Chương 68: CRIMSON HAZE

Eddie Gable had already learned the lesson once. You could not cut water. The blade passed clean through the clone's torso, silver edge humming with sanctified Flow—and met no resistance at all. The thing folded around the strike like a living tide, its body liquefying, reforming behind the arc of his swing. Frost bloomed instantly along the steel, crawling up the fuller in jagged veins.

"Tch." Eddie twisted his wrist and infused the blade with Flow, shattering the ice that was crowing on it and jumped back just as the clones performed a down ward slash, shattering the ground on which he was standing mere moments ago. He looked at the clone which only smiled with his face and prepared to attack again. Aside the fact that it was covered entirely is sapphire blue scales it had the same appearance as him. Same stance. Same footwork. Same damned breathing rhythm.

Apex Beast had broken itself down to smaller forms—seventy-six fragments, clones of the Saint who was trying to exterminate it. Its bodies now immitated the charactersitics of a liquid while it seemed to have mimicked the fighting style Eddie had demonstrated in their battle so far. The biggest threat now was its cold mist which it was now actively using as a weapon. The frost wasn't cold—it was hungry. And now its vital organs and possibly Flowstone core were scattered among the several bodies it now possesed.

Before his eyes, a clone walked into another one and came out from another direction of its body. Several of them did this as they drew closer.

'Now it could easily transfer them to any of the other clones. Hmmm, how troublesome.' As he was planning on the best way to deal with the situation, another clone lunged. Eddie stepped inside and tried to land a counterstrike. But that was a feint, the same feint he had used to sever its hindlimbs. The strike, shoulder rolled forward and be barely managed to spin out of the blades path. Ice kissed his right shoulder and pain detonated. It was the sensation of.... something being drained as the frost spread.

It was however shattered with Flow Reinforcement and, moving too quick to follow, Eddie snarled and drove his elbow into the thing's throat. While his arm initially sank inside, he managed to knock that one back into the other. They formed s wrigling mass of limbs, partially fusing to form the beasts reptilian tail before seperating again.

'Persistent bastards.' He looked at his shoulder to study the wound. Despite being frozen, the felsh appeared dry as if all the moisture had been sucked out of it. However it was already begining to heal, albeit more slowly than normal. That was the advantage of Ascension. A Saint's flesh was no longer merely flesh. As one endured the long and punishing Ascent toward divinity, the physical body was gradually rewritten.

The flaws and weaknesses inherent to mortal biology are stripped away, reshaping the flesh into a vessel capable of safely bearing vast quantities of pure, divine energy. With each Stage, each step toward immortality, the body became more refined—stronger, denser, and unnaturally resilient—its form subtly perfected by power itself.

As such, a Saint's body, such as Sir Eddie's, retained the vitality and symmetry of its prime regardless of age, resisting decay, illness, and ordinary injury to a degree that depended on the Stage. Wounds that would end a normal life are reduced to little more than momentary hindrances, brushed aside by a form no longer bound by common physical limits even without performing complex regenerative techniques such as ''Accelerate Heal'. But experience whispered a colder truth.

'Enough damage in one place still kills you.' He rolled as three clones attacked at once, blades of ice forming from their arms. Eddie swung his sword mid-roll, Flow flaring as he shifted tactics.

'Stop cutting.' He slammed the blade point-first into the street. A shockwave of compressed air burst outward, pulverizing stone and hurling the clones back like broken mannequins. The clone's bodies shattered—then melted, pulling themselves together again. Eddie exhaled slowly. They learn't and they fought like him. Which meant this wouldn't end quickly.

Several streets away, Elias moved through bodies. Not corpses— people. Men and women coated in viscous black ooze staggered toward him and the others, eyes dull, movements slack. These were the Hunters and Knights affected by whatever venom the Apex beast inflicted. They were stronger than Mundane people. Being at the Votary stage meant they were significantly stronger than the three children. And yet—"They're sloppy," Aina muttered, ducking under a wild swing and electricuting an attacker.

"Too sloppy." Jamie froze another in place and created a hammer which she broke against the second ones head.

"Yeah, its like they don't know how to use their bodies." The ooze had hollowed them out. Despite their levels, they moved with the predictability of mundane humans—telegraphed strikes, no tactical variation, no awareness whatsoever. Power without mind. Strength without will. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Elias felt it too. It was wrong. Flow without intention always was.

They dropped the last of them together, breathing hard, when the air shifted. A pressure rolled through the street—ancient, predatory, familiar.

"—Beast," Elias whispered. They didn't have time to react. Five Apex Beast clones poured from the side streets. The three were stunned by the fact that the creature had fragmented itself and taken the knights appearance.

S. K. had not planned on heroics. He had planned on returning to his hideout, brewing some tea and packing out to move to another safehouse elsewhere. Instead, he found himself crouched in a shadowed alcove, holding a book that absolutely did not deserve what was about to happen to it.

"…you're kidding me." The book had been laying open on a table near a smashed café window. Neatly written notes filled the margins. Practice phrases. Polite refusals. Emotional considerations.

'How to Gently Decline a His Advances.' The name Gael appeared at least six times. S. K. grimaced.

