Chương 152: The Titan's Breaking

Vargas in his berserker state launched forward like a heavy artillery shell, his footsteps were no ordinary running. Every place his foot struck created a shockwave that wrenched massive boulders from the earth and hurled them skyward. He charged toward the three of them at a speed illogical for his enormous frame, as though gravity itself worked in his favor and pulled him toward his adversaries. He raised his right arm, now a solid mass fusing flesh with the enormous war axe.

"Die, all of you!" Vargas roared in a voice that shook the foundations of the forest, and brought his arm-axe down in a strike against the earth. The blow did not merely split the soil, it unleashed what is known as Molten Stone Blades: waves of sharp molten rock that launched in every direction like colossal fire arrows.

"Now! Scatter!" Okonnor shouted as he leaped into the air. Okonnor deployed his own technique, [Wind Steps: Phantom Path], to move with unbelievable lightness between the flying stone blades, appearing to dance through the midst of death at a speed the naked eye could not track. On the other side, Lumia stepped back with graceful backward strides and, with complete focus, extended both hands to open [Wormhole Barrier: The Absorbing Net].

The spatial barriers Lumia created did not merely deflect the blades, they began swallowing those aimed at Dex and re-dispatching them from other portals to strike Vargas in his exposed back, making him roar with fury as his own energy returned to punish him. Dex, with his unique combat style that fused the cunning of a prisoner with the agility of the phoenix, did not flee to safety as Okonnor had.

He did the opposite, he drove forward with suicidal boldness toward Vargas, sliding beneath the enormous arm that was sweeping everything in its path. Dex deployed the skill [Phoenix Steps: Thermal Flash], leaving behind a phantom of smoke and fire to deceive Vargas's deteriorating sight, while his real body had already positioned itself directly behind Vargas's right knee, the pivot point for his immense weight.

"Take this, you stupid giant, [Molten Touch: Metallic Joint Sabotage]!" Dex placed his two newly restored hands, charged with concentrated heat from the Solar Heart, which was beginning to blaze with renewed force, directly onto the metal joint fused to Vargas's knee. Dex made no attempt to cause a large explosion that would waste his energy. Instead he worked like a military surgeon: focusing every trace of heat into a single, extremely narrow point to expand and partially melt the metal in an uneven pattern.

This sudden thermal expansion created a disruption in Vargas's biomechanical movement, making him stumble and lose his balance for one critical moment. This was the perfect synchrony Okonnor had been waiting for. The elf commander descended from the sky like a destructive green lightning bolt, both swords radiating concentrated nature energy that had begun to burn the surrounding air. [Execution Art: Emerald Soul Crosscut].

Okonnor struck Vargas's neck with a crossing blow from both swords, a blow sufficient to split a mountain, but the metal-skin of Vargas in his frenzy mode was incredibly solid. The collision produced immense sparks and a metallic clang, and the swords carved only a few centimeters into the outer layer before bouncing back.

"He is hard beyond anything human!" Okonnor shouted, springing backward in a spiral motion to dodge a blind backhand strike from Vargas's arm that nearly took off his head and ended his life. The three of them pulled back quickly to reorganize at a safe distance, while Vargas, amid his continuous roaring, was doing something terrifying: he was rebuilding the damaged portions of his knee and neck by drawing metals and silica directly from the soil beneath his feet.

He appeared to be an eternal war god that could not be killed so long as he remained in contact with the earth.

"Okonnor, your swords will never penetrate him this way!" Dex shouted, gasping, his eyes tracking the mana flow.

"He operates like a massive battery, constantly absorbing earth mana from beneath his feet to repair his armor and increase its hardness. Look at the ground under him, it's turning gray and dead and draining of life within seconds. We have to sever him from his power source. We have to separate him from the earth, even for a single second!" Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

"Separate him from the earth?" Lumia asked, perspiring heavily, spatial disorientation beginning to exhaust her mind.

"Dex, his weight now exceeds ten tons of concentrated metal and rock. How do we lift him?"

