"I see the fruits are ripe. Time to reap," he comments in a very satisfied tone.
Bicrista trembles, gripping her twin blades tightly.
"Can you handle him? I absolutely must kill that fucking spider-elf," Deedee asks the twins.
The hunter's mind is solely focused on her prey.
Her only mission is to kill Sylthrenn.
Bicrista doesn't take her eyes off the mysterious Servant.
She nods, though uncertain, a terrible premonition gnawing at her.
That dreadful feeling shakes her from the inside.
Bicrista doesn't want to dwell on it, but she struggles to ignore her trembling body.
With a force of will, she decides to disregard those thoughts and lunges at the enemy.
Bicrista, her silver hair flowing like a cloak of moonlight, confronts the mysterious Servant.
Her daggers, extensions of her arms, dance through the air.
Her swift strikes aim to find a gap in the Servant's guard.
However, the opponent moves with supernatural ease, his long, lethal claws parrying and counterattacking effortlessly.
Gallo, not wanting to leave his twin to fight alone, joins the fray.
His strategy is different: while Bicrista distracts the Servant with her frontal attacks, he aims to strike from behind, hoping to find a weak spot.
In a moment of lethal coordinated beauty, the twins execute a perfect maneuver.
Bicrista feigns a direct attack, prompting the Servant to concentrate his defense in front of him, while Gallo, utilizing [SHADOW STEP], appears behind the enemy, his blades ready to stab.
But the Servant is no ordinary opponent.
With a fluid and unexpected movement, he frees himself from the combined assault, spinning around in a deadly whirl of claws.
The attack is as quick as it is devastating, forcing Gallo to retreat, barely parrying an attack that could have been fatal.
The enemy dances between them, his coat billowing as he performs complicated maneuvers with his claws.
The Servant smiles beneath his mask, with a sinister expression, as he watches the twins struggle to keep up with his elusive moves.
He knows they are desperate, but it's as if he can sense their desperate determination, which makes him smile even more.
He circles around them, the long beads of his rosary clinking like a sigh with every step he takes.
Exchanging strikes and counterattacks, the trio ascends the staircase and quickly find themselves inside the small temple.
But it's as if he had led them there.
The assassin is startled by the surprise.
Bicrista realizes the trap too late.
Thousands of thin metallic wires surround her and her brother.
The dim light filtering through the openings in the ceiling reveals a web of metallic wires, stretched taut as violin strings, crisscrossing the entire space.
A wrong move and they're dead.
The Servant grazes one of the wires as if it were the string of a musical instrument.
*SLING*
It produces a sound reminiscent of a harp.
"Silverdark... A marvelous metal, the sound it produces is so divine. Not to mention its malleability that allows for the creation of wires that seem almost like silk... But cut sharper than steel!"
The enemy extols the qualities of the wires, while with his fingers he plays with them, composing a sinister melody.
No doubt remains.
Terror simultaneously seizes both Bicrista and Gallo.
If before it could have been their minds playing a cruel trick on them, now it's evident who they're up against.
Of all the opponents they could have met, it had to be him.
Gallo clenches his fists.
He musters courage, needing to protect his sister. She's the one who has suffered the most in the past.
The man with silver hair pulls out kunai from his bag and grips three in each hand between his fingers.
He aims to throw them at the wires, cutting them to create a path through this labyrinth.
"We're not the same as we were eight years ago! I'm coming for you, monster!" Gallo yells, launching the kunai in different directions.
Each one strikes a wire squarely, cutting it in two.
The path to reach the enemy is now clear.
Gallo rushes toward him. His daggers are ready to strike.
"No, Gallo!" his sister tries in vain to stop him.
*Dlin*
The Servant's chilling laughter echoes within the temple.
Simultaneously, Gallo finds himself ensnared in hundreds of threads, constricting him like a sausage.
The net engulfs him.
Desperation fills his yellow eyes.
