83 Soul Bound (1)

Within half a minute, the streets of Diagon were shut down and empty. Taverns and late night shops filled up with whoever came rushing off the street, their lights blinked out one-by-one. This left Galahad a bit stunned, everyone there was just ready to dive into the nearest building for protection at a moments notice, all thanks to one little mass message sent to everyone connected to the Crystal Resonance Towers.

This made Galahad's trip towards the Gate tower somewhat difficult. Crowds of people were always a good form of cover as he approached his destination, but they quickly vanished and left him in the wide open. The empty streets were too barren and the streetlamps filled with light crystals showed it well.

'Well great. Everyone who has a face smudged up against the windows is gonna see me sneaking around.' Galahad thought while squeezing into a tiny gap between two apartment complexes. He needed to hide before anyone tried forcing him to get inside a building for safety.

At the time of receiving the message, he was approaching home and had just arrived in the outer district. He turned around and still needed to make his way through the markets of the middle districts as well, in order to get to the Gate's spire out in the distance.

He stood there with very little room to think, but then Galahad realized he could use that lack of room to his advantage. He pressed his right hand and right foot along one wall and his other limbs against the other wall.

'Gods I hope I have enough Chi restored for this.' He thought before activating Raging Inferno.

The timer then began counting down in the corner of his vision, starting at just [ 3:00 ] since his body was still recovering from his afternoon with the mimics just the day before.

The little gap between the buildings started lightly glowing red as his Battle class skill activated. Thankfully it was just a faint glow and not a bright light like it used to be, the skill's evolution was certainly an improvement desperately needed.

Once Galahad was ready, he then jumped and pressed his limbs against the walls in a quick release-jump-grab manner.

His body made it up four feet in one jump, now he only needed to climb another four-and-a half stories to get on the rooftops. Where hopefully no one was sitting about to see the Gate in the distance.

*****

[ 0:23 ], He had made it with a few seconds to spare. A few slips on loose moving bricks nearly ending his climbing career for a while, the close calls were freaking him out towards the top.

The bells were more audible from the roof, that was the first thing to cross Galahad's mind. The echoes between the streets made it seem like the ringing was coming from every direction, but now it clearly came from the very visible spire in the center of the city. He was glad to see nobody was up on the top of the buildings with the same extreme curiosity as him.

Without waiting any longer, Galahad took a few steps back and leaned into a short sprint. He managed to get five steps in before jumping from one rooftop to the next. Once he landed his initial jump, he looked on to find the next place to leap.

He had another few close calls where old shingles came loose under his feet, but wasn't too death defying by his standards. It only took him a few minutes to make it across the districts and a few buildings away from the gate. Making a beeline across rooftops was much faster than sneaking through a maze of markets and shops.

'It's so strange to see the city quiet like this.' Galahad couldn't see a single person anywhere outside of the buildings. 'Teramore would have quiet nights like this sometimes, but I've never experienced Diagon being so empty.

Before he could see what was happening, Galahad could actually hear the commotion. Several Guild officers were gathering at one of the Gate entrances on the ground with weapons and armor clattering loudly.

It seemed they were communicating with others through a method Galahad couldn't see from the rooftops. They were confirming with other teams around the building that they were in position in case the containment within had failed. This was not inspiring Galahad's decision to press forward, but he did anyway.

After a quick scan of the rooftops above, he found what looked like a weight bearing pipe on one of the buildings and managed to crawl down it without a too much of a problem. He just felt bad for whoever own the building since he created multiple bends that would probably ruin the water pressure.

Once everything was clearly in view, Galahad stopped and hid in a side alley that was far enough away, that he could peak through to watch unnoticed. It may have seemed a bit idiotic to go and venture where the chaos was about to occur, but there was something he wanted to know.

Sladdus mentioned soul bound entities, something he wasn't familiar with in the slightest. Galahad could only assume that he was referring to whatever was causing the unsettling wind, and he figured this was his best chance to find out if this was the cause.

Very little things made a person's six sense go off as if it was a siren warning of death; Galahad needed to make sure this wasn't one of those things. Otherwise he just brought a demon that horrifying up to the surface somehow and they were willing to come up here to kill him.

Before he could think anymore about what the cause was, the doors to the Gate busted open with a collection of adventurers spilling out. They scattered out in different directions with faces of fear and horror.

While they filtered out, Galahad watched the Guild officers standby and begin preparing their weapons.

Two were clearly wielding weapons of a battle class while another was wearing black gloves. Galahad could see the weaponless officer had lines drawn along there uniform that glowed distinctly in the night. He could only assume it was an offense magician, wearing something similar to what Rosetta had bought just before getting abducted by the cavern altar.

It was hard to assume anything past their classes, because the uniforms they wore were thickly padded with armor beneath cloth and had helmets on their heads. Guessing there genders were no better than flipping a coin and something told Galahad the guild wanted to keep it that way. Knowing their identities and matching a class with them would give someone with a more sinister lifestyle an advantage. So the secrecy of the helmets made sense to Galahad; who had only gotten a glimpse of the front of their helmets and he couldn't anything through the visor slits that were T-shaped.

