"Don't... kill them..."
Elena's voice was a fragile thread, but to Barn, it was louder than the shattering of the titan's core.
He froze, his boots hovering over the splintered wood, his massive fists trembling as the terrifying aura of the Golem King Slayer violently rippled.
"Elena..."
Barn rasped, turning his weathered face back toward her.
"He destroyed our home.
He put his hands on you.
He broke those kids."
Elena's eyes fluttered open just a fraction, the brilliant emerald of her gaze cloudy and strained.
"If you do the same thing he did... what makes you better than him?
I feel... I feel a spark in him, Barn.
He is a fool, blinded by his own pathetic dreams.
He said... he said he wouldn't need to do bad things if he only had an elf wife.
He is desperate, stupid, and angry. Do not let your wrath consume who you are."
She coughed, a small trickle of dark blood marring her lips, but she forced a weak, shaking finger toward the corner of the room.
"Don't worry about him. Go... help Hanjun and Jayhon. They are on the ground... injured badly. Go to them."
"But what about you?"
Barn's voice dropped, laced with a rare, desperate panic.
"Your Life-Zheki is failing, Elena. The heat cauterized your wounds—"
"Im your wife afterall... I got this,"
she whispered, her lips pulling into a faint, defiant smile.
"Just... give me a moment of peace to concentrate."
Barn swallowed the lump in his throat and nodded.
He couldn't let her down.
He stamped his heavy boot, and the stone foundation beneath Elena began to churn and rise.
Like a fluid wave, the rock elegantly curved upward, wrapping around her body until it formed a massive, seamless stone sphere,
sealing her safely inside a protective ball.
With Elena secured, Barn pivoted and rushed toward the corner.
Hanjun and Jayhon lay twisted in the debris, their breathing shallow and ragged.
Jayhon's arms were bent at horrific, sickening angles from where Rodolf had stomped them, and Hanjun's facial bones were visibly
fractured under his bruised skin.
Barn knelt beside them, a heavy sweat breaking out on his brow. He was a warrior, a destroyer of mountains—but over the past
fifteen years, he had watched Elena closely.
He had memorized the rhythm of her energy, the specific, gentle cadence of how she channeled Life-Zheki.
Dropping his center of gravity deep into his gut, Barn forced his raw Earth-Zheki to change.
He didn't use it to crush; instead, he pulled the dense, mineral-rich properties of the stone below, infusing it with the basic healing methods he had learned from his wife.
He placed his massive palms over the boys' chests.
A dull, rhythmic green-brown light vibrated through his hands.
It wasn't as pure or effortless as Elena's, but the sheer volume of Barn's internal energy forced the boys' broken bodies to respond.
The shattered bones in Jayhon's arms popped and aligned with a dull click, the internal bleeding in Hanjun's torso instantly stanching.
They were still deeply unconscious, but their breathing stabilized.
Wiping the sweat from his eyes, Barn stood up. He walked back to the stone ball, waving his hand to let the rock split open.
Elena was pale but breathing, her internal organs steadily knitting back together.
"Time to leave,"
Barn muttered.
He gathered the limp bodies of Hanjun and Jayhon under one massive arm and gently scooped Elena into the other.
Stamping his foot again, the earth rose up, but this time, Barn reached deeper into the crust, pulling the heavy metallic veins from the bedrock.
A massive sphere of solid, reinforced metal cased them in.
Barn poured an immense, staggering amount of his internal energy into the structure, layering it with heavy ripples of compressed Earth-Zheki until the metal ball looked utterly primordial and unbreakable.
Before he sealed the final, small opening at the top of the sphere, Barn looked down at Elena's peaceful face.
"Elena, wait for me,"
Barn said softly, his voice echoing inside the metal shell.
"We'll be getting out of this bad kingdom for good. It was all my fault for bringing us here to hide. I'll just do some stuff out there and come back, alright?"
He closed the final hole, sealing the sphere completely.
Standing inside the ruins of his kitchen, Barn raised his single right hand beneath the massive metal ball.
His veins bulged, a terrifying gravity anchoring his boots to the floor.
With a single, explosive heave of his arm, he launched the unbreakable sphere out of the house.
