Millions of people held their breath at the same time. I hoped that I’d been fast enough to finish him before the fight had even started, but I knew it was too good to be true. Just as with my Solar Mage form, his ability to change into his Dark Demon state was unlike most Shapeshifting. It happened in an instant.
Two massive Dark Magic paws reached out of the hole Manu was lying in. The stone walls crumbled as his claws found purchase and pulled him out. He looked like a living shadow with the limbs of a colossal ancient beast. He was a paragon of Dark Magic—a creature of shadow and corruption.
I hovered above him like a demonic prince with the power of the elements at my beck and call. Heat radiated off me as a lethal aura which combated the Dark Magic lightning that crackled over him and struck randomly in every direction.
This time I matched his stare with the same killing intent. His eyes were hidden beneath the Dark Magic plasma that covered him, but as he stared up at me, I could see that the only place on his form that wasn’t in constant chaos was the surface he was seeing through. He was looking right at me.
Our stalemate lasted no more than a second. Like an enraged giant ape, he jumped and grabbed for my tail. I let him have it. He pulled me toward him with volatile strength. His other arm streaked up to intercept me.
With the momentum of a falling star, I hurled toward his encroaching claws with no intention of slowing down. My fist flared.
The collision happened so quickly that there was a delay before a sonic boom followed. His arm was made up of dense mana, which was both solid and liquid. As my rock-hard fist struck, the surface of his paw hardened like cornstarch as it was compressed, and its mass teetered to the side like a falling tree.
Bringing my feet beneath me, I wrecked the stone tile as I landed in a crouch.
The arm that I’d struck recovered before plummeting after me while his other arm tightened its grip on my tail. He still hadn’t realized his old tricks wouldn’t work on me.
A cone of fire spewed from my mouth, engulfing his torso entirely and blinding him momentarily. When his claws reached me, I was already gone, running around him, and tying him up.
Come on! What are you hiding?
The same pulse of power he’d used to stun Sai burst in all directions. As it reached me, the inferno of my Crimson Incubus’s Enrage ability snarled into life and I broke through his little snare like a fish through water.
I’d almost run an entire circle around him when I tugged against his grip on my tail and sent him spinning before he toppled to the floor.
Eshana’s section rose up like a cackling fiend, throwing insults and scorn.
A roar of mechanical laughter sounded from Manu’s fallen form. He spoke with an inhuman sound. “Finally! Before you die, let me show you what will prove to be the greatest honor of your life.”
The air trembled as all the mana in the area seemed to be sucked into a vortex that was Manu Shah. His Dark Magic limbs retracted, and his enlarged form shrank. It was like his body was devouring his own mana and a glossy black version of his original self appeared standing where he had fallen. The transformation wasn’t complete. His body went through a series of spasms as it grew in both height and girth.
With Mana Sight at full strength, I studied his new form’s makeup through the mana realm. Unlike most vampires who had a larger portion of Darkness Aspect to their mana compared to Corruption, Manu’s form had become one of almost pure Corruption. I knew what this meant through my time experimenting with the two aspects. His physical presence and explosive abilities would skyrocket.
To the naked eye, his form didn’t swallow light as the Darkness Aspect would, but his flesh had become solidified destruction. No longer was his form chaotic. He’d been chiseled with acid to perfection and seemed corrosive to the air itself. His eyes were glistening ebony and had no color distinguishing them from the rest of his form.
In the face of his vampiric arrogance, how could I let his words stand? “Sorry, bud, but you’re not as pretty as you think you are.” My tail whipped toward the back of his head. It didn’t have the same momentum as my opening attack, but it would still be like getting hit with a telephone pole and, what’s more, it was in his blind spot.
Without giving any indication that he’d noticed the attack, he blurred into action. Grabbing my tail with one hand and using his other like a carver’s knife, he cut through the thick bronze like a slab of meat.
Considering that to power level my original tail growth ability I had to slice off my own tail repeatedly, it had little impact on me, but as a show of strength, his point echoed through the Coliseum.
