Chapter 52

Chapter 52

The two behemoths collided, and the room reverberated underneath the weight of their strikes. Azmoth’s flaming fingers tore chunks out of the other large demon in huge gashes, but the sturdiness and regeneration of the satyr were obvious immediately afterward. The purple miasma surrounding the satyr quickly healed the slashes and burns Azmoth was dealing, and the enormous miniboss stood to its full height a second later—tearing through the strands of webbing encasing its right arm and swinging its club backward at full force and crushing one of Azmoth’s arms with a thunderous boom. Azmoth roared and counterattacked by leaping at it and bringing it back down to the ground to tear and bite at it, ripping out large pieces of flesh as the two titans went crazy trying to kill one another. Athela managed to get in there as well with multiple hit-and-run bites that sank venom into the satyr for applications of necrosis.

Watching the fight unfold was like watching a brutal episode of National Geographic where male lions fight—but this was the hellscape version.

Riven’s Blessing of the Crow was still in effect, and he whipped around the platform at high speed while pushing more mana into the ability. He was sure-footed, sprinting at a rate easily twice as fast as anything he could have ever accomplished back on Earth. Riven was likely going somewhere beyond thirty miles per hour with the combination of both movement buffs, and it wasn’t tiring him, either.

Coming around and getting a good positioning for his attack, he launched the Blood Lance he’d been channeling into his arm. The flickering crimson power shot out like a comet through the dusty air and made impact with the back of the warlord’s head, narrowly missing Azmoth as they flailed on the ground to claw and bite at one another, but instead of impaling the satyr, the magic just exploded and created a large but superficial wound to momentarily stun the creature.

That was more than enough time for his minions to take advantage of it.

Azmoth howled and sank his many rows of teeth into the creature’s shoulder and began ripping out its deltoid muscle while Athela shot ahead and rapidly began digging into the creature’s left eye with her fangs.

The eye burst, and the echoing scream of rage made the room tremble as it slammed a fist down into the spot where Athela had been just a moment before the arachnid had launched herself backward with amazing speed.

Azmoth, however, was not as lucky, and the half-blinded warlord’s anger simmered to full effect as the purple miasma around it exploded outward from the gem hovering in its chest and sent Azmoth shooting up into the ceiling far above like a rocket launcher. The room shuddered under the impact, the purple miasma that’d been rejuvenating the satyr disappeared, and the Hellscape Brutalisk went flailing back down many dozens of feet only to meet the satyr’s spiked club. Azmoth was hit like a baseball and smashed through one of the sets of bars of a cage and slammed into the far wall—debris billowing out like a cloud as the satyr roared in fury and violently shook its head back and forth while blinking rapidly.

Riven’s volley of razor-sharp discs slammed into the creature’s back a second later, and each had a secondary explosion of shrapnel as he infused his blood-magic projectiles with more mana after impact, tearing into its flesh just as it stomped down and sent a shock wave of mana across the room.

It was like being hit with a brick wall. Riven’s footing was thrown off when the wave hit, and he grunted with the impact, expelling all the air in his lungs. He and Athela were flung in opposite directions from the ability’s power, and each toppled head over heels until they too came to abrupt and violent halts against the bars along the perimeter of the room.

Riven screamed, feeling his right leg shatter under the impact, and he cursed while the satyr snarled his way.

Riven snarled right back. Without a second thought and with anger rising up in his chest, Riven pulled a vial of Sinner’s Blood from his bag. Downing the contents, he felt his mana quickly replenish, and his leg began to mend itself more rapidly. “Come on, you cocksucking goat!”

The remnants of the monster’s ruined eyes narrowed, and hot vapor trailed out of its mouth while it panted. It wiped its bloodied lips on one arm, hoisted its club above its head, and with a roar threw the club as hard as it could in Riven’s direction.

The enormous weapon spun through the air in an arc as the monster used the opportunity to ram its foot into the ground—creating a shock wave that was supposed to knock him down so the throw would hit true. For a moment it looked like it’d work.

Thus, Athela screeched in disbelief and awe as Riven jumped up and to the left to avoid the waist-high shock wave and conjured not one, not two, but eight simultaneous Wretched Snares that he molded together into one large net. He held on to the net with a reinforced mana connection from a location just above his hands and willed the black magic to expand, opening up to catch the spinning meteor of a club before he was nearly taken off his feet as the projectile’s force pulled him backward.

But Riven continued to infuse the conjured and reinforced net with mana as he quickly slid across the floor, silently screaming at his magic to do his bidding while he was dragged backward to a likely death at high speed. Over and over again, he pictured what he wanted and willed the mana to act, pouring his heart and soul into the internal motion while using the Unholy and Blood subpillars attached to his soul like a sieve to purify the raw mana into blood magic. The pillars responded, embracing him, and it promptly came blazing to life under his extreme mental state.

“Do as you’re told!”

The words left Riven’s mouth as he gave vision and meaning to what he wanted the blood magic to do, and to Athela’s continued amazement, the corpses around Riven were drained and erupted around him. The blood of the bodies all whirled in a vortex to come to his call, and for the first time since the blood pit, he willed his environmental resources to do his bidding just like the textbooks had talked about. The result was a massively reduced mana cost and a vastly increased power output.

*POP—BOOM*

[The Blood subpillar recognizes your authority, and the system has labeled your Blood subpillar as your specialty pillar. You may now evolve your Blood subpillar, and you are now restricted from obtaining any other specialty pillars.]

[Your bloodline begins to stir. You have created the blood spell Crimson Ice.]

[Crimson Ice (Blood): Summon ice created from blood to cover an area around or on you. You may utilize this crystallized blood to form objects or walls, cause your opponents to slip, and create temporary body modifications with variable utility. Mana cost is situational and can vary from extremely high to extremely low. Dependent on both Intelligence (40%) and Willpower (60%) stats. No cooldown.]