NOVEL NEXT Chapter 94: The Crimson Sky(Part 2)
The battlefield stilled beneath a sudden sweep of unfamiliar pressure.
Dozeuff's Tenet still bled narcotic rain across the ruined ground, his monstrous Nullath coiled behind him like a patient nightmare. Yet all eyes turned as one toward the figure descending from the shattered sanctum of the evolution chamber.
Hannya walked slowly, with the calm confidence of a predator whose hunger had long been satisfied and now only lingered to prove a point. Each step she took sent subtle ripples through the ground, her aura unfurling behind her in waves that seemed to put color into the world itself.
Her veil was gone.
For the first time since stepping into Hellnia's games, her face lay bare to the world.
Soft pink eyes, petals spinning faintly with hypnotic rhythm, glimmered beneath long lashes. Her hair, once carefully restrained, now cascaded freely to her shoulders like woven threads of cherry blossom pink. Black, regal horns peeked through, pointed skywards and radiating with chaotic power. Skin pale as moonlight held a quiet glow, lips touched with just enough red to suggest cruelty or affection depending on her mood.
And her figure, impossible to ignore.
The transformation had shaped her body with deliberate excess, generous in every curve yet balanced with poise. Where once she had been mistaken for a girl playing at royalty, she now moved with the dignity of a woman sculpted by her own impossible standards. Regal. Decadent. Every inch of her was designed to draw eyes and command obedience.
Shela stood frozen.
Wide-eyed and silent. Her sword drooped at her side as her mind crumpled beneath the impossible pressure of charm laws far beyond her resistances.
Status: Dazed. Cause: Exposure to Extreme Charm Law. Duration: Indefinite.
The words might as well have flashed before her vision in neon letters. Her words echoed somewhere beneath her consciousness, but she couldn't muster a response beyond staring.
Salitha fared better, but something deeper within her stirred, blood old as sin, roots tangled deep with Luxuria's heritage. Her heart thudded with painful clarity, her legs trembling with the instinctual urge to kneel. Fear or submission wasn't pulling her limbs, it was something older, rawer, from beneath the skin. Recognition of something higher.
For all her pride, Salitha had never felt this before. Even her own faction matron couldn't summon this instinct in her. Only the head of the Luxuria clan itself.
But still, tears pricked her eyes before she realized it, gratitude rising unbidden in her chest. She thought she had been close to death beneath a coward's scheme. Yet here Hannya stood. Changed. Terrible. Beautiful. And furious on their behalf.
'She's angry… for us.' She thought with a rush of emotions.
Dozeuff broke the silence with a sneer warped by revulsion.
"You…You've ruined yourself!" he spat, bile curling up his throat as his eyes roamed her new form with thinly veiled disgust. "You ruined it! That perfect little-"
Words failed him. The sight twisted his stomach with something close to fear, though he'd never name it so. This wasn't the form he'd coveted. This wasn't the delicate, helpless little devil he'd imagined broken beneath him. This was a woman carved from cruelty and confidence, a body that mocked his preferences by existing.
"You've ruined yourself!" he choked again, more to banish his unease than to wound.
Hannya didn't offer him the dignity of a reply.
She exhaled through her nose, a nose tilted to the sky, with a sharp sound of disdain that cut deeper than words.
A regal snort was her answer.
Salitha's moist eyes widened slightly at such a rude display. That was not a common action for the elegant Lady Hannya. More ruffian than regal.
'She must be really angry.' She thought in daze.
Hannya's hand then flicked outward, graceful as a conductor's.
The ground split beneath them.
Roots black as sin erupted in thick, writhing columns, encasing the ruined battlefield within a dome of thorns. A portion behind her, twisted skyward, entwining until they formed the shape of a vast bud, heavy and trembling with potential. The air thickened with mist, black at its base but sparkling faintly pink where light touched it.
"You've committed the most egregious of sins, little devil."
Her voice carried easily through the growing dark.
"You've forgotten your place."
Salitha felt her heart tighten beneath those words. This wasn't just about bloodlines or politics anymore. Hannya had come for them. Had stood for them. Her hand pressed to her chest as warmth broke through her fear.
"Lady Hannya!" she called, voice thick with emotion. "We can fight him together!"
