Amon’s crimson aura flared violently, bursting outward in a shockwave that rattled the stones underfoot.
Then he lunged, his body contorting as one arm stretched unnaturally forward.
From it erupted a torrent of blood, twisting and reshaping into dozens of grasping hands, each one clawing toward as if eager to drag down into the dirt.
I stood my ground, watching with a detached calm.
The sight was grotesque—visually creative, sure, but grotesque all the sa.
Dozens of coiling arms made from living blood, writhing and clutching, an attack ant to overwhelm by sheer spectacle as much as force.
Disturbing, yes.
Effective? No.
Not against .
I raised my hand, movents steady, and gathered mana until it burned hot in my veins. The spell ignited at my fingertips, fire concentrating into a piercing lance of pure destruction.
"Inferno Lance."
The words left my lips like a sentence passed.
The flaming spear shot forward, slamming into the tide of blood-hands.
The impact was imdiate and absolute—fire tore through flesh that wasn’t flesh, unraveling the crimson stream as though it were paper fed into a furnace.
The writhing arms screeched as they burned, disintegrating into mist.
I poured more mana into the lance, driving it harder, the flas roaring hotter until the entire attack was blasted apart in a storm of cinders and red smoke.
The force of the spell carried straight through, the flas ripping apart the blood stream and smashing into Amon’s arm.
His limb split apart under the blast, chunks of red mist and flesh scattering as if torn from the inside out.
I warped in the sa breath, reappearing directly in front of him. My palm pressed against his face, heat already building at my fingertips.
For a heartbeat, I hesitated—just long enough to know this was the right place to end it—then I activated [Inferno Lance].
The spell roared to life, erupting from my hand at point-blank range. Fire engulfed his skull, the explosion tearing through him with a deafening crack.
His head disintegrated under the blast, reduced to smoldering fragnts and ash, the flas searing the air with the stench of burning blood.
Amon’s body staggered back, headless, crimson ichor spraying wildly as his balance faltered.
Tendrils of blood writhed from the stump of his neck, coiling upward in twitching, unnatural motions, as though refusing to accept death.
And then, once again, the pendant at his chest flared.
The cracked gem pulsed with that sa sickly red light, and the impossible began.
The blood tendrils gathered together, pulling inward, knitting themselves into the crude outline of a skull. Muscle and sinew followed, re-forming as though sculpted by invisible hands.
I froze, watching, not with fear but with a strange, sharp intrigue.
I’d seen monsters regenerate before, but never like this. Never this grotesque. It reminded less of battle and more of sothing out of a horror film.
My eyes narrowed, fixing on the pendant glowing faintly against Amon’s chest.
Whatever it was, I didn’t need so grand revelation to piece it together.
It didn’t take rocket science—the damned thing was the source of his regeneration, the anchor dragging him back from death over and over.
I warped forward, reappearing in front of him, and reached for it. My fingers closed in on the chain, intent on ripping it free, ending this cycle once and for all.
But the mont my hand brushed the air around it, sothing invisible struck .
CRACKLE!
The backlash snapped through my arm, hurling my hand away with enough force to sting.
"Huh?"
I glanced down at my palm, the skin tingling as though I’d tried to touch a live wire. My gaze returned to the pendant, glowing with a mocking, defiant light.
I tried again, slower this ti, probing, but the sa force shoved back—repelling , rejecting .
So that was it.
No one else was allowed to touch it. Not , not anyone. Only Amon. The talisman had bound itself to him completely, warding off every outside hand.
"Tcch!"
I clicked my tongue.
That was a problem.
The pendant—there was no doubt now. It was the core behind Amon’s insane regenerative abilities. If I didn’t find a way to destroy it, he would just keep coming back, no matter how many tis I tore him apart.
By then, his head had already finished reforming.
His features snapped back into place, twisted and feral, his glowing eyes locking onto with a hatred so raw it felt animal.
His snarl deepened, the sound guttural and sharp, steam and flecks of foam hissing past his teeth as he exhaled.
The blood around him responded. It stread outward, twisting unnaturally in the air, forming jagged spikes.
With a violent thrust of his arms, he sent them flying, a storm of crimson projectiles shrieking toward .
I warped instantly, space folding as I reappeared right in front of him, too close for him to react.
My palm slamd against his chest, pressing flat against the cracked skin just above the cursed pendant.
"Inferno Lance."
The spell ignited with a roar.
WHOOM!
Heat exploded outward from my hand, the force of it carving straight through him.
His torso erupted, a massive hole gouged clean through his chest, charred flesh and bone vaporizing instantly, the air filling with the stench of burning blood as the blast hurled him backward, staggering.
For a brief mont, Amon’s eyes went vacant.
The crimson glow dimd, leaving him hollow, like the light inside had been snuffed out.
But just as quickly, it returned—his gaze snapping back with a vicious lunge, hands clawing toward .
I swung Gravefang in a sharp arc, the blade cutting through his limbs with sickening ease.
Flesh and blood parted, his arms severed in sprays of red. Before he could stagger fully into , I drove my boot into his chest, shoving him backward.
He stumbled slightly from the kick, but caught himself in an unnatural way.
His upper body swayed, jerking and righting itself with eerie stiffness, as though invisible strings were holding him upright.
The movent wasn’t natural—it was grotesque, a body that had forgotten how to be a body.
And that was when I saw it.
Sothing was wrong.
His form, once swollen with strength, seed diminished now. His fra was narrower, his stance less grounded.
Compared to the hulking monster he had been monts before, this Amon looked... frail.
Or was it just my imagination?
No—the longer I watched, the more certain I beca.
The healing was working, yes, but it was costing him.
Every ti the pendant dragged him back from the brink, his body ca out a little weaker, a little less solid, as if the very process of regeneration was eating away at him.
Multiple spikes of blood scread past and I warped again, closing the distance in a heartbeat so my strike would land clean.
I put everything into the swing—no hesitation, no theatrics—and his head ca off in a single, brutal arc.
The world tasted like tal for a second as the spray hit the air, and for a beat there was nothing but the wet thunk of severed flesh on soil.
Then the grotesque thing happened: tendrils of that sa crimson mist shot from the stump, fingers of blood that grabbed the head and held it close, and slowly, impossibly, began to knit it back onto his neck.
Muscle reknitted, skin sealed, the skull sliding into place as if soone were sewing flesh with threads of gore.
As the healing crawled over him I watched every inch of it, not out of morbid curiosity but because I needed to know how it worked.
His skin hissed where it fused to bone, like fat on a griddle; his sinews seared and stitched themselves together with a noise I could feel in my teeth.
The pendant pulsed in ti with those sounds, each beat feeding the reconstruction until he was whole again.
But sothing else was also happening—sothing small and steady that I hadn’t noticed until now.
Each ti I tore him apart and the pendant pulled him back, the re-formation cost him.
The rebuilt flesh looked thinner, the muscle less dense; the red aura that had once scread with raw, obscene vigor flickered and then settled into sothing more brittle.
He still moved, still snarled, but his sway was a little more puppet-like, his footwork a fraction slower, the red mist clinging to him with less confidence.
I realized what it ant in a second: the pendant was not granting infinite strength, it was borrowing—extracting—sothing to rebuild him.
If I kept killing him, kept forcing that cursed pendant to drag him back, sooner or...
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