Chapter 193: Erasing the Past

Holden stepped forward, his Solar-Forged Sword raised.

He was ready to deliver the final blow.

Then the Blood-Fiend’s body lurched.

The frozen left side cracked, not from any outside force but from within. The dark red tissue beneath the armor shifted and swelled, generating heat that steamed against Lyra’s frost. Ice hissed and thinned, melting from the inside out as the mutation adapted.

Tsssss.

"It’s making its own heat." Emric kept his shield raised, his voice still tight from the blow he’d taken earlier. "The mutation’s compensating for the frost. It’s burning through its own body to do it."

"Translation?" Renna shouted from the right flank.

"It’s melting the ice with its own flesh. It’s hurting itself to get free."

The Blood-Fiend slammed its good hand into the floor.

BANG!

Stone cracked beneath its palm, and the shockwave rang against Emric’s shield like a bell. The ice covering its body shattered at once, sending shards of frost in every direction.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

The Blood-Fiend rose.

Both arms were working again. Its left shoulder, where Renna’s arrows had struck, was still badly wounded, but fresh tissue was already growing over the damage. The remaining shafts were forced out as the wounds closed, dark fluid leaking from the holes and hissing when it touched the floor.

Tssss.

"It’s healing." Lyra’s voice remained steady and cold. She wasn’t surprised. "The Blood-Demon Core is regenerating the damage faster than we can inflict it."

"Then we stop trying to damage it," Holden said. His grip tightened around his sword. "We contain it."

The Blood-Fiend suddenly drew in a massive breath.

Its chest expanded, armor plates spreading apart, but it wasn’t preparing to roar. Its mouth opened, and something moved deep inside its throat. Not air. Not sound.

Something liquid.

The monster spat.

A stream of dark red liquid erupted from its mouth, sweeping across the front of the hall in a wide arc. It was thick, steaming, and almost black beneath the red glow. Wherever it landed, the stone began to bubble.

Tsssss. Tsssss. Tsssss.

The floor dissolved into shallow, smoking pools of corroded rock.

"It’s blood." Emric’s 10x cognitive buff was already analyzing the substance. "Boiling blood. The core has changed its entire circulatory system and turned it into a weapon. About three hundred degrees. One drop on exposed skin would cause severe burns."

The Blood-Fiend raised both arms.

The claws split open, revealing small vents in its palms.

The same dark liquid burst from them.

But this time, it didn’t fall to the ground.

It stretched into long, flexible tendrils that cracked through the air like whips.

CRACK!

The first struck the stone and burned a trench six feet long. The second snapped toward Emric.

He planted his feet.

"Absorb and redirect!"

CRACK!

The whip slammed into his shield with enormous force, carrying both heat and impact. Steam rolled across the shield’s surface as Emric’s boots slid backward several inches. The heat pushed through the metal enough for him to smell his sleeve beginning to scorch.

But Emric didn’t simply block.

He turned his shield thirty-seven degrees, catching the tendril at just the right angle. Instead of stopping the strike, he redirected its force back along the Blood-Fiend’s own weapon.

The tendril snapped tight.

The recoil yanked the Blood-Fiend’s right arm sideways and pulled its body off balance.

For half a second, the whip went slack as the creature struggled to regain its footing.

"It worked!" Emric shouted. "Right arm’s destabilized! Window’s open!"

Renna was already firing.

Three storm-wrapped arrows struck the blood tendrils instead of the monster itself.

Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt.

Lightning spread through the liquid.

The conductive blood carried the current straight back toward the vents in the Blood-Fiend’s palms and into its arms. Its muscles seized as the tendrils convulsed, suddenly rigid in the air.

The Blood-Fiend screamed.

SKREEEEEEE!

"Whips are down!" Renna shouted. "They’re seized up! The current shorted the whole flow!"

"Now," Holden said.

Lyra stepped forward.

She planted her feet and raised her spear with both hands, the blade pointing toward the ceiling. Her eyes glowed brighter than Holden had ever seen them.

She looked at the creature in front of her.

At the uncle who had controlled her life for years.

At the man who had hunted her and tried to turn her into something he could own.

For the first time, Lyra wasn’t fighting to survive him.

She was fighting to end him.

She poured everything she had into the spear, every bit of frost she could summon, while the 10x learning buff shaped and controlled it with precision.

The spear erupted with cold.

A blizzard array formed around it.

It wasn’t a simple wave of frost. It was a complete formation, a three-dimensional lattice of interlocking ice patterns that spread from the spear tip in every direction. The temperature inside the hall dropped so quickly that moisture in the air crystallized before it could fall.

FWOOM!

A shockwave of frost swept across the room.

And the monster’s own weapon became its weakness.

The heat it created was fuel.

Every degree the Blood-Fiend produced by burning through its own flesh gave the blizzard more energy to work against. The harder the creature tried to fight the cold, the faster Lyra’s array responded.

The blood-whips froze first.

Three hundred degrees of heat dropped to flash-frozen cold in an instant. The sudden temperature change crystallized the blood and shattered the tendrils from within.

Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack.

The frost didn’t stop there.

It spread up the arms, across the shoulders, and down the torso. Layer after layer of blue-white ice wrapped around the Blood-Fiend, forming a thick cocoon over its red-black armor.

The monster thrashed.

It tried to create more heat, burning through its own body to melt the ice.

That only made the array stronger.

Lyra’s buff tracked every change in temperature and immediately answered each warm spot with more frost. Wherever the ice began to thin, another layer formed.

The Blood-Fiend fought harder.

The blizzard answered harder.