Hannya didn't turn. Her gaze never left Dozeuff.
"No."
That single word crushed protest beneath it like iron.
"This one is mine to execute." Her smile curved, sharp as any blade. "My prey to judge."
She focused her eyes on the panel in front of her…
[
The Chaos Platform has offered you a mission.
Candidacy Trial: Judge The Rebellious
Judge The Rebellious: A devil has overstepped their authority. By consuming pure desire, a union devil has bypassed the restriction of the hierarchy. Questioning the platform's supreme clause, and naming itself supreme above all. As a Supreme yourself, the platform requests you eliminate the usurper and restore the singular order within the world of chaos.
Reward: [Candidate's Mark], +10 Platforms Favor(current: Max)
]
…Then mentally swiped it away, he would die regardless. So doing whatever that 'mission' was, was fine. It only showed the platform was in full agreement.
Not that it mattered.
Above them, the colossal red flower trembled as it bloomed in full.
Petals, thick and heavy as slabs of flesh, opened with a slow, deliberate grace. Each layer peeled back to reveal a deeper shade of crimson, blood-red and glistening as though freshly cut. The heart of the flower pulsed like a living thing, throbbing with black mist that shimmered faintly pink at its edges.
From the center of this grotesque bloom, something emerged.
From the waist up, embedded within the flower's core as if grown there like a parasite, sat a puppet. A woman in shape, draped in ancient robes of crimson and faded gold, her hair pinned high with elaborate ornaments, glinting faintly beneath the sickly light. Strings of thread vanished into the unseen heavens above, pulling taut with each subtle shift of her form.
Her painted face remained fixed in a gentle, expressionless smile. White porcelain skin cracked delicately around the edges of her mouth and eyes, where makeup had long since blurred into something more akin to decay than beauty.
Click. Click. Click.
With a slow, unnatural rotation, her head turned. And the expression changed.
The pale, serene face split away, rotating upon some hidden mechanism to reveal a red mask beneath. A leering snarl with curling lips and golden teeth. Eyes stretched wide in frozen hate, golden horns curling cruelly from her brow.
A horrifying symbol of judgment.
Above, the strings twitched in silent rhythm.
Below, the blood-colored petals curled tighter around her as if shielding something sacred, or something monstrous.
Dozeuff recoiled despite himself. Even Nullath hissed, its rings spinning faster in agitation.
"You speak of supremacy," Hannya said, her grin widening. "Yet you cannot even grasp its existence."
She stepped forward, thorns parting for her as if they feared to touch her.
"You've forgotten the fear of true hierarchy."
Above them, the puppet's strings tightened in the airless dark. Below, the roots closed in tighter, black mist curling with slow hunger.
Hannya's pink eyes gleamed with delight.
And Dozeuff's hand twitched. He felt it.
Something was wrong.
Horribly wrong.
The mist, formed from his rain, wasn't his anymore, not fully. It pressed against his skin like a thousand tiny needles, creeping under flesh, numbing muscle and mind alike faster than even his narcotic laws should allow.
"This… can't be…"
Panic stirred beneath his skin. His body moved, bolstered by his devil blood and enhanced tenet, and he lunged at Hannya in desperation, because if he didn't, he feared he'd lose control entirely.
His blade carved through the air in brutal, ugly sweeps. Forceful. Hungry. Fueled by terror he hadn't felt before.
But Hannya…
Hannya moved through his attacks like smoke through fingers.
Every step light. Every pivot precise. Elegant, regal. Just as she liked it.
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The frustration mounting in Dozeuff's heart only fed her growing disdain.
Her monster, still embedded in the great blood-red flower overhead, laughed in a rasping "kiki" Its black-threaded hand lazily pointed at Nullath, the serpent thrashing amidst the creeping roots.
"…pit…iful… creature…"
The words came broken, dragged from hollow lungs, but the disdain in them landed like weight upon Nullath's monstrous back.
Roots responded like vipers, writhing from fog deeper than the earth itself. Nullath's field of nullification faltered in places under the assault, forcing the monster to slither desperately as it expanded its aura, gnashing its parchment tongue as if in anger.
"I… nullify… all…" Nullath hissed.
