The giant monster continued to munch on the flesh within its mouth as it dragged the warrior’s lifeless body through the mountain pass.
Several tis, its intuition flared. It halted, turning its massive head to search the surroundings, senses straining for a threat. Each ti, finding nothing, it resud its march.
Within the depths of Oblivion, Rosacer watched closely.
"Thick skin," he muttered. "Resistant to both fla and blunt force. Ice may slow it, but the beast possesses overwhelming strength. Direct confrontation is impossible."
He continued speaking under his breath as his muscles darkened from exhaustion. Necrosis had already begun to creep through his flesh.
Before they could completely fail, he finally invoked Ananta.
The monster’s image burned itself into his mind, and the world shifted.
The beast sensed sothing unusual once more. It stiffened, muscles coiling, its guard rising.
Too late.
An obsidian dagger plunged into the back of its neck, and pale yellow flas erupted, engulfing its massive fra.
Rosacer erged into the physical world and swiftly produced a doll, its tendrils lashing outward with unnatural life. He hurled it toward the burning monster, then vanished again into Oblivion.
This ti, he reappeared atop a distant ridge, gazing down at the chaos below. Activating the Grafted Sigil, he conjured additional eyes, scanning the surroundings for any threat that might erge.
The beast scread, its bellows echoing through the mountains as poison seeped deeper into its body from the embedded dagger. The flas clung stubbornly to its form, refusing to fade. Though its thick hide resisted the fire, the question was never if it would fall, only when.
Rosacer had ti.
Wracked by frenzied pain, the monster could barely think, let alone locate him.
It was a waiting ga.
Its cries echoed across Mount Hermit. The entire mountain bore witness to the cacophony, a vicious scream that tore through the beast’s agony and reverberated through stone and sky alike.
Rosacer frowned. "Sothing is not right."
He carefully searched the surroundings, expanding his awareness, straining every conjured eye for the slightest disturbance. Yet there was nothing. No movent or distortion. No presence he could clearly identify.
Still, his intuition continued to flare.
It was not warning him of the wounded monster below.
It was warning him of sothing else.
Sothing far more nacing.
A faint chill crawled up his spine as the realization settled. He was not alone.
"Co on," he whispered under his breath, his voice barely stirring the air. "Show yourself."
With exhaustion piling deep within his muscles, Rosacer allowed the eyes grafted by the sigil to fade one by one. His body slouched forward, shoulders sagging, his eyelids fluttering as they nearly closed.
Even so, his gaze remained fixed on the beast below. He watched as it suffered, its thick hide slowly lting from within, while the clinging flas continued to burn across its massive form.
Then, without warning, the creature went still.
Rosacer’s eyes snapped open, terror surging through him. The blight flas had been extinguished. The screaming had ceased.
"Sothing is wrong," he muttered, already preparing to escape through Oblivion.
But Oblivion required the doll.
Though he retained ownership over it, he could not activate it from a great distance. It had to be in his hand or physically bound to him. Only then could it serve as a channel for death aura, even if it remained stored within his inventory.
There were limits to this thod. He had learned that during his encounter with Josan.
That ti, he had invoked the doll’s ability, dismissed it almost instantly, and forced the death aura through Oblivion itself. The timing had been impossibly tight. It had been coincidence as much as skill that allowed him to succeed.
Had anything gone wrong, Josan would have stopped him long before he could escape.
Rosacer continued to monitor the creature from a distance. Nothing moved.
After several tense monts passed in silence, he began to descend the ridge, advancing toward the doll. The monster remained motionless.
Each step was deliberate, his movents asured to produce as little sound as possible.
"A few ters more," he murmured to himself, lowering into a crouch as he advanced.
His plan was simple. De summon the doll, then imdiately use it to access Oblivion and escape. He had already abandoned any thought of defeating the monster. If the opportunity presented itself, he would also retrieve the Daken knife, but his priority was leaving.
Removing either could awaken the creature the instant the connection was severed.
And if that happened, he would not have ti to run.
Rosacer was now within range. Inwardly, he issued the command to the system to de summon the doll.
The instant the connection severed, the monster’s eyes flared open.