Before the uncasting of my Metal Dragon tail had taken affect, he’d grabbed it again and disappeared. I felt the tug before his form had fully taken shape a dozen feet from where he’d stood. The next moment, I was flying across the arena as what was left of my tail dissipated into nothing.
With Mana Sight at full power, time was slowed, but it wasn’t enough to fully keep up with his speed. I had to rely on instinct and feel as I launched my fist to intercept his incoming attack.
His fist rose up to meet mine, and our knuckles met knuckle to knuckle. His strength couldn’t overpower my own, but in the next instant, his other fist flashed, and a force of purple energy preceded it as he drove it into my gut.
I rocketed toward my starting point and sped over it to plunge into the wall behind it. I’d started the fight by sending him flying into the wall and now he’d returned the favor.
That hurt. I was still in one piece, but 1,000,000 of my 5,771,816 HP was gone just like that. He’d finally woken up.
I watched from my perch within the rubble of the wall as he touched down outside to wait for me.
Let’s see if I can make a better entrance than you did.
Despite Crimson Incubus Form’s incarnate heat, the internal flame of Primordial Cat burned as if from a completely different level of the infernal abyss. The stands shook as I erupted from beneath them, sending tons of stone flying as if it were nothing but gravel. If it weren’t for the stands being magically reinforced, hundreds of spectators would have lost their seats as one side of the arena had no choice but to collapse.
I cocked my paw back like a heavyweight boxer as my vast form flew toward Manu at an ever increasing speed.
He stepped back as if to brace himself, but my claw drilled into him before he could fully ready himself. Shooting across the arena, he bounced once before carving out a second crater in the wall next to the first one.
I skidded to a stop on all fours near the middle of the arena as a hulking tiger of hardened lava.
A great assortment of people in the stands shot to their feet. As far as I could tell, it was the warriors from the older generation who had reacted. It wasn’t because my level threatened them, but because they knew what the Primordial Cat was.
In actuality, my current stats were similar to my 7x Crimson Incubus Form I’d used when fighting Eshana and the mana cost was much less. 35,000 Strength and Dexterity was only possible for bashers at this level who focused on almost nothing else. To put the icing on the cake, I could fight in this state indefinitely.
Manu Shah didn’t spend any time underground. The wall collapsed as he sprang out of it. He landed a good forty feet away to give me a curious look.
“Primordial Beast?” he called. “No wonder you thought little of my offer. If you had shown me this form then I would have given you a body of Trueblood on the spot. How about it? Let’s stop the pointless hostilities and compete as brothers. The Tir family is nothing but a bunch of idealistic fools who will soon be nothing more than a mountain of drained corpses. Join me, and a body of Trueblood will be yours, win or lose. Dying with them would be a waste.”
I’d rarely spoken when in my animalistic forms, but that didn’t mean it was impossible. Primordial Cat was easier than most because it wasn’t really made of flesh and blood. With a voice as rough as sandpaper and deep as a bottomless pit, I responded
, “You have threatened me and the people I care about. It’s time I teach you the point.”
The image of Sai’s cracked core flashed into my mind, followed by every worried look that had slipped past Jale’s control for me to see. I’d been uncertain whether I’d take his life when the time came. From his own words, he’d testified that he had every intention of murdering the vampires that had shown me that their race could be as noble as it was bloodthirsty. The heat inside me swelled, but my anger burned hotter.
I ate up the space between us, slashing down at his chest.
An energy-covered fist met the swipe of my claw. It still lost to my strength but was more even than I’d imagined.
We traded blows at a lightning pace. In his smaller form he relied on coating his fists in Dark Magic’s forceful power, where I used my size and disproportionate speed to rain down savagery.
He danced back and sideways, looking for an angle of attack.
With the athleticism of the king of all cats, I mirrored his every move with a counter of my own.
The entire arena became our battlefield as our speed took us from one side to the other as we sparred.
