The ground was still shaking from the last clash, dust filling the sky like fog, and the echoes of impacts ringing between the massive stone pillars.
Ashen stood in the crater his body had carved into the ground. His chest rose and fell, blood dripping from his shoulder, his forehead, and the torn half of his chest… but his eyes?
Steady. Wild. Unfamiliar with retreat.
The giant monster rose as well… Holes the size of human heads covered its torso… Dozens of blood arms on its back were broken… One of its four main arms was completely crushed… But its flesh swelled again, recovering, regenerating. And at a terrifying speed.
Both of them looked at each other.
But this moment… was the moment Ashen decided to increase the intensity of the fight even more.
He raised his right hand… and slowly closed his fingers.
The moment all five fingers met… the world around him began to change.
Thick layers of blood scales exploded around his body, layer after layer, dark, shining scales, each one as heavy as a boulder. With every scale that formed… his defense increased, his physical pressure rose… as if his skin was turning into a primitive battle armor.
The sound of the transformation was like a hammer striking heated iron. Tak!… Tak!… Tak!
The monster looked at him… and fell silent.
And at that moment for Ashen… the rules of speed themselves changed.
A massive blood energy appeared on his legs, shaped like a leopard's paws, glowing with a dark heavenly light. Then—
Ashen surpassed the air.
His speed was no longer just speed; it was a sudden disappearance. His steps became flashes. His reaction time became faster than even the sound of his heartbeat.
The air around him could not withstand him anymore— it tore apart every time he moved.
His arms turned into beasts.
A dense blood aura gathered around them, forming the shape of giant blood bear arms, huge claws, fists like stone, each punch carrying the force of an explosion.
Ashen's body was now… a complete primitive weapon.
With a single step— he vanished.
The monster… could not track him. And for the first time… it trembled.
Not out of fear. Out of animal instinct recognizing that its prey had become the hunter.
Then—
BOOM!!!
Ashen appeared in front of it suddenly, his fist striking the monster's stomach with full force.
One strike— but it:
Shattered dozens of giant ribs
Opened a massive bloody hole in its stomach
Exploded sand and stone behind it in a straight line
And pushed the monster fifty meters back, rolling like a collapsing fortress
Dozens of human faces on the sides of its head literally exploded, flesh and blood spraying out.
Ashen did not wait.
He appeared behind the monster, a kick to its spine… the kick didn't just break the vertebrae— it deformed half its back completely and launched its body upward.
The Blood Manifestation tried to absorb the strike… and failed.
Ashen leapt above it while the monster was still in the air.
His body glowed with the three runes, the air almost burning around him.
He dropped his fist on the monster's shoulder…
A sound echoed for hundreds of meters.
The giant's shoulder exploded. The right gorilla arm fell limp, its bone cracked all the way to the torso.
The monster tried to scream— but Ashen grabbed its face as he fell with it toward the ground.
Then— he smashed it into the earth.
The entire area shattered. A stone column a hundred meters tall broke apart. The ground collapsed seventy meters downward.
The monster trembled… the Blood Manifestation began to lose its shape for the first time.
Ashen had become a killing machine that knew no mercy.
As if the monster was no longer an opponent… but a target.
The giant creature was bleeding in streams, half its chest deformed, its back destroyed, its right arm almost useless, dozens of its faces melting.
But this was not the end of its suffering… it was the beginning.