Pain was a bright, hot brand against the cold void of the Fiend form. The chief's earthen spear hadn't just cracked a rib; it had sent a tremor of pure, dense earth mana through Damian's body, disrupting the flow of his shadow-power. The gnawing on his soul intensified. He could almost hear the seconds ticking down, feel the cracks in his spirit widening like fault lines under pressure.
He straightened up, ignoring the fiery ache in his side. The fifteen remaining guards and the chief formed a ragged, desperate line. Their fear was still there, but it was now edged with a flicker of hope. The chief had hurt him.
Damian's mind, colder than the shadow-armor plating his skin, analyzed the battlefield with ruthless speed.
Problem: Fifteen enemies, including one 3rd Order Rank 6 chief. Direct engagement, even in Fiend form, would take too long. The soul-burn would finish him before he finished them. The chief was the lynchpin. His power and leadership were holding the remnants together.
Solution: Isolate and neutralize the chief. Quickly. Then mop up the demoralized rest.
But the chief wasn't some brute. He was a tactical earth-shaper. He wouldn't be easily drawn into a one-on-one brawl. He'd use his people as shields, as distractions. Damian needed to remove him from the board.
His eyes flickered to the corner of his vision. System Credits: 750. A pittance. But it was all he had left.
"Shop," he thought, the command desperate and silent. "Earth techniques. Sealing. Trapping. Now!"
The familiar, grid-like shop interface superimposed itself over the bloody square. It was dizzying. Rows upon rows of techniques, glowing with internal light, ranked by power and cost.
[Earth Technique Shop - Filter: Sealing/Trapping]
He saw them, and his heart sank even as his mind raced.
[F-Rank: Mud-Snap Bindings - 50 Credits] - Basic mud trap, slows common beasts.
[E-Rank: Stone-Grasp Field - 200 Credits] - Causes hands of stone to erupt from ground, holds 1st-2nd Order foes.
[D-Rank: Earthen Coffin - 800 Credits] - Encases single target in solid stone. Breakable by strong 3rd Order physical strikes.
[C-Rank: Terra-Lock Chains - 3,000 Credits] - Mana-disrupting chains of compressed earth. Effective against 3rd-4th Order.
[B-Rank: Mountain's Embrace Seal - 12,000 Credits] - Creates a localized gravity well and stone prison.
[A-Rank: Geodetic Prison Algorithm - 45,000 Credits] - Advanced spatial-earth binding. Analyzes target's mana resonance and creates a custom, adaptive prison. Highly effective against single targets up to 5th Order.
[S-Rank and Above: LOCKED - Insufficient System Level.]
His eyes locked on the A-Rank technique. Geodetic Prison Algorithm. It was perfect. An adaptive, intelligent seal that would tailor itself to the chief's earth affinity, holding him while Damian dealt with the others. But 45,000 credits? It might as well have been a million.
The D-Rank Earthen Coffin was all he could afford. 800 credits. He only had 750.
A notification pulsed, red and urgent.
[Insufficient Funds for 'Earthen Coffin' (800).]
[Option: Short-Term Credit Extension Available.]
[Terms: 100 Credit loan. 24-hour repayment window. Failure to repay: 10% soul integrity penalty.]
A loan. With his soul as collateral. The sheer, predatory audacity of it almost made him laugh. His System was truly a partner in monstrosity.
The chief was gathering another wave of earth spikes around his feet. The guards were fanning out, trying to flank him. Time was up.
"Take it," Damian snarled in his mind.
[Credit Extension Accepted. Current Balance: 850 Credits.]
[Purchasing: D-Rank Technique - 'Earthen Coffin'.]
[Cost: 800 Credits. Remaining Balance: 50 Credits.]
Knowledge flooded his mind—a simple, brutal pattern of earth mana manipulation. Focus, compression, containment. It wasn't elegant. It was a blunt instrument.
He had no time to practice. He had to cast it now.
"He's hesitating!" one of the 3rd Order lieutenants, a man with eyes like flint, yelled. "The chief's blow hurt him! Now, all together!"
They surged forward, a final, coordinated attack. The stone-armed woman led, her limbs elongating into crushing pillars. The flint-eyed man's hands glowed, ready to unleash a concussive blast of compressed gravel. Others followed, their varied abilities flaring.
