I Possessed The Worst Character In The Hellish Game
Chapter 38: The Womb of Blight [1]

Chapter 38: The Womb of Blight [1]

"You took your sweet time getting here, Princess."

Elara’s eye twitched at the dry calmness in his voice, but she didn’t dignify it with a response as her golden gaze stayed locked on the aberrant before her.

"B-Big Sis..." Alice’s small voice stammered against Mikael’s shoulder, her fingers clutching the fabric of his coat.

"I’m sorry.... I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have—I shouldn’t have gone out alone. I just wanted to...."

"We’ll discuss this later, Alice."

Alice nodded shakily.

Elara raised her hand, and a pale blue magic circle appeared above her palm as its intricate frost runes spun slowly.

In an instant, a thick wall of ice erupted from the ground before them, blocking the path of the aberrant.

She turned her gaze toward Mikael.

"Take Alice with you and get out of here. I’ll handle it."

Mikael paused and didn’t answer right away, his gaze still fixed on the ice wall before them.

"Sorry, Princess. But I can’t do that."

Before she could answer, a piercing, high-pitched shriek tore through the garden, layered with something that sounded almost like a woman’s sobbing, woven into the rage.

A tentacle lashed out and slammed into the ice wall with brutal force, shattering it in a single impact that sent shards exploding outwards.

A gust of wind and frozen mist blasted across the clearing, whipping through their hair back and stinging their faces.

Mikael and Elara leaped back in unison as they landed several feet apart from the aberrant.

"What?" Elara’s head snapped toward him, her composure finally cracking. "Don’t be stubborn. You’re not even Tier 2 yet. You’ll only hold me—"

"You’ll die."

Mikael said in a flat voice, cutting Elara’s sentence.

Elara froze.

"You’re overestimating yourself, Princess. Even if you’re hailed as some kind of prodigy, you can’t defeat that thing alone, and you also know it. As a member of House Morwell who serves under the Valerion Empire, I can’t let a member of the royal family die in front of me while I run away."

That was a lie, of course.... wrapped in just enough truth to sound plausible.

The real reason he wasn’t running had nothing to do with House Morwell’s honor and everything to do with what would happen if Elara died here tonight.

In all of the protagonist routes in Eclipsed Realms, Elara’s death was a point of no return.

If she died here, the Empire would fall into the hands of the crown prince, her older brother, and that would lead to one of the ’Eclipsed Realms’ bad endings.

In every protagonist’s route, he had played, whether it was Aldric, Kyle, Seraphina, or Silas.... if Elara didn’t become the crown princess, then the game’s story would certainly go in the direction of a bad ending.

Even though he didn’t know what would happen in Mikael’s route, since DLC had changed too many variables for him to predict with certainty.

But he wasn’t willing to roll those dice..... not when the stakes were this high.

He had to make sure Elara walked away from this alive, even if System hadn’t given him the quest outright.

"Fine..... Do it your way."

Elara said reluctantly. She didn’t agree with him, but she wasn’t going to waste her time arguing.

"Besides...." Mikael added, his gaze never leaving the transformed woman. "That thing in front of us... It’s not an ordinary aberration."

"What do you mean?"

A pair of tentacles shot toward them as Mikael threw himself to the left and Elara dove to the right.

The appendages punched craters into the gravel where they’d stood as chips of stone sprayed outwards.

"It’s exactly what I said." Mikael straightened, already moving again to keep distance. "Her belly... It’s probably the source of the corruption. That swelling isn’t natural. Someone had placed that thing inside her belly, knowing she would be at a royal banquet... It’s not there by accident."

Elara’s golden eyes flicked toward the woman’s distended stomach as she saw the skin had stretched far beyond anything a human body should have been able to contain, translucent and veined with something dark that pulsed beneath the surface like a heartbeat.

Her stomach turned violently.

"Why would--"

She stopped herself before she could complete the sentence.

She hadn’t noticed it before, as she was too focused on finding Alice to see the obvious clues right in front of her.

The palace security had been unusually lax tonight.

They didn’t notice Alice slip by. It would have been impossible under normal circumstances.

And normally, the garden paths had at least one or two guards patrolling at all hours, especially during a royal event.

Tonight, she hadn’t seen a single one.

"Did you tell any guards about Alice?" he asked in a low voice. "Did anyone see you come out here?"

Elara hesitated.

"No. Alice came chasing after you. If I’d raised an alarm, it would have created a scene. Half the nobility would have spent the next month gossiping about the princess who wandered off after a—"

She stopped herself from speaking further, but the unsaid word hung in the air between them.

After a nobody.

After a failure.

After the Morwell family’s greatest disappointment.

Mikael didn’t react to the unspoken insult.

"So no one knows we’re here. No one’s coming to help."

"That’s... accurate."

"Perfect." Mikael said in a dry voice. "Just perfect."

"I apologize... it wasn’t the right call."

They kept moving as they spoke, constantly shifting positions as they weaved between the tentacles that crashed down around them in a relentless rhythm.

"Alice." Mikael glanced down at the girl in his arms. "Can you stand now?"

She looked up at him and nodded lightly. "I.... I think so."

Elara caught the meaning behind his words and raised her hand, casting another Ice wall.

The thicker ice wall erupted from the ground this time, reinforced with an extra layer of frost.

Mikael set Alice down gently as he kept his hand on her shoulder to steady her.

"I need you to run. Go back the way we came, as fast as you can. Don’t stop and don’t look back. Find a guard.... any guard and ask for reinforcement here. Can you do that?"

"B-But what about you? What about Elara?"

"We’ll be fine. Your sister and I just need to keep this thing busy for a few minutes before you’ll be back with help."

Alice’s lips trembled and nodded, wiping her tears away with the back of her hand.

"Good."

He straightened and turned to face the aberrant just as the ice wall came apart and multiple tentacles shot forward this time.

The transformed woman, who had been standing still from the start, ran with her elongated body at terrifying speed as her hollow eye sockets leaked with black ichor down her cheeks.

Mikael’s eyes widened. "Both of you, cover your ears!"

Elara grabbed Alice and pulled her close as both of them clamped their hands over their ears without a moment’s hesitation.

Mikael opened his mouth, and a small grey magic circle flickered into existence just in front of his throat, its interlocking runes spun and clicked into place.

「Siste!」

A single melodious syllable rang across the clearing, making the aberrant freeze mid-lunge as its tentacles, lashing towards them, halted.

Elara’s golden eyes went wide as she stared at the frozen aberration, watching it twitch and spasm as it struggled against the invisible chains that held it.

’That was not an ability. But a magic spell!!’

She had clearly seen the magic circle forming above his throat just now.

How did he do it?

As a princess, she’d witnessed and studied more spells than the average Awakener could ever dream of from a very young age.

But never... she had never heard or come across a spell capable of freezing their opponents in their place like this, even in the royal library.

Where had Mikael learned something like this?

He created it himself?

But how did he eve--

"Elara."

Mikael’s voice cut through her spiraling thoughts.

"Ice wall, now."

She snapped back to herself. "Right."

She raised her hand, and a new ice wall appeared.

This time, she had put in much more essence than last time, creating a much thicker wall.

Mikael turned to Alice.

"Run, don’t look back."

Alice nodded with a determined look, breaking into a sprint towards the palace.

****