Under Zhe’s punch, the shadow lost its footing and crashed onto a nearby building. Under that hulking weight, ordinary walls toppled like a child’s toys, one touch and they fell.
Nero wiped the blood at his brow the instant it spilled, scooped up the unconscious Christine, and sprinted toward the safehouse ahead. Panic knifed his gut, but his mind spun like a storm wheel, slicing through the chaos. The ones who stop thinking at the edge of death are the first to die.
A monster on par with a Demigod inside the city was the last thing Nero could have imagined. The city’s warding array wasn’t for show; anyone at Titleholder or above who entered uninvited would trigger it, and it would strike first to erase the threat.
The countless Runes etched into that array could force a Demigod to reveal their body, nowhere to hide. Its power was overwhelming for one reason: this provincial capital’s array was the handiwork of the Chancellor lauded as the foremost master of arrays.
For a Demigod to slip through under such conditions, and take a swing at him unabashed—there were only two answers. Either the city guard had betrayed them, or they were all dead.
Given the scene, it was the first.
Nero abandoned the thought of returning to the barracks and ran for his hidden safehouse in the city. Christine hovered between life and death, and that Demigod monster couldn’t be solved on the spot. If the city guard saw his trail, he’d truly die without a grave.
Right now, Nero could only hope Zhe held it off a little longer, so the truly loyal units in the barracks could arrive in time.
With Arcane Power boosting his stride, running while carrying someone was nothing. Then a spray of stone burst like earthborn shrapnel, and Nero’s instincts snapped. He dropped, shielding Christine as they hit the ground.
His choice proved right. A massive bone blade tore through the wall beside them. If Nero hadn’t flattened out, his head would’ve rolled under that strike.
The giant shadow, a man encased in bone-plate from head to toe, saw the miss and bellowed. He raised the colossal bone blade high, ready to cleave down at Nero.
“Water—”
An iron fan rimed in ice whirled down from above and hit like a thousand-pound weight, knocking the giant’s posture askew. The blade meant for Nero veered wide, and, as Jasmine’s voice fell, a blizzard of ice-blooms burst in the air.
“Ice Blossoms!”
Icy roses unfurled from the iron fan, beauty veiling menace. Beneath those blooms, a snarl of ice thorns surged like chains, binding the giant shadow tight.
Jasmine appeared from behind Nero without a pause. Her iron fan snapped open as she turned, deep-blue frost sweeping out like a winter tide. She moved like a dancer before a storm god’s altar, and under the glow of ice flowers, she offered the giant a dance of death.
In a heartbeat, the bone-armor across the giant’s body was scored with a web of cracks. Filaments of cold, threaded with Arcane Power, seeped through the plates. The shadow within became a statue of ice.
“Move! Zhe’s dragging that thing’s attention. Hold Christine tight, I’ll cover you!”
Jasmine plucked her other iron fan from beside the frozen brute, vaulted to the rooftops, and guided Nero from above.
“What is this thing?! Why does it look like a Hydra?”
Zhe hid behind the broken ribs of a building, dragging breath like a bellows. The corner of his eye tracked the rampaging Demigod shadow.
It had a human torso and a serpent’s tail. The tallest buildings in the district were four stories, and they only reached its waist. Uneven bone-plates patched its frame like armor slapped on in a hurry. A ring of swollen knots bulged along its spine, and Zhe’s wariness spiked.
Monsters like this always stash toxins in those lumps. He wasn’t about to sample Demigod-grade poison firsthand. Worse, his right arm was already numb.
“This Demigod looks like a lunatic… no spells, no sensing, no Mindscape. But even raw Arcane Power blasted at random is hard to swallow.”
Zhe forced the boil of Arcane Power in his veins to settle. Even for a seasoned survivor like him, a foe with absolute advantage felt like facing a cliff with no handholds.
He was alone. He was gambling his life to keep the monster’s focus. Why not call in a family powerhouse? He’d tried. Every comm array was dead. He’d tested carving after carving in minutes that felt like years.
The answer was the same—nothing worked.
Still, he’d drawn the monster in another direction. He could breathe for a—
A crushing force struck his back like a falling mountain. Before he could turn, he was swept away along with a wall, flung through building after building until he hit hard and stopped.
Cough!
Zhe shoved the slab pinning his back aside and spat blood. His organs felt shifted, his guts lurching, nausea and vertigo spinning his skull until thoughts wouldn’t line up.
The ambush had no tell. The strike carried no Arcane Power flare; its feral aura was masked and only erupted at impact. This Demigod wasn’t the mindless brute it pretended to be.
Zhe slapped his own cheek hard and dove into a narrow alley, barely dodging another sweeping blow. Countless civilians still didn’t know what had hit them; their lives ended in that single swing.
He tried to rise, but the damage to a near-Titleholder was brutal. Confusion smothered his mind. His vision went milky. The wails around him faded to silence.
Blood began to leak unnoticed from his seven orifices.
The monster spotted him in the alley. It loosed a screech, smug as a hawk over prey, and swung a massive palm to end him.
“Bold of you, monster!”
The shout cracked like Thunder. The monster’s palm recoiled mid-swing, as if shocked by a live wire, and a figure dropped between Zhe and the crowd like a shield.
Duke Dion had forced his way back in time. He gripped a blade like a shard of violet crystal. Deep-purple Arcane Power wrapped him in layer upon layer, flowing like plasma, declaring his domain with a storm’s certainty.
Healing spells snapped onto Zhe like cards flicked from a master’s hand. The fog lifted from his head, and he yelled the moment he could breathe.
“Careful! Its attacks carry a curse!”
Duke Dion nodded, then stroked the blade’s spine. Dark clouds gathered above, drawn like ink to a brush. The monster threw a punch as big as a carriage; the duke moved, and wind and Thunder rose from bare earth.
A heavy boom cracked the sky. Purple arcs clashed with a midnight fist. The victor was clear—the deep-purple lightning that poured down from the clouds.
The monster shuddered and staggered back. Its slapdash bone-plates hadn’t covered everything. The arcs crawled over bare flesh, and the stench of scorching meat rolled out like a foul fog. The clouds didn’t thin after that Thunder; they thickened, brooding and vast.
In Duke Dion’s pupils, deep-violet lightning flared like twin storms.
The rolling thunderbeats rattled every heart, a drumline with iron tempo. Each rumble tugged at breath and will, an irresistible cadence.
It was the march of ten thousand spears. It was the pressure of righteous might.
“Resound across the heavens—Thunder!”
At his cry, the clouds above the monster lit with a thousand spears of light. Then came the endless thunderclap, and Duke Dion rode that blazing storm, cutting down with a single sword.
Lightning and Thunder braided and broke upon the monster’s giant frame, blasting crater after crater. The charred stink made Zhe grimace. He threw up a sweeping isolation ward and shouted:
“The fumes are poison, even curse. Don’t breathe it!”
Duke Dion sensed it too. Thunder spun around him in whorls like living vortices. The black miasma frayed and vanished at the outer ring, never touching the duke at the storm’s heart.
Even so, the monster didn’t fall. Its incomplete bone-plates thickened, growing across the upper body, leaving only the serpent tail bare. It shrieked, high and sharp, and the knots along its spine stirred, as if something inside was ready to tear free.
“In that case… Mindscape—Thunder: Rousing Sweep!”
Facing that monstrous adaptability, the duke’s eyes narrowed to pinpoints. The black vault above blazed with a blade of violet light, and in a roar that pressed lungs flat, a vast sea of Thunder unfurled with him at the center. A raging storm poured from the heavens, crashing down again upon the crouching beast.
