The group was sprinting through a graveyard of mangled corpses when the world exploded in a silent flash of light. The light erupted from the direction of the besieged camp, a wave of pure, searing radiance that washed over the landscape, so intense it bleached the colour from the world for a breathtaking instant.
The four of them skidded to a halt, shielding their eyes.
"What in the heavens was that?" Elara breathed, her voice filled with awe.
Alex lowered his hand, his Immortal Eyes drinking in the aftermath. He saw a vast, beautiful wave of multi-hued Qi, containing every color on the spectrum, rolling outwards before slowly dissipating. It felt clean, righteous, and overwhelmingly powerful. There was no trace of the sickening green-black taint he associated with the enemy.
"I don't know," he said, a frown creasing his brow. "But it doesn't feel like things are going well." The power was immense, yet there was an undercurrent to it, a subtle strain that left a strange, unsettled feeling in his gut. "Something's off. We need to pick up the pace."
They needed no further convincing. They broke into a dead sprint, pushing their bodies to their limits as they navigated the corpse-strewn terrain.
They ran for what felt like an eternity until a sharp, piercing screech cut through the air from above.
SKREEEEE!
Lumen's cry was not the usual warning this time; it was a shriek of pure, undiluted alarm.
Alex stopped dead in his tracks, his body going rigid. He threw up a hand, a silent, absolute command for the others to halt. He didn't turn around, his gaze fixed on the dense, gnarled woods just ahead of them.
"Something big is coming," he said, his voice a low, serious rumble that cut through their ragged breaths.
The three of them instantly took defensive positions, their eyes scanning the shadows. As they watched Alex's back, they saw the subtle shift in his posture, the slight relaxing of his shoulders, the way his head tilted with a hunter's focus. And then they saw it. A slow, dangerous smile crept onto his face.
Lily's blood ran cold. "Oh no," she breathed. She stepped forward, her voice sharp. "Alex. Whatever you're thinking, stop it right now. This isn't a training platform."
"She's right," Jay added, his own hand gripping the hilt of his sabre. "We're a team. We face this together. Don't do anything stupid."
Alex finally turned, a look of genuine confusion on his face. "What are you guys talking about? I'm not doing anything."
Elara just sighed, a weary look on her face. "Yes, you are, Alex. You get that creepy smile on your face whenever you're about to do something ridiculously dangerous and dumb all by yourself."
He opened his mouth to deny it, but paused. The accusation hit him with the uncomfortable weight of truth. Although he was planning on testing a new Qi infusion technique, he'd thought of… He couldn't exactly admit that.
"I was not," he said, his voice losing some of its conviction.
Lumen chose that moment to dive from the sky, landing perfectly on Alex's shoulder. The bird let out a single, sharp squawk that sounded suspiciously like a scolding.
"I wasn't!" Alex insisted, shooting his own beast a betrayed look.
ROOOOOOOAAAAARRR!
The sound was not just a roar; it was a physical force. It slammed into them, a wave of pure, guttural rage that made the air tremble and their own Qi roil in their meridians. The banter died instantly, replaced by a cold, primal fear.
A silhouette began to emerge from the deep shadows between two ancient trees. It moved with a stiff, unnatural gait, like a marionette whose strings had been cut and then clumsily reattached. It was massive, taller than a bear, its form vaguely familiar but horribly wrong.
As it stepped into a patch of dim light, the full, grotesque sight of it was revealed.
It had once been a stag, a king of this forest. But that was a lifetime ago. The entire right side of its body was a nightmare of blackened, sizzling flesh, the fur burned away to reveal scorched muscle and charred bone. Its right eye was a melted, weeping socket, and half of its majestic rack of antlers was gone, snapped off and cauterized into a blackened stump. This was a creature that had stood on the edge of the Radiant Sun Array and had somehow, impossibly, survived.
But its survival had come at a terrible price. The left side of its body was a riot of corrupt, unnatural life. Thick, pulsating veins of sickly green light pulsed beneath its hide, and clusters of phosphorescent fungi grew from its flank like open sores. Its remaining antler was no longer bone, but a gnarled, twisted branch of petrified, dead wood, from which two smaller, claw-like branches had sprouted. It was a walking contradiction, a grotesque fusion of holy purification and unholy blight, a creature at war with its own ravaged body.
It was once a Willow-Heart Stag, the ruler and peacekeeper of these once tranquil woods. Now corrupted by blight, the wounded, enraged ruler of these woods had come to find the source of the golden light that had almost unmade it.
It fixed its single, remaining eye, an orb of pure, burning hatred, on the four small figures who stood in its path, and it let out another roar, a promise of a slow, agonizing death.
The tainted stag charged.
Its movements were a grotesque paradox, the right side stiff and clumsy from its horrific burns, the left side bursting with the unnatural, twitching speed of the blight. It was a lurching, limping gait that still covered the ground with a speed that made the Marshlurker look like a slumbering tortoise. The sheer power radiating from it was a suffocating pressure, magnitudes stronger than anything they had ever faced before.
"Scatter!" Alex roared, the single word a command born of pure survival instinct.
They dove apart in a frantic, uncoordinated explosion of movement, the ground where they had been standing a moment before being pulverized under the beast's thunderous hooves. The creature skidded to a halt, its single hateful eye swiveling, trying to acquire a new target.
