[110 DMG dealt]
[110 DMG dealt]
[110 DMG dealt]
[+1,300 XP]
[110 DMG dealt]
[110 DMG dealt]
[110 DMG dealt]
[+1,100 XP]
[LEVEL UP!]
+2 Stat Points
+10 Souls
Enochia exhaled, wiping the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand as she stepped over what used to be a bench and was now mostly splinters and ash. The last of the imps lay crumpled beneath her heel.
[Dispel]
She rolled her shoulders, stretching out the soreness creeping across her upper back and arms. “Phew… glad that’s over. Little bastards actually put up a fight.” For a moment, she allowed herself to actually appreciate the lack of powerful enemies. As far as Hell went, this was practically a safe zone.
Still, annoyance simmered in her chest. Fighting with no skills beyond her chains was a slog. She flicked open her Status window, already bracing herself for the reminder of how far she had left to go.
─────────────────────────────
STATUS:
Name: Enochia Adams?????? Title: N/A
Level: 4???????????? EXP: 1,800 / 4,000
HP: 1,171 / 1,250
MANA: 3,300 / 3,300
STR: 5?? AGI: 8?? VIT: 25
FAI: 110? LCK: 13 DEF: 0
Free Points: 6
[ EXP ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓??????????? ] 45 %
─────────────────────────────
She blinked. “…Wait. This seems low as hell. Wasn’t I supposed to get, like, ten thousand XP?”
A cold irritation crept up her spine as she snapped her fingers and opened her Quest tab. “Quest Six—pull up.”
─────────────────────────────
QUEST 6: Defeat All Enemies
Category: Combat
Objective:
Eliminate all 6 hostile entities within the designated combat zone. This trial is region-bound: leaving the area, dying, or failing to kill all detected enemies will invalidate reward eligibility.
Progress: 5/ 6
Reward:
? 10kg Grade Five Materials
? 10 Souls
? 10,000 XP
─────────────────────────────
“…Wha—”
A fist the size of her head burst straight through the quest window, shattering the light-blue screen into pixel shards as it slammed into her face. Her head snapped sideways before her entire body was violently launched backward like a ragdoll. She hit the stone wall behind her, rebounded off it, and collapsed onto the floor in a heap.
[-100 HP]
Dust rained from the impact crater above her as she groaned, pushing herself upright.
“SHIT—!” she wheezed, spitting grit. “Ow—fuck—okay—did NOT see that one—goddammit!”
Enochia staggered upright, rubbing her jaw. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and glared in the direction that punch had come from.
And then her glare faltered, just for a moment before folding into a deeper, more irritated frown.
Something stood there… Something that was very much not an imp.
It wasn’t big. In fact, it was barely taller than them. But unlike those little freaks, this one was a lot closer to looking like a human. Its body was charcoal-black, cracked like cooled lava. Flames crowned its head and shoulders, flickering upward into a twisting plume that almost resembled hair.
Its eyes were nothing but two hateful, burning crescents carved into a smooth, molten-black face, and beneath them, a wide, jagged, fire-lit smile stretched across its black face.
The creature’s forearms were massive, disproportionately large compared to its skinny torso. They hung low, almost dragging on the floor as it walked towards her.
Needless to say, she recognized it instantly. “Oh, perfect,” she muttered. “A Spirit of Wrath.”
Imps of Wrath were the starter mobs, but these things? They were the version Hell spat out once an imp stopped being a problem and started being a nuisance.
It took another light step forward, and the ground beneath its foot hissed, cracking and glowing from the heat leaking out of it.
Enochia’s eyebrow twitched.
“A sucker punch? Really? That’s just not cool, my guy. If you wanted my attention, you could’ve tried—oh, I don’t know—literally anything else.” Her voice stayed leveled, but she was clearly annoyed.
She forced her breathing steady and straightened her back, letting her mind settle even as irritation flared hot under her skin. Because of course this was happening. Even if Roo had been merciful so far, it didn’t change that Hell itself had an entire playbook of bullshit ready to throw at her. Imps were baby mobs here.
She narrowed her eyes at the Spirit of Wrath. This thing was different.