"Lumia, remember our gravity manipulation training," Dex replied, his eyes gleaming with the prison cunning that never went out.

"Can you reverse gravity in a very narrow circle, just two meters in diameter, directly beneath his feet?"

"For two seconds at most, and it will drain everything that remains in my celestial core!" Lumia replied with complete seriousness, fully understanding that this was their last gamble.

"That's all I need. Two seconds is sufficient to send him to hell. Okonnor, when he rises, don't attack his armor. Fire your Great Forest Arrow directly into the point I'll burn open in his chest!" Okonnor understood the plan instantly, and a rare smile of admiration crossed his face. Despite his rank and history, he was struck with admiration for this human being who conjured solutions outside the box in the midst of death's final throes.

Vargas charged toward them once more, attempting to execute a suicidal destructive strike called [Earth Core Detonation]. He began gathering white and immense seismic energy in the center of his chest, energy intended to detonate his own body and destroy everything within a radius of hundreds of meters.

"Now, Lumia! Do it!" Dex screamed. With a desperate cry that tore through the stillness of the place, Lumia pressed both her palms downward with every ounce of her spiritual force. [Zero Zone: Absolute Gravity Reversal]. Suddenly, in defiance of all logic, Vargas's massive, heavy body lifted off the earth by a single meter. For a titan who depended entirely on grounding in the soil to stabilize his energy, that single meter was a death sentence.

Vargas lost control of the seismic energy that had been accumulating in his chest, because the grounding circuit with the earth had been abruptly severed. In that golden moment, Dex launched like a blazing rocket toward Vargas's chest, hanging suspended in the air. He used no sword, he gathered everything remaining in his phoenix core and every ounce of suppressed fury into his right fist. [Supernova Burst: Localized Thermal Penetration].

Dex's fist struck the center of Vargas's chest armor, at the point where the energy converged. He made no attempt to shatter the armor. Instead he caused his fist to heat to white-hot boiling point in a central spot no wider than a few centimeters, creating a thermal hole that melted the metal through and reached the tense living flesh beneath the armor.

"Okonnor! Release your arrow, now!" Okonnor had already drawn his bone bow to the maximum the string could bear. The green arrow charged with the soul of the forest was loosed, and passed through the small thermal hole Dex had made with a precision beyond all description.

The arrow entered Vargas's chest, and the instant it made contact with the mana-saturated heart, it detonated from within as emerald branches and roots, growing at a terrifying speed inside the General's body, shattering the titan's bones and tearing apart the mana channels from the inside outward. Vargas stopped moving entirely. He froze in place like a disfigured statue, and the green roots began to emerge from his eyes and from between his jaws, mingling in surreal fashion with his molten stone body.

The frenzy mode shattered, the volcanic light faded from his eyes, and his body began to contract and return to its normal human dimensions, but it was a body shattered inside and out. General Vargas dropped to his knees before Dex, and looked up at him and at Okonnor with a gaze that death had emptied of hatred, replacing it with astonishment and disbelief.

"The Empire... House Gardian... will not... forgive..." Before he could complete the sentence, his body erupted in a faint brown light and disintegrated into rock dust and ash, leaving behind only the shattered war axe and the now-dim golden armor, stripped of all value. Dex collapsed to the ground beside the wreckage, completely spent, feeling as though every nerve in his body had been incinerated. But before his face struck the earth, a strong, warm hand caught him.

It was Okonnor who caught him, helped him sit upright with dignity, and looked at him with a gaze he had never directed at any human being before.

"You fought with courage, Dex. Today, the forest owes me its life, but it owes you its very existence." Dex felt a knot tighten in his throat, and for the first time since he had entered this world, he did not feel like a prisoner or a fugitive running from his fate. He felt he belonged. He looked at Lumia, smiling at him through tears of exhaustion, then looked at the ash that had once been a fearsome General. Then he looked at Okonnor, and a smile of relief lit his face.