I Possessed The Worst Character In The Hellish Game
Chapter 40: The Womb of Blight [3]

Chapter 40: The Womb of Blight [3]

"Elara."

Mikael’s voice cut through the palace garden as he ducked under another lashing tentacle and scrambled backward, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

"That thing in front of us.... it’s using some kind of ability.... Something that’s messing with our heads... making us panic, and sloppy." He sidestepped another strike. "You need to stay calm and fight through it."

"That—"

Elara’s breath hitched.

She realized that her heart was unusually pounding too fast as her thoughts tangled in ways that weren’t normal.

She had been panicking.

She’d noticed it earlier, but she wasn’t able to pin the cause—it was making her moments slower, her magic spell slower than it should be.

But hearing him name it out loud made something click into its place.

Before she could dwell more in it, two tentacles lashed towards her simultaneously....

One aimed at her head, the other sweeping low toward her legs.

She jumped at the last possible second, twisting her body through the narrow gap between the two appendages.

Just then, when she was still in midair, another tentacle was already in motion toward her.

She couldn’t dodge it.

Mikael didn’t even have to tell her, as she simply clamped her own ears.

He opened his mouth as a grey magic circle materialized in front of his throat as he spoke the word in a melodious tone.

「Siste!」

The tentacle froze mid-lash again as the aberrant’s body locked in its place, suspended in the moment like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

Elara hit the ground and rolled, putting distance between herself and the aberrant.

But this time, the spell broke faster than the three seconds.

The aberration was adapting, or maybe it was Mikael who was losing his concentration.

Mikael stumbled backward as another tentacle rushed towards him.

He tried to dodge, but his injured thigh buckled beneath him, stealing the split second he needed.

An ice wall materialized in front of him just in time as the tentacle shattered it instantly.

But that brief moment was what Elara needed as she appeared beside him and scooped him under the arm with surprising strength, hauling him sideways.

"Thanks."

Mikael muttered as he detached himself from her grip, his ghostly grey eyes still fixed on the aberrant.

His gaze scanned the thing in front of them with cold detachment, calculating something in his head as he asked....

"You know any light affinity magic spells?"

Elara flinched at his question.

"No." She said in a small voice, tinged with a shame that she couldn’t quite hide.

Light affinity was one of the most powerful elements for offensive magic, one of the elements with the highest firepower potential in the entire spectrum.

In Eclipsed Realms, Elara wasn’t supposed to learn light magic until she entered the Astralspire Magic Academy.

That was where her real awakening began, when she would finally be able to combine her sword with her light magic, as it became her very nature.

"As expected." Mikael muttered.

"Here."

Mikael pulled out a simple-looking bracelet with three tiny opal gemstones from his right hand and tossed it towards Elara.

She caught it reflexively, and the pungent fishy smell immediately hit as she recoiled with a scrunched nose.

"What is--"

"It’s an artifact called Essentia Cistern--kinda like an extra essence reservoir. It has about 0.7 essence stored in it." Mikael didn’t look at her as he dodged another tentacle. "You will need it more than me. You’re going to be doing the heavy lifting."

"?!"

"Follow my commands and do exactly as I say."

Elara wanted to ask a lot more questions about what he was planning, what he meant by ’heavy lifting,’ and many others.

But she decided to swallow them and trust him, nodding instead.

"Thanks for trusting me."

****

The next minute dissolved into a blur of movement and pain.

Mikael had told Elara to conserve her essence—to cast only if absolutely necessary and focus on keeping the aberration distracted away from him, if possible.

And he would do the same in return if things got difficult for her.

So she did as he told her, darting in and out of the aberrant’s reach to distract it and force it to split its attention between two moving targets.

She had luckily found a metal rod near the shattered fountain, a decorative piece knocked loose in the chaos.

It wasn’t like her favored weapon--a rapier, but it was enough for her.

She gripped it tight in her palms as she spun and twisted, using it to deflect aside the tentacles that whipped toward her, coating it with a thin layer of essence.

Every deflection sent a jarring impact up her arms, rattling her teeth.

But the aberration was getting faster, more aggressive, and desperate.

Its movements were harder for her to read as its attacks came in wild, overlapping waves.

She ducked, rolled, twisted out of range, but each dodge left her a little slower than before.

Her body was slowly accumulating injuries-- deep cuts along her arms, ribs, and her shoulder as blood dripped from her gash at her temple, dripping into her eye, blurring her vision.

She blinked it away and kept moving.

But she wasn’t the only one who was injured.

Every time she caught a glimpse of Mikael, her stomach tightened.

Despite trying her best to keep the aberration away from Mikael, its tentacles still found their way towards him.

He was in much worse shape than she was -- his stomach, ribs, thigh, arms, all of them were grazed by the tentacles, tearing his flesh away and painting his whole body red.

Yet.

He still refused to give up and kept moving, and dodging, using Siste over and over again to freeze the transformed woman in place for a few precious seconds at a time.

Each time he used it, the effect lasted a little less, and the aberration broke free a little faster.

The blood was starting to drip from Mikael’s nose—the telltale sign of essence strain.

She wasn’t even sure how he could still run in that condition as her finger tightened around the metal rod.

She saw him extend his finger and fire an essence bullet, but unlike his previous attempts, this one was slightly different.

Its shape was broader and larger, and instead of flying straight, it curved slightly in the air, striking the trunk of a nearby tree at a precise angle.

The tree groaned and tilted, falling directly onto the aberration.

Its tentacles rose instinctively, tearing through the falling trunk before it could land as wood splintered and cracked, scattering across the clearing.

But the distraction cost the aberrant few precious seconds.... seconds it had spent destroying a tree rather than attacking them.

Mikael fired another modified essence bullet that struck a second tree on the opposite side, and it, too, fell directly on the aberrant.

