Chapter 211
The chief simply bowed and said, his voice stiff with formal deference, “Sir, it is our negligence that damned heretics have infiltrated our peaceful city. I sincerely request you to exorcise this filth and stop them from dirtying our city.”
“Don’t worry. Just maintain a distance from this area and ensure no one enters within range. I wouldn’t want to endanger any civilians here.” Oliver’s tone was as cold as the night air, his focus already shifting to the task ahead.
His words, though calm, carried an undercurrent of authority that brooked no argument. The chief could sense it—this wasn’t a matter of debate. No matter what, he still had to maintain a certain distinct authority as an exorcist.
Oliver nodded and walked past the policeman, entering the playground. The sound of his footsteps was soft, yet each one seemed to echo in the empty space.
The officer glanced one more time at Oliver’s back before making up his mind and leaving the premises quickly. There was something unsettling about the boy’s quiet confidence, something that made the chief want to be far, far away from whatever was coming next.
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“Sure enough, this thing has grown considerably since the last time.” His eyes narrowed as he scanned the area, his special sight peeling back the layers of reality to expose the truth beneath.
Oliver murmured while staring at a particular inconspicuous spot in front of him.
It was a sliding swing made for children to play on. It looked extremely normal, and no one would be able to tell any difference at all.
But beneath the mundane exterior, darkness festered.
Oliver doubted even exorcists of the same rank as him would easily notice anything unusual at first glance. To the naked eye, it was just an ordinary playground, but to him, it was a site of something far more sinister. But he wasn’t like other exorcists—his eyes saw the unseen, the hidden dangers others would walk past without a second thought.
However, while the swing appeared quite normal externally, from his point of view, using his special eyes, he could see a fetus-like object swirling in a cocoon of darkness.
The fetus-shaped object was constantly rotating in a circular pattern, and it was growing at a speed visible to the naked eye. Each rotation seemed to pull in more darkness, feeding the twisted thing within. The changes were observable as more and more dark espera flooded into the cocoon from a faraway source.
Oliver narrowed his eyes further and observed a string of dark espera attached to the swing. It pulsed like a living vein, carrying the taint from somewhere far beyond the playground. Shifting his line of sight, he noticed the string extending and shooting off to the east.
His gaze followed it, his mind already calculating where it led and what awaited him at the end of that dark tether.
From his research about the city layout earlier, he thought about the direction and felt it was close to where the majority of slums were located in the city.
The pieces began to fall into place.
He didn’t need to guess much and was able to effortlessly connect the dots.
It seemed that the heretics behind this whole stunt were hiding in the slums, controlling this thing from there. It wasn’t just some random manifestation of evil—there was intent behind it, a guiding hand steering the dark espera from afar.
Oliver thought he could cut off the connection instantly using his own espera but stopped himself from doing so.
He wanted to know how deep the roots ran and how many heretics were running this little dark business in the city of normal civilians. There was more to uncover here. A mere exorcism wouldn’t be enough—he needed to trace this back to the source.
It was creepy how they had gone undetected so far. This city should have been frequented by traveling exorcists once in a while, but they hadn’t found anything.
It was only when the organization suspected that there was a chance of the emergence of an artifact that the mission was assigned and he was sent here.
But now the matter didn’t seem limited to a simple artifact anymore.
There was something deeper at work here. Something far more dangerous than just a cursed playground.
Badump! Badump!
A loud heartbeat suddenly sounded in the silent playground.
He paused as he looked back at the sliding swing, or more precisely, at the baby fetus-shaped thing that was growing even faster now.
The darkness around it churned violently, as if it had sensed the approach of its final stage.
Its speed of growth had accelerated for some reason!
“Are they finally going to release it?”
Oliver squinted as he observed the flow of dark espera from the channel, which had also started to increase. It was as if the heretics were funneling more and more power into the creature, pushing it to full maturity.
The sound of a heartbeat echoed in his ears as the fetus seemed to expand, and the black mutant of a human-like thing was enlarging with every second.
It looked like it was about to be born and emerge.
It was no longer just a presence lurking in the shadows—this thing was about to be born.
Boom!
Suddenly, the dark espera exploded, and Oliver was forced to back away for a moment.
He looked at the swing. A black humanoid being started to tear off the black cocoon that was enveloping it.
Oliver’s brows furrowed as he looked at the creature in disgust. The air around him grew foul, thick with the stench of decay and corruption. There was an overwhelming stench of decay radiating from the creature.
It was nauseating and suffocating to be in the vicinity of such a thing.
‘What sort of thing is this? It’s definitely not a demon.’
Oliver thought deeply. He knew well how demons felt and smelled. Moreover, he had never seen such a thing before.
The creature had white irises like a human but, at the same time, three large mouths were hanging on the being’s face, constantly exhaling a gray smoky mist.
He frowned. The humanoid body, the human-like eyes, and mouth…
‘A hybrid?’
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