Chương 81: Chapter 80: Running

Lio kicked off the side of a collapsed shop, ducking under the blade of a beast that threatened to take his head off. The sudden movement nearly threw him off balance, but Lio simply twisted his body mid-air to regain his footing, holding Ophila tightly to his chest. A pack of skittering Adlets leapt from the roof of a burning fungal building directly into his path. Scowling, Lio activated his rune, focusing his mental energy at them. [Isopolity].

Three duplicates of his Adamantine knife materialized in front of him, and Lio sent them ripping through the canine monsters in a shower of blood and severed limbs, clearing a momentary path through. He continued to run without stopping, every step sending a fresh wave of agony up his spine. But he didn't dare slow down. Then, his eyes widened as he spotted something. Ahead, the street simply… was gone. A massive crater had punched through the entire floor, nearly thirty feet across.

It was too wide to jump normally, and the air above it was choked with winged horrors and fallen debris. And to make it worse, it was a problem of Lio's own making. See, the colossal body of the Judge giant had collapsed directly into the ground, its immense weight shattering the cobblestone and tearing the ground away into the abyss below. Lio's chest heaved as he fought through the gray spots invading his vision.

The numbness in his lower half was spreading, indicating that his nervous system was slowly breaking down. No, he needed more time. Lio activated another rune. [Atropos's Lens]. The world immediately stiffened, the roaring flames from the burning fungal buildings freezing into lashing tongues of reddish orange, and the falling ash suspended mid-air like grey dust motes. Inside the dilation, Lio's mind raced at a terrifying speed. He could see everything perfectly.

And with that crystal-clear sight, he analyzed the thirty-foot gap of the crater. He calculated the trajectory of the falling debris frozen above it. He could even see the exact angle he would need to launch himself to clear the chasm. But as he tried to command his legs to coil for the jump, the signal that traveled through his failing nervous system told him everything he needed to know. His muscles simply couldn't manage the jump. If he attempted to leap now, they would all just plummet into the abyss.

He had mere seconds to find a workaround around this problem. And luckily, it didn't take long at all. He swept his gaze through the wrecked town. Among the shattered timber and chunks of stone, he noticed a massive gargoyle, frozen while it had been tilting its head back to let out a roar. And more importantly, it was perfectly right in the center of the chasm. Lio stared at the creature, his hyper-accelerated mind mapping everything he would need for the plan in a matter of milliseconds.

And with it, a grim realization was handed over to him. It was an insane gamble, but it was the only way. Fighting his failing nervous system from knocking him out, Lio forced his destroyed legs to bend with its few remaining fibers, pouring every remaining ounce of his willpower into his shredded muscles as he prepared. And in that moment, the time limit on [Atropos's Lens] expired. The world roared back to life all at once, as Lio launched forward immediately. [Mach Heart].

The burst tore through what little remained of his leg muscles. He felt the fibers go, in the sensation like wet paper being pulled apart. His vision went completely white for a second. But his body was already airborne. And he aimed straight for the gargoyle. The creature turned its massive head just in time to see him coming, but not fast enough to dodge. Its eyes, pale and milky white, reflected Lio as he closed the distance with blinding speeds.

It was enormous up close, twice the size he had estimated from the street. Its wingspan alone spanned half the entire width of the crater. It shrieked, opening its mouth, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth— Lio had already prepared for this. Without wasting a second, he slammed his Adamantine knife directly into its jaw. The blade punched through the soft tissue at the back of the palate. Lio swung himself sideways using the embedded knife, utilizing gravity to carry him upward onto the beast's back.

The gargoyle screamed in pain. The sound was strangely wispy, like wind was leaking from somewhere. It immediately began to roll, in an attempt to throw Lio off. But it wasn't going to be that easy, as Lio threw himself flat, pressing Ophila against his chest with one arm. He scrambled around the creature's back, until his fingers found a deep crack running along the gargoyle's shoulder blade and jammed his hand in.

Now in a more stable position, Lio wrenched his Adamantine knife free from its mouth with a sharp crack, and drove it back down into the muscle between the creature's neck and its left wing. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. He gave it a good twist, and the gargoyle lurched, its roll arresting violently. The left wing seized, going rigid. However, his right wing continued to beat furiously, still trying to shake him off.

Unfortunately, it was already too late for the gargoyle. Lio activated [Augmentation]. The power flooded his right arm in a rush, and Lio wrenched the knife sideways, using it as a lever to force the gargoyle's neck around. The creature thrashed, whipping its tail up and slamming it into Lio's side. He heard a rib or two crack, but Lio showed no reaction to the pain, keeping his grip steady on the knife. The gargoyle screamed again, beating its wings out frantically to stabilize itself.

But that had been exactly what Lio had been waiting for. He let go of the back, reaching out with his free hand and grabbing the edge of the right wing. Then he pulled himself along the wing's length hand over hand, dragging himself and Ophila toward the wingtip while the airborne creature bucked and rolled. When he reached the midpoint—right where the central cartilage joined the primary joint of the wing—he drove the knife deep into the vulnerable seam. And he began to cut. The membrane was much thinner here.

