Dark Resurrection: Shadows of Nekrom [Dark Fantasy | Isekai | Soft-LitRPG | Slowburn | Time Loop]

Chapter 168 - Endgame



"Ah…"

A sigh escaped Tristessa's lips. She looked to the side, biting her lower lip with venomous discomfort. Feeling a strange sense of painful solitude, she struggled to turn her head again when the gunslinger broke the kiss and pulled away from Astoria, quickly putting his handkerchief back on.

"…"

It was evident that it wasn't the first time Auron had done that. The precedent, reflected in his face, heavy with guilt and melancholy. That was why he had recognized Astoria's condition almost instantly and how to free her from that cruel fate.

"No… Queen of Vermin! Do you reject my mother's blessing for the lips of a mere mortal?!" The Dullahan shrieked, her anger projecting toward the three of them, and that made her careless. Like a novice, guided by raw emotions. Exactly like the blood elf who was drunk in that same feeling but amplified to exponential degrees: the blood sword struck the plates of her left arm, shattering the metal under the temperature gradient and burning its dark composition with cursed light and fire. "Ah, pain! So much pain! Bishop of Hatred, curse you and your flames!"

Unlike the headless woman, Tristessa and Auron watched silently as, upon opening her eyes, the desolation of the [Demoness in Pain] that tormented Astoria vanished. Taking that darkness with it and freeing those red irises and pupils that sharpened as she blinked. Exorcised, stripping her off the shadows that had overshadowed her eternally wounded heart and led it to ruin.

"You did it… Auron, you did it!" Tristessa exclaimed, patting him on the shoulder to lift his spirits. "You're…!"

"W-What happened?"

The red-eyed woman asked her sudden question, catching both their attention, blinking even more in proportion to her confusion. The Astoria bound to pain and sorrow, reduced to an empty shell, was long gone; now her angelic face was plagued by doubts and a loss of sense of time and space, unable to reconcile an answer.

"Hey you two, what happened?" she asked again, forced to look at Auron and Tristessa, alternating between them in search of explanations. "Why can't I…?"

"That doesn't matter now."

Auron interrupted her without a second thought, forcing himself to shake off the dark emotions that tormented him. It wasn't the time to delve into painful memories. He grasped the handle of the sword Astoria had dropped upon regaining consciousness and raised it with a clear physical effort.

To give it to her.

"What matters is that you go help Severus right now."

The gunslinger's words didn't seem to make sense to her in that short time. She reached out with the same hand she'd almost used to steal a revolver from him to use it herself and blow her brains out. Trembling fingers, product of uncertainty, until she enclosed the handle of her greatsword between those, brushing against Auron's and feeling the fading warmth of her own blood against them.

But the contact with her sword restored the rest of the sanity that Margules's invisible shadow had stolen from her. And her shrewd warrior's gaze shifted westward. To where the Dullahan was kicking the exhausted Severus to the ground.

Taking advantage of the distance between them, the headless foe raised her head surrounded by magical energy to cast dark thaumaturgy.

"Stijian Kenosis!"

Beneath the mantle of ash that covered the courtyard, the darkness of the glyphs that formed the magic circle gave it an even more abysmal appearance. As if at any moment the layer of earth would give way and make everyone present to fall into the eternal void.

All magic was nullified. The mystical ability Tristessa had never heard of, called [Essential Dilution], evaporated from the warriors like an aura swept away by the arid wind of a desert. It extinguished Severus's cursed blood sword, finally plunging the courtyard into almost absolute darkness. Leaving him open to any attack and powerless to stop it.

"Damnation!" Tristessa heard the elf let out a roar of frustration; the fire of his spirit extinguished, embers burning weakly within his veins. And the catalyst in his cane shattering into hundreds of shards before his futile efforts. The end of that loop in which everything ended in the worst possible way, repeating itself. "DAMN IT ALL!"

That yell made her remember the trauma of seeing Severus being stabbed by that same enemy who was approaching him, wanting to repeat history.

Again. It was going to happen again. The fear and resignation oozing from the scars of the girl's dark soul, whose legs were about to give way and bring her to her knees. Ready to surrender…

"DULLAHAN!" Something that didn't even cross Astoria Silverthorn's mind as she gripped her greatsword tightly and began to run toward the dark knightess, like a bloodthirsty beast. "RIAAAAAAA!"

Because of the dark thaumaturgy emanating from beneath her feet, Astoria seemed to be slowed down and struggled to keep her sword in a stable position as she ran. But that didn't detract from her courage to throw herself into the unknown, leap over Severus, and clash her sword against the Dullahan's. Her war cry echoed throughout the courtyard of Burnt Fort Hexel.

"Silverthorn...! Argh!" the dark knightess groaned in pain as Astoria kneed her in the head, taking advantage of the position of her arm while using the other to apply pressure with her curved sword to block the blade of the greatsword. "Blasphemous, heretic, Queen of Vermin!"

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A burst of Discord emanated from within the foe's helmet, ignored by the irate silver-haired knightess, who repositioned her sword defensively and slashed at the lower part of the black steel pauldron. Fragmenting the metal, a new imperfection added to the dozens spread across the length and breadth of her armor.

"Astoria!" Tristessa called her name inside her mind, like a glimmer of hope that had just broken the consistency of pessimism, the same way her sword had broken the Dullahan's armor.

And the barrage of attacks didn't end there: Astoria stepped aside to help Severus to his feet and give Auron a direct path to their common enemy. With no one or anything to stop him from drawing his revolvers.

"The perfect night for a shootout! What say you, Dullahan?!"

