I Level Up by Killing Gods-Chapter 54: The Price of Mercy

The Inquisitor’s blades caught the forcefield’s jaundiced glare, edges serrated and glazed with a viscous, iridescent film.

Kael did not recognized the poison—*Borespite, distilled from the bile of Blightborne Ravager, potent enough to liquefy organs in seconds.

Behind the warrior, the city gates towered like the jaws of some mechanized beast, their rusted bars flecked with old blood and older grudges.

Lira sagged against Kael’s side, her breath a wet rasp.

The Blight’s corruption had spread like ink in water, violet lines clawing up her neck and etching fractured patterns beneath her eyes. Her fingers dug into his arm, trembling.

"Should’ve... robbed nicer people..."

The Inquisitor spun his twin blades in lazy arcs, their hum slicing through the Blightwind’s low moan.

His armor—pristine white alloy scored with burn marks—creaked as he shifted his weight.

"Surrender the thief. The higher-ups might let you die quick."

Kael lowered Lira to the ground, her back propped against a corroded support beam.

Her skin had turned the gray of week-old corpse flesh, the veins beneath glowing faintly, as if lit from within. She gripped his wrist, her nails leaving half-moons in his skin.

"Don’t... do anything... st..."

He stood. Aether’valis materialized in his grip, its bloodlust duller than he’d ever seen, flickering like a guttering candle.

The Inquisitor charged.

---

The first strike came faster than thought. Kael ducked, the blade shearing off a tiny edge of his hair as it passed.

He retaliated with a low sweep aimed at the knees, but the Inquisitor leaped, flipping midair to bring both blades down in a scissor-cut. Kael rolled, the steel biting into the earth where his throat had been, spraying grit into his eyes.

Too slow.

The sigil on his palm burned like a coal pressed to flesh, its heat throbbing in time with Lira’s faltering pulse. fгeewebnovёl.com

The Inquisitor pressed the assault, blades whirling in a silvered storm. Kael parried, each clash sending jolts up his arms, his boots skidding in the ash.

"Pathetic," the Inquisitor spat. He feinted left, then drove a knee into Kael’s ribs. Bone cracked.

Kael staggered, blood filling his mouth. Lira’s wheezing breaths hit at the edges of his focus.

*...let us in...*

The Null’s voice slithered through his skull, honeyed and rotten.

*...we will make you strong...*

The Inquisitor lunged again. Kael blocked, but the force knocked Aether’valis from his grip. The sword clattered into the dust as the blades came again—one aimed at his heart, the other his throat.

*...YES...*

He stopped resisting.

The world washed gray.

Cold flooded Kael’s veins first, sharp as shattered glass. Then fire—a searing, primordial heat that boiled his blood and blackened his vision.

The sigil on his palm erupted in a corona of putrid dark light, and the Blight came. It oozed from his pores, thick and tar-like, hissing where it struck the earth.

The Inquisitor froze, blades inches from flesh.

"What in the Seven Hells—?"

Kael’s eyes smoldered, twin voids lit by corpse-light. He moved.

His hand closed around the Inquisitor’s wrist, fingers crushing bone to splinters. The man screamed, but Kael didn’t hear.

He tore the blade free and plunged it into the warrior’s thigh, twisting until the joint popped. The second blade came next—slow, deliberate—sawing through the armored gorget to pierce the hollow above the collarbone.

"P-please—"

Kael gripped the man’s jaw, fingers sinking into flesh.

He pulled.

The scream lasted until the Inquisitor’s spine tore free with a wet *snap. Kael stood, the vertebrae dangling from his fist like a grisly trophy, and turned to the remaining guards that watched.

They fled, their footsteps echoing like the patter of rats.

Behind him, Lira retched.

---

The gray faded.

The Blight receded, retreating into his veins like a chastised hound, leaving Kael hollowed out, scraped raw. He fell to his knees, the sigil’s light dimming to a dull throb.

His hands shook—human hands again, streaked with blood and viscera.

Lira stared at him, her eyes wide with pain and something worse—fear.

Her lips moved soundlessly before she managed, "You... idiot...you managed to get possessed..."

He crawled to her. The Blight had reached her hairline now, roots tinged violet. Her pulse fluttered against his fingertips, frail as a moth’s wing.

"Earth... Faction...They might be able...and they want you" she gasped.

Her hand fumbled at her belt, trembling as she pressed a crumpled map into his palm. The paper was stained with Blight and blood, its edges singed.

"Stronghold... west... they’ll... have..."

Kael lifted her. She weighed nothing, her body limp and burning with fever.

"Don’t... you... die first..." Her head lolled against his chest, her breath shallow.

He moved quickly.

---

The wastes stretched endlessly—cracked earth, jagged spires of fossilized Etherite, skies choked with swirling ash.

Kael’s boots kicked up plumes of dust, the grains stinging his eyes and clotting his throat. Lira’s breath grew shallower, her fingers twitching sporadically against his shirt. Twice, he thought she’d stopped breathing altogether.

*...weak...*

The Null’s voice, mocking.

*...she dies because you hesitated...*

He gritted his teeth.

"Quiet."

The Blightwind picked up, howling through the skeletal remains of ancient machinery. A half-buried Etherite refinery stood ahead, its pipes twisted into grotesque shapes by centuries of corrosion.

Kael staggered past it, Lira’s weight grinding into his shoulders. The map clenched in his fist guided him west, but the landmarks were lies—a riverbed long dried to dust, a watchtower reduced to rubble.

Hours bled together. The sun hung motionless, a bleary eye smothered by haze. Lira’s skin grew colder.

---

Dusk painted the horizon in bruised purples when the stronghold appeared—a fortress hewn into a mountainside, its walls armored with Celestial alloy and crawling with Earth Faction sentries.

Green banners hung limp in the dead air, emblazoned with a sigil Kael recognized: a closed fist gripping a shattered chain.

He saw it when he stood before the council back on earth.

The gates were sealed, their surface etched with warnings in a dozen dead languages. Kael’s legs buckled as he reached the base of the mountain, his vision swimming.

Lira’s head lolled, her lips tinged blue.

"Open!" Kael’s voice tore from his throat, raw and ragged.

A sentry peered over the battlement, crossbow raised. "State your business!"

Lira stirred, her eyelids fluttering.

"Tell them... we’re... tourists..."

Kael adjusted his grip, the sigil on his palm flaring as he spoke again.

"I am Kael...and i need help"

Silence. Then, with a groan of protesting gears, the gates began to rise.

This content is taken from free web nov𝒆l.com