The miasma thickened the closer I got. Obvious. Expected.
What I didn't expect was how quickly it figured out that my [Divine Aura] wasn't going anywhere.
It took maybe thirty seconds before the miasma stopped trying to seep through and started forming things instead. Shadow prowlers first — low to the ground, yellow-eyed, fast. Then arcane horrors behind them, limbs bending the wrong way. Soul drinkers floating above, and behind all of them, the soul devourers — massive, slow, with the specific kind of hunger that didn't need eyes to communicate.
I looked at the spread of them.
Then I put away any thought of using magic.
The power here was conflicting — I'd felt that since entering the inner district, the same heaviness that cut the gods off. Running through divine incantations in an environment actively working against holy energy was just burning resources for no gain. They'd respawn faster than I could clear them anyway.
So. Fists.
The first shadow prowler that lunged got a straight punch to the head. It evaporated. Another one came from the left — I grabbed it by the neck mid-leap and drove it into the ground hard enough to crack the cobblestones. The arcane horrors swarmed next and I just — went through them. One strike each. The soul drinkers screeched when I hit them, their ethereal forms coming apart on contact with the divine energy in my hands. The soul devourers were the slowest, which meant they were the easiest — I put a knee into the first one's ribs and sent it into two more behind it.
There was no finesse in any of this. That was fine. Finesse was for when you had time.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
More came. I kept moving.
The ground shook with every exchange, the miasma churning out new shapes the moment I destroyed the old ones. It had a will to it — I could feel it — the specific frustration of something that couldn't find a way in, trying harder and harder in the same direction anyway.
The palace doors were ahead. I kept my eyes on them.
"Seems like no matter what I throw at them, they just come back," I muttered, caving in an arcane horror's chest with a straight right. "No point."
Eventually — after what was probably longer than it felt — I reached the doors.
I stopped. Breathed. Looked up.
Even in this state, the palace was something.
Massive pillars lined the entrance, white once, now stained dark with age and miasma, each one carved with figures I didn't recognize — gods or heroes from a dynasty that had vanished without explanation. The dome above was cracked but still standing, arches that shouldn't have survived intact somehow still holding. Blackened vines crawled the walls. The whole structure had that quality of something that had been grand enough for long enough that even centuries of decay couldn't fully strip it.
Then the air shifted.
The miasma swirled in front of the doors — not forming creatures this time, just — pulling inward, concentrating, and a figure stepped out of it.
Tall. Skeletal frame wrapped in tattered robes that moved with the miasma like they were part of it. Face obscured by a hood. Hands wrapped around a staff that radiated something older and heavier than anything I'd felt since Cassian. The eyes beneath the hood were dim — not dark, just distant. Like embers that had been burning for a very long time.
"A human." The voice was a rasp that somehow carried perfectly. "It's been a while."
The aura coming off it pressed down like a physical weight. Not aggressive — it didn't need to be. It just existed, and existing was enough.
I recognized what I was looking at.
A Lich.
Not a random undead. Not a remnant. The real thing — the kind that had been accumulating power since before anyone alive had been born.
The 「No Life King」.
Well.
Earlier I'd complained that I was too strong to enjoy a fight anymore.
I cracked my knuckles.
"Looks like I spoke too soon."
The Lich's hollow gaze settled on me, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, something in my chest lifted.
Now we're talking.
