Chapter 139: Rift
There were no lips, no eyelids, no nose—just a grotesque, skull-like visage.
Teeth were permanently bared in a rictus grin, the eyes sunken deep into sockets framed by cords of exposed tendon.
The cheek muscles stood out in raw prominence, every twitch of his snarl tugging those red fibers like a puppet’s strings.
The overall look was raw, glossy, and wet, as though he’d been freshly flayed—every layer exposed—making him both monstrous and, in a disturbing way, eerily human in shape.
Gross.
Whatever he once was, Amon was gone.
Completely swallowed by this blood-fueled juju, leaving behind nothing but a beast wrapped in human form.
He let out a scream that rattled through the clearing, a sound somewhere between agony and fury, blood surging over his arms, coating them until the crimson hardened into grotesque blades.
Then he lunged, bringing one down in a savage strike meant to cleave me in two.
I raised [Mana Shield].
The barrier snapped to life just in time, and his blade slammed into it with a bone-rattling crack.
The shield fractured instantly, spiderweb cracks racing across its surface.
The sheer force of the blow told me everything I needed to know—if I hadn’t raised it, the strike would have cut me clean in half.
Before the shards of mana had even finished breaking apart, he moved again.
His arm swept sideways, and with it came another lash of blood hardened into a whip-blade, a strike fast enough to blur the air around it.
It connected—
But instead of tearing me open, the blow slipped harmlessly past, sliding off me like water spilling across glass, [Fractured Existence] bending space around me to nullify the strike.
I shot forward, Gravefang cutting a sharp arc through the air.
He met me head-on, his arm reshaped into a grotesque blade, the crimson edge hissing with power as it came down to intercept mine.
But there was no clash.
I had already warped past him, reappearing above and behind.
My blade plunged downward, the tip driving through the top of his skull with a sickening crack. Bone split, red mist hissed out like steam, and for a moment his body jerked violently under the force.
I didn’t linger. I wrenched free and lunged away, landing lightly as he turned toward me, the wound already knitting together. Steam poured off his body in heavy waves, his aura boiling with rage.
Then he came at me again, fast and frenzied.
His movements were erratic, wild swings of his blood-forged limbs crashing down like a beast gone mad.
Each strike carried enough force to shatter stone, but I met them all with Gravefang, parrying, deflecting, letting his strength bleed into the ground rather than me.
He snarled, pressing harder, but I had already shifted my focus.
Casually, almost as an afterthought, I raised a hand and conjured flame. Orbs ignited around me in rapid succession, then flew forward one after another.
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
They struck his face and torso in a staccato rhythm, detonating with bursts of fire that pushed him back step by step.
The blasts forced him to stagger, his head whipping from the impact, blood sizzling as it evaporated under the heat.
The moment his footing faltered, I made my move.
I dashed past him in a blur, Gravefang flashing once, almost too quick for the eye to follow.
When I stopped, I didn’t need to look back.
His head was already gone.
The pendant flared a violent red, light pulsing like a heartbeat as Amon’s head knitted back together once more.
I didn’t give him the chance to breathe.
The instant his features reformed, I blew them apart again.
And again.
Each time the pendant flared, each time his skull began to take shape, I struck, shattering it before it was whole.
My response each time was relentless, merciless.
Again and again. Until at last, there was nothing left of him but bare bone.
His flesh had burned away, his muscle reduced to ash, leaving behind a skeletal frame bound together by threads of red mist.
He looked less like a goblin, less like a beast, and more like some undead mockery pulled straight from a graveyard nightmare. The pendant still clung to his chest, its glow the only thing tethering that husk of a body together.
I adjusted my grip on Gravefang, my knuckles whitening around the hilt.
Then I drew in a sharp breath, steady and cold, as I prepared the final strike.
It was time to end this.
I slashed.
But this was no ordinary cut.
The blade shimmered with foreign energy, a distortion that bent the air as it carved forward.
When it connected, it didn’t simply cut—it unraveled.
The strike caught the blood fiend by the shoulder, and in an instant his form began to tear apart, the energy unweaving the blood-forged flesh, pulling it loose thread by thread until the corruption could no longer hold.
But it did more than just tear through him.
The moment my slash connected, the energy didn’t simply stop—it lingered, hanging in the air like a scar. Space itself seemed to warp, bending unnaturally before it tore open.
A rift split wide behind the strike, jagged and unstable, and in the next breath it detonated.
BOOM!
The explosion was swift and absolute.
The force ripped into Amon, consuming him in a violent burst of distortion that hurled his body forward.
He spun uncontrollably through the air, flailing in a grotesque spiral, fragments of bone and blood-mist scattering as he was thrown.
His trajectory carried him straight toward me, body spinning like a wheel of meat and bone. I warped away at the last instant, reappearing atop a tree branch, boots digging into the bark as I steadied myself.
The last thing I wanted was to act as his cushion.
From that vantage, I looked down at the aftermath of my attack.
My brow furrowed, then rose in faint disbelief.
The hell...
The ground below was devastated.
The point of impact had collapsed into a crater, the earth deeply cracked and radiating fissures outward like the aftermath of an earthquake.
Smoke and dust bled from the fractures, the soil itself trembling with residual heat from the rift’s violent collapse.
And Amon?