The With-God's Devotion System

Chapter 7

The temperature dropped so fast it felt like a physical blow.

Julian exhaled, and his breath instantly turned into a cloud of tiny, floating ice crystals. He shivered violently. Even through his torn black suit, the cold was biting into his skin like invisible needles.

He stood at the edge of the crater. Down in the center, Rachael Blackwood—the Ice Queen—lay in the smashed dirt. The frost spreading from her body was freezing the toxic black mud solid.

Julian took a step forward. His foot crunched loudly on the frozen ground.

[Warning!] the System chimed urgently in his mind. [Target's passive Ice Aura is highly unstable. Entering the crater without protection will cause immediate freezing of the Host's blood. Time to death: 60 seconds.]

"You want me to kiss her, but you're telling me I'll die if I get close?" Julian gritted his teeth, wrapping his arms around himself to save body heat. "Give me something! You said my Incubus blood is awake. Do I have a shield?"

[Negative. The Host has zero mana. However, using the residual Miasma radiation currently inside your soul, the System can generate a temporary 'Miasma Shield'. This will block the extreme cold for exactly 60 seconds.]

"Do it," Julian commanded.

Instantly, a faint, sickly green glow surrounded Julian’s body. It looked like a thin layer of dirty glass hovering just an inch above his skin. The terrible biting cold vanished, replaced by a strange, numb warmth.

[Miasma Shield active. Countdown initiated: 60... 59... 58...]

Julian did not waste a single second. He scrambled down the steep, icy slope of the crater, sliding part of the way on his boots.

As he got closer, he could finally see what was wrong with the famous S-Rank Witch.

Rachael was not just unconscious from the fall. She was in absolute agony. Her beautiful, flawless face was twisted in pain. Her eyes were tightly shut, and she was panting heavily, her chest rising and falling in sharp, fast jerks.

But it was her arms that made Julian stop and stare in horror.

Underneath the torn silver sleeves of her elegant dress, dark, ugly black veins were bulging against her pale skin. 

The black veins pulsed with a sickening rhythm, spreading slowly up toward her neck. Where the black veins touched, the skin turned gray and began to flake away like dead ash.

Julian had seen this before. In the mana-mines, when a magic user spent too much time around unstable, dirty magic, their own magic would turn against them.

"Mana-Rot," Julian whispered out loud.

Mana-Rot was a death sentence. It was a terrible disease where a Mage's own magic became corrupted. 

The magic literally ate the person from the inside out. There was no known cure in all of Erlingland. Once it reached the heart, the Mage would explode in a massive, violent burst of wild magic.

That explained why Rachael fell from the sky. She must have suffered a sudden, massive attack of Mana-Rot while flying over the Rift. The pain had knocked her out.

[Scanning Target's condition...] the System chimed. [Diagnosis confirmed. Severe Mana-Rot. The target's magical core is destabilizing. She will detonate in approximately five minutes, destroying the entire canyon.]

Julian swallowed hard. If he didn't cure his own poison by kissing her in 72 hours, he would die. If he didn't kiss her now to steal her magic, she would explode in five minutes and kill them both.

"Okay. This is happening now," Julian muttered, dropping to his knees beside her.

Up close, she was breathtakingly beautiful, even while dying. Her eyelashes were long and white like snow. Her lips were a soft, pale pink, slightly parted as she gasped for air.

Julian reached out a trembling hand. “I just need ten seconds,” he thought. “Just a ten-second kiss, and I save both of us.”

[Target Acquired. S-Rank Ice Witch Rachael. Affection Level: -10 (Hostile).]

Julian paused. "Hostile? But she's asleep!"

Just as his fingers brushed the cold silk of her dress, Rachael’s eyes snapped open.

Julian froze. Her eyes were not human. They were glowing with a terrifying, piercing, icy blue light. But right now, those beautiful eyes were clouded with dark, twisting shadows of the Mana-Rot. She was awake, but she was not seeing reality. She was lost in the madness of the pain.

Rachael looked straight at Julian. Her pupils shrank to tiny pinpricks of pure hatred.

"Assassin," she rasped. Her voice sounded like two blocks of ice grinding together. "You... you will not take me alive."

"Wait! No! I'm not an assassin!" Julian yelled, holding his hands up quickly. "I'm just a guy! I'm here to help you!"

She did not hear him. The Mana-Rot was boiling her brain. In her fevered mind, Julian was just another enemy sent by her political rivals to finish her off.

Rachael’s slender fingers twitched. She didn't even lift her crystal staff. She just glared at Julian.

Crack!

The ground beneath Julian exploded.

A massive, jagged pillar of solid ice shot up from the frozen mud, hitting Julian squarely in the chest.

"Gah!" Julian grunted loudly as the force of the ice pillar lifted him completely off his feet.

He flew backward through the air, thrown out of the crater like a ragdoll. He slammed hard into the rocky wall of the canyon. Before he could fall to the ground, more sounds echoed through the air.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

Five sharp, spear-like icicles shot out of the ground directly below him. They moved with lightning speed, pinning him against the hard stone wall.

Two icicles stabbed through the shoulders of his suit jacket. Two more stabbed through the fabric of his trousers, right next to his legs. The last icicle shot right between his arm and his ribs, pinning his right sleeve to the rock.

Julian hung there, two feet off the ground, completely trapped. He struggled, trying to pull his arms free, but the ice was stronger than steel.

"Hey! Stop!" Julian shouted, pulling wildly against his trapped clothes. "Look at me! I'm not attacking you! I don't even have a weapon!"