Fear came from the unknown, from a lack of understanding. So people said, anyway—Lucian had never bothered to do a deep dive into the subject. Either way, as Lucian strode forward into the Hells, it felt particularly apt. There was no area that he knew better than the Hells. There was no area that he was better equipped to navigate. He was bringing a holy build into an area comprised solely of demons, and he was shadowed by more than a dozen people capable of transforming into a divine beast. Why should he be afraid?

  Lucian stepped into this pocket of the Hells, looking up and around. There were no skies in this place—beyond a certain point, there was only absolute darkness. It was kept at bay by considerable roaring flames placed around the ominous spire dominating their vision. It almost appeared as though they were on an island amidst an endless sea of darkness. The spire was the sole identifiable structure near them, and it had a treacherous path winding up to its entrance with multiple walls protecting it, each with formidable gates.

  Haunting noises drifted out from the dark. Screams. A foghorn. Clicking, gurgling, clacking. As the monastics joined him in their divine beast forms, they flinched at these noises. Lucian didn’t. The dark seemed utterly terrifying to those who didn’t know what was out there. It was a wilderness, yes, but a wilderness like any other. Lucian had prowled that wilderness countless times as Rowan Sumner.

  This map was the player’s introduction to fog of war mechanics. To first time players, it could seem overwhelming. If they weren’t careful, enemies could suddenly step out of the dark to attack your party members, potentially killing weaker ones immediately. The omniscient view of the map that had carried players through the early game stopped being a factor here.

  Or at least, it should have.

  “I’ll take point,” Lucian declared. “Hang back. Don’t advance unless I give the order.”

  No one would be taking his bounty this time. This place was full of demons—and demons were full of purified essence. Lucian produced a potion and drank it. This was one of Charlton Lowenthal’s brews—an utterly essential potion. He felt a dull, throbbing pain behind his eyes. Blood started to drip out like tears. But all around, the darkness… it simply vanished.

  This potion banished fog of war in a large radius in exchange for poisoning its user.

  Lucian ran out into the darkness, moving quickly to offset its drawback. Hopefully, the enemies would all be where he remembered them. Considering a great many were gargoyles, that was likely. Lucian entered where the light ended, walking around the path. He found gargoyles waiting there in the dark, standing near barrels marked with red X’s.

  The thing about traps… they could work both ways.

  Lucian cast a simple fire bolt. It struck the barrel, and an explosion roared out. Lucian used the cover of its loud noise to cast the Heavenly Blade incantation into his Inquisitor’s Spetum, empowering it. He seized upon the gargoyle with half of its body already blown off, and pierced his spear deep. It lit up with holy light, and Lucian felt some relief as he was healed. The Vitaegis provided overheal, giving him a buffer for the pain.

  Lucian pulled out his spear. The gargoyle turned to dust, and its purified essence imbued him with power. He inhaled gratefully.

  The Hells. This was his place.

  ***

  When the first explosion echoed out across this accursed place, Aurelia was terrified. She had long ago assumed her divine beast form, but even still, something about this place made her feel… off. It was too hot, too quiet, too damn dark. She wasn’t sure if the ground beneath her feet would stay solid, assuming they were adrift in some endless void.

  But ahead of them, Lucian stormed this place as if he owned it.

  Lucian would walk into that inky, all-consuming darkness without fear. He would vanish for a few moments before reappearing in a burst of white light created by his holy magic. He would slay some assailant, seen or unseen, before vanishing back to its cover. She saw enemies scrambling frantically to address this problem, but it seemed as though he had practiced for this day a thousand times.

  The path ahead was narrow and treacherous, nothing more than a small paved road lit by torches. He ignored the road entirely. He would steal upon gargoyles hiding in the darkness, lurking with flammable barrels and fire magic. He would turn their traps against them, destroying them so utterly that all they could think to do was flee to the light. Others joined the gargoyles—foul hounds of hell, barely smaller than Aurelia.

