The Return of The Wilderness God

Flawed Divinity

The corrupted holy knight moved with a sudden burst of speed that should have been invisible to the human eye, but to Ethan, it looked like a turtle crawling through heavy mud.

"Get back!" Valerie screamed, reaching into her cloak for an explosive potion flask. "That is the Divine Horizon stance! He is going to unleash a shockwave that can cut through solid bedrock!"

The towering knight raised his massive claymore, the blade crackling with jagged arcs of corrupted purple light. He brought the weapon down with a deafening roar, aiming to split Ethan and the entire room in two.

Ethan did not even draw his steel sword. He simply stepped forward, tilting his upper body slightly to the left. The massive claymore scraped past his shoulder, slamming uselessly into the stone floor and creating a massive cloud of dust.

"What are you doing?" Valerie gasped, her eyes wide with terror. "He is right in front of you!"

"Your posture is terrible," Ethan said, looking directly into the corrupted knight's glowing eyes. "Your weight is completely distributed on your back foot. If you swing that hard without balancing your hips, you leave your entire ribs exposed."

The knight snarled, ripping his blade from the stone to execute a sweeping horizontal strike. It was a legendary technique taught only to the elite guards of the capital, but Ethan just sighed.

"Master Craig used to beat me with a wet branch if I pulled my elbow back that far during morning stretching," Ethan muttered.

Before the knight's blade could complete its arc, Ethan stepped inside the guard, raised his bare palm, and struck the knight directly in the center of his chest armor. It was not a heavy punch. It was just a simple, sharp tap using a basic momentum redirection technique he learned when he was seven years old.

The effect was instantaneous. The heavy steel plate armor shattered into a thousand tiny fragments. The massive knight flew backward across the vault, crashing through two stone pillars before slamming into the far wall. He did not get back up. The accompanying Abyss monsters whimpered, scattering back into the dark tunnels in absolute terror.

Valerie stood frozen, her hand still holding her unused potion flask. "You just defeated a divine elite vanguard with a basic palm strike. You did not even use a weapon. Are you a hidden god?"

"I told you, it was just a warm up exercise," Ethan said, shaking his hand out. "He was sloppy. If you do not practice the fundamentals every single day, your movements become completely useless in a real fight."

"Useless?" Valerie repeated, her voice cracking as she walked over to examine the ruined armor. "That man was trained by the supreme entities of the continent. His style is supposed to be the pinnacle of human martial arts. You treated him like a child who does not know how to hold a stick."

"The roof is coming down," Ethan said, pointing up as heavy boulders began to rain from the ceiling. "We need to talk about his terrible technique outside."

"Right, follow me!" Valerie yelled, grabbing the stabilized black orb from the pedestal and stuffing it into her leather bag. "There is an old drainage pipe near the eastern wall. It should lead us straight out to the lower city slums."

They scrambled through the narrow, damp pipe just as the entire underground vault collapsed behind them with a massive, thundering roar. They emerged into a small, secluded alleyway lined with broken wooden crates and rotting barrels. The air outside was thick with the smell of smoke from the ongoing fires, but the immediate danger was gone.

"Where do we go now?" Valerie asked, panting heavily as she leaned against a brick wall. "The whole town is in ruins. The capital forces will be crawling all over this sector soon."

"We go to the safehouse," Ethan said, checking the horizon. "My family has an emergency cellar near the old tannery. If anyone survived, they will be there."

They hurried through the back alleys, avoiding the main streets where the town guards were still shouting and clearing debris. Ethan stopped in front of a seemingly abandoned, half ruined shed. He pushed a pile of rotten hay aside, revealing a heavy iron trapdoor. He yanked it open and gestured for Valerie to follow him down the wooden ladder.

Inside the dimly lit basement, a faint groan echoed from the corner.

"Uncle Craig?" Ethan called out, rushing toward a low wooden cot.

An older man with graying hair and a rugged, scarred face looked up. His shirt was torn and soaked in blood, a massive jagged wound tearing across his torso. Despite his injuries, his eyes were sharp.

"Ethan?" Craig wheezed, coughing up a bit of crimson fluid. "You are alive. I told your mother you would make it out of that wilderness."

"Do not talk," Ethan said, kneeling beside him and inspecting the wound. "Who did this to you? Where are my mother and father? The house was empty."

"It was not a random attack by the Abyss, boy," Craig said, gripping Ethan's coat with blood stained fingers. "The monsters were summoned as a diversion. The people who raided our estate wore the white and gold cloaks. They came from the very top."

"The holy knights," Valerie interrupted, stepping forward. "I found one of their elite vanguards corrupted in the vault. Why would the capital target a family in a remote village like this?"

Craig looked at Valerie, his eyes narrowing. "Who is she, Ethan?"

"She is an alchemist from the capital. She helped me get out of the ruins," Ethan replied. "Tell me the truth, Uncle. Why did they take them?"

"Because of our lineage," Craig gasped, his breath becoming shallow. "The supreme entities in the capital... they discovered what your parents were hiding. They know about your training, Ethan. They did not kill them. They took them alive. They dragged them back to the capital palace to extract the bloodline core."

Ethan's face hardened, his fist clenching until his knuckles popped. "Then I will go to the capital and tear the palace down."

"You do not understand the scale of this, kid," Craig whispered, his voice failing. "The entities... they are not what they seem. The whole system is"

Suddenly, Craig's eyes rolled back into his head, and his body began to stiffen violently.

"Uncle Craig!" Ethan yelled, reaching for his pulse.

Before Ethan could apply any healing energy, a bright, sickening purple light began to glow beneath Craig's skin, right over his throat. The flesh bubbled and hissed as a burning brand in the shape of a twisted eye forced its way to the surface, scorching the skin black. Craig let out a strangled, agonizing gasp as the magical curse actively began to melt his vocal cords from the inside out.