The chief remained at the back, his hands weaving, preparing a larger, battlefield-altering attack.
Damian ignored the charging mob. His Fiend-form eyes, pools of swirling darkness, locked onto the chief. He dropped his swords. They clattered on the stone, forgotten.
He brought his clawed hands together, not in a prayer, but in a brutal, forceful clap. Then he slammed them, palms down, onto the bloody ground.
"Earthen Coffin!" he roared, the words torn from him, raw and guttural.
He poured not just his remaining earth mana, but a surge of the Fiend form' corrosive darkness into the technique, twisting the simple D-rank spell with his own monstrous will.
The ground beneath Chief Hilary didn't just rise. It exploded upwards in a violent geyser of black-streaked, jagged stone. It wasn't a neat box. It was a chaotic, spike-filled maw of rock that snapped shut around the old man with a sound like a mountain grinding its teeth.
Hilary's focused spell shattered. He had time for one shout of surprise before the tons of angry, shadow-tainted stone encased him completely, leaving only a rough, pulsating rock formation in the shape of a crude coffin.
The charge of the fifteen guards faltered. Their leader was gone. Sealed in stone before their eyes.
"The chief!" the stone-armed woman screamed, skidding to a halt.
"Forget him! Kill the caster! Break the seal after!" the flint-eyed man bellowed, his composure cracking.
But the moment of unity was broken. Their coordination shattered with their chief's disappearance.
Damian didn't give them time to think. The soul-burn was an inferno in his chest now. He had minutes. Maybe less.
He launched himself at them, a horned demon of vengeance. Without the chief's support, they were just powerful individuals.
He targeted the flint-eyed man first—the second-in-command. The man unleashed his gravel-blast. Damian took it on his shadow-armored chest, the impact staggering him but not stopping him. He closed the distance, his claws raking across the man's throat in a spray of blood and rock-dust.
The stone-armed woman swung a giant fist. He ducked under it, came up inside her guard, and drove his shadow-clawed hand into her stomach, ripping upwards. Her stone skin cracked like porcelain.
It was a brutal, desperate melee. He was faster, stronger, and utterly ruthless. But they were fifteen 3rd Order adepts, fighting for their lives. They landed blows. A whip of thorny vines from a plant-affinity user sliced across his back. A jet of superheated steam from a rare thermal-affinity adept seared his shoulder, making the shadow-armor hiss.
He killed a woman who could turn her hair into razor-wire. He shattered the knees of a man whose shout could shatter eardrums. He absorbed a bolt of chaotic lightning from a storm-affinity user, his darkness eating the energy but the backlash making his vision blur.
He was a tempest of pain and death. Each kill was harder than the last. His movements grew less precise, more savage. The Fiend form was consuming him, its hunger echoing his own.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity of metal, blood, and screaming mana, only three guards remained. They were the toughest, the most cunning—a hulking man with the hide of a rhino, a slender woman who moved in brief bursts of impossible speed, and a silent, grim-faced elder whose touch caused localized gravity to intensify.
They were bloodied, panting, standing over the bodies of their comrades. Damian faced them, swaying slightly. His shadow-armor was fractured in a dozen places, oozing darkness like blood. One of his horns was chipped. He was bleeding from a dozen wounds where their attacks had pierced his defenses. The soul-burn was a deafening roar in his ears. He was below 40% integrity and falling fast.
He gathered himself for one last push to finish the final three.
Then, a sound like a miniature earthquake.
CRACK-BOOM!
The black-streaked Earthen Coffin exploded outwards. Shards of rock, sharp as daggers, scythed through the air.
Chief Hilary stood amidst the wreckage, heaving great breaths. His robes were torn, his face was cut and bloody, but his eyes burned with an unquenchable fire. His earth mana raged around him, denser than ever. He had not just broken the seal; he had annihilated it through sheer, furious power.
He looked at the square—at the mountains of his people's bodies, at his three last guards standing battered before the bleeding, horned demon. The grief and rage on his face solidified into something terrible and absolute.
Damian wiped blood from his mouth, his Fiend-form lips pulling back in a pained, defiant grin. He looked at the furious chief, then at the three exhausted guards.
"Well," Damian rasped, his voice distorted by the transformation, raw and mocking. "Took you long enough, Hilary. I was starting to think you'd decided to take a nap in there."