The ball tore through the shattered ceiling, soaring up into the sky like a shooting star. It flew incredibly high and incredibly far, completely clearing the sprawling slums, soaring clean over the majestic, golden citadel of King Lucas, and passing directly over the gargantuan outer walls of the kingdom before plunging downward, landing with a distant, heavy thud into the endless sand of the outer deserts.
They were safe.
Barn's face went entirely cold.
He turned toward the tunnel-like hole in his wall.
With one magnificent, shattering jump, he launched himself through the air.
A mile away, wedged deeply into the crater of the kingdom's monolithic outer wall, Rodolf was coughing violently, blood bubbling from his lips.
His mind was spinning in absolute terror.
Damn it... Rodolf thought, his vision swimming with black spots.
What did I do to that guy? He acts like I killed his wife and children! And why is he so strong?! He gave me that exact same oppressive, suffocating aura that the King of Morvane has before he punched me!
Desperate to survive, Rodolf squeezed his heart, forcing his internal Fire-Zheki to ignite. A wild, chaotic orange flame erupted over his entire body.
Most Fire-Zheki users only knew how to burn and destroy, but Rodolf was elite.
He knew that if a user possessed enough raw control, fire could be used to burn away diseases, negatives, and almost every shred of pain inside the muscle tissue.
It was an incredibly rare, nearly impossible feat of self-healing, but Rodolf forced it to happen.
The heat hissed against his shattered ribs, but his control was too unstable.
The fire was barely working, sputtering against his severe trauma.
Rodolf let out a pathetic groan, his body unsticking from the crater and falling heavily onto the cobblestones below.
Damn it... he realized bitterly.
My healing is too weak.
Just to stand up... I'm going to need at least four hours.
BOOM.
The stones beneath him shattered as Barn landed heavily in front of him, the dust exploding outward like a shockwave.
Rodolf didn't even have time to scream.
Barn reached down with a lightning-fast, brutal grip, his massive, calloused fingers wrapping firmly around Rodolf's right ear.
He pulled upward with agonizing, relentless force, lifting the guard off the ground by his cartilage.
"If you want to marry an elf so badly,"
Barn said, his voice a low, terrifying growl,
"then go to their kingdom and find an elf for yourself."
"Aaaagh! Stop! Loose!"
Rodolf shrieked in absolute, blinding pain, his legs dangling uselessly.
"Entering their kingdom... it's not possible for someone like me! They hardly let anyone in! You need bloodline certificates!"
Barn's eyes narrowed into a terrifying glare.
"Not anymore."
Without an ounce of hesitation, Barn gripped Rodolf's left ear with his other hand.
With a slow, brutal, and precise application of his Earth-Zheki, he forcefully molded and pulled the flesh upward.
Rodolf's screams echoed off the massive kingdom walls as his cartilage stretched and lengthened, reforming until his human ears were pointed, elongated, and looked exactly like the ears of an elf.
Barn grabbed Rodolf by the scruff of his scorched clothes, hoisting his battered body high above his head.
He drew his right arm back, his muscles coiling like a heavy iron spring.
With a deafening crack that broke the sound barrier, Barn threw Rodolf.
Rodolf was launched with such incredible, blinding speed that the friction of the air instantly set his clothes on fire.
He was a human missile, flying across the continent toward the distant eastern mountains where the Elven Kingdom resided. The wind was roaring in his ears, his skin burning so violently that the sheer pressure threatened to peel his face off.
But as the terrifying velocity forced his internal temperature to skyrocket, Rodolf's eyes suddenly widened in realization.
The external, friction-induced heat was mixing with his own internal Fire-Zheki.
The intense, agonizing speed was forcing his fire to burn wider, hotter, and with a hyper-compressed density he had never achieved before.
The roaring flames around him began to violently purge the fractured bones and ruptured organs, accelerating his self-healing at a miraculous speed.
Barn's brutal throw had done the impossible. It had pushed Rodolf's Fire-Zheki past its limits, facilitating the very healing he needed to survive the impact.
To anyone watching, it looked like Barn had just brutally murdered the guard—but in reality, he had given him the exact tools and appearance he needed to reach his dream.
Back at the base of the massive cracked wall, Barn lowered his smoking hand.
The wind caught his unruly hair as he slowly turned his head, his vacant, dark gaze looking back toward the golden spires of the inner citadel.