Chương 78: Chapter 79: The Son of the Dawn

The limestone path widened slightly as Ethan descended into the first formal subterranean terrace of the fault. The heavy, un-fired mud scarab beetle waded ahead of him, its cast-iron plating scraping against the chalky rock floorboards with a coarse, hollow grind. The smell of cold sacrificial ash grew thick enough to catch in the throat, caked in the ancient soot of three-hundred-year-old Kipsu ritual fires. Ethan took his trail torch and wedged it firmly into a natural limestone crevice along the back wall.

His flickering orange torch caught the deep, angular cuneiform cuts scoring the chamber walls. The morning star. This was the first phase of the ancient poem, celebrating the prideful ascension of the shining one before his weight failed the throne. The cackling of the common hyena packs vanished entirely, replaced by a dense, heavy stillness that made the air feel thin. At the center of the ash-covered clearing, the darkness gathered itself into a solid, towering phantom shape.

It was the Tzelem Heilel (צֶלֶם הֵילֵל) —the deified memory of a ancient Canaanite warrior-king who had assumed the title of the morning star. The specter did not look like a standard rotted corpse; its frame was wrapped in pristine, overlapping sheets of polished bronze scale-armor that threw the torchlight back in sharp, blinding needles. In his right hand, the shadow-king held a long, curved Canaanite sickle-sword (Khopesh).

The phantom's head tilted slightly, its hollow, ash-veiled eyes locking straight onto Ethan's Medjay silhouette. There was no theatrical battle cry. The Tzelem Heilel burst forward with a sudden, terrifying kinetic acceleration, its bronze sandals kicking up white dust clouds as it sprinted down the narrow corridor. The curved sickle-sword swept through the air in a low, wicked horizontal arc designed to sever limb joints at a dead run. The collision was brutal.

The sub-boss violently slammed his weight into the forward wedge of the scarab beetle. The high-carbon cast-iron armor plates fulfilled their exact sacrificial purpose. Under the sheer kinetic force of the Khopesh strike, the brittle iron crust shattered away with a succession of glassy, metallic shrieks, spraying sharp black slag fragments across Ethan's bare ankles. The golem's structural Durability Index instantly chunked down from eighty-five percent straight to fifty.

The soft mud core underneath held its shape, but the beetle was forced into a hard, sliding stagger animation. In the dim, smoke-choked clearance of the tunnel, Ethan dropped his hips, lowering his center of gravity. He stopped forcing the shot with his upper arm. He drove his weight through his base heel, matching the release apex of his rawhide sling with an explosive, whipping motion. The sling whipped flat.

The flash-hardened iron-oxide stone flew in a razor-straight, un-wavering trajectory right through the open upper clearance of the golem's back. It bypassed the flashing bronze scale-armor entirely, driving itself with the velocity of primitive iron shot straight into the center of the phantom's translucent, pulsating נֶפֶשׁ (Nephesh) throat. The metallic stone struck the windpipe with a sickening, heavy CRACK. The system let out a deep, bass-heavy critical-hit chime.

The sub-boss's forward momentum shattered instantly; his cackle choked out into a dry, hollow gasp as his health line took a massive, vertical deletion. The sheer rotational torque of the hip-turn had flattened the flight path to perfection. The Tzelem Heilel staggered backward two paces, his sickle-sword losing its tracking line. Ethan didn't pause to appreciate the form.

He was already executing the next throw: his fingers slid another red iron missile into the leather pouch, his hips winding back down to load the next core throw before the morning star's pride could recover its stance.