"You… nullify… nothing." came the puppet's withered reply, her head cocking to one side as if observing a particularly stupid insect trapped beneath glass.
Across the crumbling battlefield, Hannya's fury simmered beneath every careful breath.
Her bare hands danced between Dozeuff's strikes, turning aside his scythe with gliding wrists, parrying with open palms and folded fingers. She moved like a noble enduring the tantrums of a lesser, because that's precisely how she viewed this worm before her.
But beneath the calm mask, she burned.
How dare he force her to act. How dare he ruin her mood. Her lofty unveiling. Her carefully designed moment. How dare he make her soil her hands with this filth.
Hannya ruthlessly shoved all the blame of her sour mood on the devil before her.
Salitha, watching, couldn't see that fury, only the tension mounting in Hannya's body. To her, it looked like Hannya was struggling.
Her heart clenched. "Shela! We have to do something. We can't just watch her lose ground like this."
Shela, still fogged from exposure to Hannya's unveiled charm, blinked herself clearer as Salitha's love aura pressed against her mind.
"She's… not losing," Shela whispered, though doubt gnawed at her. "But… Baku… he gave me something. For her."
"What?!" Salitha hissed.
"A sword. I wasn't supposed to tell her it's from him but…" Shela shook her head, regaining focus. "...but that's stupid."
From her spatial ring, Shela drew forth the lacquered black box bound in cursed talismans. Even sealed, the weapon's presence devoured the air around it.
"What the hell is in there?" Salitha murmured, feeling the pressure ripple across her skin.
"A gift."
Shela broke the final seals and opened the box.
Inside, the black serrated katana gleamed with hungry intent and endless despair. Miasma shifted across its surface like unseen mouths opening and closing in silence.
Without hesitation, Shela hurled the weapon toward Hannya.
"This is from Baku!" she shouted, not bothering with the old man's request to keep it secret.
The sword struck the earth like a spear of doom.
Seeing this, Dozeuff lunged. Again and again. Desperate. Unraveling. He wouldn't allow her to do as she pleased.
And Hannya met him, hands bare and unbothered. Her speed only increased.
Until…
A palm to his jaw.
A fist to his stomach.
A backhand across his cheek that sent teeth flying into the narcotic rain.
Her movements had weight now. Precision. A cruel grace that mocked his flailing strength.
Her punches cracked bone. Shattered balance. Sent ripples of humiliation through his broken pride.
Dozeuff wheezed. Staggered. Tried to bring his scythe around, but she caught it casually, twisting it aside with fingers that shouldn't have held such force.
Another strike. Open palm. Across his face. His vision spun. His footing faltered.
"Struggling against bare hands already?" Hannya sighed, rolling her shoulder, exhaling as if this whole affair bored her more than it angered her. "You aren't even worth the exercise."
She stepped back, letting him fall to his knees, coughing black blood onto the drowned earth.
Only then did the cursed sword come into her waiting hand.
Her fingers closed over the hilt with deliberate slowness. Testing its weight. Letting the cursed edge hum with recognition.
For a heartbeat, her expression fractured, a flash of recognition beneath the cold fury.
"Gramps, you old fool... This is your idea of a gift?" The words slipped before she caught herself. A hiss of breath through her teeth followed. She glanced at the two watching before refocusing.
Still… she lifted the blade without ceremony.
Power then rippled outward. The ground split. Roots recoiled, then returned chaotically. Mist twisted into tighter spirals. Even her monstrous puppet hummed in something approaching delight.
"Since you brought this..." Hannya's lips pressed thin. "I might as well use it."
Hannya's sharp gaze lingered on the sword in her hand.
For a moment, the battlefield seemed to vanish from her senses.
Shela's voice echoed again in her mind.
'This is from Baku!'
A sigh slipped past Hannya's lips.
Soft. Exasperated.
"Exposed by Shela, huh?" she murmured, low enough only she could hear.
Her grin stretched slow, curling with malice beneath the weight of her anger.
'Tch. Meddling brat… You're lucky I found this by the river during a stroll.'
He'd probably say something like that. A helplessly poor excuse.
Hannya gave it a single, testing swing, the air peeled open along its edge, distorting as if reality itself recoiled from the weapon's return to her hands.
Without another word, she stepped forward.
