Path of Dragons #Chapter 610:7-86. Heroism - Read Path of Dragons Chapter 610:7-86. Heroism Online - All Page

Chapter 610:7-86. Heroism

Dat ignored the ghosts screaming at him to turn back, telling him that his friends weren’t worth saving. That Hong Kong was a cesspool of bad memories and even worse people, and it wasn’t his job to pull them out of the muck. None of it was new. Ever single time he used Ghost Cloak, he was forced to endure their input. At times, tuning them out was easy enough, but when things got stressful, they turned up the volume.

He didn’t know if they were real. For all he knew, they could’ve been his ancestors or the people he’d loved throughout his life. Or maybe they were just manifestations of ethera meant as the price he needed to pay for his power. Such was the cost of becoming a Witch Hunter. It was a powerful class made even stronger by his angel core, but all that strength came with plenty of issues. The ghosts, which haunted some skills and spells, were just one prominent example. The others were less obvious but just as impactful.

Dat had been forced to become quite adept at dealing with those issues, which he hoped to mitigate once he was allowed to evolve. He’d reached one-twenty-five already, but without a Branch available in the Primal Realm, he was stuck there. And that meant the ghosts were even louder and more insistent than ever before.

Now, with the situation laid out before them, it appeared that he might never get the chance to see what paths lay open before him. There were just too many undead. Fighting them head-to-head wasn’t his forte, so he’d donned Ghost Cloak and set out to end the most obvious threat. Even as Sadie battled against the undead – backed up by her snake of a brother – Dat crept through the horde, carefully weaving between the monsters so he could avoid detection.

One wrong step, a single brush against the wrong creature, and he would be done. The wights were the worst. There was a gleam of sapience in their beady eyes, and they were more than powerful enough to act on it. Despite his Ranger archetype and propensity to participate in battles, Dat was not much of a fighter. That wasn’t the point of his class. Instead, he usually played the role of an Explorer and a scout.

Most importantly, though, he was first and foremost an assassin.

He recalled the notification that described his class. The memory was burned into his mind, constantly hovering over his every action.

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<p style="text-align: center">Class: Witch Hunter</p>

<p style="text-align: center">The Witch Hunter is a capable jack-of-all-trades, effective in battle, as a scout, and in certain non-combat tasks. However, the class specializes in a single task above all others: hunting down powerful enemies and ending the threat they represent. To accomplish this, the Witch Hunter employs many of the abilities characteristic of those they are tasked with hunting down. Curses, hexes, and communing with spirits are just the beginning of the sacrifices the Witch Hunter must make for the greater good.</p>

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Dat’s compatibility with the class had been a perfect one hundred percent, which was one of the reasons he’d chosen it over his other options. That, and he’d grown up playing video games and reading comics, so the name of the class was very appealing to him. There was just something evocative about the term Witch Hunter that excited him.

Perhaps those two characteristics were intertwined.

Regardless, he’d taken the class, and he’d reaped the benefits, quickly rising to the top in terms of his position among the others in Heaven’s Bastion. Yet, he’d also learned first-hand just what the description meant by sacrifices. There were the ghosts, but in addition to that, some of his abilities just felt, for lack of a better term, evil. Even his most powerful Miracle, Blade of Severence, had sinister undertones.

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<p>Blade of Severence</p>

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<p>Sever the connection between body and soul, casting the spirit into disarray. Effectiveness based on comparative Core Cultivation. </p>

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It didn’t simply kill his victims. That would have been far more acceptable. But Dat had seen the aftermath of Blade of Severance. He’d heard the tortured wails of his victims’ spirits. It was an effective ability, often killing his enemies in a single attack. And yet, the implications of its use were also horrifying. It was even worse when it didn’t finish the deed, leaving his foes’ spirits mangled beyond all recognition. That hadn’t happened often, but those memories haunted his nightmares.

Because, for better or worse, he could see people’s spirits via the very first ability his class had granted:

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<p>Witch’s Eye</p>

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<p> Observe the realm of spirits.</p>

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He glanced back at Sadie, who blazed with bright, white light that was a perfect encapsulation of who she was. Of who she aspired to be. For all her judgemental nature, she’d always sought to do the right thing. She was never cruel, even if she wasn’t as empathetic as others might prefer.

It wasn’t always an easy road to travel, and her abilities tended to make it even more difficult. But results were immaterial. The fact that she kept trying, kept striving – that was the mark of a good person. Dat could only hope that he embodied similar characteristics, but he couldn’t see his own spirit. For all he knew, it was just as twisted as some of his victims’.

That would be fitting.

As he’d discovered, the name of his class didn’t refer to a person who hunted witches. Rather, he was a witch who hunted. And in the new world, names meant something – none more so than witch.

After glancing at Sadie, he looked to Nico. That man’s spirit couldn’t have been more different than his sister’s. Grey and amorphous, it gave the impression of self-service and greed. Nico wasn’t a good man. Nor was he evil, per se. He was somewhere in the middle, and his choices were driven by selfishness.

Dat hated him.

That wasn’t a source of pride. Nor was it something he dwelled upon. But it was a feeling he could not escape, and not just because he held Nico responsible for Lisa’s death. That was a big part of it, but it went far deeper than that. At his core, Nico just didn’t care about other people. He would do his job as a Healer or as a leader, but he would never willingly bleed for his people. He didn’t sacrifice for his companions. He was cold and calculated, and he would never be the man who’d go all-out for others. He would never lay down his life to save his own sister, much less a bunch of strangers.

