Greatest Legacy of the Magus Universe

"We must hurry!"

Gerald turned into a streak of mana as he flew towards Balthazar and Nylian. They were still fighting the remaining two cultists.

Berger and Blackie followed rapidly behind him. The gnome had an extremely dark look on his face, and he couldn't help but mutter in frustration:

"You should have told me about that damned assassin before! No… why did you hire that snake in the first place?! I don't understand!"

Gerald remained silent for a few moments. The wind brushed past his weathered face, and his eyes reflected nothing but regret. At last, he said:

"I had a feeling that the Brotherhood wouldn't send reinforcements… and I was right. The corruption runs deep, Berger. I am certain of it now. There are Cult's spies who sit at the Council of Dawn!"

Berger was stunned. The Council of Dawn was the true leadership of the Brotherhood. They were a small governing body made up entirely of Mana Core Magi. They were known as the Councilors and were responsible for setting and planning the organization's goals.

"They've infiltrated… even the Council?!" Berger couldn't believe it at all.

Gerald nodded with a grim look on his face. "Yes, I am certain. Knowing that we'd be up against the Mana Core necromancers and their undead, I had requested at least two Mana Core Magi from the Brotherhood as reinforcements. And look how many showed up…

"But I had a vague suspicion about there being spies in the Brotherhood's leadership, so I had no other choice but to seek the assistance of rogue Mana Core Magi of Ulier. Out of the ones I'd requested for help, only the Silent King showed up. But as it turns out…"

The Emperor Emeritus didn't wish to say those words, but deep down in his heart he knew… he knew that he had brought this upon himself. If the Silent King ended up doing something dastardly, then he would never be able to forgive himself.

"We don't know for sure," Berger interrupted him, trying his best to mask the concern on his face. "We'll deal with the assassin soon enough. But first, we need to get rid of these cultists."

The brutal, final battlefield soon became visible to them, and they could already see Balthazar and Nylian fighting a gruesome battle with the remaining Mana Core cultists.

Suddenly, Gerald turned to the gnome and said, "You did a good job raising him. Adam, he… he is a good lad."

Berger harrumphed, his eyes flickering with anger. "And how did that turn out?! The boy is reckless as ever! To think I even agreed to his ridiculous plan! What if… what if something happens to him? Even though he has the means to traverse the spirit world, that dimension… it's filled with countless horrors. Even I don't dare to visit that place too often."

"He'll be alright," Gerald murmured, a faint sense of finality in his tone. "In many ways, Adam reminds me of Lucian. People like him…. They have a great destiny on their shoulders. They have the ability to turn the tables in the most unexpected ways.

"If there are nine chances of death and one chance for survival, people like them with great destiny would have the ability to conquer that slim chance of survival. Even in a brutal life and death situation, those marked by fate would always find a way to grasp victory."

Berger couldn't help but frown a little. He was unable to understand why the old man was suddenly talking about abstract concepts such as destiny and fate. He didn't have the luxury of asking him further on that matter.

Because they had already arrived at the battlefield. Without a word, they landed beside Balthazar and Nylian, who were riddled with countless scars and grievous injuries.

Now, the tables had completely turned. With five of them against a mere two, victory was all but inevitable.

But something was wrong…

The two cultists, Axar and Ramsey, were behaving very strangely. The light in their eyes had been replaced by something dark and insidious. Their movements had turned sluggish and mechanical.

And soon, parts of their body began to swell, as though something incandescent was burning from within.

Gerald and the rest did not realize what was happening to the cultists.

But by the time they did…

It was already too late.

***

Deep within the Corvid Quarter, beneath the old storage house, in an underground chamber woven into the labyrinth of tunnels, Daniel was teetering on the edge of life and death.

The moment he set foot inside this vast chamber, his heart turned cold. A chill ran down his spine, and his instincts screamed at him.

He wondered why there were so few zombies inside the underground tunnel.

Now he knew.

Due to a strange mutation, or perhaps an inadvertent result of magic, most of the zombies in the underground tunnels had fused into one single entity.

These corpses writhed and coalesced, bones snapping and flesh melting, into a single disgusting mass. Dozens of arms jutted out at wrong angles, claws formed from fused bone shards. Heads sank into the pulsing bulk, their muffled screams echoing from within.

What remained was a towering corpse golem, a grotesque fusion of hundreds of zombies, its sheer strength almost rivaling a Mana Vortex Magus!

So, the moment Daniel entered the chamber, he was immediately assaulted by a hundred rotten hands, eager to reap his life and drag him into the grotesque mass of the abomination.

At the last possible moment, he drew his blade and blocked the lethal strike, but the sheer impact hurled him into the wall, blood spraying from his mouth as the stone behind him cracked into a deep crater.

The attack was too sudden, and he couldn't react in time. Now, he lay motionless on the damp floor, his consciousness slipping in and out of darkness as the abomination crawled towards him, its hundreds of rotten hands reaching to drag him into its nightmare.

So close…

Blood pooled beneath Daniel as his gaze shifted from the towering flesh golem to the rectangular contraption occupying the center of the chamber.

I was so close…

All he had to do was insert the disk into the contraption, and the million and a half zombies populating the district would all be dealt with.

As the abomination slowly crept in and Daniel's eyes gradually rolled back, a distant memory resurfaced inside his mind.

A long time ago, Headmaster Blackwood had once asked him:

"And you, Daniel? What is your dream?"

At the time, he had answered:

"I don't have any lofty goals. I just want to live a decent life and protect that which I value…"

Daniel had failed to protect Sabrina. Nylain's whereabouts were unknown to him. He did not even know about Headmaster Blackwood's fate. And in the end… he had failed to protect even his home.

But suddenly...

On the verge of losing consciousness, he seemingly heard Sabrina's and Headmaster Blackwood's voices echo directly inside his mind.

They only said two simple words.

Get up.

And in that final moment, just before the hundreds of rotten hands completely engulfed him whole… his eyes snapped open.

And the shadows came alive!