"Lady, I don't know who you are, but tonight's already shit." He ripped the pages out without hesitation. Paper tore. Blood smeared. Flow soaked into the fibers as he folded and inscribed on instinct. Talismans bloomed into being—Containment Arrays, Sensory Arrays and Binding Arrays were all he could make under such short notice. A Transmutation Array would take too much time to make. He lloked down at the handul he hastily made within the five minutes.

'Not my best work but...' He glanced toward the chaos.

"Sorry about your love life." S. K. vaulted onto a balcony and began slapping talismans onto walls, lampposts, shattered storefronts. One here. Two there in a circular route around Eddie's battle. A barrier forming invisibly. The instruction was a simple'Dont let any bloody lizard through'. He knew that his mediocre attempt would be sensed by all unwanted parties.

'Thats why I need to hurry up and dip.' Forty clones were trapped into the boundary—and with them, Sir Eddie. Eddie sensed the barrier being put up but pushed it aside in order to deal with the forty at hand. S. K. wiped sweat from his brow.

"Yeah. You're welcome you old bastard." Six clones who had gotten out of the array before he completed it noticed him.

'Ah. Shit.' S. K. ran. Not fast enough. A clone burst through a wall, ice blade scraping sparks from stone. S. K. skidded, barely avoiding a decapitation. He hurled a talisman without looking. It stuck. The clone convulsed as its Flow stuttered, body destabilizing—but didn't dissolve instead being stick to a wall as thw Binding Array took effect.

"Right. Plan B." Another clone slammed into him from behind. S. K. rolled, took a shallow cut across his arm, and hissed.

'I should have trusted my gut and bolted.' Three more lunged together. He took a punch to the mouth but managed to catch one, bare hands on its head.

"Oi," he snarled, eyes burning as his Trait ignited.

"Take this you ugly turd. The clone screamed—then unraveled. The effect rippled through not just those that attacked him, but across all seventy six fragments. The immediate six dissolved into black liquid and didn't move again. S. K. staggered, coughing, blood on his teeth.

"…that took more out of me than I'd like, I'm too old for this crap." He spat. He tore cloth from his sleeve, wrapped his arm, and pushed on.

"I hope those young'uns don't hurt themselves."

The fight with the beast clones was hell. Jamie froze four at once, ice layering thicker and thicker as she screamed, Flow pouring out of her in torrents. Aina anchored them with gravity, pinning every writhing, liquefying movement. But one clone was different. Stronger. It strained, body turning liquid beneath the ice, muscles flowing instead of breaking.

"I—can't—hold—" Jamie gasped.

"Neither can I," Aina ground out.

"Elias!" He moved. No hesitation. The Jade dagger sang in his hand, ruby core pulsing. Elias limited his Resonant—compressed it, shaped it—so that it looked like vector manipulation. Clean. Controlled. Believable. With the Dagger's characteristic being that it was able to absorb enery directly proportional from the wound it inflicted and make it even dealier gave him an advantage. Regardless of whether it was liquid or solid, once it passed through the clone, it damaged it as a wound. He struck. Again. Again.

Manipulating parameters to limit its movements and move around it while he struck the dagger bit. Where others slid through liquid flesh, the jade carved, disrupting the beast's structure. S. K. was hidden from view, binding the one Elias was fighting with a talisman which he attached to a cloth and beganto wring and squeeze, wakening it. Elias stabbed just as S. K tore the cloth. Flow screamed as the clone destabilized, collapsing inward in a shriek of ice and shadow.

Two hunters and a knight comepletly clad in armor arrived just as it dissolved into liquid ad immediatly acted on securing the remaining frozen clones and giving the girls breathing room. Wilcris scowled. Lysle swore.

"Are you insane?" Wilcris barked.

"This area was under evacuation!" Before anyone could answer, more clones appeared in the distance—running toward them. Wilcris and Lysle prepared to engage. They, along with some other Hunters had or were in the process of taking out the remaining clones. A few more of them appeared and they began to merge togehter. Eddie landed, withinhuman speed, ran up to them as the ice holding the other four broke and moved tp mergr with the others. He noticed the three children.

'What are they doing here?' He pushed the question out of his mind. The four clones had the vital organs, alle he needed to do was strike them and end this. He prepared to strike but the man clad in armor lunged at him and stabbed him in the shoulder. He had been infeced by the ooze. Bothe men collapsed and the armor clad man tried to pin him down but eddie effortlessly threw him aside and pulled the blade out of his shoulder.

By then the Beast had already returned to its Reptilian form in a crouching position and turn its attention to the Alley where S. K was hiding.

"Shit!" Its tongue lashed out—barbed, wet, impossibly fast. The only problem was that Aina happened to be standing between it and its target. Elias moved without thought. He shoved her aside as the tongue pierced his chest, his heart. He felt cold as it's venom flooded him. Blood burst from his mouth and nose as the world tilted. Sound vanished. Sight dimmed. His mind emptied, sinking into the familiar dark.

'Yes, finally.'

'No, not again.'

'You wanted this.'

'No I did not.'

'What will Father and Mother feel?'

'It wont matter 'cause I'm dead.'

'Elias...'

'Ethan...'

'Elias!'

'Ethan!'

'I don't want to die.' The Jade dagger flared and everything seemed distorted as a crimson haze descended upon the world. It was thelast thing Elias saw before the darkness took him.