Elara was the first to act. With a sharp, focused gesture, she pulled on the ambient moisture in the air. Tendrils of frost shot across the ground, racing towards the stag's legs, attempting to lock it in place. The ice latched onto its scorched right foreleg, but the beast let out a snort of pure contempt. With a single, flexing twitch of its muscle, the ice shattered into a thousand glittering shards.
It had failed. And the failure had drawn its full, undivided attention. The stag locked its burning eye on Elara and charged again, its gnarled, claw-like antler lowered like a lance.
"Elara, move!" Jay bellowed, intercepting its path. He didn't raise a wall. He stomped his foot, and a single, thick spike of earth, its tip gleaming with a metallic, silvery sheen, shot up from the ground. It struck the stag's shoulder with a deafening CRANG, the force just enough to make the creature stumble, its charge veering away from Elara and towards Jay himself.
He had drawn its ire. The stag whipped its head around, its corrupted antler now aimed to pierce Jay's heart.
But the redirection had created an opening. A razor-thin crescent of wind sliced through the air with a soft whoosh, nicking the petrified wood of the antler. It wasn't enough to do real damage, but it was enough to make the beast flinch, its lethal strike going wide.
That was the second opening. The one Alex had been waiting for.
From the moment the stag appeared, he hadn't moved. He had been preparing, his Immortal Eyes locked in seeing not a monster, but a chaotic equation of elemental energies. Too durable for pure force. Too fast for a simple trap. Burn it. Hobble it. We need to whittle down its defense and stop its movement.
He had altered his Myriad Bullet. He had woven a core of pure, explosive Fire Qi, then wrapped it in a spiraling vortex of Wind Qi, not to provide structure, but to act as an accelerant, bellows to feed the flame.
Now, as the stag flinched from Lily's attack, his work was finished. He pointed his finger forward.
A fist-sized ball of roaring, orange-white flame, trailing a tail of swirling wind, shot across the clearing with the speed of an arrow. It slammed into the stag's corrupted left hind leg. The impact wasn't a dull thud, but an adhesive explosion. The fire stuck, the wind feeding it, turning the phosphorescent fungi and blighted hide into a torch.
The stag let out a shriek of pure agony, a sound that was half roar, half sizzling hiss. Its back leg was now a column of raging fire.
"Now, Elara!" Alex yelled.
Elara seized the moment. The stag's focus was on the fire, its balance compromised. She poured her Qi into a single, focused attack. The ground around the creature's unburnt front leg flash-froze, a thick, solid block of azure ice climbing up to its knee, locking it in place.
With one leg burning and the other trapped, the stag thrashed wildly. For a moment, they thought they had it. But the sheer, blighted power of the creature was immense. With a final, guttural roar, it shattered the ice, tearing its own leg free, and launched itself, wounded but not broken, directly at Jay.
There was no time to dodge. Jay crossed his sabre in front of his chest, pouring every last wisp of his Qi into his defense. The familiar bronze glow of his earthen armor erupted, but woven within it was a shimmering, silvery light, the unyielding metal Qi manifested.
The stag's gnarled antler struck him dead center.
THOOOOM!
The sound was a deep, concussive boom that sent a shockwave of force through the air. Jay was launched backward like a stone from a catapult, tumbling through the air before crashing into the treeline twenty meters back. But he had held. He pushed himself up, his robes torn, his face pale, but impossibly, he was uninjured.
"A few more of those!" Lily's voice was strained, her face slick with sweat. She sent two more Silent Gale Razors flying, her Qi reserves clearly at their limit. The blades scraped against the stag's hide, leaving shallow, smoking cuts but doing no substantial damage.
Alex was already moving. He sprinted to Jay, shoving a mid-grade recovery pill into his hand. "You good?"
"Yeah," Jay gasped. "I'm good."
Alex turned and saw Lily leaning on her knees, breathing heavily. He was at her side in an instant, handing her another pill. He looked over at Elara. Her face was a mask of pure, desperate concentration. She was pushing herself beyond her limits, her hands outstretched as a massive, swirling dome of frost and ice began to form around the enraged, wounded stag, slowing its movements, trying to lock it down completely. It was a monumental effort, and it was working, but not for long. The ice was already cracking under the creature's furious struggles.
Jay saw it too. "Help her!" he roared. He slammed his palms onto the ground, and six massive, silver-tipped earth spikes erupted from the ground, not just around the stag, but into it, impaling its limbs and torso, pinning it in place within Elara's dome of frost.
The stag let out one last, gargantuan roar of defiance, but it was held fast.
This was their chance. The only one they would get.
Alex moved in. He coated both of his fists in Earth Qi. Jay, watching from a distance, saw that it was different from the spar with Kai Jin. It wasn't just a crude, thick layer. It was denser, more stable, the shimmering brown light so compressed it looked almost like stone had crusted over his hands.
Alex was no longer thinking. He was a weapon. He exploded forward, a blur of motion that closed the distance in a heartbeat. He didn't aim for a weak spot.
His first punch slammed into the stag's face with a sound like a boulder shattering. The second followed, and the third, and the fourth. It was a relentless, brutal barrage of pure power. He was a living jackhammer, his fists a blur of motion, each blow carrying the unyielding weight of the earth. He felt the creature's bones crack, then shatter, then turn to paste under the onslaught. He didn't stop until the thrashing ceased, until the last flicker of green light in its single eye died out, until its massive, broken body went completely limp, held up only by Jay's impaling spikes.
Silence returned to the forest, broken only by the ragged, panting breaths of four utterly exhausted disciples.