CLANG-CLANG!
Chain Combustion rocked the air, stringing up blast after blast—laying waste to the shell below. Chunks of heavy steels spewed off the thing, lit up Stormfire blue, little meteor showers racing into the gloom...
The light cleared. Showing gaping craters. Fissures snaking through that smoking slab.
But it held together.
Zane blinked.
That was a little surprising.
It seemed all that stuff—that Law, that essence, that big heft of crust—it was not for show after all.
Then it began to rumble. As though struck by an earthquake. New raw stone, raw steel rucked up from deep inside, stemming the gaps—it was the Bloodline's doing. He saw it channeling up those pillar-like legs. Traced the essence with Sage Mind. It fountained up from deep within the earth...
The Dragon Turtle couldn't move. It didn't hit particularly hard either. All it did was defense, it seemed. And it had thirty-odd Levels on him. He supposed it made sense they thought it could hold him.
One thing, though.
He was still getting warmed up.
He could feel his body coming to life. His muscles burning. His heart still thumping faster and faster, his breaths coming in steaming clouds…
He only grew more eager at the sight.
He had been waiting for some resistance.
He wondered how much more it could stand. It would be fun to try crushing it head-on. Setting his greatest power against its own. And wrecking it. Something about shows of brute strength scratched a particular itch in his brain.
Then he noticed the cracks shimmering up the walls of the chamber. All around. Racing down the sandstone floor, up those once-pristine pillars—
It seemed to hold itself up, the Turtle was draining the structure out of the room.
Which meant if Zane started clobbering…
Hm.
He hesitated.
Maybe he should go about this a little cleaner.
There was a silence as everything settled. Stopped shaking.
Then the Birds peeked out from behind their hiding spots—they started making these high-pitched sounds like steel grinding on steel. A kind of laughter. At Zane, since he hadn't gotten them after all.
Black lightning crackled on their nose-tips.
And they started shooting at him again.
The shots came blink-quick. Impossible to dodge. Little static shocks stabbing at the skin—the annoying thing was Zane was still made of steel. So they went all the way through him.
A week ago they might have laid him out spasming. But with how much he'd built up his body, even Monster Knights' shots didn't hurt much anymore. Just hard stabbing jolts. Jerking through him.
It still annoyed him, though.
He frowned.
Stupid birds.
This would soon backfire.
The more heated he felt, the more powerful. It was his Asura State. His essence, his blood, his soul all went into it—but the core of it, the thing that drove it all, was the intensity of his feeling. You could hear it building in each strong thudding heartbeat. See it in the way his chest heaved, his aura smoldered…
Zane took a deep breath. Opened his hands. And the Chains vanished.
He stood there, waiting. One beat. Two... ate another few shocks, eyes narrowed. It spasmed his hands, jerked a bicep. Little things—the birds were crowing like they had scored fatal blows.
He narrowed his eyes.
His Axes dropped to his palms.
They were bigger than he remembered. Still pure-black, edged Stormfire blue-white. Not the kinds of axes you used for trees. Or even to chop down men. Zane's axes were heavy-duty. Meant to carve open anything he wanted.
It had been a while. He wondered if these things still worked like he remembered.
Overhead he saw Evan return fire, saw bolts of white light streaking overhead breaking up the black lightning, saw the birds zipping around teetering, always a little out of reach. Evan's shots bounced off the Dragon Turtle's shell. Evan cried out in dismay.
Meanwhile Reina was still healing Zane up. Boosting him back to full Health—
He felt a sneaky intent flare across the chamber. His heart sank.
He threw himself forward—and ate a blast of black lightning arcing straight for Reina. He landed smoking, black lightning crackling across his skin….
He gritted his teeth.
And the Axes in his hands burst into Stormfire. Piercing blue-white slicking down impossibly fine crescent edges.
His aura spiked to the ceiling.
Blew out—seemed to fill the room in an instant, a haze of ghostly flame erupting, flaring so bright it made every other aura there seem a pale shadow.
And now it had gotten so hot that the air around him was catching fire. Spontaneous gouts of Stormfire sparking into being—
Zane bellowed.
If they wanted him angry, they had it.
He stared down his enemy with narrowed eyes. And launched himself straight at them.
