In principle, breaking a formation was a straight-forward matter: crack it with brute force or make it spend its energy. Of course, while the goal was simple, the path to achieve it was anything but.

A strong cultivator, or one with enough time and energy, could destroy a formation by attacking it until it broke or spent its energy - if it wasn’t being recharged, that is. However, this was all under the condition one ignored the threat of the situation. Most of the time, if you found yourself facing a formation, escaping it was a time-sensitive matter, and you might die before breaking free or through.

This was the case with Red and his companions.

Thus, the most efficient way to break it was by targeting its weakness, something only a formation expert knew how to do. Said weaknesses might not even be explicit and could be as minor as a faulty material. Yet, it was common knowledge that no formation was invincible, and if you weren’t able to find a flaw, you just weren’t skilled enough.

Thankfully, Red didn’t fall short here.

“Strike there next!”

He pointed at another spot for Emeric, who nodded with renewed spirit. He raised his arm to shoot out another fireball.

“Stop it!”

The cultist screamed with a shrill voice. They pointed at the group, and a bright green arrow of energy shoot towards Emeric, too fast for him to react. However, the projectile clashed against the flute’s barrier, which solidified at that point of impact, dissipating into a shower of toxic fumes before it could hurt .

He looked at his friend with a thankful expression, but Leon glared at him.

“Shoot it now!”

Emeric’s expression changed, and he turned around and completed his spell.

At the same time that the fireball shot out, Red also finished casting another wind blade and threw it at a different point of the barrier. The spells struck the formation simultaneously, and the shimmering shield shattered like a piece of glass before dissipating.

“No!” The cultist stared in horror at this.

Red had used the time of their conversation earlier to examine the formation. The arcane symbols weren’t hidden, so he realized this was a larger version of the shielding spell he wrote in his talismans and that he was extremely familiar with. This one was powered by some kind of demonic energy, but that didn’t change its structure.

All that Red needed to do to break it was to figure out the flow and gathering nodes of Spiritual Energy in the formation, after which he could target two spots in the barrier where this energy took the longest to reach. The formation would split its power to protect both spots at once, while also taking much longer to reach them, at which point the protection it could provide would be at its weakest.

It was a simple method for breaking formations, yet Red only accomplished it because the structure of the formation was not hidden from him - a mistake on the cultist’s part. Perhaps they didn’t expect someone as skilled as Red to appear, or were just incapable of hiding the formation in the first place.

Whatever the case, it provided the perfect opportunity for him.

‘The hypnotic effects have weakened.’

After the cultist lost their focus, some of the corrupting pressure seemed to have disappeared, which also allowed them to move more freely.

“Expand the barrier and attack!”

Red gave this simple order to his companions. Leon seemed to have anticipated this instruction and expanded the barrier to cover the cultist, while Emeric shot to his feet and charged ahead, a small explosion happening beneath his feet that propelled him forward. Flames gathered around his fist as poised to strike.

The cultist seemed to recover from their shock and reacted. Toxic fumes flowed out from beneath their mask, gathering into a barrier in front of them as they prepared to meet Emeric’s punch.

A wave of flames erupted as they made contact and the shield was no match. The noble’s flaming fist pierced through the toxic fumes like paper and struck the cultist’s face. Beneath the roaring fire, the sound of porcelain cracking and bones breaking echoed in the room.

The cultist shot back from the impact like a canon, flying out of the barrier and crashing into the flesh egg.

Emeric stood there and stared at his fist in surprise.

“That weak?”

His reaction was warranted. The snakemen from earlier were much stronger, yet everything made sense to Red when he considered this was a formation expert. Most of them forewent combat training to focus on arcane scripture, so it was sensible they would be weaker than the average cultivator.

“They’re not dead!” Red said as he charged ahead with his sword.

The cultist squirmed on the ground, trying to get up. Red opted for close combat, as he had already spent a significant amount of Spiritual Energy casting his spells earlier and he needed to keep an emergency reserve. It was why he let Emeric attack first, but now that the cultist was down, he would deal the final blow.

