Chapter 32: A New Invention
Godrick had completely lost his mind.
In the courtyard, only his roars remained, along with the heavy sound of his giant axe tearing through the air.
There was no one else in his eyes anymore.
Only the black-robed girl jumping around all over the place.
“Stand still! You damned fly!”
The giant axe swept sideways, the wind pressure tearing up bricks and stones from the ground.
Kiro screamed and jumped backward. The axe blade swept past so close that it almost brushed the tip of her nose.
She landed unsteadily, stumbled, and fell backward.
Godrick’s second strike was already descending with thunderous force.
“I’m dead!”
Kiro closed her eyes.
Boom!
A heavy impact rang out.
Godrick’s seemingly certain strike landed just an inch away from Kiro.
At the last possible moment, Roderika had thrown a freshly mixed Spark Aromatic at Godrick’s feet.
The small explosion did not cause any real damage, but the flash of fire and the sudden sound made Godrick’s movement shift for an instant.
And that instant saved Kiro’s life.
“Phew… that was close, that was close…”
Kiro crawled up from the ground, patting her chest in lingering fear. She still did not forget to turn back and make a face at Godrick.
“Can’t hit me. Mad?”
“I shall tear you apart!”
Godrick’s fury was completely ignited.
He utterly ignored the glintblades flying at him from behind, allowing Rogier’s sorceries to burst open wound after wound across his bloated body.
He ignored Loran, who was constantly bombarding his legs with Rock Sling.
He ignored Nepheli, who moved like a ghost at his side, carving cuts into his joints with her twin axes.
All his attacks, all his techniques, were poured toward Kiro alone.
And Kiro was staggering, dodging, and scrambling through that death zone made of axe shadows and swordlight.
Every time, she was on the edge of life and death.
When the axe came down, her foot just so happened to trip on a loose stone, making her fall out of the way.
When the shockwave swept across the ground, she just so happened to jump onto a broken stone pillar and avoid the impact.
When the storm roared through the courtyard, she just so happened to be blown into a recessed corner of the wall and came out completely unharmed.
Her movements had no pattern.
No technique.
No skill to speak of.
Every dodge was full of accidents and coincidences.
And yet, she simply did not die.
This absurd scene drove Godrick even more insane.
He felt like a giant chasing a fly with a swatter.
He clearly used all his strength every single time, yet he was always just that tiny bit off.
That suffocating sense of having all his power and nowhere to put it burned away what little reason he had left.
And the price of this “cat-and-mouse game” was that his back was completely open to everyone else.
Loran’s Rock Sling hammered his knees again and again. It could not make him fall, but the impact kept accumulating.
Rogier’s sorcery was like an endless barrage of needles, leaving dense wounds across his body.
But the deadliest one was Nepheli.
She was like black lightning.
Her twin axes always struck precisely at the joints of Godrick’s twisted, grafted limbs, places where there was no heavy armor to protect him.
Every strike brought up a spray of dark red blood.
“Ahhh—!”
Godrick finally let out a roar of pain.
He realized that if this continued, these annoying insects would grind him to death.
“Enough! Away with all of you!”
He slammed his giant axe into the ground.
A powerful storm exploded outward with him at the center, knocking all four people around him back.
“I shall show you… true power!”
He staggered toward a corner of the courtyard.
There lay the corpse of a huge flying dragon, long dead.
“Ah, mighty dragon… lend me thy strength…”
He raised his giant axe and brought it down brutally toward his own left arm.
This was the sign of entering phase two.
Loran immediately shouted a warning.
“Watch out! He’s going to graft the dragon! Spread out!”
Splurt!
Blood gushed out like a fountain.
But this time, something seemed wrong.
Godrick let out a scream more miserable than any before.
It was not just the pain of grafting.
It was a scream mixed with shock.
Loran focused his eyes.
Godrick had cut the wrong part.
Perhaps because he was too enraged.
Perhaps because all the wounds across his body had affected his judgment.
That axe had not only severed his own arm.
It had also sliced off a section of the thigh right next to it.
A massive wound, deep enough to reveal bone, appeared on his leg.
Blood surged out from it like a broken dam, instantly staining the ground beneath him red.
[Status: Enraged / Severely Injured / Bleeding]
“We’ve got him!”
Loran’s heart leaped.
