Chapter 728: [+123,460 HP]
Chapter 728: [+123,460 HP]
Emberion’s fire magic coalesced around Jack’s entire upper body. The heat was so intense that the air itself began to shimmer.
But this wasn’t conventional flame. This was volcanic slag. Molten rock cooled to a consistency resembling armor, forming around Jack’s torso and shoulders.
The slag formed a crust.
Designed not to deflect the Herald’s claw, but to absorb the impact and distribute the kinetic force across a wider surface area.
The slag hardened even as the Herald’s claw made contact, the volcanic material cooling to maximum density in the instant before impact.
The Herald’s claw struck Jack’s raised palm and the slag-crusted shoulder with the force of continental collision.
[-100,000 HP]
The notification flashed across Jack’s vision in stark white lettering.
The impact created a shockwave that propagated outward across the entire battlefield. The ground beneath Jack’s feet cracked.
His body was driven downward, his knees bending from the force, his feet sinking slightly into the cratered earth.
The slag armor fractured under the pressure, not completely, but visibly, the hardened volcanic material splintering at the point of impact.
But he didn’t break.
The slag crust held. Beneath the hardened volcanic material, Jack’s flesh tore. Muscle separated from bone. Blood vessels ruptured. His body absorbed the full force of a strike that had been designed to obliterate him.
The pain manifested as pure, undeniable sensation. Not paralyzing, but vivid, unrelenting pain.
His flesh knitted together at visible speed. Bone realigned. Blood vessels sealed. Muscle fibers wove back together with the precision of something far more sophisticated than simple biological healing.
[+30,864 HP]
[+30,864 HP]
The notification appeared as his regeneration ticked upward. His health bar began to climb immediately, the regeneration counteracting the damage he had sustained.
His 5% passive regeneration per second is added to the calculation.
Another [+30,864 HP] appearing as the combat log updated.
But that wasn’t the only source of healing.
Across the distant battlefield, where Jack’s army was locked in combat with the remaining draconic formations, creatures were dying.
Jack’s ring granted [+1% HP and Mana per second for 4 seconds for every entity killed], activated.
The draconic army that Jack had embedded within the Herald’s formations was systematically eliminating dragons at a rate that suggested surgical precision.
[+6,173 HP] appeared as the first kill triggered the item effect.
[+6,173 HP] appeared again as the second kill processed.
The notifications cascaded across his vision in rapid succession, [+6,173 HP] multiplying with each death, each one representing a creature eliminated by Jack’s forces, each one contributing to the healing pool that was directly counteracting the Herald’s assault.
His health bar climbed faster than the Herald’s claw strike had damaged it.
The slag crust cracked where the Herald’s claw had made contact. Jack’s consciousness engaged immediately.
Increased volcanic energy, elevated temperatures, and a greater volume of magma extracted from Emberion were utilized to reconstitute the armor.
The slag knitted itself together, healing the cracks and reforming the protective layer in the instant after the Herald withdrew his claw.
Jack’s voice emerged calm, precise, carrying no trace of strain despite the magnitude of the assault he had just absorbed.
"The first time I received so much damage that I couldn’t do anything but cut my hand off to stop it," he said, his tone conversational despite the apocalyptic scale of what had just occurred.
His yellow-orange eyes fixed on the Herald’s position, and for the first time, a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "But it’s the last time something like this will ever happen again."
The Herald’s jaw clenched.
The dragon’s golden eyes narrowed as he processed what had just happened. The human hadn’t broken.
He hadn’t been obliterated.
The human had absorbed a claw strike designed to annihilate and was still standing, conscious, and capable of speech.
The dragon’s frame began to shift.
The Herald’s massive body lowered, his weight redistributing as his consciousness shifted into a new tactical framework.
His muscles tensed beneath his golden scales, each fiber contracting in preparation for an assault of a completely different nature. His wings spread to their maximum extension, creating pressure waves that made the ground tremble beneath Jack’s feet.
"You stand before the Herald of Typhoon," the dragon boomed, his voice carrying renewed intensity. "I do not rely on single strikes. I do not concern myself with precision. I am dominance incarnate. I am the manifestation of draconic supremacy. Your fragile body has no defense against what I am about to unleash."
His massive form accelerated across the cratered earth with the velocity of something that had abandoned all pretense of technique.
This was raw, overwhelming dominance. The dragon was using his entire body weight as a weapon, lowering his massive head and driving forward with the intention of ramming Jack back through whatever remained of the earth beneath him.
The ground itself seemed to reject the Herald’s movement. Each step created a small crater. Each breath displaced the air in visible waves. The dragon’s scales reflected light with such intensity that the very atmosphere around him seemed to distort.
Jack’s consciousness engaged at the instant the Herald began to move.
The earth beneath his feet responded to his will.
Emberion’s power flowed through him, but not as slag this time.
Jack liquefied the ground beneath himself, transforming the cratered stone into molten magma that was still fluid enough to redistribute force but dense enough to provide structural support.
The rock beneath his feet bubbled and roiled, creating a hydraulic medium.
The Herald’s massive body collided with Jack’s position.
The impact was catastrophic.
The Herald’s full mass drove into Jack’s position at full velocity. The collision created a crater so deep that the underlying bedrock became visible, centuries of accumulated earth simply compressed downward by the sheer force of draconic assault.
[-500,000 HP]
The notification flashed across Jack’s vision in stark white lettering.
Jack’s body was driven downward into the magma, the liquid rock accepting him and suspending his weight while simultaneously distributing the kinetic force of the Herald’s charge across a wider surface area.
Without the magma cushion, his bones would have been pulverized into fragments. Without the liquid rock’s absorption properties, his skeleton would have shattered under the magnitude of the impact.
But the magma held.
Jack sank deeper into the liquid rock, the molten material accepting his form and suspending him at a depth where the pressure was distributed evenly across his entire body. His regeneration activated immediately.
[+30,864 HP]
[+30,864 HP]
Two ticks appeared in rapid succession, his 5% passive regeneration triggering twice in the interval of the Herald’s assault.
His item effect was processing as well, each kill from his distant army adding its contribution to his healing pool.
[+123,460 HP]
[+123,460 HP]
[+123,460 HP]
[+123,460 HP]
The notification appeared as more dragons began to meet their end.
Jack was taking half a million damage from the Herald’s charge, but he was healing that damage at a rate that was accelerating with each second.
His army’s systematic elimination of enemy dragons was creating a compound healing effect that was making the Herald’s assault insufficient.
His health bar began to climb.
The Herald pressed downward, driving more force into the impact, attempting to compress Jack into nothing more than a fragmented collection of broken bone and tissue.
The dragon’s claws extended downward, attempting to rake through Jack’s position, attempting to find purchase on the human’s body so that he could rend him apart.
Magma splashed upward from the crater, the liquid rock responding to the Herald’s assault by being displaced and flung through the air in droplets that cooled as they ascended.
The thermal radiation was so intense that stones within a hundred feet began to crack from the heat differential.