Frozen in place by the sheer, oppressive weight of bloodlust pouring off Deacon's body like heat from a forge, the Antlion Prince was halted mid-stride just as it was about to reach the multilayered Earth Barrier shielding what was left of Jass and Bonehead. Its compound eyes, both now fully healed after consuming the Elite Sand Golem's core, locked onto Deacon as the source of the overwhelming killing intent that seemed to saturate every bit of air in the chamber.
The dark red lines that had been flickering across Deacon's exposed skin were no longer flickering - they were now engraved permanently into his skin.
The red and green tendrils from that Nerve Rush pill he'd swallowed had slowed their spread significantly, now only reaching up to his hips as if whatever was happening to his body had managed to arrest the poison's progression or at least shove it aside in favor of more important changes.
Through what was left of Deacon's chest piece, barely more than scraps of leather and twisted metal rings hanging off his shoulders at this point, the Antlion Prince could see intricate imagery covering the skin underneath that definitely hadn't been there before.
It could see a woman in fur pelts standing just above where Deacon's heart should be, her bow drawn toward the sky with an arrow ready to loose at something the Antlion Prince could not see, and on the other side of his chest was a man covered in broken armor wielding a hatchet and long dagger while standing alone in front of what looked like an entire army.
Along with those two dark red tattoo-like markings engraved on Deacon's chest, there were countless others scattered across Deacon's torso, depicting warriors and mages wielding various weapons and facing dauntless tasks.
The massive hole that had been punched through Deacon's torso, the wound that by all rights should have left him bleeding out on the platform within minutes, was no longer bleeding anymore, the edges of it having hardened into something that looked like molten stone, cauterizing the injury.
Before the Antlion Prince could commit any more of these disturbing changes to memory or come up with some kind of plan for dealing with this new threat, Deacon exploded forward without warning and cast Flame Art: Flame Steps.
Twin geysers of fire erupted beneath his feet, cracking the platform where he had stood as the propulsion hurled him forward, erasing the dozens of meters between him and the Antlion Prince in less than a heartbeat.
His speed surged far beyond anything that should have been possible as he shattered the gauges regulating his vital energy, mana, and stamina, letting them erupt out of their dams and collide with one another as he siphoned more and more of them into every facet of his body - uncaring of the consequences to come.
Because for now, it gave him exactly the power he needed.
The Antlion Prince barely managed to shift into its brute form and raise its arms defensively before Deacon's dual short swords came streaking toward its face, both blades bursting into flame in the split second before impact.
As Damascus Steel met chitin, the collision unleashed a shockwave of fire that rippled across the platform, spreading cracks through the platform beneath both their feet.
The sheer force behind Deacon's opening strike drove the Antlion Prince backward despite all the enhanced strength that came with its brute form, its feet skidding across sandstone and carving deep gouges into the platform as it was shoved back several meters.
Before it could regain its footing or gather itself, Deacon was already closing the distance again.
Deacon unleashed blow after blow on the Antlion Prince, each strike coming faster than the last with an aggression that forced the creature onto the defensive for the first time since it had killed its mother and hatched with the blessing of its benefactor.
The Antlion Prince had held every advantage from the start of the fight — its stats were higher across the board thanks to the mutation it had undergone as a larva and the General-rank power that came with what it was. Minutes earlier, it had been battering Deacon without ever allowing him to land a clean hit or truly contest it.
Now, something had fundamentally shifted. The Antlion Prince found itself struggling to keep pace with the humanoid before it — no, worse, being overwhelmed by his speed and ferocity, even as Deacon bled from wounds that should have already killed him.
***
Inside the multilayered Earth Dome that Sam had created with the last of his life and mana, Bonehead could feel the warmth leaving Jass's body with each passing second, could sense her life force draining away like water through a strainer.
His only remaining arm, the right one, struggled to hold the corked Health Potion above Jass's lips, the sole limb still connected to his spine, head, and core after the boulder had obliterated everything else. It was covered in spiderweb cracks with chunks of bone missing, and remained functional only because of the mana he was desperately channeling from his core and his newly unlocked Boneweaving Racial Trait, which he had gained upon reaching Level 25.
