Chapter 56: [THE PRIEST]

“C-Caelen… Caelen—watch out—!”

The priest’s serene, saint-like smile didn’t falter.

If anything, it deepened—mocking.

Then the chamber split with a sound like a mountain snapping in half.

Its massive stone hands, locked for who knew how many centuries in a prayer pose, moved. Fingers longer than spears uncurled, joints grinding and shedding layers of dust.

The motion was too fast. For something that size, it shouldn’t have been able to move like that.

In the same breath, the massive rosary it held—a chain of stone beads, each the size of Eli’s torso—whipped outward in a violent arc.

The links screamed as they cut through the air, a blur of weight and speed, before slamming into the ground with an earth-splittingBOOM right where they had been standing.

Stone exploded upward. Dust blasted into Eli’s face like sandpaper in a storm, stinging his eyes and filling his mouth with grit.

“Shit—!”

Before Eli could even think, Caelen’s arm wrapped tight around his waist, lifting him clean off the floor.

The S-Class twisted, boots digging deep into the stone as he launched them sideways.

Their slide was rough—Eli’s stomach lurched, shoulder scraping against the floor before Caelen planted hard and steadied them.

The reprieve lasted less than a heartbeat.

A vicious spike of danger slammed into Eli’s senses like an ice pick between the eyes. He turned sharply toward the doorway—

’No—!’

The gargoyles were charging. Not the slow, creepy crawl from before—this was an all-out hunt. Claws raked the stone, leaving deep gouges as wings unfurled in the tight corridor. The ground shook with every pounding step, their glowing eyes locked onto the two intruders.

“Gargoyles!” Eli shouted, twisting his body so his gaze locked dead-on. The moment his eyes met theirs, they froze mid-lunge—mouths agape, claws raised, inches from tearing into him.

But the spike of danger didn’t fade. It surged again—harder, hotter—this time from ahead.

“Right—jump right!” Eli’s voice cracked with urgency.

Caelen moved instantly, pivoting and leaping to the side with Eli still half in his grasp.

The rosary’s return swing tore through the air where they had been standing. The sheer force of it bent the wind into a screaming vortex, whipping Eli’s hair and slamming against his skin like a physical blow.

It connected with a pillar in the chamber—stone erupted in a deafening shatter, chunks ricocheting across the floor.

“Left! Now, left!”

Caelen didn’t question—he spun, moving exactly as ordered. The chain screamed past again, pulverizing the floor in its path and leaving deep, jagged furrows.

By the time they came to a stop, the gargoyles had fully breached the chamber. Eli’s gaze pinned them in place like living traps, his peripheral catching Caelen rising to his full height, sword angled low but ready.

“This—” Caelen’s tone was sharp, but maddeningly controlled, “—is definitely not an A-Class threat. What the fuck.”

Eli’s throat felt dry. He couldn’t afford to blink, couldn’t afford to look away.

The priest loomed over all of them, towering so high its head nearly scraped the ceiling. Every slow tilt of its head groaned with the deep rasp of stone grinding against itself, glowing eyes sweeping between the hunters and its frozen minions.

’The priest is the boss. Obviously.’

But knowing it didn’t help. Its sheer size made Eli’s stomach twist. Even if Caelen got close, the gargoyles were in the chamber now, waiting for the smallest lapse in attention to rip them apart.

And there was one thing Eli knew for certain—if either of them looked away, even for half a second, they wouldn’t survive long enough to figure out how to kill it.

“Any ideas?” Caelen asked, voice low but steady, his breaths measured despite the chaos.

Eli’s eyes flicked between the towering priest and the frozen wall of gargoyles. The priest wasn’t moving now—just standing there, hands slack at its sides, its glowing eyes boring into them like a predator deciding when to pounce.

“This is… difficult,” Eli muttered, pulse still pounding in his ears. “They’re way more unpredictable than the ogres.”

He took a slow breath, thinking through the possibilities. His Danger Detection was screaming at him like a siren, but it wasn’t giving him clear patterns—just a constant, jagged thrum of imminent disaster.

“I’d say the safest move would be me keeping my eyes locked on the gargoyles while you fight the priest,” Eli continued, adjusting his stance so none of the gargoyles slipped out of his sightline. “However…”

He hesitated, glancing up at the massive figure.

The priest’s silhouette was more terrifying in stillness than in motion. Its stone robes hung like real fabric, the folds casting deep shadows that seemed to shift with the faint flicker of light.

The size alone… Caelen would barely reach its knee. And if those blows from its rosary hit again—Eli didn’t even want to imagine what it would do to a human body.

“…We’re not sure if it’ll go down easily,” Eli said finally. “With his size alone… even if you stored a significant amount of pain, we don’t know if that’s enough to kill him in one strike.”

Not only that, the priest might end up targeting Eli while Caelen is fighting with it.

Eli exhaled slowly, forcing his pulse to steady. “Can you please look at the gargoyles? I need to check something with the priest in three… two… one… go!”

The instant the count ended, Eli’s gaze snapped to the towering priest. Caelen, without hesitation, shifted his own line of sight to the gargoyles.

“What exactly are you checking?” Caelen asked, voice low but not without curiosity.

Eli narrowed his eyes, scanning the priest from head to toe—no, from head to its massive, carved feet. “He’s not moving from his spot,” Eli murmured, more to himself than to Caelen. “And it doesn’t seem like he can.”

There—he could see it. The base of the statue wasn’t flush with the floor; it was rooted. Thin cracks spidered outward from where its feet met the stone, like the dungeon itself was bracing under its weight.

“What does that mean?”

“We could test his range,” Eli said, his mind already working. “Figure out how far he can strike before committing to any plan.”

That was the only real opening they had. No guessing, no running in blind—they needed data.

“…Alright,” Caelen said from behind him, his voice calm but edged with a challenge. “But you’d better make sure I don’t die in the process.”

Eli snorted, a short, humorless sound. “If this goes wrong, I’m more likely to die first.”

A disbelieving chuckle. “Did you just roll your eyes at me, sweetheart? At your idol?”

’Oh my god. He’s actually still doing this now?’

Eli’s neck heated instantly. “I did not—ugh, just go. Please. We’re wasting time.”

The chuckle that came back was quiet and smug, a sound that made Eli’s fingers twitch with secondhand embarrassment.

But then the tone shifted. He heard the subtle shift of weight—boots scraping lightly against stone—as Caelen adjusted his footing.

The faint rasp of leather, the muted clink of armor. Then the sound that sent a faint shiver down Eli’s spine: the clean, lethal whisper of steel being drawn.

Even without looking, Eli could feel the man’s focus sharpening. The teasing aura melted away, replaced by a cold, razor-edged stillness. That unshakable S-Class presence wrapped around him like a pressure in the air, making the space feel smaller.

“Keep your eyes on the gargoyles,” Caelen said, his tone clipped.

Eli obeyed, locking onto the nearest beast—stone wings curled mid-sweep, claws frozen in the act of tearing. Still unmoving.

And then—

A low, grinding roar echoed through the chamber as the priest began to move. The deep creak of stone muscles shifting, the faint thrum of air displaced by sheer mass.

Eli’s Danger Detection flared—sharp and jagged—telling him the strike was coming.

The ground trembled faintly beneath his boots.

’Here it comes.’

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