The ceiling began to crack and groan, chunks of concrete falling as the structural integrity of the garage failed. Glass shattered, tal bent, and the air itself seed to scream from the violence unleashed in the enclosed space.
[You killed a Radiant] x 614
A system notification suddenly popped up in Vogue’s line of sight, glowing bright gold against the chaos.
Vogue was genuinely stunned when he saw this ssage. His eyes widened in disbelief. Six hundred and fourteen radiants? That was an insane number! Was that creature actually the combination of over six hundred radiants sohow fused or rged together?
That would explain why it was so strange and powerful. It wasn’t a single evolved radiant but rather hundreds of them compressed into one horrifying entity. The baby form must have been either the original host or just a disguise the hive-mind had chosen to use.
No wonder it had such bizarre abilities like splitting itself and those paralytic tentacles. It was drawing on the combined powers of hundreds of infected creatures. Thankfully, he had used his trump card when he first saw how abnormal the beast was acting. If he had held back or tried to fight it normally, things could have gone very badly.
As the crimson mist from the explosions slowly died down and began to drift apart, Vogue could finally see the result of releasing his most powerful technique this early into the Osympic Trial.
The garage was completely destroyed. What had once been an organized parking structure was now a disaster zone that looked like it had been hit by a missile strike. Twisted tal, shattered concrete, and debris covered everything. Small fires burned on several of the destroyed vehicles, sending up columns of black smoke. The support pillars were either gone completely or reduced to broken stumps that could collapse at any mont.
Bodies lay scattered across the devastated space. Not human bodies, but the gray, withered corpses of radiants. Hundreds of them, all dead, their corrupted hearts destroyed by the force of the explosion. They had been hidden inside that baby creature, and when it split apart to try to escape the blast, each individual radiant had been caught in the explosions and killed.
Vogue’s kill count had jumped significantly.
Just as the dust finished clearing and Vogue stared at the scattered pieces of broken bodies that laid across the ground, he noticed a shadow right at the center of the massive explosion crater.
Vogue’s face changed dramatically when he saw what it was. It was actually still the baby, standing there in the smoking ruins. Despite Vogue using one of his trump cards, exploding six of his clones that had transford into their dragon forms and massively increasing the lethality of the blast, the beast actually didn’t die!
If one could go back in ti a minute ago and slow everything down to watch fra by fra, one would realize the radiant beast had actually ejected multiple bodies from within its own flesh at the last possible mont. It had used the corpses of the radiants it had absorbed as a human shield, letting them absorb the full force of the explosions while it hid safely at the center.
"Gugugaga!" the baby said, but this ti its voice was different. Darker. Angrier.
The baby’s eyes turned extrely bloodshot, the whites completely consud by red veins that pulsed with visible rage. It took a single step forward, and the movent was wrong. Too fast. Too powerful for sothing that small.
The air around its tiny body compressed and then exploded outward as it shot forward like a bullet fired from a gun. The concrete beneath where it had been standing cracked and crumbled from the force of its launch.
Vogue’s face changed and he imdiately activated Ti Step!
Ti slowed down incredibly in that split second, the world around him crawling to a near stop. He could see individual particles of dust floating in the air, could track the trajectory of debris falling from the damaged ceiling. His dragon wing flapped once, giving him the boost he needed to sidestep away from the incoming attack.
But he was actually too slow. Even with ti slowed down to a fraction of normal speed, even with his enhanced reflexes and dragon-boosted agility, the baby was still faster.
As ti crawled forward, Vogue felt sothing tear away from his left side. There was a sensation of pressure, then separation, but his Pain Nullification prevented him from feeling the actual agony of what had just happened.
By the ti he successfully activated Ti Step to move himself back fifty ters away from his original position, creating distance between himself and the threat, he looked back at where he’d been standing.
The baby was there, standing perfectly still in the exact spot Vogue had occupied a mont before. In its tiny grip, it was holding sothing large and covered in silver scales.
It was holding a draconic arm.
Vogue’s face changed when he looked down at his own body, only to see his entire left arm had been ripped clean off at the shoulder without him even realizing it had happened. Blood poured from the wound, but it was already beginning to seal shut.
"So fast!" he muttered, genuine shock in his voice.
He narrowed his eyes as he watched the baby’s mouth open wider than should have been possible for sothing with a human skull structure. Its jaw unhinged like a snake’s, and it bit down on a chunk of his draconic arm as though it was eating fried chicken. The sound of crunching bone echoed through the garage.
Vogue sneered and focused his will. The arm in the baby’s hand imdiately turned into pure ash, the flesh and bone disintegrating completely as it floated away into the wind like gray snow. His own arm regenerated fully at the shoulder, growing back in just three seconds.
The baby appeared confused as the at in its mouth turned to dust. It spit out the ash and looked at its empty hands with what seed like genuine bewildernt. Then its eyes snapped back to Vogue with renewed focus.
It moved again.
Vogue imdiately activated Ti Step, pushing the technique to its absolute limit. But even with ti slowed down around him, he was still too slow to fully avoid the attack.
This ti he was missing his right leg. The baby had torn it off at the hip in a movent so fast that Vogue’s enhanced perception could barely register it happening. The creature crunched down hard on his severed leg, trying to consu the flesh before it could disappear.
But Vogue’s regeneration activated instantly, and the leg in the baby’s mouth turned to ash just like the arm had. The limb grew back on his body in seconds.
"Waaaaaaaaa!"
Tears suddenly welled up in the baby’s eyes and it began to cry like a real toddler throwing a tantrum. Its face scrunched up, turning red as it wailed with genuine-sounding distress. But Vogue knew it was anything but a normal child. This was a monster wearing the disguise of innocence.
The baby’s speed created another powerful shockwave as it launched itself directly at Vogue again, moving even faster than before. Its small form beca a blur.
"Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!"
Its claws tore through the air with sounds like fabric being ripped. In three lightning-fast strikes that happened almost simultaneously, all of Vogue’s limbs were imdiately torn from his body. Both arms, both legs, all severed in less than a second.
The four limbs hit the ground with wet thuds, bouncing and rolling across the debris-covered floor.
Vogue’s torso landed on the stump where his legs had been, balancing there for a mont. But instead of looking panicked or afraid, he smiled at the baby who was now a few ters away from him, standing there covered in his blood.
"Explode!"
"BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!"
His four severed limbs imdiately exploded simultaneously, detonating like grenades positioned around the baby. The blasts rged together into one massive explosion that consud the creature entirely. Dust and crimson mist surged through the air, filling the garage with a red fog.
Vogue’s limbs regenerated as he stood there, growing back from the stumps in a matter of seconds. He landed on his newly ford feet, ready to see if that had finally killed the thing.
But in the very next second, he felt a wet, squelching sound.
Vogue looked down, only to see the small hand of the baby had sohow pierced completely through his chest from behind. Its tiny fingers were wrapped around his still-beating heart, squeezing it. The creature had gotten through his defenses while he was focused on the explosions.
The baby then crawled over Vogue’s shoulder with disturbing agility, moving like a spider, and settled itself on top of his head. Its weight pressed down on his skull as it perched there.
And without any hesitation, it opened its mouth impossibly wide, the jaw stretching until it was large enough to fit a waterlon inside. Rows of razor-sharp teeth glead in the dim light.
Then it bit down directly at Vogue’s head, aiming to consu his brain in one crushing bite.
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