Some of those bone fragments had fallen into Jass's chest cavity through the gaping wound there, but acting quickly, Bonehead managed to seize control of them with Boneweaving. He made the fragments rise from within her body and push her lips apart from the inside, creating an opening for the potion to flow into once he managed to break the bottle.
Why… didn't I create health pills?
After what felt like years of agonizing effort even though it had probably only been seconds, Bonehead kept muttering "come on, come on, come on" under his breath every few moments as he forced his cracked and failing arm to lift higher, to hold steadier, to get the corked potion positioned directly above Jass's mouth that was being held open by fragments of his own bones.
Why?
Just as Bonehead finally managed to get the glass bottle positioned exactly where it needed to be with the cork pointing downward toward her parted lips, he felt Jass's life force take a sharp and terrifying dive, plummeting so rapidly that panic flooded through every part of his consciousness.
He needed to get the potion into her body right now — not in five seconds, not in two seconds, but immediately, or she was going to die right here in his arms despite everything they'd all sacrificed to give her this chance.
Why did I experiment on doing useless shit instead of improving the stuff I could make?
Bonehead's shaking hand clenched harder around the glass potion bottle, trying to generate enough force to shatter it and release the healing liquid within, but the glass refused to break no matter how much pressure he applied through his damaged skeletal grip.
"Come on!" Bonehead shouted to himself as he watched more of Jass's life slip away, channeling even more of the little power remaining in his deteriorating body to crush the bottle between his fragmenting fingers.
"Come on!" he shouted as he tried forcing even more strength into his grip despite knowing that his bones were reaching their absolute structural limits, uncaring of how the cracks across his remaining arm were growing larger and spreading faster with each passing moment, focusing entirely on how the glass bottle was finally starting to develop its own network of fractures and how Jass's life force kept dropping lower and lower.
"Come on!" Bonehead shouted as the cracks grew larger and larger across both the bottle and the bones that held up his body, and he could practically see the tantalizingly red liquid sloshing inside the glass, separated from Jass's mouth by just a few millimeters of glass.
As Bonehead pushed his body even further past what should have been possible, ignoring the sounds of roaring and combat from outside the Earth Dome that he hadn't even consciously registered had grown around him and Jass at some point, his bones simply could no longer handle the pressure they were being subjected to, given their current durability stats.
His remaining arm crumbled into fragments with a sound like breaking pottery, a noise that felt like a thousand bombs exploding in his mind as its structural integrity finally gave out completely, and the nearly fully cracked Health Potion fell from his suddenly nonexistent grasp.
The bottle hit Jass's face with a light tap and rolled for less than a second across her blood-covered cheek before tumbling off the side of her head and shattering against the sandstone floor where they both lay, the red liquid splashing outward in a spreading puddle that soaked into the sandstone.
Bonehead's mind went completely blank as the bones that held and protected his core crumbled in quick succession, leaving him with only half of his skull remaining and his core barely clinging to his left eye socket through sheer force of whatever magic animated his undead existence.
No! No! No! Bonehead screamed mentally to himself as he stared down at the spreading puddle of Health Potion that was flowing around Jass's head and pooling beneath her neck, where he could see it but couldn't possibly reach it or scoop it up.
NO! NO! NO! he continued screaming inside his own mind as he watched Jass's life force finally cease its downward plunge and flatline completely.
NO! NO! N—! Bonehead mentally shouted before his shadow-flame eyes suddenly rolled backward into what remained of his skull, and with a flicker like a candle being snuffed out, both flames extinguished completely, and the ever-lit dark purple core that had animated Bennett Hades Graves became dim beside the growing cold corpse of Jasmine Vanir Pines.
***
The Antlion Prince lunged forward with its claws extended, aiming for Deacon's throat, but Deacon twisted his body and brought his right sword up in a rising slash that caught the creature's forearm and carved a deep groove through the chitin before the Antlion Prince could pull back.
Dark blue ichor sprayed from the wound, and the creature screeched, but Deacon was already moving, his left blade coming around in a horizontal arc that the Antlion Prince barely managed to block with its other arm, the impact sending sparks flying into the air.
They broke apart for a heartbeat before Deacon exploded forward once more with Flame Steps, propelling him across the distance, both swords wreathed in fire as he brought them down in a crossing slash aimed at the Antlion Prince's torso.
