"W-What... what are y-you?" The angel gasps, dragging himself up on trembling hands. He looks up at me, the holy light fading from his eyes, replaced by an absolute, paralyzed terror.
[THE HEAVENLY CREATURE HAS GLIMPSED THE ABYSS THROUGH THE BACKLASH. THE SEED OF DECAY HAS BEEN PLANTED WITHIN HIM.]
What? Seed of decay? Can he be cleansed of it? I question the system mentally.
[THE PREY HAS BEEN MARKED. THE SEED HAS ROOTED. THERE IS NO WAY BACK.]
What does that mean?
[TIME WILL TELL. YOU WILL SEE...]
"Monster!" the angel shrieks, his divine mind fracturing from the glimpse of my inner void. A spear of pure, solid light materializes in his shaking hand.
"You dare attack my male?!"
Before the angel can thrust, Lilith erupts. She leaps an impossible distance across the balcony, a wicked, dark dagger appearing in her hand from nowhere. The angel reflexively fires a beam of burning light at her mid-air.
Reacting on instinct, I thrust my hand forward, opening a localized spatial fracture. The portal swallows the holy beam whole, neutralizing the threat.
Lilith lands directly on the angel's chest. Her dagger digs deep into the holy figure's sternum.
"Nobody in heaven will ever touch my male!" she bellows.
With a feral snarl, she twists the blade, tears it free, and drives it directly into his throat. The angel tries to thrash, tries to invoke his laws to defend himself, but his divinity is failing. Lilith doesn't stop. She hacks with brutal, rhythmic violence until she cleanly severs his neck.
Standing over the bleeding corpse, she lifts the angel's head high into the air by its golden hair, presenting it to the crowd like a conquering goddess of war.
"This is your heaven!" Lilith shouts down at the stunned plaza. "Liars who brainwash you! They force you to believe in a lie of freedom—a freedom that only exists under their rigid shackles! I ask you: what freedom is there if there are rules at all?!"
[THE SEED OF DECAY HAS DIED ALONG WITH THE HOST.]
I ignore the notification for a moment, stepping forward. I wrap my arms around Lilith's waist from behind, pulling her back against my chest. I find her bloody, protective display incredibly attractive.
"Reckless," I murmur against the skin of her neck.
She shivers, her fierce aura instantly melting into a soft, yielding warmth. "Did I exaggerate?" she asks shyly, tilting her head up.
Below us, the sight is priceless. The five thousand citizens look up in absolute, paralyzed silence. The being they thought was invincible, the holy messenger of the sky, lies decapitated, his golden blood pooling across the royal marble.
[DANGEROUS ARTIFACTS DETECTED: THE DAGGER OF LILITH & THE SPEAR OF HEAVEN. WEAPONS POSSESS CONCEPTUAL PROPERTIES CAPABLE OF HARMING DIVINITIES AND PRIMORDIALS. BEWARE: THEY CAN DAMAGE YOUR CURRENT PHYSICAL FORM.]
I note the warning, keeping my eyes on the crowd. The forced trance has broken; the people are rubbing their temples, looking at each other in confusion.
"Are you alright?" I speak, my voice amplified by the wind. Every face snaps up toward me. Lilith quietly steps back, taking her submissive place in my shadow once more. "I never expected such a cowardly ambush. We were all in extreme danger."
"Danger?!" an educated merchant calls out from the crowd, his voice trembling. "He... he was an angel of the light!"
"And he was actively attacking your minds," I reply coldly. "He is the exact reason you felt the sudden, pathetic need to drop to your knees without understanding why. Do you still feel that divine need now? If you do, then why are you standing? Why has the holy trance vanished the moment his blood hit the floor?"
I let the question hang, watching them glance around in dawning horror.
"This creature was no different than the Elder. They spread their psychic parasite, forcing innocents to perform acts they would never choose. These celestial beings do not care about you. They are merely predators, harvesting your souls to feed their own radiance. They feed on what is weak. Because there is only one law in this cosmos that is absolute, and it is this: All that is weak shall be devoured."
A heavy, suffocating silence drops over the plaza.
