A.N. Bit of a shorter chapter. Next one is much longer.
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Explosions rocked the Knight's Room as plumes of silver fire dotted the expanse of the Floor. Monsters shrieked as they'd suddenly find deep wounds appear on their bodies before those wounds would set alight with those same silver flames and then they'd be engulfed in Lyze's soul eating fire.
The boy himself was blur. Propelled by the aura of fire covering his form, Lyze blitzed between the monsters too fast for anybody to see. He grabbed a Barbarian's horn and flipped the monster high into the air, the monster flailing its arms as its world became too confusing for it to tell up from down. Lyze ran up a wall and then jumped off of it in the direction of the airborne monster.
He punched a hole right through its abdomen before flipping and landing on his feet as he watched the monster's remains fall to the ground and burn as he absorbed its life force. A group of skull sheep zoomed towards him with their jaws open, ready to take a bite out of him in any way they could.
Lyze clenched his hand as circuits of silver light formed over his bare skin and arcs of silver lightning began crackling over his arms and legs. He bent his legs and then sprinted forwards so suddenly that the ground shattered underneath him, and he left trails of fire and electricity behind him as he rushed past the skull sheep who were taken aback by his speed and hastily turned around to prepare projectiles.
Their cloaked hides bubbled as spears of bone protruded from them and launched at Lyze as he made a turn back towards them. As he ran even faster, his perception sped up even more as time slowed down and it seemed like the projectiles were practically floating past him. He effortlessly weaved between them and withdrew Geranos as he ran circles around the skull sheep, slashing at their bodies too fast for them to even comprehend the pain.
He came to a sudden stop in front of one of them and smashed its head into smithereens with one punch alone. But more than that, the air pressure of his punch began to disintegrate the rest of its body and he watched it happen in slow-motion with breathless fascination. Less than 24 hours earlier, it had taken him several full powered punches to break their skulls whereas now it took him only one, even without magic powering his physical strength.
He was having the time of his life with his innate power. The more he flexed and trained it, the more powerful it became. And as he came to realize, the more souls he fed to it, the longer its duration would be. Ever since then, all he had been doing was setting every monster he came across alight with the Flame and reaped the power he drew from converting their raw life energy into pure magical power.
Of course, the more he did it, the more insignificant the amounts became as it did not give him as much a boost in power as they did at first. But no small piece was wasted, all devoured greedily by his own soul his body brimmed with life. The glowing wellspring of Origin energy in his chest glowed ever brighter with each morsel he fed it, the Primordial Fire blazing ever so brightly with appreciation. Lyze got to to work using Geranos to spike the monster cores in each of the skull sheep and they all became dust as he swallowed their souls too.
Even the dagger from Hephaestus sang with the power of its wielder and shone with bright silver light as he stormed through monster hordes, showering blood and guts everywhere as the entire area was consumed in silver fire.
The executives whistled at this spectacle as even they did not need to do anything now. Lyze had grown so vastly powerful in this short time, he was dealing with these Deep Floor monsters just as easily as he had been doing so with the monsters of the Upper Floors.
"He's on fire isn't he?" Noir smiled.
"If that's your attempt at a pun or your humour, then I'm afraid it's sorely lacking." Bara said as she crossed her arms.
"He's not wrong though." Gareth said as he chuckled and gestured at the boy. "I mean look at his face, look at that smile. He's enjoying this."
"And once again, our little prodigy defies common sense." Finn shook his head. "When he said he would be ready to level up again when we leave this dungeon, I laughed at him. Now I'm having second thoughts."
"He's definitely reached S rank somewhere in his stats." Riveria said. "It's a shame that Status thieves are illegal, otherwise we may have been able to see for ourselves. It's the only explanation for the performance he's putting on."
"I'd say that it's a little bit more than S rank Riveria." The Pallum remarked. "After all, we know what he's truly capable of before he chooses to level up. We've seen the status sheets."
"So you're saying he's already viable for levelling up...at double S?" Gareth said.
"Precisely...probably. Maybe even triple." Finn said as he watched Lyze pick up two Lizardmen Elites by their tails and jump up, swinging them around so fast that all three momentarily looked like propellers before letting them go and their bodies splattered all over the Dungeon walls in a mess of blood, mangled flesh and other horrible body fluids from their digestive tracts. Lyze set them alight with a fireball each to consume their souls.
"Well the more he stacks on before levelling up, the more powerful he'll be when he becomes level 4." Dain sighed. "He's left us older three in the dust now. When we entered, we were still able to beat him if we took him seriously. Now I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't even need to get serious to beat us."
"The little freak will most definitely be first class when he levels up next." Bara sighed and folded her arms behind her head. "Something we've gunned for in the last few decades. And just when it seems we're close enough, this little brat just races past us."
"See it as a blessing instead Bara." Noir advised. "It means that the Loki Familia will be going somewhere in the future."
"Isn't that a truth to look forward to?" Finn said rhetorically before the ground started trembling violently and deep rumblings began shaking the Room as the wall exploded, out of which came a cluster of boulders.
The boulders creaked and groaned with screeches that would have burst a normal mortal's ears as the rocks bundled together to create a misshapen humanoid figure. Lava glowed at its joints with a little stream of the moleten rock running down the front of its chest and at the top where the head was supposed to be, shone a single point of purple light which was supposed to count for vision on the monster's end.
It groaned as it took slow but heavy footfalls that shook the area they were all in as the literal walking fortress began to slowly make its way over to them. Due to its sheer weight, it was understandable why it would not move so fast, but one could tell that magic would be a poor choice against this monster as a weapon since its defences were so high. But of course, there was one or two people amongst the Loki Familia who were not ordinary mages.
"An Obsidian Soldier." Gareth said as he lifted his axe onto his shoulder. "Any bets the lad's going to take this one on by himself?"