The added mass and armor of the Antlion Prince's brute form let it tank the hit rather than avoid it entirely, and Deacon's blades bit into its chest but didn't penetrate as deeply as they should have, the thickened chitin plating absorbing most of the impact.
The Antlion Prince's massive fist came around in a counter-strike that Deacon ducked under, feeling the displaced air ruffle his hair as the blow passed inches above his head, and he used the opening to drive his right sword upward in a thrust aimed at the creature's exposed armpit, where the armor was thinner.
The blade punched through, and the Antlion Prince howled as it recoiled, nearly wrenching the sword from Deacon's grip. He held fast, twisted the blade, and tore it free in a spray of blue blood that splattered across the platform beneath them.
"DIE!" Deacon roared as he pressed the attack, not giving the creature any time to recover, his swords moving in a blur of flame and steel that forced the Antlion Prince onto the defensive.
The Antlion Prince blocked, parried, dodged — its movements becoming more frantic as Deacon's assault intensified beyond anything a normal human should have been capable of sustaining, and it shifted back to assassin form to try and use speed to create distance.
But Deacon matched it step for step, his own speed enhanced by whatever transformation was overtaking his body, and when the Antlion Prince tried to leap backward to gain space, Deacon cast Ignis and sent a gout of flame directly into its path that forced it to abort the jump and roll to the side instead.
The roll brought it close to one of the Sand Golem corpses, and the Antlion Prince grabbed a chunk of sandstone debris and hurled it at Deacon's face in a desperate attempt to create an opening.
But Deacon didn't even try to dodge, instead bringing his left sword up and batting the projectile aside, not slowing him down as he closed the distance again.
His right sword came down in a Power Strike-enhanced diagonal slash aimed at the Antlion Prince's leg. As Deacon's right short sword became coated with his writhing stamina, the Antlion Prince saw it coming and tried to shift its weight to dodge the strike, but it was still recovering from the roll and couldn't move fast enough.
The blade sheared completely through the Antlion Prince's right leg just above the knee joint with a sound like breaking wood, severing the limb cleanly and sending it tumbling away across the platform, trailing dark blue blood.
The Antlion Prince let out a shriek of pain and shock that started high-pitched and piercing, but the sound was completely overwhelmed by the howl of pure rage that erupted from Deacon's throat.
In that exact moment when he'd channeled Power Strike through his damaged body to enhance the cutting blow, Deacon's entire right hand exploded into gore from the strain, skin and muscle and tendons simply rupturing and spraying blood and tissue across both combatants in a crimson mist.
The wound immediately began scabbing over with the same molten rock-like substance that had sealed the hole in his torso, the transformation happening so fast that Deacon barely registered the injury before his hand was already becoming a club of hardened molten stone.
The Antlion Prince tried to use its wings to escape, shifting desperately back to assassin form and attempting to generate enough lift to get airborne, but Deacon wasn't giving it that chance.
He dropped his right sword, the blade clattering uselessly away since he no longer had a hand to grip it with, and drove his shoulder into the Antlion Prince's sternum with the full weight of his body behind the charge, the impact lifting the creature's remaining foot off the platform for just a moment as its wings began to beat and begin to lift itself into the air.
But before it could gain any real altitude, Deacon grabbed onto the Antlion Prince's remaining leg with his remaining hand and dug his fingers into its chitin.
"You're not getting away!" Deacon snarled as he yanked downward with every ounce of strength his transforming body could generate, muscles in his arm and back tearing audibly from the force he was exerting, causing the Antlion Prince to come crashing back down to the platform hard enough to crater the sandstone beneath its body and send cracks spider-webbing outward from the impact point.
Before the Prince could recover, Deacon threw himself on top of it, straddling its torso and using his weight to pin it down, and the creature's claws immediately began tearing into him, scraping long furrows across his sides and back.
But Deacon didn't care — pain had lost all meaning the moment he held Esmerelda's dying body in his hands, reduced to little more than background noise beneath the overwhelming need to make this… thing suffer.
His left fist came down on the Antlion Prince's face with a wet crunch, the impact breaking chitin and the bones in his own hand simultaneously, and then his right arm, the one that was now just a gore-covered stub ending in hardened molten stone, slammed down in a follow-up strike that hit even harder.
The Antlion Prince tried to buck him off, its body thrashing beneath him as it attempted to get enough leverage to throw Deacon clear, and its claws kept digging deeper into his flesh, but Deacon just hunched forward and kept punching.