Slow and deliberate. The sword settled into a stance both precise and imperfect.
Lucid Sword Style.
Baku's teachings, half-learned, half-stolen, all hers now.
Her fingers adjusted the grip with practiced ease. The stance wasn't identical to Baku's, more fluid where his had been strict. Her hips set with poised intent. Shoulders lowered. Chin tilted down.
This wasn't the posture of a lofty noblewoman anymore.
This was the stance of a beast ready to dismantle.
From the side, Shela and Salitha felt their hearts shook from realization.
The cracks in Hannya's regal facade showed now, faint but widening.
Where once there had been only calm mockery, now there flickered something deeper. Anger she struggled to bury beneath that perfect posture. Fury she coated in smiles. A burning wrath so old it had been named a virtue in Hellnia.
Salitha swallowed, suddenly understanding why Baku might've chosen to arm her in secret. And deep down, she felt a pang of joy.
Hannya showing this side of her meant they were trusted, even if only a bit. She was sure.
Shela, for once, didn't dare look directly at Hannya's face. Not now. The power difference was now glaringly clear to her. She clenched her fists, she would train even harder.
Hard enough to be able to look her in the eye without her mind crumbling from the weight.
And something behind Hannya's controlled expression… something was breaking free.
And Dozeuff?
He felt it, too.
Though he sneered, though he barked defiance through clenched teeth, his instincts screamed beneath the weight of the coming storm.
Click
The sword left its sheath with a snap like breaking bone.
Dozeuff barely saw the blade move before his arm hit the ground. Severed cleanly at the shoulder, tumbling in a lazy spiral through the narcotic rain.
His scream didn't reach Hannya.
She'd already moved.
Click
Her sword whispered again from its sheath. This time, his leg spun free from his body like a snapped branch. Black blood spattered the stones, steaming in the pink-tinted black mist.
Lucid Sword Style. [First Form: Sleepwalker's Step].
Her feet barely touched the ground. Each motion a phantom afterimage. Each cut impossible to trace. Each strike returning to perfect stillness as if she had never moved at all.
Dozeuff roared, forcing his devil blood to heal him faster. Bone snapped back into place. Flesh stitched itself together beneath wet muscle.
He lunged again.
Desperate. Furious.
His scythe screamed toward her throat, caught only by air.
Click
His other arm hit the ground this time.
"WHY?!" He shrieked. "WHY AREN'T YOU SLOWING DOWN?! WHY AREN'T YOU SLEEPING?!"
Hannya stepped around him like a dancer through a drunken crowd. The edge of her sword hummed with repressed violence, sliding back to its sheath after every stroke.
Click
Click
"I'm simply tanking," Hannya answered, her voice dripping venomous satisfaction. "You pitiful ant."
Dozeuff's mind reeled. He didn't know the phrase. Didn't understand it. But his instincts recoiled from her calm as if from fire. His rain fell thicker, heavier, drowning the battlefield in sheets of hallucination, yet it rolled off her like mist fleeing the sun.
Wasn't feeling it.
The paralysis meant for her nerves never found purchase. Her supreme blood, familiar with paralytics with such potency, simply adapted using the dread venom consumed as a base.
Click
His ribs opened next. A line too thin to see at first, then yawning wide as his torso tore apart under the weight of her precision.
He collapsed forward, vomiting blood.
His body reformed, slower this time. Sloppier. His regeneration lagging beneath her relentless punishment. And it was clear.
His boost in strength was being exhausted.
Above them, Nullath writhed. The roots from Hannya's puppet pinned it again and again, stabbing through its slick flesh as if skewering rotten fruit. The puppet leaned languidly within her blood-red petals, face rotating between cold amusement and sneering wrath.
"Weak…thing…cling…to nothing…" the puppet whispered, pointing again. More roots erupted, black as oil and twice as suffocating. They chewed through Nullath's limbs with slow, twisting hunger.
The creature screeched, its null field warping erratically. Even its paradox couldn't stabilize against the sheer spite saturating the air.
Dozeuff stumbled to his feet.
"I'M A DEVIL! A TRUE DEVIL! I'M SUPERIOR!" He howled, swinging wildly. "I'LL-"
Click
His leg vanished at the knee this time.
