The Bramblehart didn't hesitate.
Its antlers slammed deep into the earth.
The ground answered.
Thorns rocketed upward in violent arcs, tearing free from soil and stone as they surged toward the Vireloch Lord.
The creature didn't dodge.
Didn't flinch.
The thorns stabbed into its body—
And immediately began to change.
Their green darkened.
Then dulled.
Then withered.
They crumbled as they broke off its stone-plated hide, falling apart like dead branches.
…Its withering ability is stronger now.
I tightened my focus.
No room for mistakes.
This time, I moved forward cautiously.
Not charging.
Not gambling.
The Vireloch Lord roared.
Its chest split open.
Purple light flared so bright it painted the canopy and the clouds above like bruised fire.
A beam erupted.
Faster than before.
I barely dodged, darting left as it tore past me.
Everything behind—trees, hills, earth—disintegrated.
The end of it hit the horizon and exploded with a sound like the world cracking.
But it didn't stop.
It followed.
I leapt from tree to tree as the beam carved a path through the forest, trunks vaporizing behind me.
The trees thinned.
No more cover.
No more footholds.
As I jumped from the last branch—
A thorn rose in front of me.
Then another.
Then another.
…Stepping stones.
They shifted beneath my weight, angling, pushing—giving me height, speed, momentum.
The beam abandoned me mid-chase and snapped toward the Bramblehart in a brutal, intelligent maneuver.
The thorns beneath my feet retracted as I twisted midair and looked back.
The Bramblehart was already bracing.
Nature surged around it—grass, vines, bark hardening into armor.
It won't withstand that.
I didn't hesitate.
I shot straight for the Vireloch Lord.
The beam slammed into the Bramblehart's defenses.
The impact was catastrophic.
The beam held—
But I watched the armor wither, crack, and die in real time.
No more waiting.
I fired Claw Slash at the Vireloch Lord's chest as I closed the distance, the arc ripping through the ground toward it—
The Vireloch twisted.
The beam tore free from the Bramblehart and swept across the battlefield.
When the beam and my Claw Slash collided—
The explosion swallowed everything.
I was thrown backward several meters, my body skidding through dirt and shattered bark.
The Bramblehart's defenses shattered completely.
Dark patches spread across its hide.
…Poison?
The dust cloud swallowed the clearing.
Visibility dropped to nothing.
I stopped moving.
One second.
Pulse Tremor.
The ground came alive beneath me.
Vibrations flooded my awareness—so many, chaotic at first—
Then I forced order into them.
There.
The Vireloch.
Stationary.
More still than it had been the entire fight.
An opening.
I advanced without question, thread stretching between my fingers.
Purple lightning burst from the dust.
It struck the ground ahead of me and detonated.
I dodged—
But more followed.
Lightning flickered wildly, striking the earth in chaotic patterns, craters blooming under every impact.
I weaved through it at full speed as the ground exploded beneath each step.
Closer.
The air changed.
Every breath tasted charged—metallic, sharp, like I was inhaling a storm.
Then the lightning shifted.
Focused.
Targeted.
A defense system.
It came for me at terrifying speed.
I pushed harder, darting through strikes that carved trenches behind me.
The power kept increasing—
Then a thorn erupted beneath my feet.
It launched me upward, clearing the dust cloud.
The lightning stopped.
Midair, the whole battlefield snapped into view.
The Vireloch Lord stood there like a statue.
Still.
Unmoving.
…Unconscious?
I tightened the thread and fired it downward, wrapping it around its legs as I descended.
I landed beside it.
Lightning erupted again from its body—automatic, uncontrolled.
I tightened the thread.
Bolts lashed out, but I moved around its massive frame, using its own bulk as cover.
Each strike fizzled and broke apart against its stone hide, never quite reaching me.
I kept tightening.
The thread cut deeper.
Deeper.
Until—
It severed the leg completely.
The Vireloch Lord collapsed.
The impact shook the battlefield so hard the dust cloud rippled outward.
I jumped back instantly, bracing—
Then it moved.
Did I make a mistake?
The Vireloch Lord stood.
I stared down.
Its leg was whole again.
Healed.
Just… rewritten back into place.
It roared.
The pressure alone shoved me back, my feet carving grooves in the dirt.
Its gaze locked onto me.
Focused.
Not wild.
Not mindless.
Locked.
Its left arm rose.
That posture—
I knew it.
…No.
I've seen this before.
The air warped.
It closed its fist.
The pull hit instantly.
The same ability.
The Orrick's ability.
How is that possible—
The pressure spiked.
I was yanked forward so hard my body stretched.
Something wrapped around my leg.
A thorn.
Another followed.
Then more—coiling around my torso, my arms, anchoring me like roots.
