"You piece of shit," Rayn whispered, his teeth grinding together until they bled. "You actually managed to touch me. You think because you can heal, you're a god? I'll show you what a real god looks like!"
Rayn concentrated his entire Gnosis into the central runes of the sword where the water and wind converged. The blade began to vibrate so violently it hummed like a dying star. At the same time, he activated the latent power of his Spatial Bracelet, infusing the elemental edge with the power to cut through the literal fabric of dimensions.
He screamed, a primal sound of rage, and executed a massive, descending slash as the thorned ball rolled toward him again.
"Dimensional Tempest!"
The slash was a hurricane of liquid sapphire and silver vacuum lines that tore through the space between them. It hit the spinning ball dead-center. The stone armor didn't just crack; it was peeled away like orange skin, exposing the glowing golden magma-flesh beneath. Rayn's blade cut deep into the beast's core, slicing its internal organs into meat-paste.
But as Rayn landed, his eyes narrowed in fury. The golden magma inside the beast flared like a solar flare. Within two seconds, the stone armor reformed, the internal organs knitted back together, and the beast uncurled, letting out a deafening, mocking roar.
The titan slammed its front claws into the ground, activating its Earth Law.
The entire cavern disintegrated into a storm of flying rocks, stalactites, and boulders the size of houses, all converging on Rayn's position like a collapsing planet. Rayn spun his blade, his movements a blur of silver light as he shattered the incoming boulders into dust.
But it was a distraction.
Amidst the blinding cloud of stone dust and sulfur smoke, the titan's massive jaw materialized right beside Rayn's left flank. Before he could redirect his weight, the beast's jaws snapped shut with the force of a hydraulic press.
CRUNCH.
The sound of bones snapping and flesh tearing echoed through the chamber. The titan's jagged teeth sheared through Rayn's left shoulder, completely ripping his left arm and hand off his torso.
A fountain of dark crimson blood erupted from the stump, painting the white permafrost in a gruesome, steaming lake of gore. The titan threw its head back, swallowing Rayn's severed arm whole, its golden eyes shining with a sickening, triumphant malice.
Vespera screamed from the far end of the cave, her dragon aura flaring into a terrifying black mist. "Rayn! You fucking idiot!" She began to sprint forward, her hands glowing with healing magic, ready to obliterate the beast herself.
"Stay the fuck back, Vespera!" Rayn roared, his voice carrying an unnatural, terrifying calm that stopped her in her tracks.
Rayn stood in the center of the blood-stained ice, balancing on one leg. His left arm was completely gone, the shoulder a shredded mess of muscle and bone that continued to pour blood. Yet, his face was dead-pan. The chaotic rage that had consumed him seconds ago had vanished, replaced by a cold, mathematical stillness.
This bastard isn't strong, Rayn analyzed, his mind operating at a hyper-accelerated state as his Conqueror Vision activated through his red-white pupils. It doesn't have supreme combat techniques. It just uses its mass, its high-speed regeneration, and these erratic rock storms to confuse the attacker. It makes you angry. It forces you to lose your mind and forget your patterns until you walk directly into its mouth. It's a psychological parasite.
Rayn closed his eyes for a split second, ignoring the agonizing fire screaming from his severed shoulder. When he opened them, the world was moving in slow motion. He shifted the Tidal Storm Sovereign to his remaining right hand, his grip steady and unshakeable.
The titan, seeing its prey crippled, believed the hunt was over. It gathered the remaining earth energy in the cave, launching another barrage of massive boulders while it slid through the shadows, preparing to bite Rayn's head off from his blind spot.
Rayn didn't dodge the boulders this time. He stood perfectly still like a statue of ice. When a massive three-ton rock flew at his face, he didn't move his body; he simply flicked his right wrist, the silver side of the blade slicing the rock into two clean halves that flew past his shoulders.
One rock. Two rocks. Three rocks. He cut them all down with micro-movements, his breathing slow and rhythmic.
