I didn’t know what to do, twisting horrible texts rose from the slimy tome in Emily’s hands. They pushed against her face slithering in through her nose, mouth, or ears. The same qi gathering in the egg flowed from Emily’s cultivation base in a steady stream at a constant and unmistakably fatal rate. I reached for the tome.

Logan caught my wrist in a powerful grip. “Don’t act carelessly. There are few ways to break such cursed objects. Especially here with such dense water qi. You need to use fire that can burn underwater.” Logan said.

I held up my hand, and a black flame rose despite the crushing sensation of water qi. Dragon flames required a lot of qi and maintained a ridiculously high temperature. Fortunately, I had taken to pulling in massive amounts of water qi. Once cycled, that qi fueled my dragon fire. In a sense, the more the water qi tried to snuff out my flames, the more qi I had to fuel them.

“Burn everything here to ashes, then take Emily and go. The fire might slow down the serpent’s birth.” Logan said.

Getting my hands on the formation and looting the water qi crystals here was secondary to getting Emily out. There was also a chance that this type of formation wasn’t that rare. Honestly, I hadn’t studied enough about formations to even know what to look for.

Haunted houses didn’t need formations to maintain themselves either. So maybe a formation wasn’t the way to go. The castle had a formation, but it didn’t hold a candle to a haunted houses gestalt spirit. Even under the qi drain of the priests they managed to hold onto their identities. Moore castle felt like a hollowed-out corpse much like what was happening to Emily. There was a pattern there I was sure of it.

I grasped the book in Emily’s hands and set it aflame. The pages turned, and a shriek erupted from the pages. Words erupted from the book twisting into long black tentacles. They lashed out, grabbing Emily by the neck before I could stop them. Other books began to open, and words quickly flowed into tentacles around them.

I tried to separate the tentacles from Emily with a yank, only for them to rip out of the book. I stared in shock and digust as they crawled into Emily. The slimy things slipped out of my hand as they slipped down her throat, through her nose, and ears.

Emily gripped her head and screamed. The other books rushed forward leaping at me, tentacles raised. Lightning blasted out from Roland, striking hundreds of books at once. Most of them immediately turned to ash but more took their place.

“This is proof of a demon cult. The high council must intervene.” Roland yelled.

Logan’s wings flared, and pillared of light erupted in front of him before blasting across the ground, turning books to ash as they passed. The high inquisitor drew his revolver and pointed it up as Ula appeared sitting on the hand railing of an upper floor.

“Hello cutey, well dad, do you approve of him. I think he’s worked with you long enough to earn the right to court me.” Ula said with a light smile.

“How could you do this? You’ve never gone this far before.” Logan yelled.

Ula pouted and brushed her red hair aside. “Don’t be silly. This is the priest’s game. I’m just an observer sent by the Infinite Chimera sect, or was it the Blood Fallen, Eternal Moon, or Forever Blood Bloom Rose sect. There are so many demon sects just on the edge of triad territory nowadays I can hardly keep track of who’s paying me.” Ula said then smiled. “Don’t worry about me, someone always pays.”

“So does the coalition of blood plan to use this county as a staging ground to attack triad lands?” Logan asked.

“Nope, are you crazy? Why would we want to ruin our little cold war? The priest purchased a few forbidden tombs from us, and I was sent to keep an eye on our investment. I might have also run a bit of business on the side, but you squashed that.” Ula shook her head. “Wisdom comes from experience. It's better to profit off of someone else’s hard work. Now that you’re here, I don’t have to stay any longer. My mission is complete.” Ula said.

She teleported in front of me and kissed me before vanishing in a wellspring of darkness. I was so stunned I couldn’t move for a second.

What the hell did she mean by that? Why were we the final ingredients to her plan? It took a good couple of seconds for it to dawn on me.

The egg would hatch no matter what, but how the spirit developed was still up in the air. While the egg had yet to hatch, it could become anything. That meant something significant. She expected us to fuck up the priest’s plans to tame the serpent for humanity. If he failed to do that, then the odds were great. It would either become a King of Kings set against humanity or, worse, a demon of some kind. Or were they the same? My context for demons and spirit beasts wasn’t in-depth. I didn’t know if there was a physical difference in them.