"None to be had from me." Finn said as he other adults agreed with him. "It's obvious he's going to attack it himself...in three, two, one..."
Lyze grabbed the Spartoi he was dealing with and smashed it against a rock, turning it into bone fragments as he furiously turned around to meet the lumbering giant. He sheathed Geranos and crouched as he flexed his legs and muscles. Heat began rising from him, the air turning wavy as licks of fire covered his limbs before he arched back.
"RAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!" The boy bellowed as every muscle in his body bulged out to the point where the blood vessels in his skin threatened to burst and the skin was drawn so tight against the muscle tissue, every single striation could be seen actively stretching to accommodate this dramatic battle stance.
The scars on his body also became more prominent as the silver fire burned bright from within and a ring of silver fire formed around him on the ground, like some sort of ritual circle that had summoned a monster. His battle roar penetrated the minds and hearts of everybody in the Room with him as it got their blood pumping in both the urge to fight and the awe of his new appearance.
When Ardee said that Lyze had the body of a man, she was not saying it for nothing. The evidence was so much more pleasurable to sight when his upper body was bare as it was now. Lyze cocked his head and began thundering towards the rock monster, the ground cracking beneath each and every one of his footfalls as he matched the heavy footsteps of the Obsidian soldier.
The monster opened its rocky mouth as its throat glowed brighter as lava bubbled up inside like bile, ready to fire it at the boy. Lyze increased his speed and dushed right underneath it before jumping up and elbowing it in the side of its face. It's jaw broke off completely, an explosion of lava splattering everywhere before Lyze grabbed it by its collarbone and used his legs to swing upwards onto its other shoulder.
He grabbed the top of its head and punched it in the back off its head, cracking its skull before punching it again to snap the neck. Lyze then jumped off while still holding its head and kicked his legs downwards so the monster flipped and was body slammed face first into the ground. Lyze then began repeatedly smashing down thunderous punches to break the obsidian and get at the magic stone while the monster waved its arms about.
Lyze's fingers became covered in silver flames as he dug his fingers straight into the rock but paused as he felt himself grab something. The sensation was hard to describe...like he was grabbing a cloud and yet also like a sheet of plastic cling film. As he pulled his hands back, he saw that his fingers were pulling something out of the monster. Out came what looked to be some kind of astral form of the Obsidian Soldier that writhed and twisted just as much as the body was doing the same.
Remembering how Nekros told him that the Flame allowed him to interact with the immaterial, Lyze realized what he was touching...he was literally ripping the monster's soul from its body. With this revelation, Lyze instantly began formulating ways in which he would not have to do this by hand. The Soldier took advantage of his pause and lashed it with a large rock arm, catching Lyze in the stomach and knocking him back.
The heels of Lyze's boots skidded and dug trenches in the dirt but he held firm as he simply grit his teeth and the breathed outwards to cope with the blow to his gut. He clasped his hand together as storms of silver lightning gathered between his palms before firing a large stream at the Soldier. It roared as it was brought to its knees again by the web of silver lightning that had ensnared it and it could do nothing as the lightning did not attack its body but inflicted continuous soul damage which had direct effect on the physical body.
Lyze lifted his other hand as a ball of lightning formed in it but this lightning became much more solidified as it thickened and hardened into some sort of malleable rope. He lashed it out like a whip and one end stuck into the right side of the monster's chest. He released his lightning attacks from his other hand and formed the same rope of lightning in it as he lashed out with that too.
The Loki Familia were met with the sight of Lyze restraining the Obsidian Soldier with two chains of silver lightning as those chains continuously feed into a net of silver lightning that trapped the monster and kept it on its knees. The Obsidian Soldier flared, the lava in its joints growing brighter as its throat opened with bubbling lava in it as it stood up in burst of anger but Lyze's forearms lit with crackling silver flames.
Lyze whipped the two lightning chains and that movement made the silver fire travel from his arms onto the chains, the flick carrying both bundles of silver flames as they smashed into the monster. The fire entered its body and slammed directly into its soul which had been hooked by the lightning chains and finally detached the astral body from the physical body.
The Loki Familia watched as Lyze pulled the chains back, dragging out the blue, luminescent avatar out of the monster's body that was shaped just like it. With one final yank, Lyze pulled the soul out of the monster's body as it began to float towards him. Lyze opened his arms wide as the wellspring in his chest glowed ten times brighter and the large soul of the monster began to get vacuumed into that bright little star in Lyze's chest.
The Flame of Origin happily devoured the monster's soul completely as the glowing silver circuits on Lyze's veins glowed brighter momentarily before they died down in intensity. The Obsidian Soldier's body stayed standing for a moment before the purple light in its head faded away and it collapsed forward with a heavy thud that shook the Floor. Lyze turned around and smiled at his Familia members as he dispelled the chain.
"I call that move 'The Claws of Hades'." He said cheerily as they just gawped at him, terrified that he had discovered such an ability. Meanwhile the GOW geek inside him squealed in delight, even amidst the seriousness of the battlefield.
Gareth blinked before the dwarf noticed something. "Why hasn't the body disappeared yet?"
Lyze turned around and saw that indeed, the body was still intact and had not gone away whatsoever. Curious about this, he activated the soul vison using the Flame and saw that there was indeed no soul in the monster. But if it was dead, then why hadn't the body gone?
'Could it be that the release of the soul upon death is what makes the bodies disintegrate?' Lyze wondered. 'But I ripped its soul out directly, and the soul died outside of the body...so they body stays?'
Ever so callously, Lyze ignored the ethical implications as he realized how much resources could be made from so much extra material left behind if the monsters did not disintegrate when he ripped their souls out. Oh yes, the Loki Familia would be leaving the Dungeon rich!
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