Pain.
Not the manageable, familiar pain Leon had grown accustomed to throughout the entire fight. This was different—sharp, immediate, and deeply invasive as the creature's magma-armored fist connected fully with his chest.
His holy armor exploded off his torso with a sound like shattering crystal. The skin beneath burned away in an instant from the intense heat, raw flesh exposed to those terrible purple nails that continued driving inward with relentless force.
His ribcage trembled from the impact, then began to crack—dense bones that had resisted everything thrown at them throughout the entire battle finally began to fracture under force applied at their absolute limits.
The creature felt it too.
This human's body is even tougher than mine.