  When they were gathered, clustered, a crossbow bolt would shoot out from the darkness, striking a putrid flower that burst and released a cloud of poison. The hounds would whine and cough, rushing out of the poison. Lucian would charge out like a knight on horseback, spearing one and vanishing into the darkness on the other side of the path. She heard nothing but the death knell of that hound… and soon enough, he would reappear, spearing another and vanishing once more before any action could be taken. Like that, the hounds died one by one. Some fled back into the poison rather than face his onslaught, yet he killed them too, striking them down with holy magic cast from the dark.

  There were foes that could see in the darkness as well as Lucian, but that never seemed to matter. Foul apes would rush into the darkness screaming in rage, only for their furious howls to be cut short in a burst of white light that faded in seconds. Undead archers with gemstones for eyes loosed their arrows without an end. They hit Lucian—she knew they did. She saw him, briefly, arrows sticking out of his shoulder, his leg.

  Two arrows in him, then seven—she counted. When next she saw him, they had fallen to one, and next time, they had swelled to a number so high she couldn’t count. Those arrows didn’t seem to be powerful enough to pierce her hide, but nevertheless, he was enduring it without slowing. The places in which he was appearing made it seem as though he was dipping into hidden recesses, climbing into caverns that he had no right to know about.

  Eventually a huge bulk of enemies had gathered in front of the first gate of the walls surrounding the spire. Aurelia wondered if this was where she would be called to step in, intervene. Instead, the barrels that the gargoyles had abandoned rolled out. The beasts scrambled to flee, but a bolt of fire soon struck it, exploding violently. Before the first explosion had even ended, another barrel rolled out, and seconds later another explosion seized the survivors.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  The demons battered at the gates, terrified. The undead archers standing on the ramparts kept loosing arrows at Lucian, but their efforts never seemed to amount to anything. When the monsters had reached a place that Aurelia thought Lucian might not be able to hit with a barrel, a crossbow bolt shot out and hit something—a target, by the look of it, and one that the undead archers had probably been intending to hit to trigger the trap against any intruders.

  A tremendous mass of boulders fell upon the remaining enemies, then started rolling down the rest of the path. Thankfully, Aurelia and all of the others were out of the way. The last of the demons on the path died. Then… the archers stopped firing. They looked around, as if confused. What had happened? Aurelia craned her ears, listening for anything. After a while, she heard the sound of stone sliding.

  Lucian stepped out of the darkness once more, somehow on top of the ramparts. He braced his spear and charged, crashing into one skeleton and pushing on to the next. He stopped at the edge, casting all of them over. He reached into the satchel at his side and produced a potion, tossing it down followed with a firebolt. It exploded violently. She recognized it—that was the potion he’d used on her.

  Lucian walked over to a lever atop the ramparts and flipped it with a kick. He looked out at them.

  “Come on,” Lucian shouted. “Make it past the gate.”

  ***

  Lucian winced as he healed himself, and an arrow fell out of his body. Under ordinary circumstances, the constant vigilance of those skeleton archers made it so that any foray into the darkness wasn’t advised. The Wardchain plus the Votive Gloves could give him a resistance to mundane projectiles of 83%. That made their arrows weak—pathetically so.

  Lost count of the stat gains, Lucian thought. That was the most bothersome part of all this, in his eyes. He liked his neat, orderly Evercodex with exact gains modeled. Still, I suppose that’s what you call one of those good problems.

  Lucian waited until everyone, including Miriam, were past the gate before he kicked the lever back into place. The gate shut behind them.

  Miriam looked up. “Is that wise, blocking our retreat?”

  “I think that you saw what I just did,” Lucian said with a touch of pride as he walked down the stairs of the ramparts. The potion was beginning to wear off. “Even still, I can’t do everything myself here. I’ll need your help for a little,” he said, addressing the divine beasts.

  It was difficult to read the expressions of their bestial forms, but Lucian felt they were saying collectively, ‘Finally. This guy is asking us to do something.’

  “Aurelia… a Stolas is going to emerge from a summoning sigil in the gatehouse we walk into next,” Lucian said. “I want you to hit it once with a holy axe from your tails, and once with a holy sword. Can you do that for me? The rest of you should stay here, keep Miriam safe. Reinforcements will arrive—undead, numerous but weak.”

  And without any purified essence, Lucian left unsaid.

