That was not the act of a berserk monster.

That was the instinct of an Exorcist working with an ally to escape a domain.

Those instincts were deeply rooted.

They told Valen that Saint Maverick and Judy were allies.

Which meant, in theory, that Valen would not use lethal force against them.

In theory.

Reality was far less forgiving.

The battle was brutal.

Valen moved like a natural disaster.

Every strike carried overwhelming force, even when he clearly restrained himself.

A backhand meant to push Saint Maverick away shattered the ground and sent his body skidding across broken stone.

Judy fired suppression pulses in controlled intervals, adjusting frequency every second.

"Evaluating resistance. Hostile output exceeds projection. Finding alternative solution," she said.

Her mechanical calm did nothing to reduce the violence.

Saint Maverick blocked one blow and failed to fully deflect another.

His lower body was crushed under a descending mass of hardened blood, his armor folding inward with a screech of metal.

He tore himself free, only to have his right arm caught and pulverized moments later.

Pain registers screamed through his systems, warnings overlapping.

By the time Judy finally established a stable connection with Valen's soul, Saint Maverick's entire lower body was gone.

One arm hung useless, and all reconstruction materials had been expended.

There was no way to rebuild on the fly.

Judy fared worse.

Valen's final sweep obliterated her frame completely.

Metal, circuits, and reinforcement plating were torn apart in an instant.

Only her Core remained.

It rolled across the ground and came to a stop near Saint Maverick, faintly glowing.

The part that housed her soul was intact.

Everything else was gone.

Valen stopped moving.

For the first time since the fight began, there was stillness.

Runes rose into the air around Judy's Core, forming a loose ring.

They flickered unevenly, but they held.

Judy could no longer speak aloud. Her speaker was gone. Her cameras were destroyed.

But she could still communicate.

The runes pulsed.

Saint Maverick could not hear her words, but he could tell she was speaking to Valen's soul directly.

Her mana output was minimal, barely enough to sustain the runic interface.

He stayed still, watching.

Above them, the air shifted.

A deep, oppressive pressure rolled across the domain.

The hammers had begun to fall.

"Judy, ask Vampire King Prince to help us stop the hammers. The Cursed Spirit God is attacking everyone," Saint Maverick said, forcing his voice to remain steady.

He knew she could not see.

He spoke clearly, feeding her information she could not gather on her own.

The runes flickered faster.

Saint Maverick counted the seconds in his head.

If the message did not get through soon, none of this would matter.

Then Valen moved.

He reached down, picked up Judy's Core, and grabbed Saint Maverick with his other hand.

Blood burst from his back, forming crude wings that stretched wide.

They shot into the sky.

The sudden acceleration pressed Saint Maverick against Valen's grip.

Below them, the city shrank rapidly.

From above, the situation was clear.

Nine hammers were falling.

Each one was aimed with precision.

'Someone found the lantern,' Saint Maverick realized.

'And since exorcism is now possible, the Cursed Spirit God is trying to kill everyone before it happens.'

Five massive Blood Spears formed around Valen.

They were refined weapons…. is what Saint Maverick would've liked to say.

They were rough, uneven, and pulsed violently with condensed power.

The blood composing them churned constantly, as if struggling to remain stable.

Saint Maverick studied them quickly.

Only five spears.

"We have six groups on our side, and we have to protect the temple too," he muttered.

There were six groups to protect if he excluded the Cursed Spirits from New Order, who had betrayed them earlier.

And one hammer was aimed at the temple itself.

If the temple was destroyed, the ritual could not even start.

'Vampire Prince is too exhausted.'

'He can't make more blood spears than this,' Saint Maverick thought grimly.

Valen could not form more spears.

Without a mouth, he could not chant or regulate his output properly.

Each spear needed enough power to destroy a hammer.

Splitting his strength further would make them useless.

Saint Maverick forced his thoughts into order.

'Valen can fly That means we can dodge the hammer aimed at us,' he reasoned.

That left five spears for five targets.

But there were six things that needed saving.

Someone would be sacrificed.

His jaw tightened.

There was no time to hesitate.

Saint Maverick activated his comm.

"Caelum¸ please confirm your coordinates," he said,

There was a brief pause.

"What?" Caelum replied.

"We will stop the hammers. Now. Location. There isn't enough time," Saint Maverick said.

Caelum did not have a drone, and his location could not be tracked.

Saint Maverick needed to make sure he would save Caelum instead of the Cursed Spirits from New Order.