They shrieked, hid—and the Dragon Turtle hunkered in, tried drawing from deep within the earth. Counting on its powers to save it.
Not this time.
He unleashed a Stormfire Slash.
SCHLUNK!
One clean sound. One brilliant smoldering line carving up the air so pure, so intense it seemed to split the world in two. And for the first time voids ran roughshod through the realm, splitting it down its length—cracking this reality wide open—
Zane's axe skidded to a furious halt some forty-odd feet away.
There was a deathly silence. As though the world were holding its breath, frozen, scared to bear the consequences of what just happened—
That brilliant line ran straight through the Dragon-Turtle's foreleg. Hanging still in the air...
And then—all at once—every point along that line exploded. In a terrific Chain Combustion.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
A machine-gun of cannon-blasts; the Dragon Turtle howled, teetered, slid around its husk of a stump, slowly collapsing—
Just as Zane's other axe slashed deep through the other side.
The world hadn't even stopped shaking when it was set rocking on its axis again. A flood of sound and light blinded the world, slowly fading...
And that connection deep to the earth—that connection to a huge chunk of its bloodline—was broken.
The Dragon Turtle had no choice but to slump. Its back legs were shaking—the whole thing looked about to come crashing down—
The birds scrambled about, screeching, all thoughts of attack lost, trying as best they could to sneak back behind the beast, trying to keep their shield—
They still thought it would save them.
There was another silence. Things had gone so quiet all you could hear was the thumping of Zane's heart. Like a war drum beating heavy in the air… One. Two. Three.
And his hammers burst back to his fists.
Then the Dragon-Turtle—bleeding out, Bloodline powers cut off, little more than a stump—saw what he meant to do. And all it felt was fear. It brought up all it had left. Those lakes of essence it stored deep in its main body, all those Laws still weaving through its shell, poured as much Bloodline as it could muster—
Zane bellowed. And let his hammers fall.
BOOM!
The first blew the peak straight off its mountain of a shell. Crushing off a good third of it then and there.
The second crashed straight down the crater. BOOM!
And the whole thing split open, cracking in half, landslides of steel and stone spewing down the sides—the shell sagged precariously then, wrecked utterly, shaking, burning, smoldering, threatening to come apart at the seams—the Dragon Turtle howled. Tried clinging on.
Zane kept coming. Relentless.
He whirled around, whipped, brought the brunt of his whole body, every last screaming muscle to bear. And rammed in two more. BOOM-BOOM!
The first broke that continent-slab-shell like an egg.
The second drove through and hammered deep into the beast's insides. Found a host of vital organs—and submerged them in a world of Stormfire. Expanding blistering fast. Seizing on the innards, swallowing them up, making new fuel… The Turtle opened his eyes, opened its mouth, trembling like a volcano about to blow. And gouts of Stormfire blew out of its nostrils, its eyes, its mouth—scorching it white-hot from the inside…
The smoke cleared. And a massive burning hunk of charred stone, charred melting steel, slumped to the ground—and Stormfire still raged over it like a rabid hound, gnawing at the remains…
Even the birds had taken some of the backlash. They hacked out plumes of ash.
They looked rather silly now, floating there with their big shield gone.
Evan let out a battle cry—and started throwing all he could. It was his moment.
The birds shrieked and ran for it. Made like insects, flitting across the room.
But Evan was on it, tracking them all the way. Zane appraised him. He was quite proud of how far Evan had come. Evan locked on, face all scrunched up in determination—and let loose a a laser-beam so bright it looked like a solar flare.
He didn't need to bring the beasts down entirely. Just hamper them.
Sure enough—the shot ran clean through a webby Wyvern wing, sending it into a smoking tailspin.
And Zane launched. Tendons flaring.
He snatched up the falling bird by the throat. And squeezed.
That amount of force did strange things. Made its lower body and upper body bulge like a balloon, made its eyes pop out as it choked.
Then he slammed it hard into the ground.
When Zane was not trying to go hard, things tended to splatter.
When he went hard, things tended to disintegrate. That was what happened with this bird's head. So much force went through it in an instant it skipped phases of matter. Splattered to blood to a fine mist. Vanished, smoking, burning up.