As long as they dragged this out, the blood loss alone would be enough to kill Godrick.
They no longer needed to take risks and attack.
They only had to keep their distance, harass him, and wait for victory.
“Don’t rush in! Kite him!” Loran shouted.
Rogier immediately understood and began to retreat.
Roderika nervously hid behind a stone pillar.
Even Kiro, the most eager to fight, understood at this moment that “playing it safe means we win.” She stopped provoking him up close and only used Frenzied Flame from a distance as a threat.
However, one person did not retreat.
Nepheli Loux.
Not only did she not retreat, she charged forward into Godrick’s frenzied dragonfire.
“Now! He’s wide open!”
Her voice carried excitement she could not suppress.
[Status: Battle Spirit Rising / Overheated / Ignoring Risk]
Under Loran’s stunned gaze, she shot forward like an arrow released from the string, passing through the gaps in the dragonfire.
She leaped high into the air.
Her twin axes turned into cold flashes of light, chopping down viciously toward the huge bleeding wound on Godrick’s leg.
Splurt!
The twin axes sank into flesh without resistance.
Godrick let out a roar that shook the courtyard.
The dragon head suddenly swung.
Like an enormous whip, it slammed heavily into Nepheli, who had nowhere to borrow strength in midair.
Bang!
Nepheli’s body flew away like a rag doll, smashing hard into the distant castle wall before sliding down and lying motionless.
She had made a mistake that even Kiro would not make.
Greed.
When victory was already within reach, she had chosen the most reckless and irrational way to fight.
“Nepheli!”
Loran and Rogier cried out at the same time.
The plan completely collapsed the moment Nepheli charged out.
Rogier tried to save her.
Ignoring Godrick’s attacks, he rushed toward Nepheli.
Loran had no choice but to move.
If he backed away now and let Rogier rush in, the already crumbling battle line would completely fall apart.
With Rogier’s fragile body, he would not last three seconds in front of Godrick.
Loran raised the Meteorite Staff in his hand and aimed it at Godrick, who was preparing to pursue Nepheli.
He began to cast Rock Sling.
This was the only thing he could do.
Use himself as bait and pull Godrick’s aggro away from Nepheli and Rogier, back onto himself.
As for Kiro, because the momentum from her last dodge had been too great, she still had not managed to crawl up from the ground.
She scrambled with both hands against the floor, watching helplessly as the battle slid toward the worst possible abyss.
And there was nothing she could do.
Everything happened in an instant.
“Die… all of you, die!!”
Godrick roared.
Dragging that blood-soaked crippled leg, he abandoned the motionless female warrior on the ground and instead locked onto Loran, who was casting.
In his eyes, this troublesome sorcerer was the greater threat.
The dragon head rose high.
Blazing fire gathered deep within its throat.
At that critical moment—
Bang! Bang bang! Bang bang bang—!
Dense explosions erupted without warning at Godrick’s side.
It was not one explosion.
It was a whole chain of them.
The interval between each blast was extremely short.
One explosion followed closely after the previous one, as if they had been linked together by some invisible fuse, forming a deadly chain of fire.
Every burst of flame landed precisely on the wound on Godrick’s thigh.
“Graaahhhhhhhhh!”
Godrick let out a miserable scream.
The wound had already been bleeding nonstop. Now, with these chain explosions repeatedly burning it, the pain was magnified a hundredfold, a thousandfold.
His massive body trembled violently.
The dragonfire gathering in his throat collapsed because of the sudden agony.
He turned around, searching for the source of the explosions.
He saw the red-hooded girl who had been hiding in the corner from the very beginning.
She was holding up a glass bottle.
Thin wisps of smoke were still rising from its mouth.
Bang bang bang bang bang bang—!
Another series of explosions erupted.
This time, they were even denser and more violent.
Godrick’s enormous body looked as if it had been hit by dozens of grenades at the same time.
The blast wave made him stagger.
He tried to steady himself, but that wounded leg could no longer support him.
His huge body collapsed with a thunderous crash.
He struggled, trying to prop himself up with his arms.
But excessive blood loss had left him without even the strength to lift a finger.
The grafted dragon head drooped weakly onto the ground, its pupils rapidly dimming.
“I… of the Golden Lineage…”
He let out one final unwilling murmur.
Then he went completely silent.