I Evolve 10,000 Times Faster

The canyon opened into a cavern.

The narrow walls simply stopped, and the space exploded outward into a massive underground chamber that stretched a hundred feet in every direction. The ceiling was so high it vanished into the purple darkness above, while the floor was smooth, polished stone, black as glass and reflecting the faint bioluminescent veins that ran through the walls like a circulatory system.

At the center of the cavern, suspended twenty feet above the floor, was the anchor.

It was a massive, floating crystal shaped like an obelisk, made of pure black stone and roughly the size of a truck. It rotated slowly in the air as dark energy pulsed from its core in rhythmic waves. Every pulse sent a ripple of corrupted energy across the floor, making the stone hum beneath his feet and the walls shudder.

The air around it was charged with so much concentrated abyssal energy that Holden could taste it on his tongue. The crystal was the source, the engine that kept the portal open and fed the endless swarm of monsters into the mortal world.

Destroy it, and the door slams shut.

But the anchor was not unguarded.

Standing directly beneath the crystal was a figure that looked like a soldier waiting for orders, completely motionless and patient.

The Abyssal General.

It was humanoid, nine feet tall, with a body encased in armor that wasn’t worn but grown. Plates of corrupted bone fused directly to its flesh covered every inch of its torso, arms, and legs in a dense, interlocking shell. The armor was black with veins of deep red running through it.

Its head was a bare skull, with two burning red orbs set deep inside the eye sockets. There was no nose or lips, only rows of black teeth locked into a permanent, soundless grin.

In each hand, it held a greatsword. These weren’t regular swords but massive, jagged slabs of corrupted metal, each one six feet long, with edges that looked as though they had been torn rather than forged. Dark energy hummed through the metal, leaving trails of black mist in the air whenever the General moved them.

Holden’s 10,000x processor read its energy signature and fed him the data before he could blink.

Rank 3, 5-Star.

His earpiece crackled, and Maeve’s voice came through beneath so much static that it sounded like she was talking through a wall of sand.

"Holden... static... reading the target... static... armor composition is... static... immune to direct magic. Repeat. The bone-armor is immune to direct magical attack. Energy-based strikes will be absorbed. You need to... static... physical force only."

"Maeve, come again. You’re breaking up."

"...armor... static... joints. The joints are... static... only vulnerability... static... twenty-three minutes before... static... Rank 4..."

The signal died. Static replaced her voice, a hissing, crackling wall of noise that told Holden the portal’s energy was interfering with the radio. He was on his own.

"Radio’s dead," he said. "But I caught the key parts. Armor is magic-immune. Joints are the weak points. Physical force only."

Emric studied the General from behind his shield, his 10x enhanced brain already running calculations. "Rank 3, 5-Star. Way above what we just fought. That bone-armor is denser than anything we’ve seen. A direct hit from any of us wouldn’t do much."

"So we don’t hit it directly," Holden said. "We hit where it isn’t armored."

"The joints," Lyra said, narrowing her eyes as she studied the General’s armor layout. "Shoulders. Elbows. Knees. Neck. The gaps between the plates where the bone-armor connects to the flesh."

"Exactly." Holden looked at his team. "This thing is on a different level. We don’t rush it. We don’t panic. Emric tanks. Lyra and Renna crack the armor. I finish it."

Emric nodded slowly. "The strategy makes sense, but I’m going to be taking Rank 3 strikes. Even with the shield, that’s going to hurt."

"I know."

"You sure about this?" Renna asked. For once, there was no run-on sentence or bubbling energy in her voice, just a real question from someone who cared about her teammate.

"I can hold." Emric adjusted his shield strap and tightened it. "Focus on your shots. I’ll keep it looking at me."

The General moved.

It moved like a snapped rubber band. One second it was standing beneath the anchor, and the next it was twenty feet closer, crossing the distance in a blur.

BOOM.

The first greatsword came down.

Emric met it.

CLANG!

Emric’s boots skidded across the polished stone, carving grooves into the glass floor as his shield arm went numb from the wrist to the shoulder. His teeth slammed together hard enough for him to taste blood, while the kinetic shockwave blew outward and sent loose stone fragments flying in every direction.

But he held.

The General’s second sword was already moving, sweeping horizontally toward Emric’s exposed right side.

"Right!" Emric barked.

Lyra was already there. She stepped in front of the horizontal swing and caught the flat of the blade on her spear shaft, ice forming instantly at the contact point and freezing the sword to her weapon for a second.

The freeze broke the sword’s momentum, causing the swing to lose its cutting edge and deflect downward. Instead of cutting Emric in half, the blade scraped across the floor.

shhhhk.

"Joint strike! Now!" Emric shouted.

Renna fired.

Two Storm-wrapped arrows streaked toward the General’s right elbow, where the bone-armor plate overlapped but didn’t connect. Her 10x cognitive buff had already calculated the exact angle and timing.

thwack. thwack.

The arrows punched through the soft tissue at the elbow joint. Dark fluid sprayed from the wound, and the General’s right arm spasmed as its grip on the right greatsword loosened.

The General reacted fast for something that big. It pivoted on its heel and kicked Lyra, sending her flying fifteen feet through the air before she caught herself. Her spear dug into the floor to arrest her slide, and she gasped as the force rattled her ribs. The kick had hit her guard rather than her body, but the impact alone was enough to hurt.

