Deacon didn't let Jeremiah utter a single word and instead let his fist crash down against Jeremiah's face. Then again, and again.
The room that they were in, which was connected to the upper drawbridge, shook from the force of his punches as Deacon went ham, unleashing strike after strike, using nothing but his fists to brutalize Jeremiah's body.
Deacon's eyes burned wide with fury as six months of pent-up anger came crashing down on Jeremiah. His fists tore through Jeremiah's flimsy raised-arm guard and bypassed the meager physical defense his Basilisk Leather Mage Robes offered – filling the room with the sounds of snapping bone and the splattering of blood across the walls and floor.
Jeremiah's head snapped left and right, teeth breaking loose and skittering across the wooden planks of the room, his nose collapsing into a bloody smear as Deacon drove his rage into every strike.
Jeremiah sobbed beneath the assault, his muffled cries breaking into pitiful whimpers between blows. He tried to form words, to spit out curses, to bait Deacon into verbally responding – into falling for his taunts, into letting his silver tongue wrap around Deacon's mind like it had during the tournament months ago.
But Deacon gave him no response other than that of his fists.
Spit, blood, and bile ran down Jeremiah's chin in thick ropes as Deacon's knuckles slammed into his face again, again, and again, each blow punctuated by the thunder of chaos outside.
Through the broken window of the room, the battlefield raged on, and Deacon caught flickers of General Obi in the distance. The golden-armored titan had finally been forced to one knee under the combined assault of Gael, Jass, and fourteen other frontline warriors – an opening the cadets seized without hesitation. They swarmed his massive, kneeling form, stabbing, hacking, and loosing arrows in a desperate bid to bring him down.
Deacon snarled and raised his fist for one final strike – the one that would burst Jeremiah's skull like a hammer striking a watermelon.
But before the final blow could land, the purple, wrinkly finger bauble attached onto the inside of Jeremiah's robes flared bright red, moments before the sound of shattering glass rang out in the skull of anyone within a two-meter radius of Jeremiah.
Deacon's eyes widened in shock as a sudden and violent surge of mana erupted from Jeremiah's chest, blasting outward in a sphere of raw power. Deacon was ripped from kneeling atop of Jeremiah and hurled upward, his body smashing into the ceiling of the room with such force that the wood splintered and cracked, but he didn't stop there. The violent surge of mana struck him with such force that it sent him through the wooden ceiling and hurtling into the open air.
The world tilted as he rose higher alongside the bits of flesh, splinters of bone, and shards of wood that were also blasted up into the sky.
His wide eyes only widened even further as he locked onto Jeremiah's upright form.
Every wound Deacon had inflicted was gone – his face that had begun to resemble mashed potatoes, the barely attached jaw that was missing all 32 teeth, the warped upper body that looked like an alien had grown eggs inside of him – all healed as if the brutal beating had never happened.
Jeremiah's eyes burned with manic rage, bloodshot and wild, his lips peeling back into a grin too wide for his face as his left hand snapped upwards, wreathed in wind mana.
Reaching for the heater shield hooked at his hip, Deacon tore it free from the hook it was attached to, pulling out a small chunk of the leather of his Leggings of the Barbarian on the side of his thigh, and hurled it downward just as a Wind Arrow launched itself from off of Jeremiah's palm.
The two projectiles collided midair with a deafening crack that was almost muted by the chaos below.
The blast from their collision sent the shield careening back into Deacon's left shoulder, the impact shattering the metal-plated pauldron of his Chestpiece of the Barbarian, ripping through its thick leather, and shaving a patch of skin before it whistled past him.
The impact spun him midair, throwing his body into a chaotic tumble as he plummeted back toward the siege tower. Jeremiah, now with his wand in hand, already had another spell on his tongue, just about ready to be unleashed and tear Deacon in two – but gravity and wood struck Deacon first.
Helpless against gravity, Deacon crashed through the siege tower's roof, ripping a jagged hole as splinters and dust exploded around him. His body slammed into the floorboards below, rolling hard over his now bloodied left shoulder.
