A flash of brilliant light accompanied by the crack of impact. Stella's four jagged, golden teeth broke into the monstrosity's heavily armored chest. All the spikes of carapace protruding from the area shattered and flew apart from the impact.
But Furio knew something was off from the moment the flail had hit; he was experienced enough to tell from the simple feel of the blow that it was too shallow, the sound of the strike strong but still far duller than it should have been.
"No-," Furio's grey eyes widened as he saw a thick circle of red encasing the monster's chest, directly covering its heart. It had used the martial art {Guard}, condensing the mana it circulated throughout its body with {Accel} into that single point in a mere instant.
A transition like that from free flow to sudden concentration required years and years of practice, and even then, you would be hard pressed to find anybody except from the upper star adventurers who could make transitions as quickly as that.
But at the very least, the monster was still injured.
Stella generated power with its activation and rotations, and by now, it was easily strong enough to smash through the monster's carapace with sheer physical power alone.
The white plating had cracked and split apart at the heart, even beneath the dense layer of protective mana and the purple personal Sapian shielding.
Bright red, raw pectoral muscles lined with streaks of white lay underneath, bleeding from force that tore a few of those powerful strands of muscles apart.
Furio waited for a moment.
Stella's light had touched that open wound. If all went well, then the creature's own longevity and primal density would work against it, and the flesh would start to bubble up, rupture, and blow apart-
But no such thing happened.
"I see," said the monster instead, observing as some of its raw, exposed flesh shuddered before a few blood vessels popped and muscle fibers tore further.
But nothing close to a major wound.
Then, its eyes settled on Stella, the flail head already moving back to Furio, but slower this time, having lost much momentum because of his surprise.
Furio yanked back on his wrench, pulling Stella back faster.
Too late.
The monster immediately learned.
Both its arms flashed purple, and instead of trying to put a Force Hold on Stella itself, it instead willed up a mound of dirt from the ground.
The dirt hit the chain with an impact that forced Stella to stop flying back and angle sharply downwards, slamming into the ground and blasting out a crater of dirt as several insects nearby blew apart from its light.
Furio adjusted as well, swiveling his wrench to the side to free the flail head, but the monster was already upon it.
With a single swipe, it severed the flail head from its supporting golden chains, and in another instant, Furio saw Stella, crafted personally by his great master, a coreforged weapon of a rarity that almost nobody in his star rank could match, disappear into the monster's mouth.
The shining light of Stella faded in an instant as the monster swallowed the flail head.
"This…is quite nourishing. Unlike anything I have sampled before-," said the monster.
It paused, as if to speak again, but then light shone strongly from within its stomach, lighting up its insides through its flesh and carapace and revealing the silhouette of three different hearts.
Was Stella's light still working? Destroying the monster from within?
No, Furio could tell that the light was dimming by the moment, the creature was frozen only in digesting the mass amount of power stored within Stella.
Instinctively, Furio knew that this monster had to be stopped here.
No matter what.
It did not have primal density yet, but it would gain more and more as time passed. At a certain point, no sorcerer would be able to deal with it using god-given magics.
It grew stronger from everything it consumed. At a certain point, no adventurer would be able to deal with it.
The gods themselves would fall before it if it was not stopped now.
Furio had gone through fifty six successful hunts in his life as an adventurer, many of those of a threat ranking beyond what he was supposed to deal with.
But he knew that every single one of those hunts, every single struggle he faced and overcame, was to make him stronger for this very moment.
To kill this monster before it killed everything else.
Furio tore Stella's chain off from his wrench and slotted in Yeolgu. The square blade vibrated faintly, still having enough stored power for two more activations.
Kill the monster before it could move again.
Furio roared as green lit up his body in a strong {Accel}, empowering him as he leaped forwards with Yeolgu raised overhead.
There were vital points every adventurer knew to strike. The brain, if a monster had one, and then its cores.
This monster possessed three hearts.
Three cores.
Destroying any single one would not immediately defeat it.
Striking the head was best.
With Yeolgu, Furio would smash the monstrosity's head and channel shockwaves internally, bursting the rest of the hearts.
The shockwaves directly countered any form of armor-plating, scales, or carapace, resonating off the hard surfaces and back through the body.
Furio batted down at the monster's head. Yeolgu's scales opened up and shimmered as the length of the blade crashed into the helmeted head with an explosive impact.
The initial blow itself was strong enough to put in deep cracks lining the monster's head, but not enough to punch through by itself to the brain.
The shockwaves, though – they traveled in mass amounts throughout the creature, shaking its enormous bulk in rapid vibrations.
The carapace began to crack, and the claws on its body, seemingly far more brittle than its shell, all shattered.
Soon enough, the creature would break apart completely with its insides boiled from the energy of shockwaves echoing within.
Furio saw the monster inexplicably move even with shockwaves rattling it, its brawny arm reaching out and grabbing one of his arms. The enormous hand wrapped around the whole length of his forearm, and he knew what was going to happen.
Furio let go of his wrench and kicked it behind him as he felt the monster rip his arm straight from the socket.
The monster reached out again, this time to grab his torso, but he tethered himself to his wrench, pulling himself quickly out of range.
Just like how he could push and pull his swords around his wrench, he too could act as a conduit point for it, though he was the only living, non-metallic body that this worked on.
As Furio flew in the air, he saw the monster take his arm and devour it in one gulp.
He grit his teeth and willed mana to condense around his empty arm socket. The muscles around the area, aided with the flow of mana, swelled up and tightened, fusing almost together to stop the mass bleeding.
Furio could not understand how the creature managed to weather through Yeolgu's tremors, but soon found the answer.
He saw the earth under the monster splitting apart, quaking as the shockwaves transferred from its body to the ground as an aura of red circulated around it.
{Dispersal}. An advanced martial arts technique. But how did the creature know how to use this?
All it had done was seen Furio use it once.
Was that truly all it needed to replicate something Furio had needed the entire summation of his years of training, talent, and breaking his own limits to muster up?
"I see," said the monster as it clicked its mandibles. "In manipulating the flow of your mana throughout your body such that it matches the physical properties of the shockwaves traveling through them, you are able to guide them out of your body.
In this manner, you may even be able to circulate electric currents harmlessly. Your device that is capable of generating such electricity thus is also rendered useless against me.
But no matter. I now understand that these tools of yours are fashioned from the essence of physical specimen.
They will now be mine.
You have proven your worth adequately. It is now time to be consumed."
Furio hung onto his wrench in the air, suspended in tethered orbit as it was with the two swords near it.
He thought about giving up. But he was far too deep into this fight to do that. And it was not just Emi and Vera, the fate of all Common life rested upon his shoulders.
And he still had one ace up his sleeve.
For now, he needed to make distance.
Yeolgu was slotted into it and Fulmi orbited it. But like the beast had said, Fulmi was useless against it now if it had mastered {Dispersal} to the extent that it could minimize damage from Yeolgu.
Furio tapped Fulmi with the wrench, imparting a magnetic push on it that sent it flying fifty meters away – the maximum range of the tether. He then raised an index finger to tap his wrench, making it pull towards Fulmi.
Like this, he could semi-replicate the effects of flying, and though it was fast, the flight patterns were predictable, following his magnetic tethers that all had linear paths.
No doubt, the monster would pick up on this.
But all he needed to do was get out of this forest, out of any potential interference getting in the way between himself and this monster when he used the most powerful ability in his entire arsenal, one utterly unique to him and his Ethera: the Resonance Break.
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