"Are you going to allow yourselves to be devoured by these sky-parasites?!" Aria seizes the moment, stepping up to the railing, her voice ringing with royal authority. "Or are we going to learn how to defend ourselves so a tragedy like Silver Harbor never happens again?! Are you men?! Aren't you going to defend your children and your wives, just as Vance has shown you?!"
"Demoness! That woman behind him—" an old priest shakes his staff, pointing a trembling finger at Lilith.
"She is a master mage!" Aria counters instantly, her lie so fiercely honest that for a split second, even I question reality. "She knows how to slaughter the parasites of heaven because she understands what they truly are! She fights for us!"
Behind my back, Lilith leans forward, pressing a soft kiss between my shoulder blades through my shirt. "She has learned well..." she whispers playfully.
"The angel is no different from the monster in the sea," I add, cementing the narrative. "They see humanity as nothing more than cattle. We are food for them, and food for their heaven."
"Then... then you want us to worship demons? To bow to hell?!" another voice cries out in despair.
"No," I reply, my gaze freezing the speaker. "Demons would devour you without a second thought. Hell offers no salvation. We humans have nothing but each other. And together, we will make both heaven and hell tremble."
The crowd erupts into a completely different kind of noise—not a trance, but a raw, vengeful fury.
"So they've been using us all along?!" an angry soldier grunts, slamming his fist against his shield. "All our faith, our coin, our prayers... for nothing?!"
"We should burn their shrines! Burn them all!"
"Yes! Cleanse the temples!"
"Ooh, I like the sound of that," Lilith purrs in my ear.
"No," I raise my hand, immediately cutting through the chaos. "How exactly do you plan on fighting a war against the sky? With torches and pitchforks?"
The square falls silent again, the anger turning into a desperate craving for direction.
"Were you expecting me to fight every single one of your battles?" I ask them calmly. "To lead a crusade while you watch? I do not even belong to this nation. But since I am a guest of your Princess, I can offer you the knowledge to become an independent, iron-willed empire. Right now, compared to them, you are less than children. It will take generations of blood, magic, and steel to build something the heavens will truly fear."
"What must we do, Sire?"
"Rebuild your nation over new foundations," I answer. "And I will personally ensure those foundations are cleared of any monsters that seek to harvest you."
I am not lying to them, but I am certainly not doing this out of the goodness of my heart. I am going to use them. They will act as my scouts, my eyes, and my ears, pointing me directly toward every high-level prey hiding in the darkcorners of this world. I am Level 6. Next comes 7, then 8, climbing steadily toward that absolute ceiling that whispers to me from the dark.
"The bird of the lake is next, then?" a woman calls out bitterly from the crowd, her hands tightly gripping her apron. "The full moon is approaching... It took my sister, her daughter, and her son! Please, Lord Vance! Please make that bastard pay!"
I hide the dark smirk tugging at the corner of my lips. The bird. "Yes," I tell her, my voice carrying a solemn weight. "I will find that silver bird. And if it leaves a corpse, I will bring a piece of it back to this square to prove its end."
"Make it suffer, Sire!" a young man adds, his eyes red with unshed tears. "It took my wife... we were recently married. She was completely innocent. I fell asleep, and when I woke up, the door was wide open and the moon was high. She was gone... Her tracks led directly into the waters of the lake. Please!"
A sudden, faint ache touches my chest at his words. But it is distant—so incredibly distant, like the fading memory of a memory from a lifetime I no longer possess. I easily push it aside.
I nod to him.
"We will assemble an elite vanguard for this mission," Aria announces to the throng, seizing the burning momentum. "We will need volunteers—hardened warriors, mages, and expert explorers. You may witness our hero fight, but know this: it is a perilous path, and you may die just like the escorts before you. Present your applications at the barracks. At the same time, we are accepting applications to repopulate and rebuild Silver Harbor. Those who volunteer to tame the port city will be granted free land, property, and depending on your merit, titles of nobility!"
The plaza erupts into a frenzy of activity as the royal guards begin directing the citizens toward the military registries. I turn back into the shadows of the palace, Lilith close at my heels, my mind already calculating the essence waiting for me beneath the surface of the silver lake.