  Aurelia’s foxlike features had an expression of, ‘are you serious?’ but she nodded, and when Lucian beckoned, advanced with him. They proceeded unmolested until they entered a gatehouse which barred them from the second wall of the fortress. Lucian looked around, spotting summoning sigils as always. When they reached the center of the gatehouse… the gates slammed shut behind them, and the sigils roared to life.

  An owl-like demon with peacock feathers emerged from the ground, spreading its wings wide. Peacock feathers always vaguely looked like eyes, but this time, they truly were eyes. Thousands of malevolent dark eyes peered at Lucian, enraged. This creature was a Stolas, an owl demon and spellcaster. It was accompanied by a huge number of enemies emerging from summoning sigils all around them.

  Aurelia lunged, twirling majestically midair. She conjured a holy axe, which effortlessly slashed into the Stolas once. It leapt back, casting a spell at her, but Aurelia dodged a lance of darkness and weaved in, conjuring a holy sword and slashing upward. The creature tried to dodge, but Aurelia was still Aurelia—that is to say, powerful. The holy blade sunk in deep, and it flew higher to escape her.

  “Perfect,” Lucian called out, advancing.

  Lucian produced one item in particular—a Lightburst—as Aurelia landed back on the ground. Meant to illuminate fog-of-war for one turn, it had a particularly potent effect against Stolas with its many eyes made of darkness. Lucian threw it on the ground and light exploded outward. Stolas screamed, and then fell from the skies. As it fell, Lucian took the time to smother his spetum’s blade in a weakness to holy potion.

  “C?l V?l,” he said, empowering his spear with Heavenly Blade.

  When the Stolas landed upon the ground hard enough to shake it, Lucian stepped forward and stabbed out with his spear as hard as he could. It pierced the creature, and holy light erupted from its body. It reared backward, the stun from the Lightburst done. Lucian pulled out another, throwing it at the ground.

  The Lightburst stun grows weaker every time, Lucian remembered.

  “C?l V?l,” he said, empowering his spetum again.

  He stabbed the Stolas again, then produced his last Lightburst, throwing it at the ground. The creature staggered back, but was no longer stunned. It immediately gathered its wings and tried to fly away. Lucian kneeled down, set down his spear, and cast two spells quickly.

  “Poi! Poi!”

  Two Pixie Darts rocketed out of his hands, both striking home. If he’d done his math right, that would be enough to finish the job. When the second hit, the Stolas’ body went limp and plummeted to the ground. When it crashed, it exploded into ashes, and its purified essence surged toward Lucian. He welcomed it, feeling growing power. Aurelia could have killed that thing easily, but she would have gotten the purified essence. Along with it came demonic power, flowing into his Inquisitor’s Mark.

  “Aurelia, I want you to jump really high,” Lucian said, standing and looking at the countless enemies surrounding them. “As high as you can.”

  Aurelia hesitated for only a moment, then leapt upward. Lucian called upon the Inquisitor’s Mark, searching for one power in particular as he moved to the center of the room. The creatures were close now—close enough that some of them snapped out at him. But Lucian welcomed a power, and it surged out of his Inquisitor’s Mark.

  A gnarled sword of darkness and flesh erupted from Lucian’s hand. He seized it, then stabbed it into the ground. A wave of bloody energy erupted in a circle, cleaving straight through every single one of his opponents, excepting one. As the sword broke, purified essence flowed to him in droves, right alongside demonic power into his Mark. This was ordinarily a harvest meant to be split between an entire party, but Lucian was hogging it all for himself.

  Aurelia landed elegantly, looking at the last remaining enemy—a shambling golem of flesh.

  “Poi,” Lucian said, and another Pixie Dart surged forth to strike it on the head.

  The golem of flesh staggered like a bowling pin barely grazed by the bowling ball… then fell, scattering to ash.

  Lucian looked at Aurelia. She watched him, tails billowing behind her, expression indiscernible. Lucian calmly walked to his spetum, picking it back up. “Tell the others to come on. I’ll go on ahead,” he informed her.

  If they were lucky, the boss of this area—the boss of the first act—would be out shopping for groceries. If not… they needed to be ready to deal with her.