Author's Preface
As the caravan marched, they encountered very few monsters. The convoy held a steady pace, not fast, but quick enough to reach the gate by sundown. That night as the sun dipped below the horizon, a golden light shimmered. There were four small buildings to the left of the gate already constructed. Cheng met Wu Jin and the caravan as they approached. No one had ever seen a golden gate up close. The Alliance had the other golden gate hidden, under lock and key.
Blue stopped dead in his tracks when he saw it. Flashes of Earth.. his parents, eve, the cramped basement where he trained. A slice of pizza flickered through his mind. He clenched his fists and muttered a single word to himself. "Soon."
Wu Jin gave orders to everyone. Some men were to unload the carriages. One driver and one escort per carriage was sent back to Silent Edge to gather the remaining supplies. "While we wait for the rest of the supplies, we will start building in the morning. We need an outpost, and quickly."
"Speed is the priority here gentlemen, it doesn't need to be pretty, it just has to work." Seori interjected.
Silent Edge got to work unloading. As the last carriage had turned around and disappeared into the darkness headed back to Chengdu. The men started campfires. There were no jokes, no drunkenness. Everyone was oddly quiet. The boys all stared at Blue and didn't say a word. Everyone knew the reality of gates now, the danger behind every new world they stepped into. Any mistake could lead to an early grave. As Silent Edge got comfortable in their new home and quarters, Mal’kareth was preparing.
In the heart of the black citadel, the Demon Lord stood before a rack of Obsidian armor. His vice commanders lined the hall. "Is everything ready?" He asked.
"Yes, my lord." The reply came quick. "We have men posted at every corner of the castle. They will fall before the corridor is reached."
"Good." Mal’kareth laughed. "Kill the weak, keep the strong alive. We will break them and bend them to his will. If only that damn annoying lich were here, then we could slaughter without care."
Mal’kareth turned to the crystal hanging from the walls. "Hatred. Soon we will hold the corpse of the Golden one's champion. Then this world will fall." He turned to look back at his army of men in the throne room, he raised his fist in the air and shouted. "THEN THIS ENTIRE UNIVERSE!"
The crystal pulsed as if it answered him. "Men, tonight we feast on meat and mead. The next feast will be one of blood."
The great hall was full of laughter, demon's tearing through raw deer meat and pints of mead. Screams of "Hail Hatred" filled the air into the late hours of the night.
After 5 days of marching from the golden gate. So-Yeon, Blue, and 50 elite soldiers of the Crimson Veil stood before a red gate. It was much larger in size than any Blue had ever encountered. Everyone stared in anticipation, with a little fear mixed in. So-Yeon gave no speech, she simply nodded to everyone and took a step through the gate. The world beyond was nothing but ruin.
The sky was painted red and black, lightning crawled across the sky like veins. Thunder echoed endlessly. The stench of blood and death rolled through with every gust of wind.
Blue looked at So-Yeon. "This isn't a world... it is a graveyard. What the hell happened here?"
Ahead. A colossal fortress of black stone rose from the wasteland. Large jagged spikes rose toward the sky. Each lightning strike reflected off the obsidian walls.
So-Yeon's eyes narrowed. "Prepare yourselves. This isn't an ordinary gate. That is a fortress meant for us to never exit."
Even the veteran warriors behind her looked between each other, nervous. As they stepped closer to the fortress the air grew heavier. Then the ground split.
From every shadow and fissure. Demons and hell hounds poured forth. Their shrieks filled the air, the first volley of arrows came before anyone had steadied themselves. Blue's system pinged as arrows rainedd down.
[System Notification]
[Second Pendant Fragment Detected.]
His heartbeat grew faster as he looked at So-Yeon. "We need to push forward to the fortress, grandfather's pendant is in there!"
So-Yeon raised her hand, and gestured. Crimson Veil surged forward like a wave. Blades cut through the small demon's flesh. As one demon fell, two more climbed from the abyss. Blue moved, Flowing Steel now even more smooth and fast. It carried him between demons, his sword slicing through necks. He felled demons before they ever had a chance to gain their footing from climbing up.
