23 Chapter 22: Soul Eater

Blood still dripped out of Luca's wounds, and even more of it pooled beneath his unconscious body, dying the green grass red. Bits of red droplets staining his wings a dark crimson where Luca had landed on them. Bits of blood falling freely to the ground off the end of his feathers and off the ends of his fingertips. In any other turn of events, Luca would have been long dead.

At the behest of the words he had uttered before passing out and being rent unconscious by blood loss, an arcane circle appeared beneath him. The circle opened up into a dark void sprawling across the grounds as Luca lay suspended in the middle of it. A portal connecting this reality to another, a darker nether dimension, and from that dimension, something was to come forth.

A symbol appeared within the portal to that nether world, the symbol of the school of conjuration flashing in purple light and forming an inscribed pentagon with the blood that had pooled, his blood, and Steels. Smoke began to rise from the dark world on the other side of the portal as Luca's mana was fed into the spell. His very lifeforce calling to the Nightmare that was to bound to him.

A cloud of bubbled up from the circle, tainting all the untouched grass around Luca's body as more of his life's bleed feel freely into the portal, further powering the ability and also taxing his unconscious body. Though Luca was no longer at risk for death, simply a prolonged period of rest as he healed, even as the spell pulled energy from his body.

An oppressive dense aura of malevolent darkness descended on the entire area. Calling 2Face's and Tatiana's attention to it and even drawing that of the Huntsmen Spider. Whatever malignant being was coming, they all knew to fear it, and though it was a terrible fear, 2Face and Tatiana both ran towards the source, wanting and needing to know what was happening.

When they saw the source of the creeping aura of malice was coming from Luca's body, they both shuddered. Afraid of what was coming next. Whether they had admitted it or not, the kid had freaked them out. Neither had ever wanted him on the team, not really. It was only at Dominic's urging that Tatiana had even initially propositioned the kid to join their team when he had arrived.

From within the circle, a slender, though well-muscled arm reached out with long clawed fingers and grabbed the edges of the portal and began pulling itself up out of the nether realm from which it had come. The Nightmare revealing itself. Showing a heavily marred body of matted purple and red scar tissue, barely covered in places by the shredded black leather armor it wore from head to toe. Rusted iron chains were bound around its wrists and its torso.

The Nightmare's head was not readily apparent underneath its armor, but as it lifted its body out of the pit it had emerged from, Tatiana and 2Face could see it wore a triangle-shaped hat, and beneath the hat, the Nightmares features were entirely obscured by an unnatural darkness, all that could be seen were two yellow orbs where its eyes were.

The thing that Luca had summoned grasped at the other side of the summoning pit within the arcane circle with its off-hand. With an otherworld effort, it hefted itself up, launching itself out of the pit. It landed perfectly upright on two spindly, unsteady looking legs. Where the Nightmare had landed, the grass began to rapidly turn to grey ash, and the earth beneath it blackened with blight. A trail of rot spread out from the Nightmare as the disease it spawned promptly killing the nearby vegetation.

2Face recognized the monster for it was it, seeing that Luca was still alive by noticing the heaving of his chest as he continued to draw breath. Just as 2Face recognized that Luca had summoned the monster, Tatiana also recognized it was a danger to them. "We need to get back away from that thing right now. Whatever you do, don't let that blight touch you."

Even as she yelled it out, 2Face was taken back in surprise by the suddenness of her outburst and quickly obeyed, pulling back in suspicion from the battlefield as he lacked in suspicion at both the Nightmare and the Huntsman spirt who was now eyeing the newest participant on the field with thinly veiled fear.

The Huntsmen Spider was not like the group of humans that had milled around trying to harm it before running away. It had sensed the sensation of danger long before it had recognized were the sensation of danger was coming from, and unlike the humans, the Huntsmen Spider turned as it could on its damaged legs to meet this new threat head-on. Planning on killing it and consuming it later, just like it had done with the other two humans.

The Nightmare grinned, showed a row of razorsharp triangle shaped teeth as it saw the spider it's master had summoned it to kill.

Splitting its attention between both the Huntsman Spider, the running humans, and a third party that waited and watched in the distance, the Nightmare announced itself. "I am Ars Goethe, a Nightmare Duke of the Nether Realm. Bound on this day to serve the Black Seraph forevermore. On behalf of my master, I will take your lives as a gift on this glorious day of his dark ascension."

The Nightmare stood upright like a man. As it moved, its limbs and bones cracked and popped. Though if it held any weakness, it did not show otherwise. The Huntsman Spider glared and hissed as the Nightmare approached it, knowing the fear of the many prey it had killed and consumed over the millennia.

As the Nightmare came closer, the Huntsmen Spider opened up its under the belly and let loose every spider it held within, seeking to completely overwhelm this new threat with numbers. But when the swarm of arachnids approached, it was to no avail. As soon as spiders got close to the Nightmare, their legs began to turn rapidly decay and turn to dust. In a matter of seconds, every spider that had been used to attack the Nightmare was reduced in ash.

