Shadow Dragon: The Fallen Angel Is My Teacher-Chapter 110: Facing An Eldritch Horror, Force Lines

MC’s POV

Lars crashed into the wall with a deep thud.

Blood smeared the stone as he slid down.

Calliope stood frozen, completely still.

She wasn’t even blinking.

’How much time did we buy?’ I thought.

Two minutes. That was all.

Two minutes before the Cursed Spirit tore through us completely.

’We need more time.’

The creature turned toward Lars.

Its movements were swift.

It was going to capture him.

I clenched my jaw.

Yuna must have sensed what I was about to do, because she shouted, "Don’t! You’ll go blind if you look—"

I activated Hollow Eyes.

The world changed instantly.

A sharp ringing filled my ears. It swallowed every other sound.

Colors bled away.

Everything turned into overlapping lines and layers.

In this state, I could see the personal world of everyone in our group.

And I could see all forms of the Cursed Spirit.

Each of them were overlapping, becoming a mixture of contradictions held together.

Its ribcage was a spiral of hallways, each lined with smaller versions of itself crawling endlessly inward.

Its shoulders were mountains compressed into inches.

Their peaks flickered between folds of air that couldn’t possibly hold them.

One of its arms branched into more arms, each splitting again until it looked like an entire forest of limbs moving in every direction.

When it swung, all of them moved — some in the past, some in the present, some in the future — but every motion landed at once.

Its legs didn’t agree where or when they were.

One leg walked forward into the past, one backward into the next second, and one simply didn’t exist at all but still kept the rest balanced.

Its head traded places with its chest every time it breathed.

Sometimes it breathed from its knees instead.

Eyes appeared wherever gestures happened. On its arms, its torso, even in the air around it.

Each blink replaced the eye with a mouth that swallowed light and exhaled gravity.

Inside its body, space twisted wrong.

I could see the back of it through the front, like the world had folded in on itself.

My body stiffened.

My mind screamed that none of this should exist.

Through the overlapping layers of reality, I saw the monster Lars was seeing — the one made of maggots and flesh — and the three-faced black mist made of fear Calliope saw, watching her from every angle.

Then the thing turned its "head," which was now somewhere inside its chest.

Its voice came from all directions at once.

"You... you can see?"

The sound stuttered, as if multiple mouths were trying to speak in sync.

"You c-can see!"

"You c-can see!"

It repeated, louder, overlapping itself until it became unbearable.

It took one step forward and suddenly ’it’ appeared right in front of me.

Then it slashed.

The blow hit me hard, sending my body flying.

The pain hit a moment later, but it also broke the paralysis that had held me still.

I twisted mid-air and landed on my feet.

My body burned, but my mind stayed calm.

I started using Harmonic Breathing immediately.

My Spirit stat was high, and coupled with the Rank 3 Mind Protection Amulet around my neck, I kept my sanity. Barely.

Blood dripped from my nose.

My eyes turned bloodshot.

Even then, the Adrenal Silence trait kept me calm enough to think.

"Lord of Shadows, I’ll heal you! But don’t look at it for too long! You’ll go insane and lose your eyesight!" Yuna shouted.

She started healing me, her light surrounding the burns on my arms and chest.

The physical pain faded, but the mental pressure didn’t.

I gritted my teeth and forced myself to speak. "Calliope, Lars! Do you guys have motion sickness!?"

Only a second had passed since I was hit.

The Cursed Spirit was already in front of me again.

It raised its arm, or something that looked like one.

To be honest, I couldn’t even tell what its arm was supposed to be.

Everything about it broke common sense.

Its ’arm’ was a scythe that held an actual blackened arm.

It swung that, and the movement repeated itself in different times at once.

Past and present attacks layered together.

The overlapping motion made my head spin.

But through the chaos, I saw something.

Grey lines.

They were Force lines.

They showed the direction of force behind each movement.

Among the countless "arms" swinging at me, only a few had force behind them.

The grey lines told me which ones mattered.

I opened portals in front of those exact spots.

The attacks passed through the portals and came out on the other side, right at the Cursed Spirit itself.

The rest of the arms passed harmlessly through my body, leaving no wounds.

