CHAPTER 203: CHAPTER 204: VIRUS

The battlefield stank of sweat, blood, and ozone-scorched metal. Mana drifted like smoke—shimmering, sickly, corrupted. The air itself coughed. It wheezed like it had caught the plague that spread among them. And amid the chaos, Veil staggered, hunched forward as his translucent, shifting form flickered like a damaged flame.

Loki’s blade met another—the clang echoing louder than it should, as if even the world wanted to announce his frustration.

"What the fuck? Why are you sooooo fucking weak?" Loki shouted, voice serrated with exhaustion and rage, parrying another blow from not one, but two of the Seventeen Primes. Number Two had a calm fury about her, all sinew and sharp precision. Number Three fought like a child possessed by something ancient and feral. Their coordination was flawless—one attacking high, one low, as if they were extensions of each other. Perfect symmetry. Beautifully murderous.

Veil barely managed to raise a finger in response, greenish-black mana leaking from the joints of his half-corporeal limbs.

"...I haven’t eaten anything!! For God’s sake. FYI... I’ve been only eating books. No mana-filled creatures, no beasts, no blood-fused organs... nothing."

Loki blinked. His sword parried a curved saber, sparks dancing like fireflies in an oil storm.

"FYI... what is that? New spell? Sounds like a cursed abbreviation—Feathered Yeti Incantation?"

A beat. A pause. Just a moment to breathe—but even that felt too long.

Tang!!

The impact jolted Loki’s bones, running through his arms into his spine. He grimaced. "Fuck! These Primes are annoying... and fucking powerful. You sure they’re humans?"

Veil gave no answer. He just coughed again.

This time, it wasn’t blood.

It was worse.

Fairy dust—sickly, corrupted, sparkling as if some poor god had wept into rot—spilled from his mouth like bile from a corpse.

A gust of foul wind stirred it, sending the glittering death into the air. It shimmered like irony. Like beauty tainted by decay.

Veil’s eyes, two fractured pools of mana, blinked as if surprised. "Huh. That’s... that’s new. This virus..."

His thoughts went back, just for a flash, just for a second—a memory slicing clean through his fading mind:

He remembered touching a library door once—old, rusted, forbidden. A seal cracked open, and something inside breathed on him. Not air. Not dust. But something alive. Something that tasted like disease. He had laughed it off then. Called it a ’shy curse.’ But now...

He regretted it. As the same dust now was inside him. Eating him. Infecting him.

He was a phantom. No organs. No blood. A living wound in space. Veil was made to slip through time, through dimensions, through logic itself. He was smoke. A whisper. Water without shape.

But now, even whispers could bleed.

He hunched again, doubling over as another spasm wracked through his core. The virus, once dormant, now bloomed inside him like a flower made of knives. A cursed orchid unfurling through his veins.

"Be careful, Loki..." he croaked between coughs. "Don’t let yourself be cut. I think even a half-born like you can’t escape this shitty virus. It... it learns. Adapts."

Another cough. Another burst of dying starlight.

"...fuck. You were supposed to find Atlas and dip out. What fucking use do you have if you’re dying the moment you enter?!" Loki snapped, whirling, ducking under Number Three’s jagged blade as it screeched through the air.

Cling!!

A curved dagger caught his shoulder pauldron. Deep enough to tear the strap. Loki grunted and rolled.

"Huh?! Fuck you!" Veil shouted suddenly, fire returning to his cracked voice. "You got beat up by an old man. With his weary fists. That old guy—Mayne—his bones were made of feather!"

Loki gritted his teeth. "Shut up—"

"But you know what?" Veil growled. "You lost. You fucking lost to a broken old man. Crying about your bitch. Who didn’t even let you get laid."

His words were a dagger dipped in laughing venom. They sliced through the tension—not easing it, but warping it into something wild. Loki faltered mid-step, his brain struggling to process the insult.

"What?"

The terms. The phrasing. The tone. They made no sense anymore. It was like Veil was unraveling—not just physically, but linguistically.

Loki ducked instinctively as a spear sliced through the air—just inches from his temple—and aimed straight toward Veil.

It would’ve skewered him through the gut.

Would’ve.

But Veil blinked—and a hole opened in his stomach. Literally. A void that blinked open like a mouthless scream. The spear passed through it and thudded into the cracked earth behind him.

"...what the fuck was that! Are you mad?! I’m already dying—you want me in a fucking death bed?!" Veil complained, staggering.

"Stop complaining and come here, you cunt-language-speaking bastard!!!" Loki roared.

His shout echoed, vibrating the world like a cracked bell. His voice rang through the battlefield, across corpses, smoke, and shattered enchantments.

Above—his eyes flicked upward.

A flicker in the sky.

Aurora. Floating.

Merlin beside her. Both....Both drained. But both burning.

And that look on the old man’s face—

"No..." Loki whispered. "Old man... don’t do it. Don’t—"

But he knew.

He knew the spell Merlin was weaving. He recognized the fingers. The glowing symbols spinning between his hands like old constellations summoned from the bones of stars. The sky above them cracked. Just a hairline. Just enough for light to bleed through like a wound.

"Don’t..." Loki muttered.

The battlefield trembled as if the world itself feared what was coming. Thunder crackled—not from clouds, but from mana reacting to the madness brewing in Merlin’s soul.

Veil looked up as well. His face twisted. "That crazy bastard..."

They had all heard stories. Not myths. Not legends. Just whispers. Of one forbidden spell. Older than the empires. Made for annihilation, not salvation.

Merlin was going to cast it.

He was going to unmake a slice of the world.

*****

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