"It’s fast," she said, spitting blood. "Faster than I thought."

"Again!" Emric shouted.

The General was already on him. Both greatswords came down in a crossed overhead strike, forcing Emric to raise his shield with both hands and brace himself.

BOOM!

This time, the impact drove him to one knee. The floor of beneath him cracked, his shield dented, and his arms screamed from the force, but he held.

"Strike the left knee! it’s opened!" Emric grunted through clenched teeth.

Renna fired two arrows into the General’s left knee joint.

thwack. thwack.

The General stumbled as its left leg buckled, catching itself with the right greatsword by planting the blade into the floor.

"Right shoulder!"

Lyra drove her spear forward in a precise thrust, the tip finding the gap between the General’s shoulder plate and its collarbone armor. Ice exploded into the joint, freezing the tissue underneath.

crack.

The bone armor around the shoulder split, stress fractures spreading across the plate like cracks in a windshield. The General’s right arm dropped, its greatsword hanging loose in a grip that could no longer tighten.

"It’s working!" Renna screamed. "The armor is cracking!"

"Keep hitting the joints!" Holden called out.

He hadn’t moved from the edge of the cavern, watching and evaluating. His 10,000x processor tracked every movement, every crack, and every shift in the General’s posture, mapping the armor’s failure points in real time and feeding the information to his team through his callouts.

"Left elbow! Now!"

Renna fired.

"Neck joint! Lyra!"

Lyra thrust.

"Right knee!"

Renna fired.

Each strike hit a joint, and each joint cracked. The bone armor Maeve had said was immune to magic was failing because Team Soup wasn’t hitting it with magic. They were hitting it with physics: arrows, ice, and steel, driven by Rank 2 strength and guided by a 10x cognitive buff that had turned three academy students into a precision demolition team.

The General staggered, its armor reduced to pieces, plates hanging loose, joints frozen, and dark fluid leaking from a dozen wounds. It swung its remaining greatsword in a wide, desperate arc that Emric caught on his shield.

CLANG!

The impact was weaker. The General was slowing.

"Armor’s done!" Emric shouted, his voice ragged and his arms shaking as he held up a shield dented the size of a fist. "Now, Holden!"

Holden walked forward.

The General turned its skull-head toward him, the red orbs in its eye sockets flaring as it recognized a threat. It raised its one functioning greatsword and pointed it at Holden.

Holden stopped five feet from the beast.

He looked at the shattered armor, the frozen joints, and the dark fluid dripping from the dozen wounds inflicted by his team.

"You drop your swords too far when you swing."

The General lunged.

Holden triggered Hellfire Cleave.

Every ounce of Rank 3 energy he had was channeled through the Solar-Forged Sword and ignited simultaneously. A column of white-hot crimson fire erupted from the steel, so bright that it turned the purple cavern into a blinding white room for a second.

FWOOOOOSH!

He swung.

The fire hit the General’s shattered armor and didn’t stop. It tore through the cracked plates like they were paper, passing through the frozen joints, the dark flesh, the bone, and finally the skull.

The General split into pieces. The fire carved through it in a single, continuous arc, separating every cracked section of armor from every other section. The greatsword melted, the skull split, and the red eyes went dark.

The beast came apart in a shower of dark ash and burning fragments, each piece dissolving before it could hit the ground.

BOOM!

The shockwave from the kill blew across the cavern. Emric braced behind his shield, Renna grabbed a stalagmite, and Lyra dug her spear into the ground.

The fire settled, and the light faded.

Where the General had stood, there was nothing left except ash and heat.

tsssss.

[Abyssal General (Rank 3, 5-Star) Defeated!]

[+20,000 KP!]

[2x KP Booster Active! KP Doubled!]

[+40,000 KP!]

[Current KP: 648,290]

Holden stood in front of the ash pile, his sword steaming. He didn’t look back at his team because he could hear them.

Emric collapsed into a sitting position, breathing so hard that his whole body shook. "My shield is ruined. I need a new one."

"That was INCREDIBLE!" Renna was jumping again despite the double gravity. "We did it!! We took down a Rank 3! I hit SIX joint shots! Six!"

Lyra walked up beside Holden and looked at the ash, then at him.

She studied his face. He was calm, not winded or strained, not even breathing hard. He had just killed a Rank 3, 5-Star with a single swing, yet his heart rate hadn’t changed.

"You’re stronger than you show," she said quietly.

"I’m exactly as strong as I need to be."

She didn’t push it. But she filed it away in the part of her mind that was learning to read Holden Voss like a book written in invisible ink.

Holden pointed his sword at the floating crystal above them.

The Portal Anchor hung in the air, rotating slowly and completely unaware that its guardian was gone. Dark energy pulsed steadily from it, each beat sending another wave of monsters into the mortal world.

"That’s the target," he said. "Destroy that, the portal closes, the war ends."

Emric pulled himself to his feet. "How do we destroy it?"

"I hit it really hard."

"That’s your plan?"

"That’s always my plan."

Emric looked at the crystal, then at Holden’s still-steaming sword, and finally at the pile of ash that used to be a Rank 3 General.

"Fair enough."

Holden raised his sword toward the anchor. The crystal pulsed, the cavern hummed, and the red light from the crystal reflected in the blade, mixing with the dying orange glow of Hellfire Cleave.

He stepped forward.