And so, the Adamantine blade cut through it like butter, until the wing finally tore free. The gargoyle immediately began to spin, its remaining wing beating uselessly. Using the momentum, Lio was already moving, flinging himself and Ophila back onto the creature's back. He smirked as the gargoyle lost altitude fast. Then, at the very last moment, just before the creature's body would have smashed into the crater, he kicked off the gargoyle's back.

With all of his muscle fibers destroyed, [Mach Heart] had nothing left to give him, his legs responding with only a ghost of a jump, but it was still enough. Just enough, in fact, to allow Lio and Ophila to barely clear the edge, while the gargoyle's body tumbled down into the abyss below. Lio hit the ground running, keeping Ophila pressed tight against his chest. As he sprinted forward on his mangled legs, Trestfall's broken streets opened up ahead.

Entire roads filled with cracked cobblestone, collapsed awnings, and the burned remains of storefronts. The bunker was close. He cut through an alley, then vaulted over a collapsed wall, until the debris of buildings fell away, replaced by the ashen lands of the burned Amberpulp fields. Then, he faltered. Lio had arrived at a pile of corpses. The grotesque collection was piled high with limp and bloodied bodies—dozens of them. The haphazard nature suggested that a human hadn't placed them there.

Instead, it seemed as if they had been simply deposited there by something/ But luckily, or unluckily, Lio wouldn't have to wait long to find out. Perched at the very top of the heap, was a dark figure, sitting motionlessly. It was tall and lithe, being inhumanely thin. It didn't seem to be made of mass, instead blending into the shadows behind it. Lio scowled. A Dread Stirge. The parasitic creatures from Floor 19, monsters who fed exclusively on fear.

Their distilled blood-essence had been used to make the Death's Breath artifact. It looked as though the creature had attached itself to a Floor 18 Adlet. Lio could tell instantly, as no regular Adlet possessed that shadowy form, nor did they exude that oppressive aura. And, based on the giant pile of bodies, this wasn't a regular Dread Stirge either. Because Dread Stirges thrived and grew stronger by absorbing the ambient terror around it, the current state of the town was a perfect feast for them.

With hundreds of people trapped in absolute panic, the creature was drawing on an almost limitless reservoir of energy, making it unbelievably powerful. This wasn't good. Not at all. As Lio continued running, unable to stop for risk of paralysis, the entity turned its head towards the sound. The Adlet's eyes had been consumed entirely by blackness, and as it fixed its face unerringly on Lio, the pressure in the air dropped instantly, the monster's aura hitting him like a brick.

Truly, the Adlet host beneath the Stirge was barely recognizable. Its canine snout was elongated, its joints bending strangely, and its entire fur coat had been replaced by a smoking, darkness. Lio tsked. The Stirge was gorged. In a town consumed by fire and slaughter, the ambient terror was rushing in plentifully, and this thing was drinking every drop of it.

"Ophila," Lio muttered through his cracked lips caked with ash.

"Try not to die, okay?" No response came back. Not that Lio would've heard it. As soon as he had leaned down to speak those words, the Dread Stirge had vanished from the top of the pile. Clang! Lio's instincts, honed by a millennium of combat, were the only reason his head remained attached to his shoulders. He had raised his Adamantine knife just in time to block the clawing attack, but it still sent him reeling back five feet, his mangled legs screaming in pain.

Then the creature was already there again, appearing from his blind spot. There was barely any time to react as Lio reached down and slapped two runes into activation. [Isopolity]. [Pyrolysis]. Two phantom blades coated in fire materialized in the air, intercepting the Stirge's secondary strike. The copies clashed against the beast's claws, but the force was simply too overwhelming, as Lio hadn't had sufficient time to strengthen his mental control over the telekinetic weapons.

The duplicates shattered into pieces of blue light. The mental feedback hit Lio like a punch to the face, and a thick stream of blood erupted from his nostrils. To make matters worse, [Pyrolysis] was already taking its toll as well. Every time he stabbed his knife deeper and deeper into his arm to draw out more blood, the closer he was forced into the edge of unconsciousness, or even death. The shadow-host lunged again. Lio twisted, throwing Ophila clear of the trajectory as he brought his left arm.

He couldn't even use his legs anymore. [Augmentation]. His muscles swelled enormously as the magical reinforcement took hold. Lashing out, he caught the Stirge by its elongated neck. But before Lio could use the iron grip of [Augmentation] to crush its throat, the creature flexed its claws, and thrust its arm forward with a blinding speed. Its claws pierced straight through Lio's swollen forearm, fracturing and shattering bone.

Lio's left arm twitched once, then failed entirely, the numb feeling of paralysis claiming the limb. Knocked completely off balance by the impact, he tumbled backward, collapsing onto the scorched earth. Ophila was thrown a few feet away, rolling into the soot but remaining tightly bound. Lio tried to push himself up, but his left arm was completely unresponsive, a mangled mess, while his right arm trembled, barely able to support his weight. Blood from his nose was now soaking the front of his shirt.

The Dread Stirge stood over him. Though it had no expressions, Lio could basically feel the parasite's ecstasy as it drank in the fresh wave of agony and panic through the air. Then, step by step, the shadowy abomination began to creep closer.