I looked back.
The Bramblehart.
Its antlers were locked into the ground, body trembling as withering spread across it in ugly, creeping stains.
But it didn't let go.
More thorns erupted, binding me tighter, fighting the pull.
They stretched.
Cracked.
I heard a deep, raw groan from the Bramblehart as the force strained its body.
It's holding me down so I don't get torn apart.
I wrapped my thread around the main thorn gripping me, reinforcing it.
The thread gleamed in the thin sunlight breaking through the haze.
The pull intensified.
Unbearable.
The thorns began to splinter in my grip.
I grabbed one that was already breaking—
And snapped it free.
I hurled it with everything I had.
The pull accelerated it.
The thorn became a projectile.
It slammed into the Vireloch Lord's right shoulder and shattered inside its body.
The creature screamed—high, violent.
The pull weakened.
For a heartbeat, the air felt like it remembered how to move.
I didn't waste it.
"Sorry," I muttered.
I snapped the remaining thorns holding me and surged forward.
Behind me, the Bramblehart groaned again—but I couldn't stop.
I tore another thorn free and threw it at the Vireloch Lord's left shoulder.
Not as hard—
But deep enough.
Another scream.
Purple light surged as it tried to heal.
I threw another.
Straight through its leg.
Clean.
Then I ran.
The Bramblehart answered—thorns rising beneath my feet, launching me forward with terrifying speed, like the forest itself was throwing me into the fight.
I drove the final thorn straight into the glowing chest core.
The Vireloch Lord screamed.
It wasn't enough.
I drove my fist into the wound—
Inside.
Heat.
Pressure.
A buzzing, living wrongness that writhed around my arm.
I felt them.
The stones—packed tight, fused together, holding.
I clamped onto one and pulled.
It didn't move.
Muscle convulsed around my arm. The flesh tightened, crushing, trying to seal me in—trying to keep it.
Not enough strength.
…No choice.
My vision bled red.
Blood Frenzy.
Power detonated through me.
My body tore itself open to make room for it—flesh splitting, blood flooding out as my strength spiked in something brutal and uncontrolled.
Pain vanished beneath the surge.
I pulled again.
This time, the Vireloch screamed differently.
The stone tore free.
The backlash hit like the world itself had kicked me—
And I was blasted backward, flung clear as the force exploded out of the wound.
The stone flickered weakly in my grip.
The Vireloch Lord howled, reeling—its core pulsing unevenly.
Let's see what happens if I try this.
I charged again.
It fired the beam.
I didn't dodge.
I raised the stone and braced it in front of me.
The beam struck—
And reflected.
The collision shredded the world in both directions.
Trees vanished into vapor.
Earth peeled away in screaming sheets as the force tore outward.
I dug in and pushed forward anyway.
One step.
Then another.
The pressure climbed, crushing, relentless—like the beam was trying to erase me outright.
My arms screamed.
My body bowed.
Blood ran freely as my muscles tore under the strain.
The stone began to crack.
I felt it through my grip—fractures spreading, resistance thinning.
Something inside the stone stirred.
Dark.
Rotten.
Dead.
The pressure surged again, doubling, trying to force me back—trying to break me before the stone gave way.
It was going to explode.
I hurled it away and jumped back.
The beam bent toward the fracture—
Dragged into it—
Then—
It detonated.
Light swallowed everything.
A hundred meters simply ceased to exist.
Trees were erased mid-branch.
Stone shattered into dust.
The ground tore open and vanished as if scooped out of the world.
I was flung backward.
As I spun, dazed, I saw it—
The blast expanding in perfect, violent silence, the air itself ripping away from the center.
My lungs burned.
There was nothing to breathe.
The pressure dropped so fast my body seized, weightless for a heartbeat—like gravity had been stolen along with the air.
My vision tunneled, dark creeping in at the edges as my thoughts scattered.
Something wrapped around my torso.
I didn't fight it.
Didn't have the strength.
The last thing I felt was the world falling away.
Then everything went dark.
—
I woke moments later, flat on the ground.
A thorn was still wrapped around me, torn free mid-explosion, half-charred and trembling like it had been ripped out of a living thing.
The Brambleharts lay nearby.
The one that fought beside me was down.
Withering spread across its body in slow, merciless veins.
The others dragged themselves to it, pressing close, trying to shield it, trying to help with bodies that were shaking from exhaustion.
I sat there silently, dust in my mouth, the taste of lightning still on my tongue.
That monster saved me.
Again and again.
…I'm grateful.
I watched them struggle together, stubborn to the end.
And something inside me—something I didn't expect to still exist—shifted.
Maybe—
Maybe being a monster isn't so bad after all.