Chapter 65

Night of the Hunt (3)

“So, I’m willing to accept that you want to say something insane again!” Noel shouted.

“…”

Aiden’s face crumpled at the blunt verbal abuse, but Noel showed no sign of moderating her tone while sprinting at breakneck speed, carrying both him and Katya slung over her shoulders like oversized sacks.

“What I want to know,” she continued, breathless, “is what insane plan you have for actually carrying out that insane idea!”

“…I am capable of being hurt too, Lady Noel,” Aiden grumbled under his breath. Even as he complained, his eyes continuously scanned their rapidly changing surroundings.

When he stopped to think about it, their current situation was thoroughly bizarre.

[Quest Info]

♠ Main Quest

◈ Act One,

• Chapter 2,

  ▶ Difficulty has skyrocketed due to external interference.

  ▶ The original event, ‘Large-Scale Invasion,’ has been replaced by the subjugation of a ‘top-tier demonic beast’!

  ▶ Quest completion rewards will be significantly enhanced due to the extreme jump in difficulty!

Even the system notification made it blatantly obvious that Aiden was never intended to cross paths with a monster of this caliber at this point in the story. There were very few entities in this entire world capable of brushing aside combined attacks from both Noel and Katya as if they were minor inconveniences.

‘Top-tier demonic beasts normally never leave the Void Zone.’

Even within the Void Zone—an environment explicitly tailored for the survival of the absolute fittest—top-tier beasts reigned at the undisputed peak of the ecosystem. They typically roamed its deepest reaches in search of powerful prey, holding zero interest in the world beyond.

The logic was simple: demonic beasts existed purely to destroy and devour, and the inner Void Zone was the ultimate feeding ground.

If a creature of this level had suddenly wandered into the material realm, the Puppeteer, Rad, had almost certainly tampered with it before Aiden sealed him away.

Specifically, the [Berserk] status currently driving the Soul River was almost certainly the result of Rad’s meddling. The demon had systematically stripped away the intellect of a beast that would normally never abandon its lair, reducing it to little more than a rabid animal before releasing it upon the duchy.

Once Aiden pieced the puzzle together, a clear path forward emerged.

The Soul River had lost what should have been its greatest asset: its rational mind. Meanwhile, Aiden possessed two unused skill-copying opportunities targetable directly at the very person who had driven it mad.

That meant an opening existed. The monster had a fatal weakness, and Aiden held the exact tools required to exploit it.

For instance, while it might have looked as though the trio had done nothing except run for their lives, Aiden had successfully planted almost every single blasting stake he had brought along during the pursuit.

Noel ran, Katya delayed the beast’s approach with holy attacks, and Aiden hurled prepared explosive stakes from his pack, driving them into the ground whenever an opening appeared.

Attempting such a ridiculous setup while fleeing would normally arouse the suspicions of any intelligent creature. Under normal circumstances, the Soul River was a sapient predator; in its current Berserk state, however, it possessed zero capacity to understand why those strange iron stakes mattered.

Aiden merely needed to capitalize on that blind spot.

He leaned over and tapped Noel’s shoulder while she ran so hard the soles of her boots looked ready to burst into flames.

“Lady Noel.”

“…No.”

“Lady Noel—”

“I don’t care what you are about to say. The answer is an absolute no.”

“…”

Aiden’s face fell instantly. Noel caught his disappointed expression out of the corner of her eye and squeezed her eyes shut in exasperation.

Nothing about their desperate situation had actually changed for the better, but she was painfully aware of a frustrating truth about herself: now that they had come this far, she was inevitably going to end up going along with whatever unhinged strategy he proposed.

‘Goddess Karva, why did you place me next to a man with zero concept of self-preservation?’

“…Fine,” Noel groaned, yielding. “I will at least hear you out.”

“Let’s jump.”

The instruction was so blatantly suicidal that Noel had to force a severe curse back down her throat. Had they been in a proper social setting governed by basic manners, the sheer audacity of his words would have earned him a swift slap.

“Jump where?” she demanded.

“Down there.” Aiden pointed casually toward the sheer vertical drop beside the mountain path. It was the exact same cliff where he had rappelled down earlier to hammer stakes into the rock face.

“…”

Noel glanced over the ledge.

The bottom was completely invisible. The gorge was so deep that a howling wind rose from the abyss, striking their ears with a sound unnervingly close to human shrieks.

“…Down there?”

“Yes. Don’t worry, I have everything calculated.”

Before he could finish his sentence, a string of colourful language finally escaped Noel’s mouth—severe enough that, in polite society, she would have been promptly thrown out of the building.

While Aiden was still trying to figure out how to process hearing the worst insult of his recent life from his own sweet fiancée, Katya—who was still firing continuous bursts of divine energy at the pursuing Soul River—tilted her head.

“So we just leap down there?” Katya asked.

“Yes,” Aiden confirmed. “If I’m going to tame it, I need to knock the fight out of it first.”

