The Sinner Hunting System-Chapter 69: Desperate Situation

"More enemies?!!"

He didn’t finish the thought before the pressure hit him.

Not physical. Something that reached directly into the wraith-state and grabbed it, pinning his incorporeal form to the floor with a weight that had no natural explanation.

He strained against it and got nowhere, this wasn’t a body being held down, it was something acting on a different layer entirely.

"Spirit Binding. A branch of necromancy targeting undead and wraith-type entities."

A figure stepped out of the shadows wearing a rough linen robe, skin the color and texture of a corpse, covered in dense black spots.

His palm was cupped around nothing, but the arcane energy gathering in it was visible, shaping itself into a faint magical circle.

"Did you think we’d come to kill you without knowing what you were, Mr. Alanster?"

[Sinner detected.]

[Jasmine Adams.]

[Lv5: Necromancer.]

[Cardinal Sin: Superbia.]

Sinner. The word settled in Raphael’s chest like something heavy being set down. He looked at the one-armed man with the cleaver.

[Sinner detected.]

[Jack Adams.]

[Lv4: Headhunter.]

[Cardinal Sin: Ira.]

The scan extended along Jack’s body and found what was riding with him.

[Analyzing... Complete.]

[Lv3: Shadow of Alp.]

[Cardinal Sin: Avaritia.]

"Five different sins. Five assassins." Raphael let out a short, humorless breath. "The Brotherhood really does take me seriously."

Jack was already gone, the Alp’s concealment had swallowed him back into the room’s shadows the moment the scan completed.

Then Jasmine’s fist closed.

The invisible hand grabbed his wraith-form and squeezed, and the pain that came through it had nothing to do with nerves or tissue.

It operated directly on the soul, the kind of pain the body’s systems had no framework for, no ceiling on, no graduated response to.

It simply arrived at full intensity and stayed there, and his body began responding to it without asking him first, the Wraith Form dissolving as the flesh tried to escape what the spirit was experiencing.

"Jason!"

He activated the domination and Corporeal Reformation simultaneously.

Jason’s scream came from somewhere distant and real.

In the half-second of transition back to physical form, Jack’s cleaver was already moving.

Crack.

The blade went through him at the waist.

His Lv1 physical resistance offered approximately nothing, the cut was clean, effortless, the bone providing no more friction than everything else.

His lower half separated and slid away. His upper body hit the floor.

"Hss— God damn!"

Being cut in half was exactly as unpleasant as it sounded.

But the Corporeal Reformation was running, and the connection to the lower half hadn’t broken, he was still aware of both pieces, still in control of them.

His remaining right hand grabbed the waistband and pulled.

His legs responded, the left foot pushing upward, and the two halves crawled back toward each other with the particular wrongness of a thing that shouldn’t work but was working anyway.

They met. The flesh sealed itself closed with the seamlessness of well-fitted pieces.

Jasmine looked at this with mild surprise. The intelligence he’d received apparently hadn’t covered this specific capability.

He recovered quickly, the situation was still entirely controlled from his perspective, and a controlled man didn’t need to panic about new information.

"Blood Flesh Bishop abilities. You killed one and took them. Yes, that explains it."

Raphael raised the revolver.

Six rounds in the cylinder. No backup ammunition anywhere on his body. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

Against five targets, two of them Lv4 and above, one of them Lv5, with no allies, no cover, and no exit he could see.

He looked at the building above him. If he could reach sufficient height, he could clear the structure and drop into the sea below, get outside the land cordon entirely.

What happened after that was unknowable, but it was better than the known outcome of staying here.

The Prophet had mentioned his Cardinal Sin multiple times, with the specific confidence of someone who had already seen what came next.

If fate had a branch where Raphael kept growing, then the only requirement was reaching it, exerting every available option until one of them connected.

He was still thinking when the cold came.

Quiet. Sourceless. Already inside him before he registered it was coming.

"The spirit — damn it—!"

The Malevolent Spirit required active attention to track, and he’d been focused on the tactical problem.

The other assassins had used that focus deliberately, timing the possession to the moment his attention was divided.

The whole unit moved together with the coordination of people who had run this sequence before.

His body locked up.

Somewhere outside his field of vision, Jack was already moving, the Alp’s shadow-concealment hiding both of them, the angle of approach unknown, the blade traveling toward his neck.

Jasmine’s free hand was drawing the last stroke of a new Spirit Binding circle. He was already anticipating the Wraith Form response.

Check. All positions covered.

The despair surfaced for a moment and Raphael didn’t let it stay.

The Earth Dragon’s pit was a few steps to his right.

The edges of it were webbed with fractures, the ground around it structurally compromised from the excavation.

He gave up fighting for control of his upper body and took back his right leg instead. Blood Frenzy, one explosive activation.

Crack.

The fractured edge gave way. The section he was standing on tilted and dropped, the rim crumbling inward, the slope pulling everything toward the hole.

He kicked his left ankle with his right foot, hard. His balance went.

He and the Malevolent Spirit still riding him tipped together toward the pit and fell.

The cleaver passed through the space his neck had occupied.

It left a wound, long, deep, the kind that would have finished the cut if he’d been a half-second slower, but the head was still attached.

He fell into the darkness with the assassins watching from above, and in the few seconds of freefall the System gave him something he’d been waiting for.

The Third Hunting Ground. Not fully entered, just the threshold, a glimpse, the microseconds of awareness that came with the arcane channel opening.

Something like the Second Hunting Ground’s fate-lines, but structured differently.

Fourteen branches extending inward toward a central point, some of them already far along, some just beginning.

[Current Cardinal Sin Affinities.]

[Superbia: 46%]

[Gula: 20%]

[Ira: 8%]

[Luxuria: 7%]

[Current Sin-Fruit: 60.]

[Consume Sin-Fruit to raise a specific Cardinal Sin affinity?]

[Each Sin-Fruit raises affinity by 0.1%.]

[Affinity exceeding 50% in a single sin grants qualification as Demon Lord Candidate.]

Vigo’s face surfaced in his memory. He knew what being consumed by a Cardinal Sin looked like, progressively less yourself, progressively more the sin’s instrument.

He had no other option.

[Sin-Fruit consumed. Superbia affinity raised to: 51%.]

[Superbia Authority: Scapegoat.]

[Effect...]

The freefall ended. His awareness slammed back into the present before the description finished loading, the ground rushing up toward him at a speed that would render the rest academic if he didn’t act in the next fraction of a second.

Too early with the Wraith Form and the necromancer above would detect the state change and snap him back to physical mid-fall with the Spirit Binding.

Too late and the fall would do what falls at this speed did.

He locked every remaining bit of focus onto the approaching ground and waited.

The last possible moment.

Now!