He pitched sideways, falling like a toppled statue. His scythe clattered from his fingers.
Click
An arm gone again.
Click
The other arm joined it.
"WHAT IS THIS?! WHAT ARE YOU?!"
Hannya didn't answer him.
Her sword answered for her.
Click
Ribs gone.
Click
Thigh severed again.
Click
Half his face peeled away beneath a cut too fast to follow.
Dozeuff's healing wavered now. His mind frayed under the weight of his crumbling Tenet. Nullath's screams turned feral, biting even at him now in confusion, in panic, in fury without direction.
The narcotic rain became rivers. Oceans. Drowning the battlefield in shimmering filth. But none of it touched Hannya's skin.
Her body walked between drops, her aura splitting the incoming waves.
Behind her calm expression, behind her delicate poise, Body laughed. Soul hummed.
Both closer than ever. Both pushing her toward indulgence, toward cruelty, toward satisfaction.
Punish him. Break him. Show him what love without restraint looks like.
Above, Nullath's howls reached a fever pitch as the puppet's roots tore it limb from limb. Black mist wrapped its wounds, slowing its null field until even that paradox collapsed inward on itself.
The puppet's voice echoed one last time. "Sleep… now… lesser…"
Nullath imploded in silence. Its corpse fell into ash, into threads, into memory.
Hannya returned her sword to its sheath with one final, quiet click.
Dozeuff twitched on the ground. Limbless. Broken. His blood pooling in the poisoned rain.
Salitha and Shela watched in stunned, silent awe.
This was Hannya's truth.
Regal? Yes. Beautiful? Yes.
But beneath that?
Something darker. Something crueler.
Dozeuff lay gasping, his limbs scattered like discarded meat, his regeneration sluggish, spasming beneath the weight of exhaustion, defeat, and terror.
Hannya approached slowly.
Each step measured with the poise of a queen descending her throne to amuse herself with a broken toy.
Her shadow fell across his ruined body.
Her sword rested quietly sheathed at her side.
She looked down at him and smiled, a cruel smile.
A smile sharp enough to bleed sanity from flesh.
Dozeuff, despite his pain, despite his shattered pride, recoiled. His mouth worked uselessly to summon words of protest, threats, bargains, wishes, anything. None came. Only black blood and shallow breath.
Hannya's finger extended toward him. Lazily. Like pointing at a stray insect.
Above her, within the crimson petals of the massive rose, the puppet mimicked her gesture. The pale face rotated, its grin stretching impossibly wide, painted lips splitting into a leer of mirth and malice.
"Kikiki... Don't think death will come as swiftly as my blade, pretender." Hannya stated dangerously.
"Kiki!" The puppet's laugh rattled like a broken instrument.
Its laughter echoed as the petals shivered, a chorus of unseen threads pulling tighter, beginning to attach to unseen parties across the mountains, and finally Dozeuff himself.
Hannya tilted her head. Her grin deepened, her eyes narrowing with palpable delight as if savoring a glass of fine wine poured from another's suffering.
"You thought yourself superior."
Her voice was soft, almost warm.
"You thought yourself untouchable? Supreme? Above all?"
Dozeuff whimpered.
"No, none of you are." Hannya whispered, her voice curling like smoke. "You are all nothing."
Her pupils spun.
Two of her four petals burned scarlet now. A crimson more vibrant than blood, more savage than wrath.
Her finger traced a small circle in the air before her.
"Mask of the Bad: [Delirium]."
The moment she spoke it, reality for Dozeuff shifted.
The softness of the change was the most terrifying for him.
The world seemed to breathe wrong.
Colors bled from stone. Sound curled back into silence. Even gravity forgot itself for a heartbeat.
Dozeuff's eyes widened as something unseen wrapped around his core, sinking into his nerves like a thousand threads, one by one.
His scream didn't come from pain alone.
It came from knowing, knowing somewhere deep within the rotting halls of his soul, that this torment would not end anytime soon.
Hannya's grin softened, becoming something worse.
"Dream well, little devil." she said as the mist thickened around her feet, swallowing his broken body inch by inch.
Above, the puppet laughed again.
"Kiki!...little…devil…"
And beneath that laughter, the last of Dozeuff's mind began to unravel.