"My god demands your blood."
"Tell him to get in line," I shot back, rolling my shoulders as demonic power rippled across my transformed body. "There's a waiting list."
The Blood Golem lunged again, its fused skull-arm sweeping sideways in a brutal arc. I kicked off the ground, wings snapping wide. The shockwave from its strike shattered stone pillars and sent fragments skittering across the chamber floor.
Mid-air, I twisted, diving straight toward the lamia priestess.
She didn't panic.
She smiled.
The vortex behind her accelerated, the entire lake spinning faster and faster until the crimson surface blurred into a spiraling disk. The runes carved into the chamber walls flared, threads of red light snapping outward like veins, connecting her body to the lake.
"Too late," she whispered.
A pulse exploded outward.
BOOOOM!
My wraiths staggered as one. Several were ripped apart instantly, their blue flames torn from their skeletal frames and sucked toward the vortex like sparks into a hurricane.
"What the hell?!" I snarled, beating my wings hard to stabilize myself.
"She's synchronizing with the other sites!" Beatrice's voice cut through the chaos. Her eyes were still closed, her hands weaving through the air in intricate, impossible geometries. Pink sigils spun around her like orbiting stars. "She's drawing mana from all of them into herself."
A chilling realization struck me.
The other lakes. The other lamias. They were all power sources, and since this ritual site was the only one being attacked, she was drawing power from the rest to defend herself.
The blood golem's movements grew faster. Smoother. Its attacks were no longer clumsy swings—they were precise, calculated strikes, each one forcing my remaining wraiths onto the defensive. The crimson tendrils she'd summoned before returned, thicker, sharper, moving not just at me but weaving around her in a deadly, protective web. She was turning the entire chamber into a weapon.
"Sigh... I hope my body can survive this." With a sigh, I made my choice.
Using my grandmaster sword techniques.
The moment the long sword appeared in my hand, the very air in the chamber seemed to freeze. The blue flames of my wraiths guttered, dimming, as if bowing before a superior power.
Ahh~… the familiar feeling of the perfect, noble weapon in my hands.
The blade hummed.
Not loudly.
Not theatrically.
Just a quiet, resonant vibration that traveled from the hilt into my bones, into my marrow, syncing with my heartbeat. I felt every molecule in the blade, every flaw, every perfection.
I shifted my grip, my body settling into a stance I hadn't consciously realized I remembered. My feet found their place on the stone floor as if they were always meant to be there.
The lamia's smile faltered.
She could feel it too. The shift in power. The sudden, oppressive silence where the chaos had been.
"Ahh...." I took a long, deep breath, my chest rising and falling.
I focused.
The world faded into a blur of gray and red.
The lamia. The blood golem. The tendrils. The chanting. The smell. Everything.
Everything but her.
And the perfect, straight line between us.
"Formless Sword Art, Fourth Stance:"
Slowly raising the sword until it was parallel to the ground.
"Eclipse."
No explosion.
No dramatic flash.
The light simply… bent.
The crimson glow of the vortex dimmed as if a shadow had passed over the sun. The spiraling lake slowed, its violent rotation stuttering, confused. Even the air pressure shifted, collapsing inward toward the edge of my blade.
"What—" The lamia's pupils constricted. She could see it. The distortion. The world folding over itself. For the first time, her beautiful face was etched with genuine, unadulterated terror. She tried to lunge backward, to retreat into the safety of her vortex, but the distortion had already taken hold. Her movements were caught in the trap, slowed to a crawl, each desperate inch taking an eternity.
I stepped forward.
Not fast.
Not slow.
Just inevitable.
The Blood Golem roared and brought both arms down in a crushing pincer meant to flatten me into the stone.
I moved once.
A single pivot.
The blade traced a shallow arc.
The golem didn't shatter.
It disappeared along the line I cut, its upper half sliding soundlessly into nothingness as if erased from the world. The lower half stood for half a second before dissolving into inert sludge.
No noise. No impact. Just a silent, clean removal.
The crimson tendrils lunged, seeking to skewer me from all sides.
I didn't stop.
My blade moved through the space I occupied.
The tendrils met the space behind me. Their tips sliced clean off, the severed ends flopping uselessly to the ground like dead worms.
Three steps.
Three steps were all it took to cross the distance between me and the lamia.
She was frozen, trapped in the slow-motion nightmare of my Eclipse. Her face was a mask of horror, her mouth open in a silent scream. The intricate, glowing tattoos on her body flickered violently, the power she was desperately trying to draw from the other lakes severed by the spatial impossibility she was trapped in.
Eclipse wasn't a slash. It was an absence.
A temporary denial of existence along a chosen axis that made things it touched… simply… no longer part of the equation.