At least until the inspection part of his system activated;

[ Caldro Edwindell ] Battle Class: Spearman

[ Yinsken O'Brynd ] Battle Class: Swordsman

[ Sareth Von Klash ] Magician Class: Attack Mage

As Galahad waited and glanced over their names, he felt a brief rumble beneath his feet, then another; randomly he could feel muffled impacts coming from underground. 'I'm really hoping those aren't footsteps.'

Galahad was feeling them get worse with every second. He quickly removed the thought of heavy footsteps since the explosions were too sporadic and he would have noticed them the first time he made contact, but pretty soon a familiar feeling hit him.

The gust of rage and terrifying energy was coming at him in the air once again. Only this time, the source was the Gate right in front of him.

Galahad had no idea if anyone nearby could feel the tension grabbing at his heart, but he never figured that out since the rest of the night was an absolute mess.

The large wooden doors into the Spire had automatically swayed shut on their own earlier; but just a moment later, something began wailing on them with a great amount of force. Clearly it wasn't human since the doors were unlocked and they only needed to jiggle the knobs to escape, regardless the wood creaked loudly under the stress of being bashed at repeatedly.

Immediately after that started, Galahad saw white mist rise through the crevices of the stone and move unnaturally against the wind. It was certainly the first time Galahad had seen a monster that could control fog, so his confusion brought him to think back about what he knew about magic using demons.

As he scrolled through his mind to everything he had read about in both school and through the collection of books in his living room; he quickly gave up as this was a first for he'd seen something use fog. He could name at least a dozen that used water or ice, so maybe the mist could be an unacknowledged byproduct to that element.

More mist was now bleeding out of the stones with each passing moment and the guild started taking action. The one in the middle known as Yinsken had a red karmic plate one hand and a sword in the other, they were screaming in a grave tone that they had contact on their side, the red Karmic was right up to his visor, glowing in the dark.

Galahad could only assume the guild Karmic plates were capable somehow of sending and sharing voices between the teams and kept watching.

Sareth, who was almost petite enough to be smaller than Trista was able to finish a spell skill that erupted in a blast of lime green light.

In her hand, she held a sphere of convulsing green goo and veins like a living sportsball before throwing it directly again the wall.

The sphere arced in the air briefly before splattering against the stone with a sizzling noise.

'Ahh corrosion magic, that's a rare affinity.'

Galahad was easily distracted by the magic skill, that he almost didn't realized the implications of throwing the acid substance at the walls and not the door.

'They're attacking the mist? Why not wait until the actual monster is standing outside to attack? . . . Or maybe it's an extension of the monster.'

Galahad suddenly heard some kind of screech that ran a shiver down everyone's spine. It was a shrill pitch that was only on the brink of being considered human, but too warbled and loud to be a human pitch. The smoke also seemed to have shudder while doing so, making it seem very alive and in pain before retreating back inside.

The tendons of white retreated back into the Spire and at the same time, another group of four adventurers were running through the doors while carrying a fifth person.

Galahad couldn't really tell why the fifth person was unconscious because he ducked back into the alley, they were rushing through the street he hid beside.

While they ran by to the nearest medical center, Galahad was able to get a glimpse at them from the shadows. The five of them were too preoccupied to notice his presence.

Galahad couldn't see much, but something caught his eye. The unconscious man being lugged on the biggest guy's shoulders was incredibly pale and his skin was very taunt against his body. It appeared as if the man had been starved for days, leaving his deprived body to slowly wither away.

Although Galahad hadn't seen the full extent of the damage done to the man's health, he did see one of his arms was strangely blackened and dried to a state beyond mummification.

There was no fluid anywhere below his bicep as the deadened joint flailed about lifelessly. It stuck in Galahad's head long after the group flew past, and he couldn't figure out why.

'Where have I seen a photo of that?' Galahad was sure that not long ago, he'd seen in a book about monsters who didn't devour the entire body, but just it's nutrients. A corpse of a person that was killed by such monsters was on full display on the book's earliest of pages, warning about the powers of that demon. That corpse was completely mummified in the same way that man's arm was, leaving Galahad frustrated with his own memory.

It took him a bit of time before something clicked in Galahad's mind, making realize what had been chasing him all this time.

'Oh no, no no no no no.' Galahad took a step back and felt fear creep it's way into his heart once again.

One word came to mind and that was the last thing Galahad needed to face off against.

It was a Phantom, and not just one, but by the looks of it, at least ten were coming to kill him.

*****

[ Quick Message: To whoever is posting my novel on fastnovel.com, I don't mind if you post it (I don't get paid for any of this, its a fun project I do in my spare time), but you may want to update the summary at the front cover and a lot the earlier chapters. There has been quite a few edits since then. ]