a bellowing chorus of ugliness. It drowned my ears in an unrelenting wave and I almost moved to cover them, but I stood strong.
A tier 10 protection spell, the strongest I could cast, wrapped around my body in a golden swirl of magic. It flickered as it resisted the sound, saving my ears from further injury and confirming that it was a psychic attack. I could still hear it, but there was no pain anymore.
I frowned as I walked forward, palms swirling with all the magic I could muster. Magic circles appeared around me as I readied to strike. There would be no holding back, not against this.
I shone a golden glow as I approached the breach, ignoring the storm that poured stronger by the minute.
Judging by the increased strength of the storm, it was more than likely that the central spire had shut down. Most likely due to the surge of energy from the opening of the breach.
A giant pale hand reached out from the other side of the breach, pulling against the edges as the scream sounded louder.
It tore through reality as it pulled, until it finally crawled out.
It hunched over the breach like an ogre, surveying the land in front of it with its many eyes. A flickering halo floated above its bald head.
There was no doubting what it was. A disfigured angel, malformed and bloated by a corruption. It had black pits for its eyes and a smiling mouth that oozed a grayish slime. Its once white and feather wings were but gone, replaced by grayish protrusions on its back that looked more like bat wings.
It was unlike any monster I had seen before. It was definitely no servant of the gods, not even they would create such an abomination.
Once its gaze finally found me, it screamed. It ran fast, faster than it should, galloping like a horse on all four limbs.
I struck first, sending a barrage of concentrated magic rods against it. The rods hit its body with complete accuracy, stopping the abomination in its tracks. I quickly jumped, launching my fist against its head as it tried to stand back up.
There was a loud thud as my fist met its target, followed by a crack as its neck snapped. I grabbed hold of one of its wings, swinging around using the force that propelled me. The wing tore off as I pulled against it, landing myself on the rubble beside the abomination.
Without a second more to spare, I aimed my palms at its exposed side and unleashed a torrent of magical energy. It was hot, as hot as molten rock. It pierced through the abomination's skin, melting its insides and burning the skin around it. It howled in pain as the beam burrowed deep.
But it was not enough.
A large hand appeared from the corner of my eye and I jumped away, narrowly avoiding the hand as it slammed on where I once stood.
The monster reoriented itself, quickly turning to face me as I landed a few meters away. The wounds I inflicted on its body were already healing with the gaping hole on its side filling itself up and closing. It bled, but that didn't seem to do anything other than slow it down.
I frowned. That wasn't a good sign.