The Path of Ruin

He was in a difficult situation.

"Give up, you won\'t win."

And the woman was well aware of that.

Yet Amar did not answer her.

Instead, he used the vines around his body to attack her once more.

The woman... just sighed slightly. She raised her right hand, then simply pulled it to the right side.

The purple-colored eon that filled the room suddenly rippled. An even darker smoke suddenly burst from her palm and rained down on Amar\'s vines.

One by one, the vines withered, shriveled, and collapsed to the ground, rotting before they could reach her. Amar stopped his attack and retreated backwards to avoid the smoke.

"Our paths are in opposition. I am the worst match you will ever face in your entire life. You don\'t stand a chance against me. I haven\'t even used my blessing yet."

Amar gritted his teeth. Even though he didn\'t answer her, he was well aware that what she said was true.

"What... is your goal...?"

The woman tilted her face, hidden by a hood, slightly to the side.

"Power, and a little revenge, I guess."

"Revenge?"

The woman sighed deeply.

"I\'m not going to tell you my life story. Just know that I hate your town and your beloved Guardian. Actually... you didn\'t even need to know that either."

The woman stretched slightly, then slowly removed her hood and uncovered her face.

She was quite a beautiful woman. She must have been in her thirties, but her beauty belied her age. She had orange hair and eyes that glowed purple because of her eon. She had a tiny face with small freckles.

She was a woman who could have attracted even Amar, if her eon hadn\'t made her feel so... filthy.

But that wasn\'t the point.

"Let\'s finish this. I have to move on to the final step."

What mattered... were her eyes.

As Amar was looking at her, she fixed her violet eyes on him.

Then Amar saw her eyes suddenly change color and turn yellow.

\'Her blessing!\'

He quickly averted his eyes, careful not to look at her, and tried to understand what kind of attack he had been subjected to.

Then, suddenly, he felt his whole world spinning, his stomach churning.

\'What...?\'

"Die."

When he found her rotten hand in front of his face, he tried to fight back. But his whole world was spinning, and his stomach kept having a vomiting reflex.

So he couldn\'t.

Only... physically.

As a last resort, Amar poured all the eon in his body into his vines and randomly attacked her.

Even though his senses were blurred and his body was in pain, he managed to make her retreat. Then, he put the attack aside and unleashed vine after vine, closing them all in on himself.

Soon, he was plunged into darkness by the vines. But he did not stop. He surrounded and surrounded himself... and then he used the vines to bury himself in the ground.

He felt all of the woman\'s attacks. The vines around him were rotting fast and she was approaching him in the same way.

Yet he kept growing new vines.

Finally... he managed to get his body deeper and deeper into the cave floor. Not only that, he found what he was looking for... one of the pieces of the Guardian that had been scattered all over the area.

And the moment he came into contact with it, even though his communication with it had largely broken down, he asked for its help, as he always could.

And his Guardian understood what he wanted, even if it couldn\'t comprehend what he was saying.

Amar suddenly found himself being dragged underground by vines that did not belong to him.

He breathed a deep sigh of relief, then.

He had escaped.

*******

Kael and Matthew got back to town as fast as they could and explained the situation to Pecera and Scher.

Now, they knew who their enemy was.

"We must quickly gather all the knights, bearers, and followers in town and go to the cave!"

They had no idea how long Amar could hold on. So Kael wanted to move as fast as possible.

And the others mostly agreed with him. It was clear that the woman was connected to the town\'s problem and if they could take her down, most of it would be solved.

Scher quickly made a decision for the group.

"I\'ll tell the baron about the situation and arrange what I can. Go through the town and stay in the dungeon until I make the announcement. Keep everything under control until I leave."

And he quickly headed for the door to get out of the room.

But just as he was about to open the door, it was opened by someone else before him. And the person who entered... made them all freeze in their tracks.

"A- Amar...?"

Scher quickly stepped aside to make way for Amar as he entered with a grim look on his face.

He was in pretty bad shape. He still had the hand-shaped rot on his right arm and his eyes were a little glazed over.

