The silence that followed the aerial destruction was not normal.
It was the kind of silence born from something that should not be alive after such a strike.
The dust began to settle… and the deep pit where the monster had been thrown was leaking dark red smoke.
Ashen stood at the edge, his body tense, his aura flickering, his chest rising and falling heavily.
Despite his multiple injuries…
Despite the blood covering half his body…
His savagery did not decrease at all.
But…
Inside the pit…
Something moved.
The ground shook, as if something massive was rearranging its bones.
Arms appeared…
Then more arms…
Then dozens…
Then hundreds.
Bloody arms filled the entire space.
The ground suddenly exploded beneath Ashen's feet.
From below, giant twisted, sticky bloody arms shot out, moving as if they had a killer instinct.
They wrapped around his legs.
Then his torso.
Then his arms.
In one second… Ashen was fully restrained.
The arms pulled his body so tightly that he began to hear faint cracking sounds from his ribs.
The ground around him was turning into a forest of bloody limbs,
writhing, twisting, and screaming, its air dripping with danger and slime.
---
Then—
Heavy, deformed, breathing violently—
The giant mass of flesh rose from the pit.
The giant monster…
Despite the holes, the explosions, the heavenly strike…
Was standing.
Its torso was holes upon holes.
Its back was half destroyed.
One of its arms trembled without the strength to lift.
Dozens of faces on the sides of its head had melted like burning wax.
But its vertical eye?
It was darker… and more lethal… than any moment before.
When it looked at Ashen,
it wasn't looking at an opponent.
It was looking at a nightmare it had to kill at any cost.
It opened its deformed mouth—
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!
It wasn't a sound.
It was direct bombardment.
A bloody sound wave shot out faster than the eye could track,
striking Ashen directly—
and his trapped body shook violently.
The first howl shattered the arms around his chest.
The second howl cut his skin from shoulder to hip.
The third howl burst blood from his mouth.
The fourth howl made the air itself explode around him,
the rocks cracked, the pillars fell, the ground collapsed under his feet.
The fifth howl…
was like a sonic blade tearing the body from the inside.
Ashen felt numb for a moment.
Then pain.
Then emptiness.
He dropped to one knee,
blood pouring heavily onto the ground.
The bloody arms grabbed him again,
stronger, deeper, more brutal.
The monster didn't wait.
It raised its head…
its vertical eye began to glow.
Blood inside it formed a hellish vortex.
The air melted.
Stones rose from the ground.
The pressure cracked the rocks beneath its feet.
When it completed,
the beam became a pure, concentrated red mass,
capable of melting a mountain wall.
The monster aimed the beam at Ashen…
Then fired.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!
The beam pierced the arms holding Ashen,
melting them completely,
then hit his body directly.
It wasn't a push.
It was bombardment.
Ashen was launched hundreds of meters into the air,
burning, rolling, leaving behind a trail of smoke and scattered blood.
He crashed into a massive stone pillar—
the pillar shattered like sand.
He kept flying—
hit a rock wall—
the wall exploded—
then fell into another ruined pit,
his body covered in wounds, his skin torn,
some bones exposed,
his head bleeding,
his chest shaking with difficulty.
The entire stone forest had turned into a red zone.
Blood, dust, debris, the smell of burned flesh.
The giant monster stood in the middle of the destruction…
breathing wildly…
its face cracking…
but its power trembled around it like a beast freshly risen from hell.
As for Ashen…
In the distant pit,
his body was shaking…
but his eyes, despite the blood,
did not fade.