The Last Circle-Chapter 25: The Quest

"What do you mean destroy the Nephilim and the Father!?"

Nameless continued agonizing over the quest, wanting rip out chunks of skin as he clawed at his face. It was outrageous and unfair. that he would be given a quest against the enemies he struggled with the most.

He scoffed. "And for what? Redemption? Redemption over choosing how I die?" he said, shaking his head at the thought that he was punished when he was going to die anyway. "And where am I supposed to go?" he asked the panel, shaking an angry fist. "How am I supposed to kill those things without an effective weapon!?"

He swung outward, slashing the air with the fiery arrival of his weapon, as thought intended to destroy the system. Of course, he was met with nothing. Besides, the system was his only saving grace in this accursed realm, and he needed it no matter how much it would torture him.

"And even worse," he began walking in circles with gritted teeth and an angry face that bolded it's new formed lines, "I don't even get the damn Seeds of Corrup—"

The ring of the bell cut him off, and he read:

[For your profanity, your Sin has increased by one.]

[In accordance to your [Lightless Creature] attribute, your accrued sins have doubled. You have gained two sins.]

Nameless whipped his head back, shaking it as he let out a guttural growl and clenched fists. However, he did have a point. Every single one of the Nephilim were reduced to a state beyond ash: merely memories that no one wanted to hold onto, but he didn't get any Seeds of Corruption out of it.

That's when the worry settled in:

"There's no shot that I burned the Seeds of Corruption right? Can I even do that?"

It seemed that he'd never find out, not that knowing would've changed anything. Besides, even if he didn't get the seeds, he still did get the Fragments of Divinity, though that was the least desirable outcome...

"Right," he held a pensive gaze on a speck of ash, holding his chin, "I did get the fragments instead." He navigated towards his status menu and read:

Sin: 99,999,999,996,348

Fragments of Divinity: 113/1,000,000

He sighed as he dragged a hand down his face, chuckling to himself, sounding more like restrained weep.

"Why did I have to get myself in Hell?"

It was too late to ask questions like those, and he realized this much immediately. Seeing that he was only wasting time now, he decided to walk back towards the dark archway, set equidistant to each end of the miraculously standing rocks, painted in a sea of ash that only piled up with itself raining down.

Without hesitation, he drew his blade and engulfed himself in the ruinous flames, lazily slashing the air to let an arc of fire travel into the empty darkness ahead. The arc travelled for approximately ten seconds, which was still quite a considerable amount of time for how fast it travelled, before it crashed against a wall, letting scorching echoes reach his ears after a couple of seconds.

He hurriedly ran over to the pillar, peeking his head side to side before looking straight into the darkness. Nothing ran over or made a sound.

'But is there really nothing in there?' he wondered, squinting to get a better look in the darkness, letting his thin, black outlined eyes scan whatever they could. 'Maybe I'm about to walk right into a trap?'

He shook his head, knowing that worrying wasn't going to do him any good.

'Besides, worrying about traps and roaming through Hell is like...' he raised a brow as he looked out the top of his eyes, 'like worrying about, uh, drowning when you... go for a swim in the ocean without knowing how to swim!'

Whatever his analogy was supposed to mean, Nameless stepped into the darkness, maintaining his flame form even if it would make him stand out. At this point, having fought—well, having fought them to some degree—the Nephilim proved that he needed to be ready at all times. He couldn't keep up his game of stealth forever... not that that's been going as planned too.

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Regardless, a bitter-cold sensation washed over him as his vision grew accustomed to the darkness. Hiding in the shadows, many stalactites hung across the ceiling, though just how they formed was a mystery beyond his wildest imaginations. Even worse was when he saw the plop of tiny drops of a liquid that fell straight into a diminutive hole in the ground. Whatever the liquid was, he was certain that it was in his best interest to avoid it, and so it was that he found himself having to navigate through a bullet hell.

'Now what am I looking for here?' he asked himself, narrowly avoiding the droplets. 'I wonder if this leads to some secret place where the Nephilim like to hide?'

Whatever it led to, Nameless genuinely hoped that wasn't the case. He needed to become stronger if he wanted to fight the Nephilim without trouble. But the question always remained:

'How do I become stronger?'

Eventually, he'd make it past the obstacle course of droplets and reach a large winding path, as though a great serpent had burrowed within. In fact, it was so wide that Nameless found himself easily continuing in a straight line, but it certainly did raise the question of just what was hiding in here.

'There better be some artifacts or clothes in here... or even armour,' so he thought, looking from side to side at the weathered stone, shaped to a perfect winding path. 'Now that would be even better.'

He continued in silence, taking in deep breaths of the gloomy environment, always keeping a careful eye on both where he walked and his surroundings. Things were a bit too quiet for his liking.

He'd finally come across the same beings that one of the attribute tiers was named after, nearly paying for it with his life, but now things were simply quiet.

It really bothered him. Silence was an eerie thing in a place where he and his fellow Hell-dwellers only knew constant pain and suffering, and for once—perhaps when he still had his memory—he'd bear witness to a harsh voice he never knew was his, begging the question:

Just what manner of monstrosity lay deep within the frame of man?

It made him wonder just how sinister the Nephilim were if he, the supposed worst of all creation, was given the task to go and destroy them...

Perhaps he already knew? Their visage of bone and torn flesh, a rictus that never moved, their use of magic... things were starting to make a bit of sense as he thought:

'So they are what counted towards murder?'

It was a hollowing thought, forcing him to take a brief moment to stop in his tracks and ponder on the weight of this quest.

'Destroy the Nephilim and the Father... Who is the Father?' he wondered, assuming that it could only mean the patriarch of the Nephilim, but that caused him some distress as things were starting to explain themselves. 'If they have a structure like that... then that means, they're intelligent.'

It had to mean they were. After all, if they were merely mindless beasts, how would they cast magic and work together?

'They were ones who also branded themselves as an enemy of God,' he thought, rubbing his nape as he continued through the cave.

He would've liked nothing more than to see the Nephilim as merely the "behemoths" he once thought them to be, like mindless creatures merely satiating their hunger. But now, it would seem that his previous suspicions were being answered.

The Nephilim were beings that seemed to kill for the sake of it, they used dark magics and branded themselves as enemies of God, they looked like his worst nightmares, they sounded like it...

'So is their Sin count even relevant?'