Noel nearly yelled that there was a massive difference between knocking the fight out of a monster and committing collective suicide by jumping off a cliff, but Katya cut her off before she could speak.

“Really?” Katya said. Then, before anyone could stop her, she added, “Let’s go.”

Katya blasted a massive surge of divinity directly into the ground at maximum output. The sheer kinetic recoil launched all three of them into the open air like a missile firing from a launchpad.

Inertia carried them outward, and gravity immediately took over, sending the trio plunging straight down into the chasm.

“I swear to God, you impossible, damned Prince Aiden!” Noel screamed.

“…”

She was so furious that she had somehow managed to mix a formal honorific straight into the middle of a screaming insult. Aiden silently decided that he would offer her a very sincere apology once they survived this.

As that thought crossed his mind, the Soul River caught sight of them falling down the cliff face. Its crimson eyes locked onto them.

Without a second thought, the beast leapt directly into the abyss after them.

The movement—driven by such primal, blinding malice that the creature paid zero mind to its own survival—sent a freezing chill down everyone’s spine.

Even so, they still had a job to do.

Aiden took a deep breath and pulled the final explosive stake from his backpack, hurling it toward the cliff wall. He couldn’t drive it deep, but he caught sight of it wedging firmly into a narrow crevice as they plummeted.

“…What on earth have you been planting this entire time?!” Noel yelled over the rushing wind, baffled as to why he was still calmly setting traps while free-falling alongside an apex predator intent on tearing them to shreds.

The fact that Noel retained enough presence of mind to interrogate him while dropping off a cliff suggested she was hardly ordinary herself.

“Blasting charges,” Aiden called back calmly.

“…What?!”

There was one minor detail about the Aslan Duchy that outsiders rarely knew: mining was one of its most vital industries.

Consequently, acquiring high-grade commercial explosives designed to shatter solid bedrock was surprisingly easy.

During their frantic retreat, Aiden and the others had planted enough mining-grade explosives along the cliff route to supply a commercial quarry for a month.

“…Why would you plant that many explosives around us?!”

“Simpler to show you than explain!”

Aiden pulled a specialized steel cable equipped with a spring-loaded grappling hook from his shoulder bag—gear he had personally checked to ensure it could handle the weight of multiple people.

He threw it across the gorge with precise aim. The hook bit deep into the opposite rock face, violently interrupting their vertical fall.

With a firm anchor established, the three swung across the canyon like a giant pendulum, slamming hard against the far rock face. The impact was brutal enough that Aiden had to instantly deploy a barrier of Brilliant Radiance to prevent severe internal injuries.

The Soul River, however, was about to experience a vastly different outcome.

Had a shred of its natural intelligence remained, it might have attempted to brace itself or catch an outcrop. In its current Berserk state, it merely swiped its massive paws toward them in mindless rage while falling uncontrollably through thin air.

The sheer physical ability that allowed its flailing limbs to come dangerously close to them even in free-fall was terrifying, but the final outcome was already sealed.

With a deafening rush of wind, the Soul River accelerated all the way to the jagged floor of the ravine.

CRASH!

“…”

“…”

Noel and Katya stared down into the darkness in utter silence. Still dangling from the taut cable, Noel narrowed her eyes into dangerous slits as she turned toward Aiden.

“…Mr. Aiden.”

“…Yes?”

“From this moment on, if you ever plan to execute something like this again, please consult me first.”

“…”

“Do you understand me?”

“…Hey, no one got hurt, right?”

Noel glared at him with enough intensity to cut him in half, but Aiden deliberately avoided her gaze.

They weren’t done yet.

Still dodging her eyes, Aiden reached inside his coat and pulled out a heavy metal detonator.

“…What is that now?” Noel asked, her voice dangerously flat.

“We need to detonate the charges.”

The entire route along which he had scattered the blasting charges had been designed with a single objective: to drop an entire cliffside directly on top of the Soul River now lying at the bottom of the ravine.

BEEP!

A sharp signal chimed, and the charges embedded throughout the cliff face detonated in a synchronized sequence.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Rolling explosions thundered across the night sky. Even through the deafening roar of collapsing stone, Katya’s voice rang out clearly.

“You planned all of this from the very beginning?”

“Of course.”

“…All of this?”

“…”

He had deliberately lured a top-tier demonic beast to this specific ravine, baited it over a cliff, and arranged to bury it under a mountain of rubble. Apparently, every single step had been calculated from the start.

“…Mr. Aiden, what exactly do you spend your free time thinking about?” Noel asked, her tone a mix of sheer exhaustion and disbelief.

Katya immediately added her own commentary. “I keep telling you, the way your mind works is terrifying.”

“…”

“Doesn’t your brain always default to ‘how do I blow this up and kill it’?”

Aiden’s face twitched as he held the detonator. Hearing that specific criticism from Katya of all people was genuinely hurtful.

