Chương 31: Battle End

Aram roared—or rather, what used to be Aram. I did not waste a single second. I didn't wait to see what he would do. Ignoring the blinding agony shooting up my broken right arm, I scooped Lania up with my good left arm, gritting my teeth against her dead weight, and ran. The chapel shook violently behind me. A deafening crash echoed through the room as Aram blindly smashed into the stonework. I sprinted toward the far corner of the ruined sanctuary, sliding behind a massive, overturned statue.

I laid Lania down as gently as possible, brushing a stray lock of hair from her pale, unconscious face.

"Just stay asleep a little longer," I whispered. I reached into my fanny pack with trembling, bloody fingers. I pulled out my last batch of potions: Tundra's Water, Fulgur's Blood, and Second Wind. I had brought two of each, so this was it. I briefly debated using the Golden Hearth Nectar—I only had one bottle left. I looked down at my broken right arm. It was swollen, bruised a deep purple, and bleeding red blood. But I could still move it. Even if it felt like holding my hand in a blazing fire, I could move it.

I chose to save the Nectar. If I couldn't protect Lania perfectly during this fight and she got caught in the crossfire, she would need it to survive. I wouldn't have it any other way. I pushed the thought aside and downed the three vials. My magika reserves roared back to life, my heart raced with electricity, and a freezing calm washed over my muscles. I stepped out from behind the statue. Aram was still near the altar, panting heavily and growling. He had grown to nine feet tall.

Everything around him in a thirty-meter radius was flattened. His power and range had vastly increased. Keep him thirty meters away from Lania at all times. Got it. I picked up a stray stone from the rubble and hurled it at him. It sailed through the air and hit the ground naturally, skipping across the tiles. Thank God. His power hadn't gone fully automatic—he still had to deliberately trigger his negations. If it were a passive, constant field, I would have been completely fucked.

Aram growled once more as the black sludge finished consuming his flesh, turning him into a hulking, armored beast. I took a deep breath and vanished. I emerged from the shadow right behind him. He did not notice me. I swung my right fist, heavily reinforced by Tundra's Water and Shadowstride, capable of smashing solid concrete. It hit his sludge armor with a dull thud. He did not flinch. His defense was astronomically high. I gritted my teeth and activated Rotary Rend.

Blood immediately spewed from the torn muscles of my already broken arm. The invisible, shrieking vortex wrapped around my fist, and the black sludge began to swirl and tear. My arm drilled deeper and deeper into his armored back. The monster screamed in pain and instantly triggered his power, negating the normal force—not just directly on me, but on everything within his thirty-meter range. I wasn't fast enough to use Shadowstride to escape.

The crushing weight of gravity slammed me down to my knees, forcing a mouthful of blood up my throat. Aram spun around to swat me into a bloody smear, but I had already vanished. I reappeared behind a distant pillar, panting heavily. Fuck, this is going to be painful. Aram's power had skyrocketed, but his cunning was gone. Since normal punches reinforced by my skills wouldn't do a damn thing against him, my only choice was to repeatedly use Rotary Rend.

The simplest plan formed in my mind: Wait for Aram to stop using his negation. Use Shadowstride to get into his blind spot. Drill into him with Rotary Rend. Get out, and repeat. The plan was simple, but the execution was going to be pure hell. I would have to rapidly switch my focus back and forth between Shadowstride and Rotary Rend, and I was ninety percent sure Aram would catch me every time. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

But there really was no better plan. There was nothing left in this chapel I could use to my advantage. I had to whittle him down piece by piece. I took another deep breath, ignored the burning in my lungs, and vanished. I emerged near his flank as he blindly thrashed at the empty air. I threw my right arm forward and activated Rotary Rend a second time. The centrifugal force ripped into his side, tearing away massive, hardened chunks of black sludge. But the recoil was too much for my body to handle.

With a sickening, wet snap, the remaining intact bones in my right arm shattered completely. Aram roared, negating the normal force. I choked on the pressure, dropped my focus. I shifted my focus back to shadowstride and hopped away just before his massive claws crushed the floor where I had been standing. I leaned against a wall, my right arm now hanging entirely limp and useless at my side. From now on, I had to use my left. Aram was thrashing wildly now, leaking black fluid from his side.