Dat had difficulty not comparing Nico to Ron. They were so different. The latter wouldn’t hesitate to give everything he had, just to save a single life. Stranger. Family. It didn’t matter. He viewed it as his personal responsibility. If he thought it was the logical move, Nico would run rather than fight to save others.

It was infuriating to see someone who’d been blessed with the power to do so much good, and watch him squander it on self-preservation. So, Dat hated him – unabashedly and without reserve.

As Dat turned his attention back to the horde, he saw that each one of the undead had an aura too. Most were barely visible – just a slight green illumination – but the fact that Dat could see them at all was troubling. If those creatures had spirits, then were they alive, just in a different way? The spirits of the skeletons and wights blazed much brighter, though they were twisted out of shape. Dat didn’t know how to interpret that, so like so much else that troubled him about his class, he pushed it out of mind.

Instead, he focused on making his way across the platform. As he did so, Sadie fought against the horde, and though Dat wanted nothing more than to assist, he knew that was not his place. She had her task, and he had his.

After a few minutes – that felt like hours – of stepping lightly around the undead monsters, the gates through which they’d come exploded in a shower of green sparks. Only a few moments later, Avara, Queen of the Damned, screamed. Then, she slammed her staff of twisted, black bone into the ground, and green fire roiled in the sky.

Or that was what Dat’s normal vision suggested. Witch’s Eye told a different – and far more terrifying – story. Those were spirits up there. To the naked eye, they looked like flames, but to Dat, they were writhing spirits screaming in agony as their very essence was harnessed to fuel a powerful spell.

The resulting energy slammed into the remaining members of the horde – there were still thousands of the monsters crammed onto the platform – and their own spirits blazed with new fury. Their eyes lit with green flames, and they moved with far more purpose, precision, and, most troublingly, power.

Dat knew he couldn’t wait much longer.

He rushed, uncaring if he was detected. With his high Dexterity and decent Strength, he could outpace most of the undead. Still, he made a point to avoid the powerful wights and domineering skeletons.

As it turned out, caution was unnecessary anyway. When the undead had been empowered by the burning spirits above, they’d focused entirely on the most visible target. Sadie fought valiantly against them, her own spirit blazing more brightly than ever before, but Dat could tell that her struggle wouldn’t persist much longer.

Dat’s mission was more urgent than ever before.

When possible, he darted around the zombies remaining between him and his target, but other times, he simply leaped over them. Even if they detected him, they paid him no heed.

And then, after leaping onto the throne, he was in position.

He drew his short sword – a mundane weapon, but one that had seen him through countless battles – and took aim at Avara’s back. She wasn’t a large demon – probably five and a half feet at most, and painfully slim to boot – but even with her small stature, she loomed over his crouched form. Her aura was almost as twisted as the wights’, though in an entirely different way. It almost seemed like self-mutilation, rather than something that had been inflicted upon her by an outside source.

Dat couldn’t concern himself with that, though. Most of the enemies he’d seen in both the Trial and in the Primal Realm were damaged beyond all recognition. Avara seemed no different. He knew he couldn’t afford to hold back.

He embraced Blade of Severance, and without further hesitation, struck. As the blade slid between her back ribs to pierce her heart, Dat knew it was a kill shot, especially with the benefit of the powerful Miracle contributing to the strike. Her aura shattered like glass and she slumped.

But she did not fall.

That was when the first vestiges of panic set in. They completely enveloped him a second later when the Queen of Desolation’s aura stabilized – still shattered and pulsing with whatever passed for agony when it came to spirits – and she whipped around. She moved more quickly than Dat could track, and before he understood what was happening, her hand closed around his throat.

Dat knew what was coming.

He could sense the panic in her spirit. He saw the fury in her green-glowing eyes. She had no intention of letting him leave the Primal Realm alive. Even if she fell, she would ensure that he died right alongside her.

So, Dat’s next decision was an easy one. If he was already doomed, he intended to make his death worthwhile. He wasn’t like Nico. He would do whatever it took to help his friends survive.

Without an ounce of regret, he embraced Curse of the Greater Good:

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<p>Curse of the Greater Good</p>

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<p>Make a sacrifice for a worthy cause.</p>

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The last vestiges of his Faith whispered into the spell. It didn’t matter. The primary fuel for the Miracle wasn’t Faith, but rather, his willingness to martyr himself. The effect took hold, pouring energy into his shortsword. He twisted it, the act counting as an attack and releasing the energy. Experience tales at Freewebnovel

Just as Dat’s life dissipated, he spared a moment to hope that Nico acted against his character. The one other time Dat had used Curse of the Greater Good, Ron had saved him. Dat was capable of the same thing. But being able was a very different thing than being willing.

Even as Dat started to lose consciousness, the Queen of Desolation’s shattered aura was scattered to the wind. She stumbled, releasing Dat to fall back upon her throne. He didn’t have the energy to brace himself.

Blackness closed in, and his last thought was that even if he died – even if Nico refused to save him – it was worth it. His class might have labeled him an evil witch, but he felt satisfied that his actions made him the hero he had always dreamed of becoming.

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