"...What? You blocked that...?" Yuna muttered behind me.

I created two more portals near Lars and Calliope and pulled them through with Telekinesis.

"Heal him!" I shouted to Calliope.

The sudden pull snapped her out of her daze.

"Y-Yes!" she stammered, her hands glowing with healing light.

The Cursed Spirit immediately turned its focus on her.

The black mist that had surrounded her earlier surged forward like waves crashing in.

In that mist, I saw the grey lines again.

They were thin, sharp trails slithering through the air like snakes.

Wherever they passed, walls and floor split open with deep cracks.

I opened portals in front of those lines and redirected them.

They shot back into the Cursed Spirit.

The attacks hit its twisted body, but instead of harming it, they were absorbed.

The surface of the creature rippled, swallowing the force like water taking in stones.

"I... I’m alive?" Calliope whispered, almost in disbelief.

She must’ve known that unknown attacks from the black mist would kill her.

The mental attack from the Cursed Spirit would’ve told her that.

It was the Cursed Spirit’s way of stopping her from healing us.

"Just focus on healing. Leave the defense to me," I said.

She nodded quickly and started healing Lars.

I kept creating portals to block the constant attacks.

They came from every direction, and were too many to count.

I couldn’t block them all, so I used Telekinesis to grab Calliope and Lars, tossing them through portals to dodge.

We kept moving nonstop.

Every few seconds, I pulled them out of one portal and pushed them through another, keeping them out of harm’s way while Calliope tried to heal.

The pressure in my head grew heavier with each passing second.

My vision blurred.

Blood poured from my nose faster now.

I was loosing too much blood.

Then I felt a light tap on my shoulder.

A flash of blue lightning passed me.

"Thanks! I’ll take it from here!" Lars said, his voice firm again.

He crouched low, and blue sparks burst around his legs as he shot forward.

The Cursed Spirit he saw was different.

It was just a massive humanoid made of maggots with four arms.

It was much simpler than what I and Calliope were seeing and that fact gave him an advantage.

He could engage in combat with the Cursed Spirit.

The creature punched, shaking the ground.

Lars jumped forward, grabbed its hand, twisted its arm, and used the momentum to spin himself.

His kick landed straight into the Cursed Spirit’s head, sending it staggering backward.

The shockwave rippled through the space.

Even the version of the Cursed Spirit I was seeing staggered back. So did the one Calliope saw.

This was because of the special nature of this place.

It was like when we picked up that book with Mira earlier.

Each of us had seen a different cover, but it was still the same book.

The Cursed Spirit was the same.

We all saw something different, but it was still one being.

I couldn’t harm mine because it wasn’t physically "touchable" to me. No one could touch that Eldritch Horror.

But Lars could fight his version because it had a solid form for him.

When he pushed it back, all our versions moved at once.

The Cursed Spirit roared and swung with all four arms.

Four portals opened in front of it.

This time, all four attacks went straight into them.

"You can interact with the monster I’m seeing?" Lars shouted, dodging as lightning crackled around him.

He sounded surprised but excited.

"Yes! I can see it now too!" I called back.

"Hah! You’re the best, man!" Lars laughed, full of energy even in the middle of the chaos.

He dashed forward, lightning trailing behind him.

His fists and kicks diverted the Cursed Spirit’s attack.

It didn’t take damage from him, but he managed to stagger it using its own momentum, and that was enough.

Calliope stood a few meters back, her hands glowing with light.

She healed Lars every time the Cursed Spirit’s attacks grazed him.

Meanwhile, I focused on defense.

Portals opened one after another, catching the invisible lines that tore through the air.

Each one hummed with power as I redirected attacks away from us, and pulled Calliope and Lars away from attack that came too close.

The three of us worked like parts of a machine.

Lars kept it busy. Calliope healed him. I blocked anything that could kill us.

Against all logic, we were actually succeeding in buying time against the Eldritch horror we were facing.

Five minutes passed.

Then ten.

It felt like we could keep this up forever.

But by the twelve-minute mark, cracks started to appear in our formation.

Lars’ stamina had reached its limit.

His steps were slowing.

His Aura was diminishing, and he was breathing hard.