Leon seemed to pick up on his intentions and expanded the barrier to cover his charge.

His opponent seemed to hear his approach and raised their head to look at him. Red was met with a human face covered by green scales, whose features were hard to discern beneath all the blood. Their eyes, however, showed a simple emotion.

Fear.

Red reached the opponent in a few steps and stabbed forward with his sword. Yet, before his weapon connected, he felt something. The constant flickering fluctuations from the flesh egg seemed to shift for a moment, before gathering at the center of the egg. Then, out of nowhere, they started to fuse and something horrifying appeared in his crimson sense.

This all happened in a matter of instants, but Red, who was always paying attention to these fluctuations, was able to react immediately. He stopped his stabbing motion and jumped back the way he came.

A second later, something struck the place he had just been at, raising a vast cloud of debris and dust.

“Ugh!”

Leon’s let out a pained cry as his barrier seemed to be pierced and started to dissipate. He stumbled on his feet, and the toxic fumes that surrounded them seeped in through this crack.

Red watched this with alarm, but before the barrier dissipated completely, Leon seemed to regain his composure.

“Come closer!”

Red and Emeric heeded his order. At the same time, Leon put the flute to his mouth and blew the same notes from earlier, causing the collapsing barrier to reform around them - this time significantly smaller.

The toxic fumes closed in around them and obscured their view again. However, something heavy seemed to shift in the air, its movements inadvertently clearing away vast swathes of the gas and revealing the chamber to them again.

Red then saw what had just attacked him.

An enormous, blood-covered tentacle appendage had sprouted out of the flesh egg and was waving around the chamber aimlessly. At the same time, a strong, dark-green demonic aura manifested around the egg, its pressure hitting the group like a hammer.

“Go back!”

Red warned his group, and they all retreated to the edge of the chamber, where the pressure didn’t affect them as much. There, they could take a moment to look at the creature that had just appeared.

“I-Is that…?” Emeric trailed off, his voice trembling.

“A Greater Ring Realm demon,” Red said with a frown.

He was also struggling to maintain his composure.

The bodies on the surface of the egg had all disappeared, absorbed into this entity all at once. This was Red felt as he approached, and if he hadn’t been paying attention to those fluctuations, he would have definitely died.

As the blood dripped down the writhing appendage, its true appearance became clearer. What they at first assumed to be a tentacle resembled more a snake’s tail, covered in jagged green scales, and a pitch black fluid dripped from between the nooks in its skin. When this liquid touched the ground, it started to eat away at the stone, which evaporated like water in a hot pan.

“It’s too late,” Leon said in a shaken voice. “We couldn’t stop the ritual.”

“No,” Red shook his head. “The ritual is not done yet.”

“What do you mean?” The noble looked at him in confusion.

“The demon is still forming.”

He could feel it with his crimson sense. The fluctuation of the demon was pulsing, as if the life force it had just absorbed was threatening to leave it. This oscillation in strength was diminishing every second, but it was clear the creature inside the egg was still not in a stable state.

“It’s still not out of the egg,” Red said. “It’s probably still stabilizing its strength.”

Leon’s eyes lit up at this.

“Then can we stop it?!”

“Even if we could, I doubt we could damage it enough to stop the process.”

“… Is there really nothing we can do?” Leon frowned.

“What could we do?!” Emeric looked at him in fright. “It’s a Greater Ring Realm demon! We can’t kill it!”

Before they could say anything else, they heard a maniacal laughter. They saw the cultist had stood up and was holding their arms up as if to worship the emerging demon.

“You have blessed us with one of your true children, mother! Now, let it be born and tech this city the-”

The cultist was interrupted as the tail suddenly slammed down on top of them, pulverizing their body and cracking the ground in half. The entire chamber shook under this impact, and rocks came falling down from above.