As the humans watched from a distance, all they could do was stare in fear. Wondering what evil, the newest member of their team had awoken and unleashed. The sheer in the air was stifling, making it difficult to breathe and started to cloud their reason. Every single set of eyes were transfixed on the impossible scene before them, the Nightmare from another world, and the giant spider it was going to kill.

Tatiana let out an audible gasp of fear as they all watched the Nightmare thrust its hands into the blighted earth, causing the blight to rapidly expand its area of influence to include where the Huntsman Spider was. Though the monster was unaffected by the newly expanded blight, it seemed the intention wasn't to try and use the decaying ability. Skeletal arms emerged all around the gigantic spider, spawning out of the blackened and blighted earth as the Nightmare that summoned them looked on in glee.

White ivory fingers of bone embedding themselves into the chitin carapace of the arachnid. Tearing off the outer layer of armor and further tearing into the soft flesh underneath. The Huntsmen Spider screamed an ungodly shriek of pain as those skeletal hands dug into its body and seized hold, systematically beginning to butcher the monster. Though the spider tried to shake the skeletal hand's loose, fighting for its life to free itself from their clutches, it was to no avail. The monsters doom was sealed.

Without a sound, the Nightmare pulled its hands out of the blighted dirt. The arms of the Nightmare seemingly more shadow than flesh as everyone struggled to watch and keep up with its rapid movements. It reached down a dark hand and grabbed at the pale flesh of its own leg and began to pull. Tearing at the skin until both the flesh and bone ripped off. its arms seemingly more shadow than flesh as everyone struggled to watch its movements. A dark hand grabbed at the pale flesh of its leg, pulling and tearing at the skin until the leg ripped off. The Nightmare smiled as it lapped at the leaking marrow of the jaded bone it now held in its hand.

What remained was completely over wordly. An oily darkness began to materialize in the shape of the leg the Nightmare had lost. A shadow leg upon which the Nightmare easily walked upon as it approached the entrapped and terrified arachnid. In its hands, it wielded the severed leg like an executioner blade. As the Nightmare moved, it began to shuck the pale flesh from the bone, using its clawed hands to sharped the edge of the bone in even powerful strokes. The sound and sight of which put the fear of death and the knowledge of true fear into all who heard it.

Find authorized novels in Webnovel，faster updates, better experience，Please click www.novelhall.com for visiting.

The Huntsmen Spider realizing its death was approaching tried to resist up until the very end. Snapping with its jaws and trying to bite at the Nightmare, hoping to disembowel or behind it like it had the humans. But it never mattered. The difference in their strengths was simply overwhelming. Ar Goethe, a Nightmare Duke had no reason to fear such a pathetic creature. With a simple forward thrust, the spear of bone stabbed through the lower mandible of the Huntsman Spider. The Nightmare not content with just that bit of damage, continuing to cut and stab, completely unstoppable until it had cut its way all the way through the spider's underbelly, splitting it cleanly in two as blue spilled out from the massive wound.

The spider stopped struggling to get free as its lifeforce and blood disappeared, lapped up by the blighted ground that had spread all around the battlefield, feeding upon the death of both the land and the spider. The Nightmare was not content in simply letting the spider die, not after it had harmed its master. The Nightmare carefully examined the spider before walking around to the spiders back and thrust a hand through the abdominal wound it had created. Destroying all the useless organs inside until it, at last, the Nightmare found what it was looking for and grasped at the still-beating heart of the spider and tore it out. The white organ was continuing to beat, even as the spider collapsed in death. The bone arms that had been holding it in place, releasing their hold on the Huntsman Spider's body and retreated back into the blight.

Boss monsters, unlike regular minions, were not instantly reabsorbed by the dungeon after a battle. They decompensated at a rapid rate. The skin first turning to dust as the muscles and organs turned to paste. But even then, within minutes, the dungeon would have reabsorbed the rapidly decayed body of the arachnid if not for the presence of the blight that absorbed it instead.

The entire time, Luca remained unconscious as the remaining members of his team looked around at each other uncertain of how to proceed or what to do. Not one of them wanted to die, and the monster this Nightmare was, spoke towards a primal fear within them of fates worse than death. Instead, they all held their breath from where they watched, hoping the Nightmare wouldn't turn its attention to them.

Walking over to the unconscious boy, the Nightmare looked at the heart in its hand, imbuing it with the same dark energy that made up parts of its own body. The nether energy swirling around the heart corrupting it until, at last, only a bit of dust remained. The Nightmare grabbed Luca and shoved the dust down his throat, causing the unconscious boy to began to cough himself awake, even as the dust worked on healing the few remaining wounds he had and adding a dark glisten to the metallic hue of his body.

As soon as Luca opened his eyes, the Nightmare disappeared. It's mission completed for now until its master called for him again. All around, the blighted area around Luca disappeared. Leaving a dead spot where nothing would ever grow there again. Proof of what had happened in this spot, proof of the blight. But in the very middle of where the portal had been remained a single obsidian jewel that held all the energy the blight had taken from the land. A parting gift from the Nightmare to its master.

Elsewhere, the remaining members of the team were reeling, wondering just who Luca really was, and what he really was. Wondering if they had made a mistake with him or if he might just be their salvation.