Chapter 64: The Core Cracks

The Colossus tried to grab him with its half-grown right fist. Three small fingers scraped across the crystal chest. Alvian flattened his body and let them pass over him. The wind pulled hard at his skin, but it felt like a normal breeze to Alvian.

He climbed faster.

The Core came into view through the clear crystal. A glowing ball of light, pulsing with space magic, sitting right in the middle of the Colossus’s chest. The stone wall protecting it was extra thick. Half a meter of super-dense crystal, much harder than the outside skin.

He put both palms flat on the thick wall and turned on his contact Domain.

[Domain activation: contact mode, dual-palm.]

[Essence cost: 6/second.]

[Essence: 152 → 146 → 140 → 134.]

The wall began to melt. Grey dust came off where his hands touched. But the progress was super slow. The hard stone resisted the acid, and the monster’s healing put new stone over the damage almost as fast as it melted.

Net melting speed: barely moving. Half a percent per second.

’Too slow. I need three times more power.’

[EXP Allocation: 20,000,000 EXP.]

[Essence: 134 → 234 (+100 points). Cost: 20,000,000 EXP at 200,000 per point.]

[EXP Bank: 105,000,000 → 85,000,000.]

A wave of fresh Essence flooded his system. The Domain’s power tripled instantly. The melting speed jumped from slow to super fast.

The crystal wall got thin. Cracks ran across the thick stone. Grey dust poured out from his hands in streams. The Colossus tried to heal the damage, but the boosted acid was three times faster than its healing. New stone melted before it could even harden.

[Shell integrity: 80%... 60%... 40%...]

The bright light of the Core glowed through the thin wall, casting strange shadows on his face. The Colossus cried out. It was not a roar of anger, but a sound of real fear. Its Core was open. Its life link to this world was taking direct hits.

[Shell integrity: 20%... 10%... 5%...]

The Colossus stopped trying to shake him off.

It began to shrink itself.

The whole thirty-meter body pulled inward. Crystal walls pushed in from all sides. The chest space closed around him. The Colossus was giving up its outer body mass, squeezing everything it had to protect the open Core.

The pressure was massive. Tons of heavy stone pushed in from every direction. His acid-covered bones melted the stone pressing against his skin, keeping a small open space for him inside the tight trap.

But the shrinking got faster. More stone flowed inward, fixing the Core wall from the inside.

[Shell integrity: 15%... 12%...]

The time window was closing fast. His Essence was running low.

[Essence: 234 → 200 → 170 → 140.]

’One last push. Ten more seconds. Break the wall and take the Core.’

He pushed his hands deeper into the breaking stone. The bright light burned against his palms. The warmth of the Core beat against his fingers like a heartbeat.

[Shell integrity: 5%... 2%...]

CRACK.

[Shell integrity: 0%. Core exposed.]

The Colossus’s magic heart sat right in his hands. A ball of concentrated space magic, warm and live, beating like a real heart. Beautiful. Scary. The core link that kept a Rank 5 Calamity Boss stuck in this world.

The stone walls pushed tighter. The shrinking reached its limit. The Colossus was using every piece of stone it had left to crush the intruder inside.

Alvian closed his hands around the ball.

The Colossus squeezed.

Walls made of crystal pushed inward from every side. Tons of heavy crystal pressed against Alvian’s body like a trap made of stone and anger. The space around his chest was shrinking. His legs were pinned against the broken Core shell. The pressure grew every second as the Colossus pushed its own body mass into the walls, giving up everything to protect its heart.

His VIT 855 held.

The crystal pressing against his skin started to break and crack. His bones, filled with Clearwater power, dissolved the stone on contact. Where his body touched crystal, grey dust formed in thin streams. The Colossus was trying to crush him, but the crystal was melting around him.

’Not being crushed. Being held. The stone around me is melting. I just need to reach the Core.’

But the Core was right there, inches from his fingers, and the Colossus knew it. New crystal flowed over the exposed sphere from every direction. The shell health was going back up. The regeneration was winning.

[Shell integrity: 2%... 5%... 8%...]

The window was closing. In seconds, the Core would be covered again, and he would be trapped inside a healing Colossus with no room to swing his sword and no Essence to keep the Domain active.

He made his choice.

He stopped using the contact Domain. The melting field around his hands shut down. Essence stopped draining. But he did not waste the energy. He pulled everything he had left and pushed it into his sword.

Clearwater Coating on the blade. Severing Sword Aura placed on top. Bone Corrosion passive moving through his skeleton. Three melting effects stacked on a single broken piece of steel.

The sword became something it was never meant to be. The metal vibrated so hard that the cracks in the blade grew wider with loud noises. The weapon was going to break after this hit. He knew it. He did not care.

He pulled his arm back as far as the small space allowed. Six inches of room. Not much. But STR 520 did not need much room.

He pushed the blade forward with all his strength.

The Clearwater-coated edge hit the thin crystal shell covering the Core. The melting was instant. The shell, already weak from the Domain, offered no resistance. The blade punched through the crystal like a finger through wet paper.

The tip of the sword touched the Core.

The glowing sphere cracked.

A single line of bright white light ran across its surface. Then another. Then twelve more. The Core broke along every line at once, pieces of trapped spatial energy separating from each other.

[Core integrity: 100%... 50%... 10%... 0%.]

The Core exploded.