One of the most powerful moves of the Formless Sword Art that I created.
However...
PUSHH!!!
It was demanding to use this move, even for the old me. My vision swam, my lungs burned for air, and every muscle in my body screamed in protest. Blood trickled from my nose, the strain of manipulating space itself taking its toll.
The lamia saw my moment of weakness, but she didn't dare to make a move yet, as the aftereffects of my attack still held her prisoner.
But I made my move.
"Cinders... bind her," I commanded, my voice strained.
My remaining Cinder Wraiths surged forward, their blue flames flaring as they swarmed the lamia. They didn't attack. They bound, using the six hell chains I summoned earlier.
The lamia was caught, her body glowing a violent, angry red as the chains and wraiths held her in place. She thrashed and screamed, her serpentine strength immense, but she couldn't break free.
"I have her!" I roared to Beatrice. "Do it!"
Beatrice's eyes snapped open. They were blazing, no longer crimson, but a solid, luminous pink that held the same terrifying light as a neutron star.
Unfortunately.
Rumble! Rumble!
Before she could finish, the entire chamber shuddered violently. Cracks spiderwebbed across the stone floor.
BOOM!
The ground right beneath me exploded.
A colossal arm, a crab's pincer as big as my torso, erupted from the stone.
The two-headed monstrosity from the lab had burst through the floor.
And it was no longer floating lifelessly in a vat.
It was very much awake.
"AHHH!" I screamed as the pincer closed around my left leg, the sheer force of the impact snapping bone with a sickening crack. Pain, white-hot and blinding, exploded through my body.
"Aza!" Beatrice cried out, her concentration momentarily broken.
"Don't break the circle!" I snarled at her, my face contorted in agony. "FINISH IT!"
The monster's heads, the pretty woman, and the cruel man both fixed their eyes on me. A single, unified thought echoed in my mind, a projection of pure, primal hunger.
"Do... you... think... you... could... easily... kill me?" the two-headed monstrosity's dual voices rasped, a grotesque harmony of a woman's melodic tone and a man's cruel growl. "The... 'Doctor'... was... a... fool! He... gave... me... the... harvest... when... the... ritual... was... disrupted!"
The doctor's body had been left behind in the lab, and this monster had apparently… absorbed it. It had consumed the doctor's knowledge. And perhaps, a part of its twisted consciousness.
"UMBRA!" I roared.
From my shadow, the big black panther jumped and, with its powerful jaw, clamped down on the monstrosity's crab arm, trying to pry it open.
But it wasn't enough.
The pincer tightened, and I felt more bones grind into dust.
"Fascinating..." the monster purred, its female head looking at Umbra with a detached, scientific curiosity. "A familiar. A shadow construct. And... strong. I will enjoy... absorbing you."
"You will enjoy NOTHING!" I roared. Using my good leg, I kicked off the ground, my body spinning through the air. With my left leg still trapped in the monster's grip, I used the momentum to swing my right leg around.
CRUNCH!
My heel connected with the male's head's jaw.
The monster roared in pain, its grip on my leg loosening just enough for Umbra to pull me free.
I collapsed to the ground, my left leg a mangled, useless mess of flesh and bone. Blood pooled around me, the metallic scent mixing with the already foul air of the chamber.
"BASTARD!" I spat, pushing myself up with my good leg, my sword still clutched in my hand. I ignored the pain and took a stance.
"Formless Sword Art, Second Stance," I breathed, the world narrowing to the point of my blade and the monster's multiple, mismatched limbs.
"Mirror's Edge."
The words were barely a whisper—more breath than voice—, but the blade answered like it had been waiting its entire existence for exactly this moment. It didn't glow. It didn't flash. It simply became a line of impossible silver, an extension of my will.
A reflection.
A perfect, unbreakable mirror that showed the monster not its own grotesque form.
Then...
Crack!
A hairline split traced across the center of the blade's mirrored sheen.
At the exact same instant—
A matching fracture tore across the monster's torso.
Not cut.
Not sliced.
Fractured.
As if something had struck it from the inside.
The female head gasped.
The male head roared.
Another crack splintered across the reflection.
CRACK!
The creature's crab pincer split down the joint, chitin snapping apart with a wet, splintering sound. Blackened blood sprayed across the stone.
Mirror's Edge did not attack the body.
It attacked the truth of it.
Whatever force struck the mirror—
Returned.
Perfectly.
Relentlessly.
Thud!
"Haa... Haa..." I dropped to the ground, my body trembling from the strain and the pain. Blood dripped from... every hole in my body. My nose. My ears. My eyes.
And of course... between the legs.
"Thank you, Aza," Beatrice said, her hand resting on my shoulder. "You've bought me enough time."
"Just.... make sure to repay me later."