Gallo realizes his mistake too late. Now, he's completely immobilized.
"The threads you can see are not the danger, but merely a warning," the enemy chuckles.
*SLING*
The Servant touches the wires near him, and the vibration moves along the web, reaching the man.
This motion causes the threads to tighten even more around his body.
Sharp as razors, they slice through flesh and crack his protections.
In an instant, Gallo is covered in deep wounds all over his body.
"AUAUAURGHH!" the man screams in desperation as the Silverdark wires penetrate his flesh millimeter by millimeter.
"GALLO!" Bicrista screams in despair.
She wants to reach her brother and free him but can't afford any movement, completely surrounded as she is.
The enemy, with a grin beneath his mask, watches from a safe distance.
His fingers play with the rosary coming down from his hat, almost conducting the deadly orchestra he has set up.
The soft jingling of the beads echoes the sound of Gallo's tormented screams.
His heart beats in sync with the rhythm of the wires tightening around his body, each pulse a new wave of pain amplifying the man's cries.
Bicrista's mind races for an escape from this trap, a way to save her brother and herself.
But she knows time is running out.
The threads are closing in, and their deadly embrace becomes more effective with each passing second.
"Argh… T-this… is the e-end…" Gallo murmurs, his voice weak and broken.
He feels the cold metal digging into his skin, as if it were an extension of the monster's cruelty.
"I wonder which part of your body I should eat first, Gallo. Now that you've grown, you must have become very flavorful. Perhaps I'd start with the heart… Decisions, decisions," the Servant muses, hand to his chin in indecision.
Bicrista is paralyzed not only by the danger of the threads that encircle her, preventing her from moving without getting entangled but also by the terror of the memories that the enemy's words bring back to her mind.
Blood from Gallo's flesh spreads along the metal threads, staining them red.
"R-run… B-bicrista!" he only has the strength to scream this.
With a decisive touch, the Servant makes the entire network of wires resonate.
*SLASH*
The wires, like a butcher's blades, precisely section skin and organs, while the blood, no longer confined by the man's flesh, bursts out, completely flooding the area.
Splashes of the red liquid even reach Bicrista's face.
[[ Strauss Wagner Team Player, GALLO SCHRECKEN was eliminated from the Demonic Game of Death! ]]
The system's sterile and unadorned notification announces what is obvious to the woman's eyes.
But she still can't believe it.
"NOOOOOOO!!!" she screams in despair, turning pale at the sight of her brother's gruesome death.
The glistening red liquid soaks her skin, and her eyes widen in shock and pain.
Bicrista's mind reels, struggling to process the horrible scene unfolding before her.
She tries to close her eyes, to shut out the sight, but the image is etched into her memory.
The silver wires that had tightened around Gallo like a vice begin to release their grip.
Stained red, they are visible, but with a movement, the monster shakes them.
The blood drips off, and they return to forming a perfect net.
The enemy, the Servant, takes a step forward.
The ticking of his rosary echoes in the small temple, a sound as sharp as the metallic threads that surround Bicrista.
The temple now swims in blood, as if it had been painted by an artist's brush.
The artist of blood is clearly the enemy standing before her.
Her worst nightmare returned from the past, and now it's a dreadful reality.
The masked man laughs, his mask of a dead elf as if endowed with its own life twists into a smile.
The Servant's eyes sparkle with excitement, and at that moment, Bicrista realizes that the monster is nothing but a madman, a psychopath of the worst kind who preys only for pleasure.
Bicrista stares at him in disbelief, her mind still frozen by the horror of the situation.
That is the monster of her nightmares.
The one that appears while she sleeps.
As he had promised her, he has come back for her.
{ BICRISTA! BICRISTA! Listen to me! }
Strauss Wagner's voice in her mind finds no response.
{ BICRISTA! Answer me! }
The woman cannot hear him.
The only thing that fills her head is fear.
Because in front of her is the Monster of the Church.
Jakobus Aufreiber.
