Chapter 211: Battling Ghorrath.
Ghorrath shifted.
Twenty feet of fused corpses and necrotic muscle moved as one, producing a deep, guttural groan that was difficult to describe. The sound seemed to come from hundreds of throats at once, each corpse contributing a different note to the unnatural noise.
Then one of the corpses embedded in Ghorrath’s shoulder stirred.
Its head lifted slowly, and its jaws creaked open.
A stream of incomprehensible words spilled from its lips as it whispered an incantation, while another corpse fused into Ghorrath’s abdomen began casting an ability of its own, sending blue energy spreading throughout its giant body... probably some kind of protection.
The fight was about to begin.
Kael didn’t give Ghorrath the opportunity to finish preparing.
His boots exploded against the ground.
Bones shattered beneath his feet as he launched forward with tremendous momentum, his body rapidly becoming nothing more than a blur of motion. A streak of darkness tore across the barren battlefield, cutting through the sea of bones beneath the blood-red horizon.
Ghorrath’s chest suddenly split open.
A thick layer of fused corpses separated, revealing a glowing cavity buried deep within its torso.
Then it fired.
A wall of flame erupted from the cavity, expanding outward with enough heat to distort the air itself.
Kael saw it coming but he didn’t slow down.
Instead he shifted his posture, drawing upon the earth energy within his body as it surged toward his forearm. His arm hardened beneath the concentrated force, becoming as sturdy as a mountain.
At the same time, Kael activated Aura of Destruction.
Dark energy flickered around his body.
The moment he punched through the wall of flame, the two forces collided.
The Aura of Destruction tore into the fire’s very structure.
The flames began breaking apart as their composition rapidly decayed. Their heat vanished before they could even touch his armor, the once-raging inferno turning into cold, drifting soot that scattered behind him.
Kael didn’t even slow down.
He kept charging forward until he stood before the towering corpse golem.
His momentum hadn’t faded yet.
Kael planted one foot against Ghorrath’s massive knee.
Then he pushed.
The force launched him upward.
His body shot twenty feet into the air, carrying him toward the level of Ghorrath’s bloated face. Countless eyes were embedded within the mass of rotten flesh, some belonging to creatures that Kael couldn’t even identify.
He didn’t care.
His fist tightened.
The next instant, Kael brought it down like a hardened lance.
BOOM!
His fist smashed directly into one of Ghorrath’s primary eye sockets.
The surrounding bone shattered.
Several corpses were violently knocked loose from the impact, tumbling away from the creature’s face as fragments of bone and rotten flesh exploded outward.
At the same time, Aura of Destruction penetrated the wound.
It immediately began eating away at the structure holding the creature together.
The effect was particularly potent against Ghorrath.
The creature was already an unstable fusion of countless different existences. Their bodies had been stitched together through necromancy and Existence Cramming, forcing incompatible structures to coexist within a single body.
That instability worked perfectly in Kael’s favor.
Once the Aura of Destruction began attacking the structure, the damage spread through the already-compromised connections.
Ghorrath’s face buckled.
Dark ichor sprayed outward in a thick mist.
Yet the giant corpse golem didn’t let out any sound of pain. Instead, it simply retaliated.
Its enormous arm swung sideways.
The elongated limb tore through the air like a massive battering ram.
Kael was still suspended in mid-air.
He couldn’t dodge normally.
And he couldn’t afford to tank that attack either.
"Shadow Between Steps."
His body vanished.
The air behind him cracked from the sudden displacement as Kael bypassed the trajectory of the massive arm.
He reappeared beside Ghorrath’s temple.
He didn’t hesitate.
His elbow descended.
The strike was as sharp as a blade.
CRACK!
His elbow tore across Ghorrath’s jaw, smashing through layers of bone and rotten flesh.
The impact finally forced the massive corpse golem to stagger.
Its enormous body shifted backward.
The movement was subtle.
But for something twenty feet tall, even a small step created a violent tremor across the battlefield.
The ground quivered.
Bones jumped from the ground.
Nearby piles of remains collapsed beneath the disturbance.
Kael barely had time to register the result.
Something moved behind him.
A tail formed from fused spinal cords lashed through the air.
It wrapped around Kael’s leg before he could react, locking him in place while he was still airborne.
Kael looked down.
The grotesque tail tightened.
He didn’t struggle.
Instead, he channeled the energy of millions of planet embryos into his free leg.
Power surged through his body.
Then he kicked downward.
BOOM!
A tremendous shockwave erupted from his kick.
The fused spinal tail was severed instantly, the violent force tearing through the mass of bones and flesh with enough power to send fragments flying in every direction.
But the shockwave didn’t stop there.
It continued outward.
The battlefield trembled as the invisible force flattened several nearby piles of bones, scattering remains across the plain and carving a path through the corpse-covered ground.
With nothing holding him in place, Kael entered a smooth descent.
His boots touched the ground.
He skidded backward, kicking up a cloud of dust and bone fragments.
He barely had time to stabilize himself.
Ghorrath attacked again.
The atmosphere suddenly changed.
The warmth vanished.
A bone-chilling cold spread across the battlefield, causing Kael’s Danger Sense to erupt with warnings.
His entire body reacted.
Something was coming.
Kael looked up.
The sky darkened.
Then an obsidian bolt of lightning tore through the crimson clouds.
It wasn’t shaped like ordinary lightning.
It had been compressed into a singular, tapering arrow of pure ruin.
Black energy wrapped around its surface as it descended toward him at terrifying speed.
It looked like Judgment from Hell itself.
Kael’s pupils contracted.
There wasn’t enough time to think.
He immediately poured a massive amount of mana into the Spectre-X nano armor.
The armor responded.
Thrusters activated across his body.
Kael launched upward.
His first attempt at flight was anything but graceful.
His body immediately tilted sideways, his trajectory becoming a jagged and frantic line as he struggled to control the sudden acceleration. The unfamiliar movement nearly threw him off balance.
Fortunately, the upgraded AI system reacted faster than he could.
The armor automatically compensated for his movements, stabilizing his body and adjusting the thrusters.
Kael’s trajectory shifted.
The obsidian lightning arrow passed beneath him.
A microsecond later, it struck the exact spot where he had been standing.
BOOOOOOM!
The ground exploded.
A massive crater formed as the bolt drove deep into the earth, compressing the surrounding energy until the terrain itself seemed to buckle beneath the impact.
The shockwave caught Kael before he could move far enough away.
His body was blasted backward.
Kael flew through the air before crashing violently into a towering wall of protruding bones.
CRASH!
Kael’s body slammed into the wall of protruding bones with enough force to smash straight through it. His armored body tore through the massive structure before continuing forward, sending countless fragments of bone scattering through the air.
Fortunately, the wall had absorbed enough of his momentum to give him the opening he needed.