Taking aim, he smiled behind his handkerchief. His eyes gazing through the dancing shadows that reigned in the courtyard with ease. The sudden silence was broken by the discharge of his revolvers with precise shots. Armor-piercing bullets in their right and hollow-point bullets in their left; a combination that wreaked havoc on the battered shadow-born knightess.

"Auron!" Tristessa thought, a small smile forming on her lips. Purged for the moment of the poisonous loneliness caused by the kiss, giving way to hope, in the opposite direction to the suffering of her other self.

"The King! King without a Crown… King without a Kingdom…!" the Dullahan wailed, doing her best to shield her head from the storm of bullets. "Ah, argh! Mothers…!"

Dark metal bent, pierced, and split, while the shadows that mimicked skin, muscle, and blood also mimicked the consistency of blood spurting from fresh wounds. On her arms, legs, and much of her torso. Reaching her in such a critical state that she was unable to even maintain the stability of her dark thaumaturgy spell. In an instant, all magical energy frozen in time and space resumed its flow.

The danger posed by those warriors was real. It drove the Dullahan to take the form of a torrent of shadows and attempt to escape…

"Mad phantom, I won't allow it!" Severus no longer had any barriers in his way. Only the resistance of his fiery and wrathful spirit, allowing him to raise his right hand toward the shadows and gesture with mathematical logic with his left. "EIN ATTRACTOR IRIT!"

Spider veins spread across his face and arms, evidencing his soul getting damaged from the overuse of magical energy. Severus didn't care about that, nor did he care about spitting blood. He conjured those violet glyphs and ring-shaped geometries to subject the Dullahan to the relentless force of gravitational attraction. So powerful that her shadowy form was pulled to the ground.

"Curse you, Bishop of Hatred!" Gravity had forced the dark knightess back into corporeal form, on her knees and in a position that was advantageous to her: she had descended in the middle of the courtyard, dividing Tristessa's group of warriors. Having her at his mercy. "Emprosa Athanaton!"

Divide and conquer. In the literal sense of the word, conjuring through dark thaumaturgy a barrier of darkness that split the courtyard in half. Due to her weakened state, the Dullahan hadn't been able to conjure a defense of massive proportions like in the Feydra Forest, but one large enough to buy her time. To reach the girl dressed in gothic-back, almost blending into the gloomy atmosphere around her.

"Tristessa!"

"I'm coming, lady!"

"Don't die now!"

The screams of Astoria, Auron, and Severus came from behind the figure of the dark knightess, looming before Tristessa like the mortal threat she was, despite all the damage she had suffered. The scars of battle manifested in the form of her fragmented armor and gaping wounds that continued to ooze physical darkness. A harbinger of the end, seeking to end that loop and return to the void of the Cosmos where she could heal and await a new night of terror and violence. Forever, until Tristessa could defeat her.

"…"

But who said that very loop wouldn't be the last? The endgame of that chess match? The end of the Dullahan?

The fate of both, spinning in the air like a coin, waiting to see which way it would land, amidst all those shadows moved by powerful winds. A bet that two hidden guests were also participating in. Luxury spectators in the form of apparitions, not corporeal, watching from the top of one of the walls.

"Endrel… Margules."

Tristessa named them both, the Angel of Rebirth and Demoness in Pain. Discord-made phantasms of rotten flesh and steel; shadows that were embracing each other, bound in lustful and twisted love. In the same manner and posture as when they pulled on the [Golden Chains] within the In-Between. Chains that had invaded the material plane in the presence of the two supernatural beings; traversing the burned walls like cobwebs, and gears protruding between the holes and tears, turning the wheel of Life and Death that existed hidden, but always present.

"■ ■ ■ ■ ■"

Endrel's voice, powerful as the explosion of a dying star, and which only Tristessa heard. The voice of that angel who, along with that of her lover, condemned Tristessa to always start over. Agents who oversaw her [Dark Resurrection] in the name of Vel'Moran. Between macabre smiles and grimaces of erotic suffering.

"MY NEMESIS!" While not as apocalyptic as her mother's voice, the Dullahan's roar was like that of a lioness from the underworld, as terrifying as it was admirable. Truly, a great and persistent adversary, she now raised her sword toward the starless sky, and from within her helmet glowed two red eyes charged with all the power she could muster. Ready to kill her. "MAKE YOUR CHOICE!"

"…I won't die today." That thought made Tristessa, against all odds, smile with complete confidence. She adopted the Arachnion stance she had learned from Katriel Strauss and, with the hand not holding her hunting dagger, pointed it at the ashes. Feeling, in the distance, the call of a demiurgic regression and a black light seeking rebirth. "Arise!"

Her [Divinity of Accursed Existence] roared like a demonic howling within her. Infernal, scorching, it threatened to reduce every spiritual particle that composed her being into cinders.

The strain exerted on her soul was brutal, like never before. An anguish that in another context would have made her writhe on the ground in unbearable pain. Now, that agony stimulated her confidence, watching the ashes rise and take the form of one of the ancient soldiers from the Age of Kings.

"GRRRRR! GRAAAAAAAA…!"

His armor, broken and brittle. His face, legs, and arms imperfect, ashes that kept falling. His hatred toward Tristessa for granting him this blasphemous imitation of Life was so transcendent that it bridged the material and spiritual worlds.

"Attack!"

The revenant's anger was inhuman, but he was unable to resist his summoner's command. He was forced to raise his brittle, fragile spear from within the cloak of ash, giving it the strength to withstand any impact and lunge at the Dullahan. The spear's tip took on the consistency of the ancient metal it was once made from, more powerful than dark steel.

It allowed him to pierce her completely, from one end of her abdomen to the other.

And the Dullahan vomited a dark imitation of blood from within her helmet.

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