The surrounding landscape vanished beneath a massive plume of dust as a catastrophic rockslide reshaped the canyon. Hundreds of thousands of tons of solid rock came crashing down directly onto the Soul River.

✦ ✦ ✦

Thick dust hung in the air, slowly settling as the thundering echoes finally faded into silence. Aiden let out a tired sigh, checking the tension on their support cable.

There was one immediate problem with their current position.

“…Lady Noel, you’re currently the heaviest among us, so if you shift around too much, the cable might snap.”

THWACK!

Noel delivered a swift, powerful punch straight to his ribs.

“…I didn’t mean your physical weight!” Aiden gasped, clutching his side. “You’re wearing heavy full-plate armor right now, so technically your total mass is the highest!”

THWACK!

Noel struck him hard a second time without hesitation.

“…”

Aiden quietly noted a new life lesson: never tell a woman she is heavy, regardless of context or physics.

As he recorded that wisdom, a horrifying sound echoed from deep beneath the rubble pile.

GRRRRRR…

“…It survived that?!” Noel gasped, staring down in absolute horror.

Through the settling dust, the Soul River was actively crawling upward out of the debris, digging its massive front claws into the sheer cliff face to haul itself up.

It was far from unscathed. Finding a single patch of unblemished hide on its body was harder than finding a fresh wound. It had survived a fall from a massive cliff, followed by a mountain of solid granite crashing onto its spine—yet it was still alive, still moving, still driven by pure malice.

“This is a nightmare,” Noel whispered.

“No, this is perfect,” Aiden countered.

His perspective was completely different. If a creature of this tier could be killed by a simple rockslide, it would never have earned the title of a top-tier demonic beast in the first place.

More importantly, if it had died, his plan would have failed.

“I told you, I’m trying to tame it. It would be a major problem if it died here.”

Without another word, Aiden unbuckled his harness and released his grip on the cable.

Rather than climbing to safety, he dropped straight toward the approaching monster.

Normally, diving directly into the reach of a top-tier beast would mean being instantly squished into paste. In its battered, bleeding state, however, its reaction speed was compromised enough for Aiden to handle.

He deployed a localized barrier of Brilliant Radiance to deflect a sluggish swipe of its massive front paw, then landed squarely on top of the creature’s broad head.

Now came the critical phase of his plan.

Aiden activated his skill-copy mechanism, targeting the two specific abilities the Puppeteer had used to manipulate the beast in the first place.

[System Message]

▶ You have imitated ‘Skill: Demonic Energy: Flow Control.’

▶ You have imitated ‘Skill: Demonic Energy: Divine Command.’

[Skill Info]

◈ Demonic Energy: Flow Control

• Analyze the internal energy pathways of a target possessing demonic energy. Once analyzed, you may apply [Divine Command] to the target.

  ★ Copied via [Imitation]. Performance is reduced compared to the original!

  ◈ Demonic Energy: Divine Command

• Invade the target’s mind and implant an absolute command. The target must obey the order until another entity overrides or removes it.

  ★ Copied via [Imitation]. Performance is reduced compared to the original!

Aiden let out a quiet chuckle as the skill descriptions flashed across his vision. He placed his hand directly against the Soul River’s skull. Because demonic energy originated from a sealed god, abilities derived from it possessed distinctly sinister characteristics—a trait these two skills demonstrated perfectly.

For once, however, he was immensely grateful for them.

Concept-based abilities like these couldn’t be evaluated through raw offensive output alone. Even if their overall efficiency was lower than Rad’s original versions, the core functionality remained completely intact.

Most importantly, they were tailor-made for his exact current need.

[System Message]

▶ Activating ‘Skill: Demonic Energy: Flow Control.’

▶ Analyzing the target’s internal demonic energy pathways…

▶ Analysis complete!

In his mind’s eye, Aiden could clearly trace the corrupted black currents pulsing inside the Soul River’s nervous system. He located the exact focal point where the foreign energy was concentrated and reached toward it.

[System Message]

▶ Activating ‘Skill: Demonic Energy: Divine Command.’

▶ Warning: A duplicate instance of [Divine Command] is already active on this target. Activation failed—

Before the warning message could finish rendering, Aiden deployed the ideal counter-ability.

▶ ‘Ability: Purifier’ has cleansed and removed the existing [Divine Command] embedded within the target!

Aiden wondered if Rad, wherever his soul was currently sealed, would ever realize what he had done. Every trap the demon had laid to make Aiden’s life difficult had instead been transformed into a buffet of high-tier resources laid out directly for his taking.

Rad’s skills alone had proven to be a absolute goldmine.

The immediate result materialized right before his eyes.

[System Message]

▶ The target’s [Berserk] status has been successfully cleansed!

▶ ‘Skill: Demonic Energy: Divine Command’ has been successfully applied!

▶ The target will now obey your commands!

Everything had unfolded precisely according to his design.

As the final system notifications cleared, Aiden looked up at Noel and Katya, offering them a bright, perfectly innocent smile.