The tentacles tore through it just as easily as the first.

’How is he even doing that?’

The question echoed in Elara’s mind as she dodged another tentacle.

Modifying a magic spell wasn’t supposed to be that easy.

Even the most basic spells--like essence bullet--required years of practice before you could alter their structure without destabilizing the entire ring.

But he was doing it, perfectly calculating and modifying each essence bullet so that the tree would fall in the exact right direction towards the aberration.

And that wasn’t all.

Even as he moved between firing essence bullets, she could see him preparing another spell in his other hand.

It was forming extremely slowly.

Her eyes tracked his movements as she saw he was running around the same area, over and over, his feet tracing a specific path while his right hand slowly gathered essence.

That was when she saw it, making her eyes go wide.

He was drawing a magic circle on the ground with his own blood, carving the delicate runes into the gravel and dirt with drops of crimson that gleamed with twin moonlight.

And he was all doing that in the middle of the battle while being injured.

She couldn’t process it... couldn’t understand how someone who wasn’t even an academy student could do this.

Was this really the same Mikael Morwell that everyone called talentless?

He hadn’t even received any formal training in advanced spellcraft.

By all logic, he shouldn’t have been able to do any of this.

And yet there he was, painting a masterpiece in his own blood while death screamed at his back.

But there was no time to marvel.

She saw him complete the final rune as the circle flared once with pale grey light before settling into dormancy.

The trap was ready.

Now they just needed to spring it.

Elara ran toward him as her body moved on its own, and she reached him in three strides, grabbed him under the arm, and hauled him over her shoulder.

He was lighter than she expected, or maybe the adrenaline was just making everything feel weightless.

"Lead it to the circle." He said in a strained voice.

She nodded and sprinted as the aberrant followed, its tentacles slamming into the ground behind them, tearing up chunks of earth and stone in its wake.

When the aberration was a few meters away from the magic circle, Mikael spoke again.

"Here, now."

He extended his hands toward her, and she saw the small magic circle forming above his palms.

It was smaller than the one on the ground, but the design was similar—interlocking rings of runes that spun slowly, waiting for input.

"Pour every drop of your essence into it." He said in a rush. "Convert it into a light elemental. I don’t have the light element needed to activate the trap. Only you can do it, so pour it all in, everything you have."

Elara nodded and placed her hands on the grey magic circle.

The moment her skin made contact, her eyes glowed golden as she understood the design.

It was genius—mad, impossible genius, the kind of thing that shouldn’t have worked but somehow did.

Mikael had built a circuit.

The magic circle in his hands was a relay, a switch designed to receive her essence and convert it into a form the larger circle on the ground could use.

Her light affinity flowed through her palms and into the runes, where it was caught, shaped, and redirected downward, channeled through an invisible pathway that connected to the blood-drawn circle beneath the aberrant’s feet.

It was the same principle that governed the enchanted lamps in the palace, but applied to offensive magic in a way she’d never seen before. And he’d built it in the middle of a fight.... with his own blood as the conductor.

The grey circle blazed gold.

She poured everything she had, converting it into a light elemental.

When the aberration was directly above the magic circle...

He opened his mouth, and the grey magic circle at his throat flared to life.

「Siste!」

The aberrant froze mid-step, its tentacles locking in place above the glowing circle on the ground.

But Mikael didn’t stop there.

He used Siste again, layering the spell over itself, and again, each repetition draining more blood from his nose and more strength from his limbs.

"Be quick. It’s breaking faster now."

The runes on the ground began to glow as brilliant golden light rose from the blood-drawn lines, like liquid fire.

The runes that Mikael had painstakingly traced with his own blood—carved into the dirt and gravel while dodging tentacles and fighting through exhaustion—were finally activating.

The light climbed higher, wrapping around the aberrant’s corrupted form like chains of divine judgment.

For one beautiful moment, Mikael and Elara allowed themselves to believe they might actually win.

When suddenly.... the magic circle on the ground flickered.

The glow wavered that might have been mistaken for a trick of the eye.

But Mikael felt it.... The resonance between his conduit circle and the larger array on the ground stuttered and fried itself.

"No..." The word escaped his lips as a whisper.

He had overestimated himself.

The magic circle on the ground stopped glowing.

The golden light died as runes lost their brightness and the entire array... stopped.

The aberrant broke free from Siste’s grip.

It raised its tentacles above.... but instead of attacking them, the appendages plunged into its own head, piercing through its own skull with a wet, grinding sound as it began to pull, tearing the flesh apart, splitting the elongated body vertically downward.

"W-what is it doing now?" Elara whispered.

The swollen stomach began to bulge and stretch even further, its skin pulled taut until it was nearly transparent, and something huge was moving beneath it.

"...."

Mikael didn’t answer as his voice died in his throat, as realization dawned on him.

The party.

The banquet.

Why place a lone aberrant in the palace when there were hundreds of awakeners inside who could overwhelm it? Why choose a target so heavily guarded?

The answer was simple.

The aberrant hadn’t been sent to kill anyone.

It had been sent as a bomb.

A walking, breathing delivery system for whatever horror was growing inside it.

They had been fighting the shell the entire time, and now that shell was breaking open.... into an explosion.

"Run."

He grabbed Elara’s hand as both sprinted back.

But it was already too late for them.

The aberration’s belly tore apart in a massive explosion that ripped through the palace garden.

The blast caught Mikael and Elara from behind, lifting them off their feet and hurling them through the air like broken dolls.

.

.

.

When the dust settled, the garden was silent.

The explosion had carved a massive crater in the earth, its edges smoking and glowing with faint heat residual.

Trees lay toppled in every direction, their trunks splintered and blackened.

And in the center of the devastation, two charred bodies lay motionless among the ruins.

******

TBC...