From what she remembered back on Earth, imps usually hovered in the level 10 to 40 range, occasionally spiking higher if they clung to a big demon’s shadow. But Spirits? Spirits were usually level 50 at the minimum, and were able to reach up to level 90. And she had killed plenty of Spirits before, though they were of Greed and Pride usually.
But this one… this one was her first Spirit of Wrath.
Meaning it leaned heavily into physical damage. Heavy hits. Heavy arms. Heavy everything.
And unlike imps, which had no skills at all, Spirits absolutely did. Which should have been fine—her stats were monstrously higher than a normal spirit’s, and even compared to most demons, she outclassed them massively.
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But it still bothered her because she had no skills... And almost all of her stat points were dumped into Faith, the skill-scaling stat. Not anything that would help in a full-on slugfest.
“God… if I had put my points into STR instead of FAI,” she thought bitterly, “This would have been so much eas—.”
She didn’t finish the thought, because that was when she saw the Spirit’s attack coming.
Its arm snapped forward like a molten whip. She leaned back sharply, boots scraping stone, and thrust out her arm on instinct.
[Chains of Nebuchadnezzar]
A chain tore out of her wrist, erupting backward in a violent arc, slamming directly into the Spirit’s abdomen. The impact was loud, reverberating through her bones as the creature lurched backward.
[104 DMG dealt]
“Nice,” Enochia thought, teeth flashing in a fierce grin. Then her smile dimmed just slightly. Not all her damage went through. “Great,” she muttered internally. “So the bastard has armor too.”
Enochia clicked her tongue sharply and snapped her fingers toward the Spirit. “Analysis.”
Nothing happened.
“…Are you kidding me?” she muttered, blinking twice in disbelief before her face twisted into an irritated, incredulous glare. “Wow. Thanks, Roo. Totally forgot ANALYSIS was locked behind level twenty-five for some ungodly stupid reason. Because why would I ever want to know the HP of the thing actively punching me?”
Her eyelid twitched. She was literally playing blindfolded.
Not that it mattered too much. She still remembered the rough numbers from Earth, spirits usually had somewhere between six hundred and eight hundred HP at baseline.
Her smirk sharpened into something almost feral as she glanced at the chain still wrapped around its waist. At least she had one advantage.
The Spirit’s body flared with light as it dashed toward her again. This time, Enochia tried to react, she really did, but she was half a heartbeat too slow and the creature’s massive forearm smashed into her stomach like a flaming sledgehammer. Her breath shot out of her lungs. The world spun. She felt her body lift off the ground again as she was flung clean across the church for the second time in a minute.
[-112 HP]
She slammed into the broken, sandy wall she had carved out earlier, the impact rattling the bone-deep ache still lingering from the earlier sucker punch. Her skull rang. Her ribs throbbed. She barely had time to shake her head clear before she heard it, the crackling roar of heat as the Spirit leapt after her.
She rolled in response.
A split second later, the Spirit’s fist caved the wall in where her head had been, turning stone to glowing debris.
“Fucking—HELL—!” she spat, scrambling backward. Her arm snapped outward on instinct and she fired—
[Chains of Nebuchadnezzar]
Four chains exploded forth, streaking across the platform in brilliant arcs, but the spirit was too fast.
It ducked between the first two, twisted under the third, and leaped cleanly over the fourth, landing directly in front of her. Its molten grin widened, flames licking up its neck and shoulders.
Then, in a voice that could only be described as demonic, she heard:
[Black Fang]
And the bastard lunged. Its jaws clamped down onto her shoulder. The pain was instant, shocking, electric, ripping a raw scream out of her throat before she could choke it back.
[-135 HP]
Her knees buckled and her vision blurred white around the edges. Every instinct screamed to wrench free, to tear it off, to move, but the spirit’s bite only tightened.
“GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME!”
Her voice ripped out, and the response was immediate as more than a dozen chains erupted out of her at once.
They didn’t shoot out neatly or in proper arcs this time, but they exploded, the way water bursts from a dam when the wall breaks. Chains tore free from her arms, her back, her sides, erupting in every direction with no pattern and no restraint. They ripped across the entire platform in jagged, uncontrolled lashes, smashing into pillars, benches, walls, and the floor. They spilled down the length of the church in a violent cascade, snapping, thrashing, whipping into anything unfortunate enough to be nearby.
