Chapter 123

Breathing from every surface, gazing from every corner, stalking every moment, the horror of the cave wasn't a woman, but an endless loop of a structure that watched its prisoners' every moment. And the party of misfits arriving through her servant's portal were treated no differently.

She'd watched them for two days at this point, and everything from the quarrels to the lovemaking and all that was left in between, she'd soaked it all like a sponge.

'A curious bunch for sure.' She thought her eyes still glaring down at the party as they attempted to look for her. 'Too bad they're not gonna be alive for long.'

Having trapped them in a castle of ice–something she'd decided on because of Helga's spears, the horror flooded the room with cold air enough to freak out the very blood in everyone's veins. Feeling their bodies stiffen up to the cold, and their eyes slowly losing their vision, Raven and his party were forced down onto their knees.

"Al'Fira!" Taking over Erika, the devilish Asmodia warmed up everyone's body with a debuff cleansing spell. It made it so that the effect of the cold was near to non-existent against their skins.

Finally realizing what was going on, Helga gathered everyone behind her and had them form around in a circle to counter anything the surroundings threw at them. And in case the ground tried getting to them too, Asmodia laced it with liquid copper that bled out of her feet and quickly turned into solid metal.

'What the hell is happening?' Surprised by Erika's new powers, Raven was left quite confused, but given the circumstances, there was no way he could spare time to mull things over or ask her anything about them.

"Non-material entity, just like the mind horror, we need to destroy this place so we can force her true body to form up again!" Helga screamed as a smile crept up her lips.

For their first encounter with a keeper, it seemed the physical manifestation of the monster was in the form of a girl who was more than vulnerable, but the problem lay in forcing the entity back into that state once she'd turned into the very walls around them.

"Leave it to me!" Slamming her fists together, Aria fed the gauntlet more of her blood and rushed right over to the walls. "Defend me Amedith!"

Calling out to the hero to protect her as she made the ice walls crumble, Aria as well as the others got to work in getting the very structure around them to crumble.

"You truly believe you could even dent–" Before the horror could finish her sentence, buffed by the gauntlets as well as Asmodia's spell, Aria knocked out one of the ice walls in just a few hard punches. "YOU MORONS!"

Growing spikes from every corner in its rage, the horror tried to tear through the party, but to her surprise, Amedith's shield managed to break every icicle that came their way.

'Two more strikes before the absolute defense breaks…' Knowing he could defend three attacks with his shield every day no matter the strength, Amedith really hoped that the others could bring the rest of the structure down before he ran out completely.

"UGGGHHHH!!!" Summoning a barrage of her elemental weapons, Helga hurled them to the walls until more and more of them began to shatter.

Assisting Helga with her task, Raven summoned a heavy throwing ball, and with just a few spins with the chain attached to it, he chucked it into the weapons to what remained of the ice structure.

"HERE I COME TOO!" With the spectral Minotaur punching through the ceiling, Mino crumbled the thing to dust with the help of yet another one of Asmodia's speed buffs.

Losing more and more of her body, the horror's mind began to race, it hadn't expected them to figure things out so quickly, and if they didn't leaving them to starve would've been a viable trick. But with most of her body gone, the raging horror was forced to let down the illusion of the ice dome. Instead, leaving them back on the rocky paths, she tried to fool them with more illusions.

Taking the form of Raven she tried to blend in and slice their throats, but the very first one to realize being Raven himself, he didn't even hesitate before pulling out the rifle and sniping her in the head. Being hit in the head unexpectedly, the horror was left stunned as her manipulation tactic failed even before it started.

Although she'd stalked the party's every move, the fact that was making the situation slip out of her hand so quickly, was the fact that no matter what she did, they would show her no mercy and no time to react; for that's the way they'd been trained by Helga.

"Ta~ Ta~" Before her mind settled from the shock, she felt a flurry of runes being etched into her back. Turning her head, she noticed the red-eyed priestess smiling at her for a moment before disappearing out of her sight the very next instant.

Moving in while she was left in a stunned state, Amedith shot his storm of the sword; Raven hurled his own set of darkness-made weapons at her, as for Mel the archer, she decided to use the very technique that she'd been tortured with by the mind horror, which was to make a tree sprout out of the woman's heart.

"AGGHHH! H UIGHNN!" Howling in agony as her body was torn from within and a tree sprouted from the wound, the horror clawed its own face until the pale blue hue turned red and fleshy.

To further her agony, once Amedith and Raven's weapons were pinning her into the tree growing from within herself, Helga and Aria both moved in with explosive punches. Watching the entire party turning the shade into a bloody pulp, a smile tugged at Erika's lips as she activated the runes she'd just etched on the shade's broken back.

And the moment it happened, the horror lost all control of its body and began expanding like a balloon.

"Get away if you don't want dead rot on your face," warned the priestess just moments before the horror's body was blown to fucking smithereens. Had it been more cautious, more strategically sound, the shade may have stood a chance, but the very fall of its existence was running into a party trained by a holy war veteran.