He hadn\'t realized it before, but the smoke the woman had used not only damaged what it touched, but also dispersed into the air and caused harm when inhaled.

"I\'ve been poisoned, I can\'t use my right arm at the moment, I managed to escape somehow, but we need to be quick. That woman said she\'s going to move on to the final step. She\'s going to do something dangerous."

Scher nodded quickly. This time, there was nothing to stop him like Amar, so he quickly left the room and headed for the baron\'s room.

After Scher left the room, Amar took a deep breath and looked at Kael and Matthew.

"Good work."

He didn\'t say anything else. Just... that was it.

Kael and Matthew looked at each other. They both felt like smiling, but neither of them reacted.

They were in a situation where they had to act quickly.

But they couldn\'t do that.

Because the next second, the whole manor started to shake as if there was a violent earthquake.

"H- hey, what\'s happening?"

Pecera turned to Amar in a slightly panicked, but still professional tone, quickly grabbing onto something.

Amar could only squint.

"The dungeon... the center of the tremor is the dungeon."

And it was then that the group remembered an important detail.

The dungeon... eon...

They had forgotten about the ever-increasing amount of eon in the dungeon! Or rather, they had put it on the back burner.

As soon as Kael and Matthew heard the word \'dungeon\', they moved quickly. Their destination was, of course, clear.

*******

Soon, Kael and Matthew realized what was happening.

Or rather... they saw it.

\'The insane... have made it out of the dungeon!\'

All of them, in fact, had made it.

The mansion was full of insane people after the tremor that had shaken the whole town.

And in the last few days, so many insane people had appeared that it was almost impossible to pass anywhere without running into one in the mansion.

Chaos.

That was the only word that could describe the mansion.

Kael and Matthew overpowered most of the insane who came out and attacked them, and continued on towards the dungeon. Fortunately, the insane were not overpowered, even if their physical strength had increased. This made them a little difficult to defeat, but not impossible.

Especially the fact that there were two of them gave them a great advantage. After all, insane people were notoriously bad at thinking straight and often focused on a single person.

So, after a short time, the two reached the stairs leading down to the dungeon.

And the moment they did, Kael\'s brow furrowed. So did Matthew\'s.

"There are... still too many eon here."

The eon that filled the dungeon, so much that it was almost hard to breathe because of its density... was almost never spent.

On the contrary, it was practically doubled.

So the eon here was not the cause of the tremor.

\'What is this woman up to?\'

Kael was beginning to understand a few things as he saw what was going on.

The reason the people in the town were going insane... was probably because she knew they would be gathered in the dungeon and she could throw the barony into chaos when the time came.

But even though the insane were a threat to normal people, they were not overly difficult to defeat. So... they only existed to cause chaos and distraction.

At least that was his idea.

\'Then why is this eon so dense?\'

Kael paused for a brief moment. He remembered what had happened in the cave. Before she started fighting Amar, the woman was holding a piece of vine that he was sure belonged to the Guardian.

And if he remembered correctly, there were a lot of those vines in that cave, all with rotten spots on them. Which, In short, indicated that the woman wanted to hurt the Guardian for some reason. Who knows, maybe it was because of her that Amar and the Guardian were disconnected.

\'She may have wanted to prevent the Guardian from informing Amar about the situation.\'

And... what exactly was the \'next step\' she told Amar about?

Using the insane to avoid suspicion, using them to accumulate an enormous amount of eon in the mansion, and then using them again as a distraction...

Blocking Amar\'s communication with the Guardian.

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The power to decay and rot everything, an \'evil\' purpose targeting the town...

Kael paused. Perhaps her target was not the town but... something in the town?

Suddenly, an idea came to him, and then his expression darkened.

"Heart of the Guardian..."

Kael quickly started to make his way up the dungeon.

"Matthew, we need to get to the Heart of the Guardian quickly. I think the woman\'s purpose is related to the Guardian."

Even as he said this, he didn\'t wait for him at all. He quickened his pace and started running.