The instant he rolled into a crouch, he lunged sideways, dodging a razor-thin saw blade of wind that whizzed past him and sliced into the planks of where his skull had been a moment earlier.
Deacon followed through with the momentum of his downwards lunge, with his hand shooting out and locking around Jeremiah's right leg. The mage's eyes bulged as Deacon yanked hard, ripping his balance out from under him, and in one fluid motion, Deacon hauled the leg towards him upwards, and back, ripping Jeremiah off his feet and slamming him flat onto the floorboards.
Deacon didn't hesitate to take advantage of Jeremiah's ignorance of his skills in grappling and his stupidity in not surrounding himself with Manashields and pinned him down for the second time.
Jeremiah thrashed beneath Deacon's weight, but his strength was pitiful compared to Deacon's, as compared to him, Deacon's physical stats were at least five times higher than his own – hence Deacon's surprise when he had been blasted off of Jeremiah the first time.
Deacon drew back his right fist and drove it down, but instead of his fist being met with flesh, his knuckles smashed into a translucent blue surface. A Manashield flared alive around Jeremiah, with spiderweb cracks spreading from the point of impact.
"Tch–" Deacon snarled, pulling back to punch again.
He never got the chance.
A stone pillar burst from the wall to his right, smashing into his ribs and hurling him sideways off Jeremiah. The sudden physical strike to his ribs caught him off guard, along with the power behind it, as the impact of him colliding with the left wall knocked the wind out of his lungs and shook the entire movable siege tower.
His collision with the wall had enough power behind it that, upon impact, a large chunk of the wall caved in, and a few planks splintered open and revealed a hidden staircase that connected the bottom of the siege tower to the top and various other platforms along it.
Jeremiah scrambled to his feet and retreated backwards until his back hit the opposite wall, shakily pulling out the now finger bauble he kept hidden beneath his outer robes, and saw that it was now dark black and curled upon itself.
He clutched his wand with trembling hands, layering another Manashield around himself as he spat incantations, hurling spell after spell toward Deacon. Fireballs burst against the wall, shards of ice shattered across the floor, and stones blasted holes into the wood.
"You're dead, Deacon! You hear me? You're fucking dead!" Jeremiah screamed, his voice cracking as much from panic as rage. "I'll tear you apart, you peasant fuck!"
Deacon tore his arm free from the wall and charged Jeremiah head-on, weaving through blasts that erupted inches from his head and feet – uncaring even when others slammed into him.
And when getting in range, he hit the barrier with enough force that thin bone fractures grew along his knuckles.
Unfazed by the pain, Deacon's fists pounded into the Manashield again and again, with each strike flooding in with more and more power behind it.
Cracks spidered across the surface of the multilayered Manashields, growing in size with every blow despite Jeremiah's attempts to constantly reinforce and repair the cracks.
"Stop –stop!" Jeremiah wheezed, his voice shrill as sweat streamed down his soot-smeared face. His wand trembled in both hands, thin cracks spiderwebbing along its length as he poured all the mana he had and what remained within his Accessories into the shield that was the only thing protecting him from certain death.
But no matter how much he forced into it, the fractures only spread wider under Deacon's relentless assault.
As Deacon landed his thirty-third strike, with scraps of leather attached to his bare fists, a deafening crack rang out – sounding like sweet music to Deacon's ears, a death omen to Jeremiah's.
The shield shattered, shards of mana breaking away and dissolving into nothing.
Before Jeremiah could even try to press himself further into the wall, Deacon's hand shot further forward, seizing him by the collar of his robes. With a guttural roar, he lifted Jeremiah clean off his feet and slammed him down onto the floorboards with such force that the wood split beneath the impact.
Deacon's knee slammed into Jeremiah's chest, pinning him down as his fists smashed against Jeremiah's face again and again.
Jeremiah's breath came in wet rattles, choking on blood and spit—yet a smirk began to curl across his shattered lips before faint, bubbling laughter emerged.