Then a second wave followed up with even more chains, which were even denser and even more frantic, as if her body had decided the appropriate number of projectiles was all of them.
She was spamming her signature skill like a panicking gamer mashing every button on the controller to survive.
[104 DMG dealt]
[104 DMG dealt]
[52 DMG dealt]
The spirit recoiled, teeth tearing free from her shoulder as it dodged out of the initial blast radius, and thank God, because the moment its jaws unclamped, she gasped, sucked in a ragged, blessed breath, and collapsed backward into the avalanche of her own chains.
The weight of them crashed onto her immediately.
She was buried alive under her own weapon, metal links crushing her ribs and pinning her limbs, chains piling and folding and knotting over themselves like living iron serpents.
And somehow she laughed. A shaky, breathless, vaguely hysterical little snort pushed through her teeth.
“Okay—okay—this is officially the dumbest way I’ve ever nearly died.” she wheezed, struggling under the pressure of thirty-plus chains and counting.
Because the spirit had dodged most of it. Of course it had. Spirits had reaction speeds stupidly higher than their imp counterparts. And she had thrown the equivalent of a metal tsunami at it without aim or intent.
Meanwhile, she was now the one getting crushed by her own overkill.
Pinned under the mass of thrashing chains, she squeezed her eyes shut, forcing her mind to focus. She’d fought spirits before. Though thankfully, this was only her third time that she got hit by that stupid skill.
Black Fang wasn’t a high-damage move. It siphoned life equal to the physical strength used, which meant the hit itself hurt like hell, but the actual HP loss was relatively small. That was intentional since its main purpose wasn’t killing.
It was inflicting pain, and God damn did it succeed.
Above the mountain of chains, she felt the metal tremble.
The spirit was out there, tearing at her chains, trying to force its way through the maze she’d created in panic. Every few seconds the links shuddered, vibrating as something slammed into them and notifications flickered into her mind like tiny stabs:
[102 DMG Taken — Chain #14]
[97 DMG Taken — Chain #3]
[108 DMG Taken — Chain #22]
[95 DMG Taken — Chain #7]
[110 DMG Taken — Chain #11]
[93 DMG Taken — Chain #19]
[101 DMG Taken — Chain #6]
[98 DMG Taken — Chain #4]
[106 DMG Taken — Chain #27]
[92 DMG Taken — Chain #15]
[109 DMG Taken — Chain #2]
[96 DMG Taken — Chain #8]
[103 DMG Taken — Chain #25]
[94 DMG Taken — Chain #17]
[107 DMG Taken — Chain #5]
[99 DMG Taken — Chain #13]
[91 DMG Taken — Chain #20]
Damn… These chains are absolute bullshit.
Her grin widened as she wiggled uselessly under the crushing weight. She couldn’t move an inch. Every attempted twitch only made the pile settle heavier, squeezing down harder as if reminding her that physics still applied.
“Yep…” she murmured through a strained exhale, “…This is why I only use a few.”
But still, that grin didn’t leave. Because even pinned, even buried, even half-suffocating under her own weapon… she had options.
She slowly rotated her head, dragging it inch by inch against the chains until her line of sight shifted. Through a crack between the twisted links, she caught a flicker of orange flame.
It was closing in, which only made her grin grow sharper because she’d just noticed something the demon clearly hadn’t.
She was close to the jagged hole in the floor where she’d found the blueprint earlier.
A plan sparked. A stupid plan, a reckless plan, a plan very much in character for her current blend of adrenaline, pain, and annoyance.
“Oh… I’ve got an idea,” she whispered to herself, breath shaky but excited. “Oh, this is gonna be so stupid.”
She braced her boot against a knot of iron links beneath her. The chains groaned, shifting. She pushed harder, using the tiny bit of space she had to lever her body a few inches to the side. The entire chain pile slid with her, scraping across wood.
Above her, more chains trembled violently as the Spirit slammed into several at once.
[105 DMG Taken — Chain #9]
[94 DMG Taken — Chain #24]
[101 DMG Taken — Chain #12]
[110 DMG Taken — Chain #3]
“Oh yeah,” she whispered. “Come here, you molten-armed bitch. I’ve got a present for you.”