The other bird saw what happened to its companion. Tried flapping away in a panic, screeching—and Evan got it right through the eye. Zane found it sputtering on the ground, and smashed it. Then smashed it again, for good measure.
And that was that.
***
𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝕦𝕡!
𝔼𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝟚𝟝𝟜 -> 𝟚𝟝𝟝
Those were very specialized Monster Knights—they had been made with their teams in mind. They only seemed good at their one thing. Once you got rid of that, Zane found them surprisingly easy to crush. No harder than any normal Monster. But Reina told him that was more of a him thing than a them thing.
He wasn't sure what set them apart from normal Monsters. According to what Reina could glean, it was their Bloodlines and their Weapon Cores—it seems to grant them a new tier of power at the same Level.
Speaking of Weapon Cores. Zane now had three new ones to play with. Two sleek black ones, a bigger gemstone of a third. He wondered if it would be enough to upgrade his Chains another time.
Just then—
𝕊𝕪𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕞 𝕙𝕒𝕤 𝕕𝕖𝕥𝕖𝕔𝕥𝕖𝕕 𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕟𝕒𝕝 𝕥𝕒𝕞𝕡𝕖𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕘
ℙ𝕒𝕣𝕥𝕚𝕔𝕚𝕡𝕒𝕟𝕥𝕤 𝕙𝕒𝕧𝕖 𝕓𝕖𝕖𝕟 𝕤𝕦𝕓𝕛𝕖𝕔𝕥𝕖𝕕 𝕥𝕠 𝕦𝕟𝕗𝕒𝕚𝕣 𝕔𝕙𝕒𝕝𝕝𝕖𝕟𝕘𝕖𝕤
ℝ𝕖𝕤𝕥𝕠𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕓𝕒𝕝𝕒𝕟𝕔𝕖…
ℂ𝕙𝕒𝕝𝕝𝕖𝕟𝕘𝕖 𝔻𝕚𝕗𝕗𝕚𝕔𝕦𝕝𝕥𝕪: ℍ𝕖𝕝𝕝
ℂ𝕒𝕝𝕚𝕓𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕖𝕟𝕤𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟…
Zane blinked.
Then, right in front of him—
ℕ𝕦𝕨𝕒'𝕤 𝔼𝕝𝕚𝕩𝕚𝕣 𝕠𝕗 𝕋𝕒𝕝𝕖𝕟𝕥 [𝔼𝕒𝕣𝕥𝕙 (𝔹)]
𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕤𝕚𝕘𝕟𝕒𝕥𝕦𝕣𝕖 𝕓𝕣𝕖𝕨 𝕠𝕗 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕣𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝔸𝕝𝕔𝕙𝕖𝕞𝕚𝕤𝕥 ℕ𝕦𝕨𝕒, 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝔼𝕝𝕚𝕩𝕚𝕣 𝕤𝕙𝕒𝕣𝕡𝕝𝕪 𝕓𝕠𝕠𝕤𝕥𝕤 𝕠𝕟𝕖'𝕤 𝕔𝕦𝕝𝕥𝕚𝕧𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟 𝕥𝕒𝕝𝕖𝕟𝕥 𝕗𝕠𝕣 𝕒 𝕡𝕖𝕣𝕚𝕠𝕕 𝕠𝕗 𝟛 𝕙𝕠𝕦𝕣𝕤.
Oh, nice.
He figured it would be useful for the next floor. Maybe if he came across a horde of Monsters to smash, or a big stash of elixirs. He pocketed it.
Reina had been given the same thing. A matching pair. This made sense to him.
Evan, meanwhile, got an essence treasure called a 'Good Fortune Cookie.' He gasped all excited. He started telling Zane that it was made by this one old man he had apprenticed under in baking all those years ago. The guy had been some kind of undercover master this whole time.
Zane was not sure what was going on there.
Anyway—it should be enough to get Evan his fourth Class Evolution.
Avery also got a treasure, to her own surprise. She got six more drops of White Fox Bloodline. She thought the System must have been happy with how hard she cheered. Now she just needed to get one more Concept, and she could unlock a brand new Godbeast Skill. Something to do with mirrors. She was psyched.
At the end of the chamber, meanwhile, a new staircase had opened up….