For a moment, I even started to appreciate what he was capable of. If it were Eshana I was facing, or even Jale, it would be a match I’d try to thoroughly enjoy, but it wasn’t. It was against a man I sought to kill.
I began channeling mana into my Primordial Cat Form until it cost twice as much, or 4,000 MPS. That was all that it took to gain another 10,000 stats to my Strength and my Dexterity. It was almost a 30% increase in power and speed. Without delay, I put it to use.
His fist met my claw, which threw his arm back.
Seeing the opening, I batted him aside like a cat does a ball. He tumbled across the ground but got his feet under him and came to a skidding stop before putting another hole in the arena wall.
The purple glow that surrounded his two fists began to soar, soon covering his entire body.
He appeared before me just as his afterimage disappeared from where he’d been standing. I swiped at his gleaming attack but my paw was knocked aside.
As he squared up in front of me, I pounced with an open mouth, ready to snap him in two.
Time seemed to freeze as power was drawn into his fist. Stepping forward, he drove the built-up energy straight into my lower jaw and it exploded.
The blow didn’t push me back, but tore my lower jaw clean off. As I was still bracing for impact, his shin collided with my feline shoulder just below the neck. My entire form whipped around from the impact, opening up my flank.
I didn’t have to do anything for my lower jaw to regenerate over a matter of a few seconds. The loss didn’t affect my HP, but I had lost magma during the exchange, so it had a similar effect. If I lost 75% of my magma then I’d be forcibly reverted to my human form. I was able to quickly replenish what I’d lost, but it wouldn’t solve my long-term problem of him being powerful enough to rip me apart.
At 4,000 MPS, I’d held back any channeling that would force me to dip into my mana pool. I had to admit that some part of me didn’t want to believe there was someone out there at my level that could force me to push Primordial Cat Form to its limit. But I’d been wrong.
I jumped and spun to counter his follow-up attack. With uncanny reflexes, I just managed to keep his explosive fist from tearing apart my back haunch. Doubling my channeling once again, 8,000 MSP was soon pouring into my form which gave me another 10,000 Strength and Dexterity, or 55,000 in each.
He seemed to sense my burst of power and brought his fist low as he summoned more energy into his hand. As I rebounded to the earth, my newly enhanced limbs smashed down.
A surge of energy burst from his form as he punched upward. My paws never reached him as the wave of power tossed me away like the cork from a bottle.
I twisted in the air to keep my eyes on him as I arched upward. How did he keep matching my strength?
In many ways, he reminded me of Sai when he buffed himself, but there were some radical differences. One was his seemingly unlimited ability to focus his energy into more and more powerful attacks. Somehow his speed also kept matching mine.
“Weak,” he mocked.
Fine, Mr. Purple Glowstick. Let’s see what happens when you get snapped in two.
The space in which I flew practically ruptured as I removed my channeling limit and mana gushed into my Primordial Cat Form. I surpassed 4x in an instant and 5x came and went. I landed nearly a hundred feet from Manu Shah as my form flew past 6x as if it were a spectator standing still. I surpassed 4,000,000 MPM and I wasn’t even halfway there.
Manu’s lifeless eyes widened when he saw what was going on. He didn’t sit still to let me power up. He appeared at my forward flank with a blinding light covering his fist.
Not this time.
He disappeared from my side in a flash with a simple swipe of my claw. A crevasse soon scarred the ground like the opening of an immense zipper being pulled in the direction that he fell. Instead of burrowing into the wall, he came to a stop in a seated position near the middle of the arena.
With each additional 10,000 stats from my Primordial Cat Form, the cost of channeling doubled. 8,000,000 MPM wasn’t my limit even though the supposedly indestructible tiles beneath my feet were already melting and those in the surrounding area had steam rolling off of them. Or was that smoke billowing up as they readied to combust.
