Mason landed hard on the Warden's chest. Feeling the weight, the Warden let go of its heavy weapon. The long blade hit the silver water with a loud clang, making the surface ripple and shake.
The giant's iron fingers, thick and cold, clamped around Mason's throat.
Mason ignored the pressure on his windpipe and made a wild but partially strategic effort. Instead of pulling back, he lunged forward, using the Warden's grip as a fulcrum. With his hand still tightened around the hilt of the knife in his own forehead, he slammed the wood into the Warden's eye socket.
The impact splintered the hilt of the knife. The green light sputtered, but the Warden didn't fall. Instead, it let out a grinding sound and slammed Mason downward.
Mason hit the silver surface with enough force to rattle his teeth, but as he hit, he watched the Warden. He saw the way it shifted its hips to generate downward force. Even in the frenzy, the creature followed a geometric logic.
'Hips... pivot... anchor...'
Mason was no master of martial arts, nor was he skilled at street fighting. If there was one thing he excelled at, it was stealing. He had stolen all his life.
As the Warden raised an iron fist to finish him, Mason mirrored the movement. He wasn't a master, but he was a thief. A mimic. He anchored his own heels into the vibrating water, copying the Warden's wide, rooted stance.
The Warden's fist descended.
Mason didn't block with his arms. He allowed a mindless beast-like instinct to take over, throwing a spray of the heavy, silver water upward with his foot to obscure the Warden's vision. This gave him time to simultaneously use the martial pivot he'd just seen the creature use.
He slipped the punch by a hair's breadth. The Warden's fist slammed into the silver water, sending a vibration so violent it tossed Mason upward.
Afloat, Mason saw his opening. The Warden was reset, its weight on its front foot—the same mistake Mason had exploited before. But this time, the Warden was ready to counter a lower attack.
'..... So...'
Mason, who would have normally gone for the legs, grabbed the Warden's stuck arm and hauled himself up, using the creature's iron limb as a ladder. He reached the Warden's neck and dismissed the idea of a strike. Instead, he wrapped his legs around its neck in a messy, desperate chokehold. He was copying the Warden's "joint-locking" logic but applying it with the frantic energy of a gutter cat.
"You... and me... we're both just junk!" Mason screamed, the blood from his forehead stinging his eyes.
He drove his thumbs into the gaps of the war mask. He soon found a pitted, weakened seal where the mask met the jaw and heaved.
The Warden roared and began to spin, trying to force Mason off its back. Mason held on, resisting the pain in his broken shoulder. He began to rhythmically slam his head—the side with the knife—against the Warden's temple.
Every impact was a life-threatening gamble, as the blade of the knife could have shattered his skull or driven its way into his brain.
To hell with that; he was a ravaged beast now. He'd show this monster what street fighting looked like. He didn't care about the risk. All he wanted to do was kill the beast.
'Pathetic? Me? How dare you? Birthed in the Stone Slums? To die at sixteen? How dare they? A doctor declared my death? How dare he? Brought into another damned world? How dare they? To hell with this world! To hell with every damn thing!'
Where was all this coming from?
It was all anger. The anger Mason had stored in his heart all these years was now full. He wanted to unleash it.
Mason yelled. No, he roared like a ravaged beast. The sound tore through the sterile silence of the Endless Ocean. The anger—years of being told he was a walking corpse, years of breathing the dust of the Stone Slums—boiled over, turning his blood into liquid fire.
As the Warden spun, Mason clamped down like a parasite. Every time the Warden's iron skull whipped around, Mason met it with a headbutt.
The vibrations were blinding. With every strike, the knife in his forehead groaned against his bone, the tip likely scraping his frontal lobe. His vision flared white, then red, then black. But the anger acted as a tether; it kept him conscious when his body should have shut down.
The anger replaced his lost energy. In fact, he was already dead, but the bitterness in him wanted to achieve its aim of unleashing itself onto something, and he had found the right medium.
This was his first battle with a Yaoguai, and it was messy, driven by survival instincts. It was a battle that had already cost him the life he had once lost back on Earth. He wasn't going to lose this one so soon.
He was running crazy. Just a few minutes into the destruction of the Celestial Realm and he felt like he could explode. To be honest, the Warden's share of the anger was very little, but it was the only thing present to absorb the impact of sixteen years of silent screaming.
The metal jaw of the mask finally snapped under the relentless pounding of Mason's skull.
Mason didn't rip the mask off. He did not want to see what was underneath. Instead, he gripped the now-detached, razor-sharp iron jaw of the mask and used it like a handle.
He shoved his fingers deep into the neck joint of the Warden, feeling the cold, pressurized silver water pulsing against his skin.
"I am not pathetic! Die! I am not weak! Who gave you the right to classify me?! Who?! Die! Die! Die!!!!"
Mason slammed his forehead into the mask one last time. The hilt of the knife, already splintered, acted as a hammer, driving the jagged iron jaw of the mask into the Warden's throat.
A geyser of silver water hissed out like steam from a burst boiler. The Warden's iron frame went rigid. The green light in its eye socket turned a violent, screaming emerald before shattering into a thousand dull shards.
The momentum of the spin carried them both downward. They hit the silver surface with a sound like a hammer hitting an anvil.
Mason was tossed aside, sliding twenty feet across the vibrating water until he slammed into a tree. He lay there, his chest heaving, his left arm useless, and the knife in his head now buried so deep the wood of the hilt was flush with his skin.
Across the silver expanse, the nine-foot Warden didn't move. Slowly, the iron bones began to disconnect. The ribs, the arm guards, and the heavy boots began to sink into the silver water, which was no longer solid beneath the creature's corpse. It was as if the realm was reclaiming its failed soldier.
Mason stared at the jagged crack in the sky, his breathing shallow. The anger was gone, replaced by a hollow, cold exhaustion. He was slowly losing consciousness as the voice came back alongside the scroll.
[You've slain an Effluent Hollow, Remnant Of The Cursed War]
[Agility +5]
[Vitality +2]
[Strength +3]
[Martial Assistant 1% loaded]