I waited for the briefest opening, then vanished again. I materialized right beside him, ducking under a wild backhand swing. I channeled Rotary Rend into my left fist and drove it directly upward into his elbow joint. The vortex shrieked. The sludge armor splintered, and the joint gave way. With a sickening tear of flesh and hardened ooze, the monster's entire left arm was ripped from its socket, flying through the air and crashing into the pews. Aram shrieked, a sound that vibrated deep in my chest.

He stomped the ground, dropping his negation field in a frenzy. But I was already gone, having retreated into the shadows. He was crippled, leaking black sludge from his severed shoulder, stumbling blindly. I just needed one final, clean shot. I scanned the room and found it—a long shadow cast high up on the wall from the flickering flames of one of the lights still left. I hopped into it. Emerging near the ceiling, I plummeted straight down toward him. He looked up, his single bloodshot human eye widening.

He negated the air resistance, my fallling speed increased. He dug his own grave. I funneled every last drop of my remaining magika into my left arm. Rotary Rend. I smashed my spinning fist directly into the top of his skull. The sludge armor caved in immediately. The brutal centrifugal force drilled straight down into his brain, obliterating his head entirely. A massive fountain of black sludge exploded outward in a violent geyser, raining down and covering the cracked tiles.

The beast's body went rigid, then collapsed backward with a heavy thud. I hit the ground hard, rolling to disperse the impact, and came to a stop covered in ash and black ooze. I didn't speak a word of victory. I didn't want to jinx myself again. I lay there for quite some time. The adrenaline slowly bled out of my system, replaced by a bone-deep, paralyzing exhaustion. Every nerve in my body was screaming.

I just stared at the fractured murals on the ceiling, listening to the quiet crackle of the blue flames, letting the reality wash over me. I was alive. It was over. Eventually, I forced myself to move. I pushed myself up off the floor using only my core and my knees, refusing to put any weight on my agonizingly broken arms. I awkwardly reached into my fanny pack with my left hand—which was bruised and trembling from the recoil of the last strike—and pulled out the bottle of Golden Hearth Nectar.

It hurt just to pop the cork with my teeth, but I finally managed it. I poured the glowing liquid down my throat. It was cold, sweet, and incredibly soothing. I had doubted whether it would be enough to completely heal my arms that were practically pulverized, but the potion proved me wrong. A warm, golden light radiated outward from my chest. My shattered bones snapped back into place, my torn muscles reknitted themselves, and the deep purple bruises faded to normal skin.

Within seconds, both of my arms were as good as new. This potion was ridiculously overpowered. I really hoped I could take some out of the Rift with me. I walked back toward the overturned statue. Lania still lay unconscious, her back resting against the cold stone. I sat down beside her. I thought about everything that had changed since I first pulled the Skillmerge card. Was it all just a stroke of luck? Was it some kind of divine intervention? Was I secretly a "chosen one" bound for greatness? Probably not.

There were definitely better candidates for a hero than me. But whatever the case, I was deeply satisfied right now. I had accomplished exactly what I had set out to do. Well, technically, I wasn't done yet. I still needed to get Lania out of this nightmare facility. As if waiting for my cue, Lania suddenly jolted awake. She gasped, panting heavily, and scrambled backward. She frantically turned her head left and right, her eyes wide with terror, expecting to see the lab, the tubes, or the doctors.

Then she spotted me. Her face cycled through a dozen different emotions in the span of a second—confusion, fear, disbelief—until it finally settled on one: a stern, unbreakable resolve.

"I am not going back," she said, her voice trembling but fierce.

"Don't worry." I reached out and gently ruffled her hair.

"Aram is gone. No one is holding you here anymore." The dam broke. The stern resolve crumbled, and tears flowed freely from her eyes. She jumped forward and wrapped her arms around my neck, hugging me as tightly as she could. She was sobbing, burying her face in my shoulder, stammering words I couldn't even make out through her cries.

"It's alright," I whispered, hugging her back.

"We can get out of here now."