Deacon froze mid-swing, confusion cutting through the haze of rage. Jeremiah's swollen, blackened eyes weren't locked on him – they were fixed on Deacon's left thigh.
Deacon turned his head and saw something that dropped his heart.
Jabbed straight into the exposed flesh of his thigh, where the leather where the clasp of the heater shield used to be was a lavender feather.
Beneath the feather were veins of purple mana that had injected themselves into his internal mana system and were growing with every passing second as they continued to spread across his skin and dig deeper into his system.
Deacon froze in place, with his right fist still cocked back, and watching as he slowly became a slave of Jeremiah's once again – unsure of what to do, as he had no idea how he had even gotten out of Jeremiah's mind control the first time.
Jeremiah's choking laughter scraped at Deacon's ears – wheezing, broken, every rasping sound dripping with mockery, as if all his rage and effort had all been for nothing.
But that laughter suddenly came to a halt as two pairs of eyes widened in disbelief.
The veins spreading from the lavender feather buried in his thigh suddenly stopped—then began to retreat, shrinking back into the wound as if sucked dry, being pushed back by molten tattoo-like markings that grew across his thigh.
They burned red-hot, cutting through torn flesh like fresh brands, but Deacon didn't even register the pain of them searing his flesh, and instead watched with abated breath as the markings glowed brighter. They forced the feather out of him with a sharp pop.
From there, both pairs of eyes watched as the flickering lavender feather floated down and landed atop the blood-slick floorboards, where it turned a dull gray color.
Deacon stared at it in disbelief with his heart pounding so hard he thought it was going to burst from out of his chest.
His left thigh throbbed where the molten markings had seared him, but the heat was already fading, leaving nothing but raw flesh behind – as though it had all been branded into him and then erased in the same breath.
Jeremiah's swollen eyes bulged wide as his breath rattled out in short, wheezing gasps; his gaze traveled from the gray feather lying on the floor to Deacon's eyes.
Deacon stared back into Jeremiah's equally shocked eyes for but a second before a roar tore itself from his chest, guttural and full of months of rage, and both of his fists came crashing down.
The floor shook with the impact, and the wood splintered beneath Jeremiah's skull as blood sprayed upward, spattering across Deacon's arms and the already stained walls as Jeremiah's head burst like a watermelon under a hammer.
Letting out a shakily exhale, Deacon slowly got up and stood over Jeremiah's corpse, with his chest heaving, blood dripping from his knuckles, and his eyes locked onto the body of the person who had mind-controlled him and countless others.
Deacon remained standing over Jeremiah's corpse for a period of time, which was unknown to him, and only snapped out of his thoughts when he was suddenly struck by a series of System Notifications.
*Holy General Obi, the Impaler has been slain by the combined efforts of the Noblesse Dignity, Ravenlight, Bulwarks Unlimited, Ashen Fangs, Ironlight Company, and Silverfang Marauders*
Floor Six – War of Kingdoms Event 2: Rush to Break the Stalemate
It has been one hundred and twenty-seven days since the war between the Holy Human Kingdom and the Tyrannical Undead Kingdom erupted in its entirety. The once-mighty banners of both kingdoms are now drenched in blood and decorating the grounds of the battlefield along with the corpses of thousands. Despite relentless assaults, neither kingdom has been able to gain ground.
The conflict has ground to a brutal stalemate. Both Pontiff Kings have suffered severe wounds, confining them to their castles under the constant care of their respective healers.
Key positions along the frontlines have collapsed, leaving the lines in shambles. As a result, both kingdoms have been forced to hire mercenaries to fight at their side. You are one such mercenary, a human who has turned coat and wishes to show loyalty to the Undead Pontiff to preserve your and your Party's living states.
Floor Completion Criteria:
▸ Eliminate the four Lieutenants of the Holy Human Kingdom: Christoff, Vitura, Elira, and Talaris ✔
▸ Slay the General of the Holy Human Kingdom: Obi, the Impaler ✔
Rewards: Immediate access to Floor Seven & Elixir of Lucidity
*[Human Lv 13 // Wizard Lv 14] has been slain – XP has been given.*