Another pause followed, shorter this time.

"My location is near the forest strip behind the eastern market, close to the broken watchtower. Don't save me or the inn girl. Save the Cursed Spirits from New Order instead. Don't worry about the temple either."

Saint Maverick did not argue.

"Understood," he said.

He cut the connection immediately.

Turning his focus back to Judy, he began relaying coordinates out loud.

She could not hear the comms, but the runes around her Core reacted to his voice and intent.

"Three spears to the crewmate groups. Two to the Cursed Spirits from New Order."

The runes flickered sharply.

Judy processed the information.

"New directives received. Reassigning targets. Optimizing strike paths. Solution identified," she spoke in her mind.

The runes flared.

Valen raised his arm.

He swung it down.

The Blood Spears launched.

They cut through the air like red comets, leaving glowing trails behind them.

Each spear struck its target moments before impact.

Explosions tore through the sky.

Hammers shattered.

Fragments burned away before they could reach the ground.

Saint Maverick did not look back to confirm the results.

Valen was already moving, wings beating hard as he veered sharply to the side.

The hammer aimed at them screamed past, missing by meters, and slammed into the market below.

The shockwave rippled outward.

Saint Maverick closed his eyes for a brief moment.

He hoped Caelum had a plan.

For himself.

For the inn girl.

For the temple.

…

MC's POV

Red lines stretched into the sky.

They were spears, tearing upward, meeting the falling hammers head-on.

The air shook in distant bursts, and fragments burned out before they could reach the ground.

Before the hammer above me could strike, I reached up and pulled out my earpiece comm. I crushed it in my palm.

"I don't think this has a location tracker, but you can never be too sure."

I opened a portal and stepped through.

A moment later, I was standing at the temple.

The hammer meant for this place was already falling.

The temple sat on top of a mountain, exposed, with nowhere to hide and no structure strong enough to endure a direct hit.

For the first time since the hammers appeared, I raised my head fully.

It was enormous.

Calling it a hammer almost felt wrong.

It was more like a piece of the sky itself, torn loose and shaped into a weapon.

Just looking at it made my stomach twist.

My vision blurred slightly, and a dull, throbbing pain spread behind my eyes.

Something like that shouldn't exist.

"Yuna, the time limit on the cursecraft the inn girl used on me is up, right?"

"Yes, Lord of Shadows," Yuna replied immediately.

I nodded.

I was under two effects.

One was Yuna's skill, which amplified both my good luck and my bad luck.

The other was the curse the inn girl had placed on me.

It had taken an entire week's worth of my bad luck and compressed it into thirty minutes.

That was why everything had gone wrong at once. Why the enemies found the lantern first. Why the hammers were falling now.

But there was a reason I asked her to place the curse on me.

'Now that the curse has ended, all my bad luck for this week has already been spent.'

Which meant—

'I only have good luck left.'

I activated my Hollow Eyes and turned my gaze toward Dante.

The hammer descended steadily, its presence crushing the air around the temple.

Stone creaked beneath my feet.

When the hammer was only a few hundred meters away, I spoke.

"Dante, release combat form."

He reached into his uniform and pressed a hidden button.

The fabric was pulled inward, vanishing into storage, and his true form was revealed.

Dante's true form was never the same for everyone.

What you saw depended on you.

Right now, he was being influenced by my luck.

Which meant that the form the Cursed Spirit God in the sky would see would be the one most favorable to me.

And I could see it.

Through my Hollow Eyes, Dante's form began to warp.

His shape twisted and changed.

From the perspective of the Cursed Spirit God, a simple eldritch horror formed.

Mud.

Something formless, endless, and impossible to grasp.

Dante began to grow.

And grow.

His body expanded past the temple walls, past the mountain itself.

His limbs thickened, stretching upward until he was larger than the peak he stood on.

Until he was large enough to meet the falling hammer.

A shockwave burst outward as Dante caught it.

Both of his hands slammed into the hammer's underside, stopping it mid-descent.

The impact sent a violent tremor through the mountain.

I felt the ground dip beneath my feet.

A low grunt escaped Dante's lips.

The Cursed Spirit God in the sky responded instantly.

The pressure increased.

The hammer pushed downward with greater force.

Dante's knees bent.

The hammer began to move again, inch by inch, pressing closer to the temple.

He couldn't stop it completely.

But he had slowed it.

By a lot.

I measured the descent with my eyes, calculating the rate at which it was moving.

'I have about five minutes before the hammer reaches the temple.'

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