Then, from the dust behind him, the titan lunged. Its massive jaws were wide open, its jagged teeth dripping with Rayn's own blood, its maw large enough to swallow his entire upper torso in a single bite.
Rayn didn't turn around until the beast was three inches from his face.
He smiled. It was the smile of a winner.
"Got you, you fat pig," Rayn whispered.
He didn't use a flashy technique. He didn't scream a high-level name. He simply thrust his right hand upward, channeling every ounce of his remaining wind Gnosis, his spatial bracelet power, and his own lifeforce into a single, vertical line.
The blade moved faster than the concept of time itself. It entered through the beast's lower jaw, pierced through its brain, and exited through its armored spine, splitting the twenty-foot titan completely in two from head to tail.
SPLIT.
The two halves of the dinosaur fell to the left and right, hitting the mud with a heavy, wet thud. The golden magma-blood poured out in torrents, sizzling against the ice.
But Rayn knew the bastard's trick now. Even as the two halves lay on the ground, the golden energy began to arc between them, trying to pull the flesh back together for another regeneration cycle.
"Not this fucking time," Rayn growled.
He stepped between the two halves, his right arm becoming a blur of absolute destruction. He swung the Tidal Storm Sovereign thousands of times in a single minute. He didn't just cut the beast; he turned it into a culinary experiment. He sliced the muscle into inches, pulverized the bones into powder, and used his water magic to wash the golden blood into separate corners of the cavern where they couldn't connect.
Within sixty seconds, the legendary king of the earth-shakers was reduced to a fine, red, non-regenerative soup of flesh and stone mush that lay stagnant in the mud. The golden light finally died out, leaving only the cold stench of death.
Rayn collapsed to his knees, his right hand shaking as the Tidal Storm Sovereign dissolved back into his core. The blood loss was finally catching up to him, his vision blurring at the edges.
Vespera appeared beside him like a flash of lightning. Her face was pale with a rare mixture of fury and terror. "You are the biggest goddamn idiot I have ever met in my entire life," she screamed, tears of frustration gathering in her golden eyes.
She didn't waste time lecturing. She slammed her hand onto his bloody left shoulder. Her black-green dragon Gnosis erupted, invading his nervous system. Rayn gritted his teeth as the flesh began to smoke. Out of the shredded mess of his shoulder, new bone structures began to grow like coral reef; muscles spun themselves out of thin air, and skin crept over the new limb until his left arm was completely restored, good as new.
Rayn stretched his new fingers, letting out a breath of relief. "Thanks, wife. Your magic is always top-tier."
"Shut the fuck up," she snapped, wiping her face. "Look at what your 'great reward' brought us."
Rayn stood up, leaning on his new arm, and scanned the red meat-mush of the titan. He walked through the gore, turning over pieces of stone armor with his boot.
There was nothing.
No shimmering blue crystal. No stone pillars. No thumb-sized living artifacts. Just a pile of dead, decaying meat.
Rayn's brow furrowed, his fist clenching in disappointment. "What the fuck? Matthew said the stronger the monster, the greater the price. Where is my goddamn artifact?"
Vespera looked around the massive chamber, her dragon instincts piecing the truth together. "It wasn't a treasure chest, Rayn. This monster... it didn't have an artifact because it was the artifact of this floor's security system. This entire chamber was a gatekeeper trial. Dawinton didn't put a reward here; he put a test to eliminate anyone who wasn't strong enough to see what lies at the actual bottom of this pit."
Rayn stared at his restored hand, then looked deeper down the dark, twisting path of the second level that extended from the back of the arena. The air coming from the deeper strata was even colder now, whispering with the promises of a greater horror.
"A gatekeeper, huh?" Rayn muttered, his disappointment fading into a dark, burning anticipation. "Fine. If the guard was this fun... I can't wait to see what the master of the house looks like."
He turned to Vespera, his white hair stained with the blood of the titan. "Let's keep moving. We've still got a lot of miles of this hell to walk."