Chương 39: Chapter 38 - Holding the line

Kalsar's Kithren hit the boss dead center, all four legs driving into a shape that gave under the impact and then simply reformed around it, absorbing the charge without any of the violence Ant expected from a collision that size. It struck back immediately, jaws closing hard on whatever passed for the boss's shoulder — no lightning in it, no light, just weight and force and teeth, a physical strike thrown with everything it had.

The boss answered with a lash of violet energy, a whip-crack of light that should have thrown Kalsar's Kithren back across the chamber. It didn't. The runes along its flanks caught the strike instead, drinking it down, and Ant watched the pattern flare brighter down its spine, a network of light spreading from where the attack had landed like something feeding.

"Elemental Absorption," Kalsar said, quieter now, mostly to himself.

"Good. Keep him on magic. Keep him honest." For a stretch of minutes it worked exactly like that. The boss lashed out again and again, streams of violet light and cracking bursts of pure force, and every strike that connected only made Kalsar's Kithren stronger.

Ant could see it happening in real time — the runes climbing brighter with each hit absorbed, and his Kithren's next lunge coming in visibly faster than the one before it, a bite landing with enough force to actually rock the boss backward on whatever passed for its footing. It wasn't just holding on anymore. It was gaining, the gap between what it had started the fight with and what it had now widening every time the boss made the mistake of throwing more magic at it.

"He's getting stronger," Ant said, half to himself.

"That's the point of the skill," Kalsar said, though there was something almost pleased buried under the flatness of it.

"Every hit he takes off pure magic, he gets to keep a piece of. Speed, strength, both. The more he eats, the harder he hits back." The boss seemed to notice the same thing. Its next strike came slower — not from weakness, Ant realized, but from something that looked almost like hesitation, a half-second pause before committing to another lash of violet light that hadn't been there in the opening exchanges.

It threw the attack anyway, and Kalsar's Kithren tore through the follow-up counter faster than the boss could recover from throwing it, driving it back another full step. The shifting mass that made up its shoulders seemed to tighten, drawing in on itself in a way that read, unmistakably, as frustration. It struck again, harder this time, more force behind the light than any of the earlier attacks had carried, as though sheer volume alone might overwhelm whatever the absorption was doing. It didn't.

The runes simply climbed higher, brighter, Kalsar's Kithren shrugging off the escalation and answering it with a bite that opened a visible tear along the boss's forearm, dark motes drifting free from the wound before the shape knit itself back together. The boss went still. Only for a moment — a pause in the rhythm of the fight that felt different from anything that had come before it, like something reconsidering an approach that had stopped working.

Ant felt Mahkir go tense beside him, and even Kalsar's easy confidence flickered, his eyes narrowing on the boss's stillness with the particular wariness of a man who recognized a predator changing its mind about something. Then it moved. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. The boss's next strike didn't come as light.

It came as a fist, closing the distance in a single motion faster than anything that size should have managed, and it caught Kalsar's Kithren square in the ribs before the runes had any chance to do anything about it. The impact threw it sideways into the chamber wall hard enough that stone cracked.

"It's not stupid," Kalsar muttered, watching his Kithren shake itself upright again.

"Wondered how long that would take." The boss came again, and this time it didn't choose. Violet light lashed from one side while the other arm swung in, a fist wrapped in nothing but raw physical force, and Kalsar's Kithren had to split its attention between absorbing what it could and simply taking what it couldn't.

The runes still lit wherever the magic landed, still fed something into its strength, but the punches landed clean and full and stayed landed, no glow softening them, no system answering for the damage at all. It kept fighting. It kept winning ground, barely, trading hits it shouldn't have been able to trade — every bite still landing harder than the last thanks to whatever the absorbed magic was feeding into its muscle, but harder wasn't the same as untouched, and Ant could see the difference starting to matter.

The moment it began to slow wasn't dramatic. A half-step later meeting the next lunge. A dodge that carried it slightly less far than the one before. The runes stayed lit, stayed bright, power still visibly stacked up and waiting inside it, and none of it seemed to matter against a boss that had simply decided to stop giving it anything clean to feed on. Whatever the skill stored, it clearly didn't translate into endurance. Strength, speed, the raw force behind each strike — all of that kept climbing.

But the fight had already run long, longer than anything Kalsar's Kithren looked built for, and the accumulated weight of every physical hit it hadn't been able to answer with absorption was settling into its movements in a way that no amount of stored power seemed able to undo.

"Kalsar," Ant said.

"I see it."

"He's not—""I said I see it." Kalsar's voice had gone tight, controlled in the specific way of someone holding back a decision he didn't want to make yet. His Kithren took another hit, staggered, recovered a fraction slower than the hit before it had allowed. Mahkir's ears had gone flat against his skull. This isn't a fight he wins alone, he said. Not against something built like that. Ant didn't answer.

He was watching the runes — still glowing, still climbing with every burst of magic that landed, power stacking up inside Kalsar's Kithren with nowhere obvious to go, while the actual damage kept piling on underneath all of it. Stored strength and spent stamina were apparently two very different things, and only one of them was running out. The boss pressed harder.

Two strikes in close succession, one magic and one fist, and Kalsar's Kithren took the first cleanly on its flank — runes flaring, the pattern brightening again — and staggered hard trying to pull back from the second, catching only part of the dodge, the punch clipping its shoulder and sending it down onto one knee. It got back up. Slower.

"Kalsar." Ant's voice came out harder this time.

"Stand down," Kalsar said, not looking at him, every word clipped.

"He can take more than this looks like."

"He's not fast enough anymore."

"I know what I'm looking at." The boss closed again, unhurried, patient in a way that felt worse than aggression would have. Kalsar's Kithren met it with everything it had left, jaws driving in with all the stored strength it could put behind them, a bite that should have ended something. The boss simply took it.

Absorbed the damage the way flesh absorbs a blow that isn't quite enough, and answered with both arms at once — one lash of violet light, one closed fist — and this time there was nothing left fast enough to split between them. The fist connected. Full weight, no glow to soften it, and Kalsar's Kithren went down and stayed down for a long, terrible second before dragging itself back onto its feet, breathing hard, runes still lit but visibly dimmer now, the light guttering at the edges instead of climbing.

Something in Ant's chest turned over. He looked at Mahkir. Mahkir was already looking back, every line of him coiled tight, waiting for exactly one thing.

"We're not standing here," Ant said.

"You are standing here," Kalsar said, sharp, final.

"Both of you. That is an order." Ant didn't answer him. He was already moving, Soul Render clearing its sheath before he'd finished the thought, Mahkir a half-step ahead of him and closing the distance to the boss faster than either of them had discussed or agreed to or planned in any way at all. Kalsar's voice followed them across the chamber, furious and useless against backs that were already gone.

"Ant!" He didn't stop.