No! I don't want to be a Super Necromancer!

"Not dead yet?" Damien muttered, his voice steady despite the exhaustion etched into his bones. His spear gleamed once more, the tip humming with power drawn from realms no sane man would name. "If the First Circle of Hell isn't enough… then maybe the Second will be."

He raised his hand slowly, the motion calm, almost reverent. His fingers curled in a spiral of invocation, knuckles glowing faintly with the lingering residue of time-twisted deathlight.

The space behind him darkened, the very air drawing back as though aware of what was coming, something older, crueler, something that bled sorrow like the sky bled thunder.

"Descend into Madness," Damien whispered.

And the world listened.

The blackened core at the center of Fluffy's, no, Vel'kharn's—chest twisted violently, the seal from the First Circle cracking open again as new glyphs, etched in the quiet language of despair, spread outward across his ribs.

A second core unfurled beneath the first, not layered, but intertwined, like a parasite made of grief and entropy.

Then it tore.

The chains around his spirit splintered outward and reattached deeper, binding not just to the First Circle, but plunging downward into the Sea of Sorrow—Xeralis, where madness and regret walked hand in hand beneath waves of liquified memory.

Vel'kharn convulsed once, his skeletal wings folding inward before erupting into a storm of bone and soulsteel. His body thickened, not just with armor but with presence, as if the weight of every murdered beast, every erased lineage, every lonely extinction now walked with him.

His six eyes glowed with tear-shaped runes, and a low vibration, not a growl but a wail, began to spill from his chest. It wasn't sound. It was the memory of crying. The echo of a scream that had long since stopped. It was despair sharpened into a weapon.

The battlefield changed instantly.

Golden light dimmed. Wu Jinhai faltered mid-air, blinking rapidly as the divine glow around his body fluctuated. His eyes darted left, then right, as the terrain beneath him warped. Stone and cloud twisted into the outlines of forgotten tombs.

The very air thickened, as if saturated with mourning. Faces, faint, flickering, half-remembered, appeared in the sky above, mouths open in eternal screams that made no sound.

And then the Wail of the Abyss struck.

Vel'kharn's howl rose to a crescendo, and for the first time, Wu Jinhai didn't scream in rage.

He screamed in fear.

The light around him pulsed violently, then fractured. His flames weakened. His body stuttered mid-flight, faltering not from damage but from weight, the unbearable pressure of his own history crashing down on him.

The grief of those he had burned. The regret of those he had abandoned. Every voice he silenced. Every promise broken in the name of power.

They returned, wailing.

He saw their faces.

He heard their names.

His knees buckled in mid-air, his soul twisting from within, trying to curl inward and protect itself, only to realize there was no shelter. The Sea of Sorrow gave no sanctuary, only reflection. Only truth.

Vel'kharn launched forward.

No roar. No need.

He simply moved, and space surrendered to his fury.

His claws tore into Wu Jinhai's barrier, not just breaking the light but draining it, absorbing the lingering warmth like a void starved for memory.

Damien surged forward behind him, his own aura trailing tendrils of shadow-wreathed sorrow. His death energy had changed, it no longer radiated power.

It radiated longing. The terrain beneath his feet warped, grass turning to ash, stones etching themselves with the faces of the dead.

He struck with his spear.

Wu Jinhai raised an arm to block, but the blow went through, not through flesh, but through his heart's conviction. His will had splintered. His pride, so carefully polished, so blinding moments ago, had dulled into something desperate.

The divine heir, the chosen flame, the voice of the Celestial Blaze Sect, now nothing more than a shivering figure haunted by the lives he'd scorched to get there.

Vel'kharn pounced.

Wu Jinhai tried to scream a final curse, but the Wail of the Abyss swallowed it.

Six claws carved through his body. His core flared once in protest, then shattered.

And Damien's spear struck one final time, impaling him through the chest, driving divine flesh into the platform until it cracked and bled gold.

Wu Jinhai's eyes, once fire, dimmed into a flickering regret. His mouth opened, and in his final moment… he wept.

Then he died.

Not with an explosion.

But with a silence that echoed far louder than flame.

The battlefield was still. Death hung in the air like a verdict freshly delivered.

The disciples of the Celestial Blaze Sect, who had arrived too late to aid their young master, watched from the fractured edges of the realm with expressions frozen between disbelief and horror. Their pride, their hope, their future sovereign, dead in a pool of fading gold and flickering embers.

And then the sky tore open.

A vertical rift in the heavens, sharp-edged and rimmed with celestial flame. From it descended a silhouette swathed in heavy light, the pressure of its presence making even Vel'kharn's claws retreat a half-step.

A single eye opened within the rift.

It was not an eye of mortal scale. It was the will of a sect master.

The Celestial Blaze Sect's patriarch had appeared, not in body, but in avatar. But it was enough.

"Who did this?" the voice boomed, ancient, cold and absolutely furious. "Who dared destroy my lineage? Who desecrated the flame meant to inherit my throne?"

Damien was not a fool, he remained silent.

But the eye was no weakling as well. It narrowed and traced the energy straight to Damien.

Then it branded him.

A single rune, blazing, ethereal, and searing, lashed out from the rift and burned itself into Damien's left shoulder, sinking past flesh and bone and into soul.

"You are cursed," the voice declared, "to be hunted by the light of my sect in every realm your foot dares to touch. Until your soul is ash. Until your name is forgotten."

The rift snapped shut.

And then the cost of descending Fluffy to the Second Circle of Hell hit.

It didn't arrive gently, nor with fairness. It came as a wave, a collapse of thought, a reversal of breath, a constriction of reality itself. Damien's knees buckled. His hands dropped the spear. Blood poured from his eyes, not from damage, but from sorrow.

He fell forward to one knee, gasping, the battlefield spinning.

He could feel them.

All of them.

The men and women and beasts who had died within his aura, especially those dragged into the Second Circle's effect. Their pain. Their terror. Their grief.

He was carrying it now.

Every soul.

Every regret.

And within the silence that followed… they spoke.

Dozens of voices. Hundreds. Too many. Some begging. Some accusing. Some sobbing. Some laughing in madness.

He clutched his head as they coiled inward.

They would never be silent again. Not until the next descent. Not until the next price.

And Vel'kharn stood watch over him, silent, unmoving, eyes of sorrow and ruin reflecting the man who would now carry the weight of every name he erased.

Damien had survived.

But part of him had already drowned.