Chapter 68: Regret
"Bastard!" Liam screamed, watching as the cracks in his barrier started to widen and spread even further.
He was still an F rank, just like everyone else. Albeit he had a much higher capacity for Origin Energy, being at the peak of his rank.
But he had a breaking point, just like everyone else. Rohan suspected he was beginning to near that breaking point now.
"Just how long can you hold on for? How long will your Origin Energy last? It’s already shocking that you’ve been able to uphold so many Genetic Armaments at once.
Even now, all these other Awakened are still slumbering under your influence, your vines are giving Elane a hard time trying to remain still for long enough to get another shot at you — and let’s not forget your mysterious ability to control over a thousand beasts at once. I’d hardly believe any of that being the power of a single F rank Awakened if I weren’t experiencing it for myself right now."
Rohan continued to taunt Liam while simultaneously delivering another strike to his barrier.
The Pseudo-Commander beast was heavily injured, so despite its impressively terrifying power, Rohan was able to barely dodge its strikes every time it went near him. He could already see the regret starting to form on Liam’s face — wishing he didn’t give the beast such a harsh beatdown beforehand...
Or perhaps the regret came from his hatred of Rohan and Elane, gritting his teeth over the fact he hadn’t dealt with them sooner.
Liam’s face twisted with each additional word Rohan threw at him — precisely what Rohan wanted. Although he hadn’t lived a long or a very fulfilling life, he’d dealt with people like Liam all throughout his time in high school — albeit much more toned-down versions.
People, full of arrogance and unfounded confidence. They believed themselves superior — the inheritors of the world and all its glory, and Rohan always managed to get under their skin.
All he had to do was demean them, undermine their abilities, and their achievements, and they’d come howling back at him with scorn and hatred. Their judgement always clouded them in such a state.
And Liam was no different.
A man as obsessed with control as Liam hated being dissected out loud. He hated having the moving parts of his grand plan pointed at and named, let alone laughed at. Every sentence Rohan spoke was another nail scraped down the chalkboard of his mind — utterly unbearable to listen to.
It was another reminder that this wasn’t some perfect ritual anymore; it was a fight. A filthy, disgusting fight where nobody held back.
"Shut up." Liam snarled.
His left hand jerked slightly, and at once the stone vines coiling across the chamber walls and floor lashed out with renewed violence. They shot toward Elane in jagged bursts, not trying to bind her this time, but to smash her into a lump of meat until there was nothing left that resembled her.
Elane twisted away rather easily thanks to Liam’s erratic state slowing down his reaction times. A vine did clip her previously injured shoulder and spun her half around, but all it gave her was a momentary lapse of pain and a scrape.
A point-blank arrow shot was enough to completely dispel the stone vines trying to smash her to pieces.
Rohan saw the exchange in the corner of his eye but didn’t flinch. Under normal circumstances, Elane wouldn’t have been able to deal with those vines so easily, which told him all he needed to know.
’It’s working.’
But he couldn’t split his focus now.
Not when the malformed Pseudo-Commander beast in front of him was already moving again.
Its body groaned as it shifted, plates of shell and shedding scales scraping over each other with a horrible grinding noise.
It was bigger up close, too big.
What had once been an Elite Spike Beast not much different from lesser brethren now looked like a grotesque thing stitched together from the wrong parts of multiple monsters.
Its shoulders had grown beyond proportion, looking rather cartoonish, as cords of muscle were still forming in the middle of battle.
Its forelimb came down toward Rohan like a landslide.
Rohan threw himself forward rather than back, sliding beneath the descending blow as the limb smashed into the chamber floor behind him, hard enough to shower him in chips of stone.
’This thing’s random blows are able to damage the lair!’
That was a stark reminder that he should avoid being hit at all costs. Even while heavily injured and completely mindless, the power he was up against right now blew well past E rank.
Heat blasted over his back due to the superheated air forming everywhere the beast’s arm struck being dispersed on impact.
But he was in the clear, with a straight view toward Liam.
This was the rhythm he fell into. Avoid the beast and aim for the brain behind the brawn.
Force Liam to divide his attention to delay both the Pseudo-Commander and the Horde not far away now.
"Miss me?"
Rohan lunged, spear tip flashing toward the man’s wounded arm once again. Liam’s barrier flared up for its penultimate showing — its cracks spreading so far and so thin that it completely shattered and wilted away in the small area Rohan had been concentrating his attacks on.
Rohan’s spear bit just enough through the fractured shield to tear the man’s arm completely away from his shoulder, finishing off what he started at the very beginning of the fight.
"ARRRRRGHHH!!!"
Liam hissed through gritted teeth and staggered backwards, another arrow shrieking past and dealing with the rest of his barrier a heartbeat later.
The shot struck him square on his other remaining shoulder, completely incapacitating both of his primary limbs. Rohan grinned savagely and gave Elane a mental thumbs up for the impeccable timing.
Thud!
The half-corpse of the Pseudo-Commander fell to the ground, no longer able to stay under Liam’s control thanks to the mental shock he’d been delivered by Rohan.
Rohan’s eyes snapped to the beaten and battered man lying in a puddle of his own blood, pupil’s flaring up murderously bright.
This was the first time he was faced with killing another human being — not just delivering a temporary death in the Origin Realm.
Yet Rohan felt no remorse whatsoever; any moral code he stood by told him Liam deserved what he had coming a thousand times over.
"Cough... I’ll... Kill you..." Liam barely managed to get out.
"Haha, and how do you suppose you’ll manage that from down there?" Rohan wondered, amused by the dying man’s fortitude despite the position he was in.
A smile formed on Liam’s bloodied face as Rohan stabbed his spear into his heart. He was much too tired to hear any more of the mad man’s ramblings before his inevitable death.
"Sh—oul... ave... been... quick—er." Liam forced out in between his final, dying breaths, eyes strangely falling to the wall behind Rohan.
"What did he say?" Elane asked, not able to catch that last part due to how silently he spoke and how loud the rumbling was.
’Rumbling?’
All of a sudden on full alert, Rohan flipped around with his pupils narrowing to pin-size, faced with a horrifying sight.
"The horde’s reached the chamber!"