So-Yeon watched Blue move through the waves of demons seamlessly. A hand gripped her ankle. She turned and looked down, a demon cut in half had dragged himself by its claws to her. It raised a dagger. So-Yeon's kicked the demon's arm off her, she raised her foot and smashed the demon's head to pieces. As she shook the demon's blood and brain material off her foot she looked back at Blue. "He's already that strong. At this rate, he'll surpass me soon." She thought to herself.
Everyone pushed through, until they met two large black doors. Ten men each leaned and used all their strength to open the door to the fortress. As it creaked open, candles flickered to life on each side of the long corridor. So-Yeon and Blue nodded and walked inside.
As they cleared the corridor, they went room by room, killing any demons hidden behind the doors.
“Next,” So-Yeon said, pointing her sword.
They kicked through a door into a barracks packed with cots and rotten meat. It erupted. A demon split a soldier’s arm clean and roared as the man fell screaming. Another Crimson Veil stabbed the demon through the throat and went down under three demons tearing at his legs. Blue crashed through them like a storm, two strokes, three bodies and dragged the bleeding man clear with one arm while parrying a spear with the other.
“Bind them.” So-Yeon barked, already moving. “Captain, left flank! Hold!”
The left buckled. For ten terrible seconds, the formation bent under a flood of bodies...claws raking, teeth biting, but the line did not break. They killed every demon in the room and stood in the aftermath of dead demons and men bleeding.
The Crimson Veil warriors got 20 seconds to catch their breath before another command flew at them.
“Count!” So-Yeon said.
A sergeant swallowed. “Forty-three standing. Five wounded. Two…” He didn’t finish. Four men dragged the two dead comrades into the corridor. "We will collect them on the way out." So-Yeon ordered.
Blue wiped his blade on a dead demon's hide. They pushed again. Another corridor. Another chamber. A mess of bone hooks and chained cages, the metal clinged together. A wave of demons broke against the Crimson Veil’s shields and died there. So-Yeon threaded their line and turned anything that lived into two halves. Blue cut a path through a tangle of demons, felt a claw open his sleeve, answered with a step behind and a cut across tendons, precise, clean. They hit the stairs. Up.
Halfway through the fortress an orc in plate big as a horse dropped in from a ledge and drove a war cleaver at Blue’s skull. The first time Blue had faced one of these, he’d nearly died. This time he didn’t stop. He stepped into the arc, let the cleaver shave a line of hair, and carved inside the plates... ribs, then spine, two neat cuts that tore the orc’s legs off. The body crashed past him, armor screaming on stone.
“He’s grown again,” So-Yeon thought, even as she parried, riposted, and took a demon’s head clean. “How does he grow so quickly?"
By the time they reached the upper hall, the Crimson Veil breathed like bellows. Armor hung in shreds. Men staggered and kept moving because there was nowhere else to go. The dead count was a number no one said. The wounded were plain to see.
They met a shield wall of demons in the long gallery. Large things with tusked helms and tower shields carved from bone. The corridor narrowed.
“Drive!” So-Yeon shouted, and became the spear. Her sword rang and rang again; her qi flared and she hammered open a gap. Blue filled it with motion, slipping past a stabbing pike to break an elbow, he kicked a shield up with his foot and explode the throat behind it. Then he vanished as a hammer fell and reappeared with a throat-cut that kept the hammer from ever hitting anything.
“Keep moving!” she called. “Don’t let them re-form!” They didn’t. They crushed the wall, piece by bloody piece, until the last demon choked on its own blood. The survivors leaned against the stone. Hands shook. A man sobbed once and bit it down. Another threw up quietly and apologized. Blue looked back down the hall.
Half the Crimson Veil were on their feet. Half were not. The ones who stood stared at their hands, their blades, blood stained their armor, some of demons, some of comrades.
The weight of the scene hit him then. All the way to the bone. "I'm not strong enough." Blue thought to himself. He closed his eyes. "Golden ones… if I’m really your champion, then help me. Lend me the strength to protect everyone." He muttered to himself. He opened his eyes. “We have to keep pushing,” he said to So-Yeon, voice steady again. “The second piece is up ahead.”
She nodded once. They advanced into a final corridor wider than a street, lit by torches that burned without smoke. The quiet was sudden and wrong. No claws skittered. No demon's shrieked. The system pinged in front of Blue's eyes.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
[Boss Found: Mal’kareth The Demon King]