Chương 151: The Forbidden Frenzy Protocol

A terrifying stillness fell over the battlefield, not the stillness of peace, but that particular funerary silence that precedes storms capable of erasing entire cities from the map. The smoke still rising from the shattered cannons began to coil inward on itself in strange spirals, as though the very air could sense what was coming and was afraid of it.

General Vargas stepped back several paces, his gait unsteady for the first time, his left hand pressing hard against the deep wound in his shoulder left by Okonnor's arrow. Blood flowed freely, but it was no ordinary blood. It was Imperial blood saturated with earth mana, falling upon the soil and producing a sound like the hissing of serpents.

His eyes, which had always conveyed cold fury and strict military discipline, had completely lost their human light, transforming into two frightening hollow sockets blazing with dark brown volcanic magma, in which stirred an ancient energy reaching back to the age of the first giants.

"You dared... you truly dared," Vargas whispered, and his voice no longer resembled any human sound. It was closer to a geological fault splitting open inside a great mountain, a voice carrying the echo of rockslides within it.

"You dared to defile the blood of the House of Gardian with a treacherous arrow of dry wood. And you, you human vagrant, you refuse, dared to trip my foot with a traitor's cunning. The time for playing by rules is over." Suddenly, the earth beneath Vargas's feet began to buckle and crack in complex geometric rings. This was not the result of an axe blow or an external enchantment, it was because his body itself had begun to operate as a cosmic magnet, pulling in the surrounding matter.

Rocks, gravel, even the molten metal from the cannon remnants began to be drawn toward his body and fuse with his skin. From the depths of his throat rose a bestial roar that shook the leaves on the furthest trees at the forest's edge, a roar that caused birds to drop dead from the sky from the sheer force of its energetic frequency. The luxurious golden armor Vargas had been wearing began to melt and dissolve under the weight of the internal heat radiating from his core, but it did not fall to the ground.

Instead, it began to flow like liquid gold, merging with his skin and muscles in a terrifying biological fusion. Black rocky and metallic masses grew from his joints, and his body swelled until his height rose to three meters of muscle encased in layers of metal fused with earth elements.

As for the war axe, the Continent Breaker, the most terrifying transformation occurred there: the handle began to interpenetrate with the bones of his right arm, literally fusing with them and becoming an organic part of his locomotive system. In this mode, Vargas had sacrificed everything, his tactical mind, his dignity as a human being, and his organized defensive capabilities, in exchange for an absolute destructive power that could neither be deflected nor predicted.

His body had become a moving mass of concentrated gravity and continuous seismic force, his every movement guaranteed destruction, and his every exhaled breath raised the temperature of the surrounding space. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. Meanwhile, Dex Williams stood dozens of meters away, watching this transformation that surpassed imagination.

His heart was hammering violently in his chest, the sound of its beats echoing in his ears like war drums. Though his body was still trembling from the effects of the Life Nectar that had rebuilt his cells in its painful way, his mind was passing through a state of strange clarity, the clarity that comes only to those who stare into the face of death and accept it. Dex looked to his left, where Okonnor stood with a legendary, unshakeable calm.

The elf commander was wiping the blade of one of his swords with a strip of his robe, his expression focused and quiet, as though Vargas's transformation into a cosmic monster was nothing more than another routine obstacle on his long road. That very calm was what allowed Dex to gather himself. Dex felt a complex mixture of emotions he had never known before.

He, the prisoner who had spent his life fighting in the mud of cells, using poisons, backstabs, and every dirty trick to survive one more day, found himself now standing shoulder to shoulder with Okonnor, a figure who had once represented to him the embodiment of authority, nobility, and a clean power he secretly despised.

"Am I really here? Is this my fate?" Dex asked himself inwardly, feeling the burning heat gradually returning to the phoenix core in his chest. The core was no longer cold as it had been after the explosion, it had begun pulsing with a faint orange light.

"I have always fought alone, stealing, fleeing, betraying to survive. But now, I am part of a triple blade aimed at severing the head of an A+ rank monster. Fighting beside Okonnor gives me a strange sensation of security, as though for the first time I am not a hunted thing but a warrior. Yet this security demands a steep price, it demands a level of performance and sacrifice I have never before reached. Today, there is no room for error, and I cannot be the weakest link that Vargas breaks to destroy us all."

Okonnor turned toward Dex in that moment, and his gaze carried neither pity nor condescension, for the first time, it held the glint of genuine respect.

"Dex, listen to me carefully," Okonnor said in a calm, low voice amid the thunderous noise of the transformation surrounding them.

"Do not try to match his physical force or collide with him directly right now. He is no longer human, he embodies the earth in its peak fury and savagery. I will be the lightning that scatters his attention and drains his movement with the speed of my blades, and you, you be the burning fire that targets his joints and his fusion points. Lumia, your role is the most critical of all, maintain the void around us, prevent him from pinning us down with his gravity."

Dex nodded with force, and felt a spark of pride ignite in his soul, a spark more powerful than any magical mana.

"Understood. Let us erase this monster from the history books."