His left fist came down on the Antlion Prince's face and connected with a sickening crunch that he felt reverberate up through his arm, and he watched through tear-blurred vision as his own knuckles split open from the impact, skin peeling back to reveal shattered bone underneath before the molten rock substance immediately flooded the wounds and hardened over them.
His right stump followed a heartbeat later, the club of stone and gore that used to be his hand slamming into the Antlion Prince's mandibles with enough force that he heard the chitin crack and splinter, fragments breaking off and embedding themselves in the pulped flesh of what remained of his forearm.
Each strike sent shockwaves of pain up his arms that his brain was barely registering anymore; each impact produced wet crunching sounds of breaking chitin, the sharp crack of his own bones fracturing, the splash of mingled red and dark blue blood hitting the ground.
The Antlion Prince's defensive strikes grew weaker with each exchange, its claws that had once torn deep furrows into Deacon's back and sides were now barely scratching the surface as pain and blood loss drained its strength.
Just as the Antlion Prince's strikes abruptly ceased, a massive concussive wave of subsonic force erupted outward as its eyes flared white. The blast slammed into Deacon head-on, rupturing his eardrums as blood sprayed from them, and his fists froze mid-swing. The Antlion Prince let out a chortle—
—which was cut off less than a heartbeat later as Deacon's fists came crashing back down into its face.
"You thought I'd fucking stop because of some FUCKING NOISE?" Deacon shouted as he continued to pound his fists into the face of the Antlion Prince and grabbed a hold of its mandibles, that broken them off its jaws – slicing off his own hands in the process.
But without even pausing to consider other alternatives to hit the Antlion Prince, Deacon opened his mouth and lunged forward with his teeth bared like a rabid animal.
His jaws clamped down on the Antlion Prince's throat with enough force that several of his teeth cracked and broke, but Deacon didn't care. He bit down harder and harder until he felt the chitin beneath his teeth give way to flesh.
The Antlion Prince's dark blue blood filled his mouth with a taste like copper mixed in with crunchy sand, but Deacon didn't care as he began tearing and ripping, shaking his head back and forth like a rabid animal, working his teeth deeper into the wound he was creating.
The Antlion Prince tried to push him away one last time, its claws scraping weakly across his chest, but it didn't have the strength left to dislodge him, and Deacon felt the moment when his teeth finally punched through the creature's throat completely.
He tore out a ragged chunk of flesh and chitin and whatever passed for arteries in the Antlion Prince's mutant anatomy, ripping the piece free and spitting it aside in a spray of dark blue blood that painted his face and chest, before lunging back to its neck and tearing more out of it.
The Antlion Prince convulsed beneath him as Deacon tore away more and more of its neck until he could no longer tell when it finally went still, and death claimed the mutated child of the Antlion Queen. It was only then, with the struggle ended, that he realized what remained of his cracked teeth were clenched around chunks of sandstone.
*[Antlion Prince – General Lv 25] has been slain – Partial XP has been given.*
Lifting his head with bleary eyes, Deacon stared at the System Notification that appeared at the forefront of his vision.
His sight drifted in and out of focus as he sat atop the Antlion Prince's corpse for several long moments, gasping for air while his chest heaved and his lungs burned from exertion that had pushed far beyond what any human body should have been capable of enduring. He looked down at the creature he had just killed with his bare hands, his teeth, and what remained of his arms.
Slowly, agonizingly slow, his eyes lifted from the System Notification to glance around the massive chamber, and he cast Blood Sense, the spell flickering to life.
Deacon's gaze swept across the platform desperately, looking for any sign of his friends, hoping with every fiber of his being to see even one red silhouette that would mean someone had survived this nightmare.
But there was nothing— not a single splash of crimson anywhere within his sensory range, even from within the Earth Dome, Sam gave his life to cast.
Tears spilled freely down Deacon's face, hot and stinging as they carved clean tracks through the blood and gore smeared across his cheeks.
Great, broken sobs tore from his chest, wracking his body so violently that his broken ribs sent fresh lances of agony through his torso with every ragged breath.
"Why!" Deacon screamed at the empty chamber, his voice breaking and raw and barely recognizable as human. "Fuck! Kill me, not them! Fuck!"