“W-We need to go!” Emeric said as he saw this. “There’s nothing we can do anymore, Leon!”

“But…”

Leon still seemed hesitant.

“We can’t do anything else,” Red said. “But we might be able to delay it.”

“What do you mean?” Leon looked at him in confusion.

“We can collapse this place.”

Seeing the chamber tremble under the demon’s attack had given him this idea. This entire place was already corroded by the toxic fumes, and its foundations were already weak. He didn’t think burying the demon would kill it, but it might delay its emergence at the very least.

“But we are in the middle of the city,” Leon shook his head. “Who knows how many people are living above here?”

“They might have felt the tremor and already started to escape,” Red said. ”Besides, I doubt they would build this chamber in a place too populated, as they might have risked being discovered.”

“Still, how can we be sure?”

“We can’t be sure, but when this demon emerges, the people above will be the first ones to die. However, if we delay it here, even if for just a moment, we will give the other people in this area a chance to escape.”

Red wasn’t suggesting this out of a sense of heroism. Whatever option they chose wouldn’t necessarily affect whether they could escape from this place before the demon emerged, but since he had the opportunity to hinder the cult’s plan and save lives at the same time, he saw no reason not to do it.

Leon seemed to struggle with the decision for a few moments, but soon resolve came to his expression.

“You’re right. We need to try to stop it.”

“T-That’s good, but…” Emeric interjected. “How do you plan on collapsing this place?”

“You will do it.” Red said.

“Me?! How?!”

“Your explosive attacks are our only option. Focus on shooting the area above the snake with all you can, and we’ll carry you out of this place if we need to.”

Red’s wind spells wouldn’t be effective for something like this.

Emeric, however, was looking around in fright.

“A-Are you serious? Why don’t we just-?”

“Please, Emeric.” Leon stared at his friend with a sincere expression. “I need you help.”

There was a prolonged silence as he heard his companions’ words.

“Agh, I mean…” Emeric shook his head in resignation. “I can do it, but how can we know if it will work?”

“It’s fine,” Red shook his head. “At that point, we’ll have done all we can.”

As they were talking, the movement of the demon’s tail was getting more frantic.

“… Fine,” Emeric nodded, his expression still uncertain. ”Let’s do it then.”

After getting his confirmation, the group moved to the entrance of the tunnel they had come from. There, Emeric took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

“Right, here goes nothing.”

A fiery aura started to gather around his body, hot enough that it forced his companions to step back.

Over this mission, Red realized that Leon’s confidence about Emeric’s strength wasn’t misplaced. When it came to raw power, he couldn’t compare to the fiery spells of the young noble - at least not yet.

The aura around Emeric gathered around his hands, which he put together in a cupping motion before pointing it at the ceiling above the egg. His expression suddenly paled, and a fireball similar to the ones from earlier started to form in the air in front of him.

This one, however, seemed different. The flames seemed contained this time, unlike the more wild appearance of a normal fireball, and as Emeric’s aura finished gathering in his hands, the spell resembled more an orb of pure orange light. Yet Red could feel an enormous amount of power within the fireball.

“Could you have always done this?” He asked.

“D-Don’t mess with my focus!” Emeric glared. “I need to spend my vital blood to use this spell.”

Red understood what this meant. This was spending life force, which one couldn’t recover, to strengthen or execute a spell.

As Leon heard this, his expression changed.

“You-!”

“It’s too late already!” Emeric shook his head. “You want to help them, right? The spell is already done, either way. Now stop interrupting me.”

Both Leon and Red fell silent. Emeric had never shifted the focus from the orb in front of him, his expression strained as if he was engaged in an invisible battle against the fireball. Only a few moments later did he seem to relax and look over at his target again.

Then, with a shout, he let loose.

The condensed fireball shot forward like an arrow, faster than the spells from earlier, and before they could even blink, it crashed into the ceiling. A blinding explosion enveloped the chamber, and the entire world seemed to shake.