Well, if we grabbed Emily and left, could we even escape the aura when it awakened. My gut was telling me we didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell without my battle form. With Roland nearby that wasn’t an option leaving us with only one shitty option. We had to kill the priest and get to cover. Maybe the spirit wouldn’t try to destroy all of mankind, fingers crossed.

Emily yelled as black wings erupted from her back as the tentacles wrapped around her. I dashed forward as I felt her qi recovering rapidly. The tentacles inside of her cultivated the water qi in the room at a rapid rate. In the blink of the eye, her strength was restored.

I saw Roland stop Logan from helping me. “We have to get to the high priest, or else we’re all dead,” Roland yelled.

Logan met my eyes before heading deeper into the cathedral.

Emily smashed me in the chest, cracking some ribs and launching me into a wall. She flapped her wings and seemed to teleport. A powerful clawed kick blasted me through a stone wall, and the building shook. A white laser fired up through the building, and I knew Logan had begun fighting as well.

My thigh felt empty, and I saw my gun under a pew. It wasn’t like I planned to use it on Emily anyway. Black flames licked her raven wings as she floated in front of me like some fallen angel. Winning wasn’t possible without my battle form, but if I used it, then Roland might notice. Killing a nascent realm inquisitor didn’t seem very practical with the time limit.

I formed a small fireball and threw it at the transformed Emily, only for it to fade away before touching her. My eyes roamed her wings. For a fraction of a second, those wings had grown brighter.

A plan began to form at seeing that. How much fire qi could those tentacle monsters really handle? They did seem rather water-aligned. Small feathers covered Emily’s shoulder before the extra fire qi was used up.

Emily zoomed down, and I rolled as her ax kick cut a crater through the concrete floor and the concrete tiles around us leaped up. Black flames licked at my fists as I kicked off with qi steps. She blocked my strike with her forearm before going for a grapple. I struck her chest with my other arm even as she slipped her foot inside mine.

My time was running out; she twisted, bringing her other leg up to take me off balance. But grappling with her was always to my advantage. I poured more of my qi into the flames licking at my hands. The tentacles beneath her skin moved. She grabbed my face as I fed more qi to the flames.

The tentacles erupted from her mouth, nose, and ears. I sucked in a breath and transformed. Using fire breath even in my battle form felt alien to my throat. This form was meant to merge a dragon’s battle power with a human body. So, the flames came to my call as I exhaled.

I could have tried to block their exit to trap them inside of her to die, but Emily had taught me a lesson. Give an enemy a false escape, and they’d take it because hope was a poisonous thing.

The tentacles flailed and shrieked as they burned. Still, they fell and burned away, freeing Emily of their control.

I stepped out of the broken section of the cathedral where Emily and I fought and thrust my hand out. Hungry black flames rushed out and swept through the pews and books, burning everything, they touched. The old bones brittle from their drained qi made fine kindling, and the shrieking tentacles sounded pleasant to my ears.

Then I turned to the egg and decided my best bet was to dead lift it. I opened my inventory with a crazy Idea. Items stored in my inventory went into stasis. All I had to do was fit an egg the size of a small shed into my inventory.

Before I’d managed to store trees with some trimming, fitting the egg wouldn’t be any different than sliding a couch through a door.

Crack!

Shards of eggshell fell away revealing a great blue eye. Before the shards hit the ground, I snatched them up. I measured the power of the so-called king of kings to my own battle form enhanced power.

“Nope!” I said and lifted Emily to my back and tied her.

Crack!

I snatched those last pieces, inventoried them, and sprinted for the exit. Something built up behind me as I yanked every water qi crystal covered skeletons I could on my way out.

Crack!

“Oh fuck!” I yelled and pushed off with inquisitor speed. Battle form powered up and my body screamed in protest as I pushed forward in the wake of a tidal wave of water qi. Illusionary serpents formed leading the tidal wave before separating to snatch up people in the street.