Pov Narrator.
In a burst of speed, Isagi disappeared from the place where he was. The air compressed beneath his feet and the ground creaked when his body shot forward.
In a blink he was already in front of the demon. The monster's yellow eyes widened in surprise. Something had changed. It wasn't just the speed… there was something different in the way Isagi moved now.
Isagi threw a straight punch toward his face. The demon reacted in time, tilting his head to the side to dodge it by barely a few centimeters… but that was exactly the trap. Isagi's body was already turning.
A spinning kick slammed brutally against the side of his head. The blow was so clean that the demon's neck twisted violently and his face was thrown to one side, expelling a mixture of saliva and yellowish blood.
Before he could recover, Isagi's hand closed tightly around one of his horns. The veins in Isagi's arm stood out intensely as he tensed all his muscles.
—Come here.
His fist slammed directly into the demon's face. The impact was so violent that the monster's body was sent flying backward as if it were a doll launched by a catapult.
—(His blows are now much more violent than before…) —the demon managed to think. But he had no time to react.
Isagi had already caught up with him. The hunter's hand closed around the demon's leg mid-movement, stopping his trajectory dead. And then he spun. His body described a brutal arc while using all the force of his momentum.
The demon was slammed against the ground with monstrous violence. The concrete broke on contact, forming cracks that spread like spiderwebs beneath his back.
Isagi didn't hesitate for a second. His fist, wrapped in cursed energy, descended like a hammer. The blow struck right in the demon's chest, making him spit saliva and air suddenly while his torso sank slightly into the crater of the impact.
And then the beating began. Punches. Blows. Kicks. A rain of attacks fell upon the demon at a dizzying speed, each impact shaking his body violently. The dry sound of the blows echoed through the alley again and again, accompanied by small explosions of dust and fragments of concrete.
Isagi was not fighting like before. He was venting. The fear that his head would explode at any moment if he gave the opportunity had awakened something deeper in his combat instinct. Without realizing it, his body was attacking with a clear intention. Kill.
Each blow carried all his strength. Each punch sought to break bones. Each kick had the intention of destroying. He was no longer fighting to measure strength nor to have fun. He was fighting to end the fight. That instinct, raw and direct, was pushing his body beyond what he had shown until now.
And thanks to that… Isagi was beginning to draw out the true potential of his new physical abilities.
Isagi brought both hands together and raised them above his head. His fingers intertwined tightly while his muscles tensed. For an instant, the murderous look he had been showing throughout the entire fight seemed to calm slightly… but his body did not hold back at all.
And then he dropped his arms. The blow descended like a hammer. His two fists slammed brutally against the demon's body in a devastating double hammer blow.
All the ground beneath them shattered instantly. The concrete broke into multiple cracks that spread outward like spiderwebs, while fragments of asphalt and stones shot upward along with an explosion of dust, dirt, and debris.
The impact shook the entire alley. A small tremor ran through the area while the pieces of concrete fell back to the ground with a dry noise. After that.
Silence.
The dust began to disperse slowly in the air, rising into a gray cloud that hid the place for a few seconds. When it began to dissipate, Isagi's figure appeared within the cloud. He was standing in the center of the crater he had created.
His chest rose and fell with somewhat heavy breaths, small puffs of vapor escaping from his mouth due to the effort. It was the first time he had attacked in such a direct and brutal way.
In front of him, at the bottom of the crater, was the demon. His enormous body lay thrown down, completely motionless. His eyes were blank. A thick thread of yellowish blood mixed with red slowly came out of his mouth while his chest had sunk in an unnatural way.
That last blow had completely destroyed his rib cage. He didn't move. Not even a little. That made Isagi slowly lower his gaze toward his own hands. He opened and closed them several times, as if trying to process what he had just done.
—(Did I do this? I didn't think I had this much power without using Wind Breathing). —he thought, blinking several times.
During all this time he had gotten used to depending on Wind Breathing to kill demons. In his mind, that technique was what truly gave him the power to finish them. He had never seriously considered how much he could do with just his own body.
—(Damn…) —Isagi looked again at the crater… and at the destroyed demon inside it. —(I'm a beast, I'm a beast).
He couldn't help it. A slow smile began to form on his face. It seemed that Isagi was much stronger than he himself had thought and calculated.
Snap. The snap of fingers broke the silence of the alley.
At that very instant, Isagi's danger sensor went completely crazy, firing alarms in his mind. He barely had time to react when he felt something impossible to ignore.
His head began to burn. It was as if someone had lit a fire directly inside his skull. For a fraction of a second, the pain accumulated and the next instant
BOOM!
Isagi's head exploded as if it were a grenade. Blood, fragments of bone and brain matter shot out in all directions, splattering the ground, the alley walls and the nearby debris.
Isagi's now headless body remained rigid for an instant. Then it fell backward heavily. The silence lasted barely a second.
—HAHAHAHAHAHA!
The mocking laughter of the explosion demon filled the alley while he slowly licked his lips, his tongue running over the remains of blood that stayed between his teeth.
—Now that was fun! —he said between laughs—. You gave me a good beating.
The demon slowly straightened, cracks running through his body as he rose once more from the ruined ground. Although he was still smiling, it was obvious that the damage he had received was not minor.
—But luckily for me, my body is much tougher than that of most demons. —He shook his shoulders, making small fragments of dust and debris fall from his dark skin. —If a demon made of normal flesh had received those blows, you definitely would have destroyed him, kid. But what bad luck for you that mine isn't made of flesh. —He struck his own chest with his knuckles, producing a dry sound—. My body is more similar to rock.
Even so, the demon spat a mouthful of his bright yellow blood onto the ground. Isagi's last blow had clearly left him pretty messed up. The viscous blood splattered the concrete while the demon looked again at the headless body lying on the ground.
But then… He blinked.
—Huh?
His smile froze slightly. Something was happening. The demon tilted his head with curiosity while observing Isagi's corpse. Where there should have been only a destroyed neck something began to move. First a white structure appeared. The skull began to rebuild itself slowly, Then came the brain the gray matter regenerating inside the newly formed skull.
Then the eyes. After that the flesh. The muscles. The blood. The skin. Everything regenerated at an absurd speed. In a matter of seconds, a completely new head formed over the neck of Isagi's body. The demon watched the entire process with his eyes wide open.
—Huh? —he murmured, now completely astonished—. Can you regenerate even if your head is destroyed?
When the regeneration finished… Isagi had already recovered his head. And he was alive again.
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End of the chapter.