My channeling rolled to a stop at 15,360,000 MPM, or 256,000 MPS. 8x Primordial Cat Form did the impossible. It brought the physical stats of a level 10,000 caster past 100,000 for a limited period of time. I didn’t receive the 100,000 stat bonuses, but it was as if I was a living volcano and all its eruptive pressure was my strength. Two minutes would be my limit.
Although I couldn’t see my full profile, glancing down, I saw the change that had taken place after catching a glimpse of my paws. Instead of the rough grey of igneous rock, my form’s flesh had become ruby red with the internal radiance of a hot coal, but also crystalline in nature. It was as if I was a living ruby molded into a cat titan.
Instead of the people in the stands fleeing, the strongest among them flew forward to add their strength to the normally invisible barrier that protected the audience. Among this assembly was the beast-feeder that had plunged his fist into Sai’s chest and brought him back from the brink of death. Seeing him gave me a sense of relief regarding what I was about to do. I could rest assured that only Manu would feel my wrath.
The side of the arena in which I stood was already a land of molten rock. The tiles were completely unrecognizable as what they’d been before.
Manu had come to his feet and gained some distance. His aura increased to the size of a purple pillar. He still dared to face me. For some reason, his family hadn’t sent anyone to pull him from the fight while there was still hope. They wouldn’t get another chance.
I struck.
His feet flew out from under him.
While he was still sideways in the air, my claw appeared as the shadow of death as I drove it downward. He drilled into the ground, only stopping after traveling dozens of feet.
Like a puppy that had found a prize, I dug at the ground with my front paws as the stone turned molten in great globs and I cleared tons of rock in seconds.
Finding where he lay, I snapped him up with my jaws and leaped out of the new pool of liquid rock. Lava flew everywhere as I glided through the air like a playful cat toying with its food and shaking it back and forth.
Before I landed, I threw back my head and tossed him straight up more than a hundred feet in the air. Crouching down as I landed, my Primordial Form seemed to change as I gathered my strength. My legs took on a more human shape and my front paw turned into a modified fist. I sprang upward.
You’re finished.
As the thought entered my head, I saw the streams of Dark Mana pouring into him from all directions. His mana should have almost been spent even if he were still alive, but the vortex I’d seen
before had opened again, and the forcefield that was meant to protect the audience was providing him energy. He’d found a way to tap into an ocean of power.
In the moment of his death, he became a peerless flare. The explosion blew us apart.
If I could fly I would have already been on top of him once again, but I couldn’t and had to land.
He landed opposite me and had undergone another change. His ebony body became his core and liquid mana covered him in a thick layer. It was like he was wrapped in purple lightning.
His vortex was still churning, replenishing his mana. It seemed that as long as the forcefield protecting the audience existed, he’d never run out.
I glanced over to the one powerhouse I knew. The beast-feeder met my gaze and shook his head. If he stopped what he was doing then the audience would be in danger, so he didn’t have a choice.
Jale’s voice suddenly sounded in my head. “Withdraw, Zerin! With this ability, he’s invincible here. You already proved enough.”
“I can’t do that, Jale,” I replied with an appreciative tone. “This is why I’m here. I came to gain experience and retrieve what I need to free my friends from the grasp of a tyrant. If I can’t win against Manu Shah, then I’ll never defeat true monsters. Don’t worry. I’m not trying to prove anything. It won’t take much longer.”
“No, stop! Zerin, you slug sucking…” Her jaw clamped down on her words.
I found her swearing oddly sweet since it was so foreign coming from her.
The fight had really not been going on awfully long. Maybe a few minutes at the most from start to finish. From the moment I powered up to 8x Primordial Cat to now, it had been less than fifteen seconds so most of my mana remained unspent. Things had escalated so quickly…
“Are you thinking about running away?!” Manu roared. It sounded as if he had trouble holding back.
Trying to throw my words back at me, huh? “No. I was wondering if Dark Mana could burn,” I rumbled back.
Underworld - Scorching Sun: A LitRPG Series Page 26