"Erika! Heal me for god sake!" Blocking the last attack his shield could withstand, Amedith screamed to the priestess at the top of his lungs. Bruised up from the echoing horror's assault, his eyes wandered all over trying to figure out where the damned thing suddenly went.
Suddenly getting a half-eaten apple thrown at him from a branch, however, his concentration was thrashed.
"She's busy dumbass, the horror's playing tricks on your head!" Casually warning Amedith from atop a tree branch, Helga summoned a throwing knife and threw it in his direction. Its blade lightly grazed the hero's cheeks and then stabbed through the head of the shade emerging from his own feet.
"SHIT!" Jumping away the moment he sensed the monsters, Amedith quickly got away, and in the meantime with the spectre-like horror trying to remove the special blade, Raven readied his attacks as well.
"Get the fuck outta here!" Summoning a slab of darkness with spikes underneath, Raven brought it down on the shade's head and kept the pressure going until the horror was buried deep under its weight.
Moving in right after Mel conjured her woodland magic from the ground and cased the entire slab as well as the monster in a pod of vines. Glancing over to Raven, she nodded at him so he would make the slab disappear, and the moment he did so, Mel grew poison thorns inside the vine pod.
Stabbing the horror from every direction, and even poisoning its flesh with a paralyzing agent, she as well as the rest of the other two slowly moved towards the caged creature.
"Is it dead?" Asked Amedith, limping from having withstood every attack from the disappearing shade all by himself.
"Not sure yet, but I don't feel any mov–" Stopping dead in her tracks, Mel quickly turned to Amedith. And to her horror, the one who'd asked the question was standing beside another of the same person.
'Fuck…' Not knowing the limits of the horror just yet, she'd never expected it to turn into one of them, but now that it had, she had no clue how to deal with the situation. But apparently Raven did.
Being a mage reliant on light and dark, his keen eyes had already noticed something that the others didn't. Unlike any other object, the creature had no shadow and if it did, he could have used it to summon something right underneath him.
"That one!" Conjuring the rifle he'd learned about from Daruis before, Raven shot the shade right in its head. With a bang, its head exploded into a mush, and the sight left both Mel and Amedith horrified by the ordeal.
"What the fuck was that?!" Complained the hero, but feeling yet another presence nearby his anger quickly switched back to vigilance.
"Erika's done, I think, we should move out of the region!" Hollering at the ground, Helga jumped off the tree. Quickly walking up close, the Valkyrie gestured to the group to follow her outside the corrupted area.
And while they made their way back to the camp, Aria and Erika were busy putting on the final touches to their plans. However, the pain in Erika's chest had truly started to affect her ability to etch runes into the ground as well as cast any form of spell.
'I…' Feeling light-headed to the point of her growing dual vision, she finished the last stroke of the rune and attempted to get up. But failing to do so, her body fell to the ground, vulnerable to all and any horrors that may be lurking around.
"What happened?" Picking up the priestess in her arms, however, Aria began carrying her away while a group of her clones circled around them as security.
"I-I don't know," she muttered before her mind slipped to unconsciousness.
"Damn it! Now we can't set the trap off!" Beginning to dash to get out of the forest quickly, Aria knew that things were about to get worse especially if they ran into a horror that they hadn't encountered in their weeklong training.
Thankfully, however, having cleared the forest thus far, her return to camp had been entirely uneventful. But the same couldn't be said for the sleeping beauty Erika. The curse on her chest cast down to her by a devil had finally taken hold, and the heavenly powers she once garnered were all but gone.
Waking up in a plane with nothing but a golden beam of light shining from above, she glanced down at her body–which had now turned into a cloud of crimson fog.
"Where am I?" She asked expecting nobody to respond.
"In my warm embrace," but she was wrong.
Walking into the darkness through the radiant light came a feminine angel with golden wings. Her eyes covered behind a dark blindfold still glared strong enough for Erika to feel her gaze. Dressed to the bare minimum with ceramic hands cupping her breasts and pussy, the false angel Asmodia managed to fool the mere mortal.
"The goddess has answered your prayers and sent me as a beacon for your lost soul!" Moving closer and closer with her dark heels clanking against the ground, Amsodi cupped Erika's cheeks in her hand and slowly leaned in to whisper. "Accept your talents, she demands for you to be more fierce, for you to unlock your inner powers to the fullest potential."
Unable to move or even speak a word, Erika listened as the devil whispered into her ears.
"So be death incarnate to your enemies and a radiant angel for your friends," moving her hands down to Erika's hand, Asmodia took a step back and smiled at the priestess. "In the goddess's name, I pronounce you 'Death's priestess', shackled by none and driven by your own desires of the mind."
Sprinkling some seeds of corruption with the last part, Asmodia leaned towards Erika and planted a kiss on her forehead.
'Ahh~ Such decadence, such restraint! No wonder you're pent up, but thanks to me, it's time for you to be your own master…Well just as long as you also heed the goddess's words.' And with that thought, the devil of seduction pushed Erika back into her body.