It roared in brutish rage. The knife lodged in its flesh released its deafening poison, flooding the wound, yet the creature showed no reaction at all. The toxin was consud, erased, as though it had never existed.
Rosacer’s wrist was already flicking.
This ti, he was too late.
A tremor rippled through the mountain. The ground convulsed violently, cracks racing outward toward the forest below and across the mountain’s peak. Massive boulders tore free, tumbling down the slopes as the terrain itself began to collapse.
The crunch of flesh and bone. The deafening cries of an unbound soul. Sothing unnatural. Sothing starving bellowing from the beast.
It was a wise hunger poured out of the beast, heavy and suffocating, wrapping around the mountain like a living thing.
Slowly, the creature turned its head toward Rosacer.
He was already moving, already trying to flee.
The beast scread.
Blood burst from Rosacer’s eyes as the sound tore through him. In the sa instant, the monster lunged forward. Everything happened within a single breath.
The impact was catastrophic.
The creature slamd into him, hurling his body dozens of ters across the stone. Ribs shattered. His back broke. His limbs twisted grotesquely as he struck the ground, his body crumpling like discarded flesh.
Pain drowned him.
Yet Rosacer did not lose consciousness.
Through blurred vision and choking blood, he forced his will into motion. He activated the Grafted Sigil.
Bones ground against one another as they realigned. Muscles stitched themselves back together, torn flesh knitting with wet, agonizing precision.
"Not this ti," he muttered inwardly.
He forced himself upright, though his legs trembled beneath him. Standing alone felt like defiance.
He had learned his lesson during the fight with Kirata. Pain was irrelevant. The mont he allowed it to slow him, death would follow without hesitation.
"Alright," he whispered to himself. "What now?"
There was no longer any choice between running or fighting. Getting away was out of the question. The beast was too quick, too powerful, and utterly in control.
"In control," he repeated within his thoughts, forcing the chaos down, forcing his breathing to steady.
Rosacer turned inward and addressed the system. "Summon Arcis."
The space between him and the monster shuddered wildly. Reality crumpled inward, twisting like ripped fabric, and out of the distortion stepped a slender girl. Her feet landed without a sound, yet the mountain seed to tremble faintly, as if it too sensed her presence.
As always, her aura flowed outward, dense and undeniable—commanding, in control.
Rosacer raised a trembling arm and pointed toward the towering beast. "Kill it."
Exhaustion was getting better of him.
Arcis inclined her head in a small, almost indifferent nod.
Dark flas blood in her palm. Black, lightless, devouring even the glow of the monster’s eyes, they writhed as though alive.
Even Rosacer shuddered, when he saw the black flas in action again.
The beast roared and charged.
The ground shattered beneath its steps as it closed the distance in an instant, a mountain of flesh and rage hurtling toward her.
Arcis did not move.
She lifted her hand.
The black flas surged forward like a tide.
They struck the creature head on.
There was no bang, no sudden crash.
Instead, the flas effortlessly consud the monster’s charge. Its roar cut off suddenly as its body began to collapse, burning and crumbling apart at the sa ti.
Muscle slid away like soaked paper, while bone darkened and splintered, shrieking as it was taken by sothing far colder than fire.
The beast thrashed, striking blindly, tearing apart stone and earth, but each movent only fed the flas further. Its body began to warp, bulging and shrinking in unnatural rhythms.
Then it let out another scream.
Just then, sothing else tore free from within its chest.
A pale, distorted shape burst outward, howling as it erged, a soul dragged into the open at last. It writhed in the air, twisted by centuries of binding and hunger, its form barely holding together.
Arcis muttered, her eyes widening, "Hermit Soul."
The black flas recoiled from it.
The creature stopped in its tracks, suddenly realizing that sothing profound and essential had shifted.
The soul let out a final, echoing cry, then fled, streaking across the mountain like a dying star, vanishing into the depths beyond the peaks.
The monster’s body collapsed instantly.
What remained hit the ground with a dull, lifeless thud.
Silence followed.
Arcis let the flas fade from her hand and turned slightly toward Rosacer, her expression unreadable.
Rosacer sank to one knee, breath ragged, blood dripping from his chin.
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