Chapter 119: The Pillar That Wouldn’t Fall

Chapter 119: Chapter 119: The Pillar That Wouldn’t Fall

The battlefield was a total nightmare.

Aria could barely feel her left leg. Blood ran down the side of her face, dripping off her chin into the dust with a soft drip-drip.

Her silver spear trembled in her bloody grip, from raw, bone-deep exhaustion. She had been fighting nonstop, and the horror in front of her showed no signs of slowing down.

The second mutated drake threw its head back and roared.

ROOOAAARRR!

Its titanic body was battered. Thick ice clung to its scales, burn marks blackened its chest, and lightning scars zig-zagged across its limbs. But underneath all of that damage, the oily black veins of the booster pill still throbbed with terrifying violet light. The false SS-rank beast was still an unstoppable force of nature.

"Darius," Aria rasped, tightening her grip on her spear shaft.

"Still here," a deep, rough voice answered.

Darius stood five paces away, looking just as battered. His right shoulder was torn open, blood soaking through his shattered armor.

One leg was bruised and trembling, held together only by a crude cast of hardened stone. His earth defenses were barely holding up.

Aria glanced at him sideways. "Can you still fight?"

Darius flashed a tired, bloody grin. "Can you?"

"Unfortunately, yes."

"Then so can I."

Aria almost smiled, before another deafening screech cut through the air.

SKRRREEEECH!

The drake charged.

"Scatter!" Aria screamed.

BOOOOOOM!

The drake’s massive claw smashed into the road. The asphalt cratered, blowing chunks of concrete and crushed metal through the air.

Ryan threw himself forward, catching a boulder on his cracked tower shield.

CLANG

That shoved him back five yards.

Kael rolled hard across the gravel. Lena caught herself on a cushion of pressurized air. Mira folded space open, vanishing half a second before the beast’s tail swept through her space.

Orion flickered away as a streak of lightning, swallowed by the thick black smoke.

They had been trapped in this cycle for ten brutal minutes: dodge, run, strike, retreat.

Nobody could take a direct hit from that mutated abomination.

One clean strike from an SS-rank was instant death. Even Aria and Darius, two of the toughest S-ranks alive, had barely survived the initial clashes.

The drake pivoted, swinging its massive forelimb at Aria. She thrusts her palm out.

A thick glacier of solid ice erupted from the road.

CRASH!

The beast’s claw smashed through the frozen barrier like thin glass. Aria leaped backward, but the wind pressure caught her chest, launching her through the air.

She hit the ground, rolling across the road with a sharp cough. "Damn it!"

Darius slammed both fists into the deck.

RUMBLE-CRUNCH!

Thick stone slabs shot out of the ground, clamping around the beast’s back legs. But the monster flexed its bloated muscles and shattered the stone instantly.

Its claws grazed Darius’s cheek as he countered with a jagged stone pike.

CRACK!

Driving it straight into the beast’s chest scales.

The drake roared, but it didn’t slow down.

"Tough bastard," Darius grunted, tasting copper.

FWIP.

A shadow flickered in his blind spot. Darius turned his head, too late.

A dark elf dropped from a lamppost, tossing an empty black pill wrapper aside. His aura violently exploded from standard A-rank straight into peak S-rank, red lightning crackling around his daggers.

"You again?" Darius growled.

"?Drak’mor, hal-morin!" [Die, human]

The elf hissed, lunging at Darius’s throat.

Darius raised his stone-clad forearm.

CLANG!

The impact cracked his stone guard. Before the elf could strike again, a silver blur flashed past.

SHNK.

Aria’s spear punched straight through the elf’s ribs. Blood bubbled on the elf’s lips.

"Ghra....." the elf gasped.

Aria twisted the cold steel with a vicious snap.

"You aren’t strong enough."

She ripped the spear free and kicked the corpse away. It hit the dirt and didn’t move again.

Darius panted heavily, looking around the street. "Is that all of them?"

"Five elves down," Aria said, wiping blood from her eyes. "The riders are dead. It’s just the drake left."

"The drake is the problem," Darius muttered.

The massive beast seemed to realize its masters were dead. Its red eyes flared with berserk fury.

ROOOOAAAR!

It moved with sudden, impossible speed.

Aria’s eyes went wide. "Darius, look out!"

Darius turned around just as the colossal spiked tail slammed into his chest.

BOOOOOOOOOM!

The blunt force blasted Darius fifty yards across the boulevard, smashing him through a brick wall and burying him in concrete rubble.

"DARIUS!" Aria screamed.

She turned to sprint toward him and that single second of distraction was fatal.

The drake’s backhand swept across the street, catching Aria square in the ribs.

CRACK.

The air was knocked completely out of her lungs. Aria was hurled through the air, her silver spear slipping from her numb fingers, clattering away on the pavement.

She crashed onto the hard road, her vision swimming in gray haze. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move.

"Captain!" Ryan roared, charging forward with his cracked shield raised.

WHAM.

The drake swat him aside like a fly, sending Ryan and his broken shield skidding into a line of parked cars.

Lena’s face went chalk-white. "Aria! Ryan!"

In the rubble, Darius tried to push himself up on his elbows. His arms gave out, his vision blurring as dark blood poured from his mouth.

"Get... get back..." he wheezed.

The mutated drake ignored them all. Its glowing crimson eyes locked onto Kael, who was kneeling in the center of the road, clutching a severely burned arm.

Kael looked up.

The colossal, three-ton claw hovered directly over his head, casting a massive shadow over his face.

His legs wouldn’t respond.

"Uh-oh," Kael whispered, his lips trembling into a weak, pathetic smile. "That’s... not good."

"KAEL! RUN!" Lena screamed at the top of her lungs, sprinting toward him with tears streaming down her face.

She was thirty yards away. She would never make it.

Everyone froze. Pure, helpless horror choked the air. Kael closed his eyes, slumping his shoulders.

"Well... this really sucks."

The massive, spiked foot crashed downward to crush him into red paste.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

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