The butterfly unfurled its coiled proboscis, which transformed into a spear dozens of meters long. An instant later, it lunged forward at dizzying speed.
Uriel moved his body to the side, letting the blurry figure pass him by. When the butterfly missed its initial attack, it continued flying in circles.
Uriel, giving it no room to breathe, lunged forward. Despite his massive body, his speed was equally something to reckon with.
He raised one of his claws and brought it down against the great monster, striking it directly. The air exploded as the abomination's body fell downward toward the great river.
When its body crashed, it raised an enormous wave hundreds of meters high.
Uriel dove into the water, ordering his minions to attack simultaneously to kill the great monster.
The reason for this was to experiment with commanding a weaker army to kill something stronger.
---
The abominations responded as a single mass.
From the depths of the Great River, the shadows moved. First came the fastest ones: a dozen corrupted needlefish, their elongated bodies like living swords, slicing through the water in absolute silence. Behind them, a swarm of lesser creatures — pale eels, crustaceans with asymmetrical claws, jellyfish whose tentacles glowed with a deathly light — closed in.
The butterfly, still recovering from the dragon's impact, tried to rise out of the water.
But Uriel had already anticipated that.
Three corrupted tyrants emerged forming a triangle. The fifty-meter sea serpent, now with scales black as coal, coiled in the air and hurled its body against one of the great monster's wings. The colossal crab — a mass of cracked carapace from which a black substance oozed — sank one of its claws into one of the butterfly's sharp legs.
The third tyrant was new. A spectral manta ray with a forty-meter wingspan, dominated just three days earlier, which Uriel had kept hidden in the darkness at the bottom. Its translucent body passed through the water without generating resistance and attached itself to the butterfly's underside, discharging a current of dark energy that partially paralyzed its muscles.
The butterfly shrieked again.
But this time it wasn't a simple warning cry.
It was a curse attack.
Uriel felt it like a stab in his consciousness. The indescribable sound transformed into something worse: a sensation of instant decomposition. The weaker abominations — about two hundred of them, the newly dominated ones — began to dissolve. Their bodies liquefied in the water, turning into black stains that dissipated like ink.
The spectral manta ray released the butterfly's belly. Not of its own volition, but because the creature had reversed Uriel's order.
"What...?"
Uriel frowned. He could feel it. The butterfly hadn't just killed his dominated minions. It had interrupted his connection with them for an instant. Not enough to fully free them, but enough to cause confusion.
"So its song also affects control," he thought. "Interesting. And dangerous."
But Uriel hadn't gotten this far by being reckless.
He transformed again.
From his Western dragon form, his body contracted and expanded into a new configuration. This time, he took the form of a six-headed serpentine beast, each head with a specific function: one to bite, another to spew dark acid, a third to emit sonic shockwaves, and the remaining three to maintain mental control over his minions while he focused on combat.
One hundred meters of liquid nightmare.
The butterfly, seeing Uriel's new form, hesitated.
That hesitation cost it dearly.
The first head lunged forward and sank its fangs into one of the butterfly's wings, tearing off a piece of black membrane. The second head spat a stream of darkness acid that fell onto the pale white abdomen of the great monster, making its flesh smoke. The third head emitted a sonic roar that destabilized the butterfly's flight, causing it to stagger in the air.
"Now!" Uriel commanded, though he didn't need to speak. His will was enough.
The five-hundred-meter shark emerged.
Not from below. From everywhere.
Because Uriel, at some point during the battle, had dominated more sharks. Not just one, but seven. Though the strongest was a great beast, the others were of corrupted rank, ranging from monster to devil.
All of different sizes, but with colossal mass, all moving as a single fist under his command.
The butterfly tried to flee upward.
But upward was Uriel.
His serpentine body extended like a living net, trapping the butterfly between its six heads and countless rings of black scales. The creature's sharp legs dug into his flesh, but Uriel no longer felt pain as he once had. His darkness form was malleable. Every wound closed as quickly as it opened.
"Stop fighting," Uriel whispered, bringing one of his heads close to the butterfly's faceted face. "I'm offering you something no other creature in this river can give you."
The butterfly trembled.
"Purpose."
The great monster stopped moving.
Uriel activated his Domination at full power.
He felt his will clash with the butterfly's malignant will. Both wills began to fight.
Uriel felt the weight of the great monster's will as it tried to crush him, consume him, and corrupt him.
But he could no longer be corrupted. He could not be consumed because he was vast and unfathomable.
His will was absolute. Uriel and the butterfly remained locked in a mortal battle that agitated the river's surface, raising great columns of water.
The battle stretched on for what seemed like hours when in reality it was only a few minutes. Finally, Uriel succeeded.
His will won over the great monster's will, and with that, he was able to kill it. Using his will and fueled by dark essence, he pierced through the abomination's body.
[You have killed a Great Monster: Nightmare Butterfly]
Uriel watched the corpse slowly sink, manifested a tentacle of darkness, and caught the corpse, preventing it from submerging.
Creating another tentacle, he searched for a few moments until he extracted two brilliant orbs — the Supreme Soul Fragments. After securing the fragments, he let his minions devour the butterfly's corpse while his great beast fed on the turtle's flesh.
Emerging to the surface, he created a small boat using Supreme Memory, observing the two great Soul Fragments. He quickly began implanting the necessary enchantments.
Previously, placing the enchantments as well as the necessary nexuses would have taken him hours, but now, after recovering all his knowledge, he did it in a matter of minutes.
After creating his first detonation core, he stored it in his dark storage. As for the second, he took out his first memory — the Dark Cloak, the one that had been very useful to him during his early years on the Forgotten Coast, as well as one of his most cherished memories.
His two enchantments — [Living Shadow] and [Concealment] — had saved his life.
Since this was a fifth-level memory and he wanted to turn it into a Supreme armor, he needed four more Supreme Cores.
Checking his dark storage, he sighed. He only had Ascended and Transcendent fragments.
"I need to hunt great abominations," Shade thought, looking toward the great river. Then he looked upstream, toward the future, then downstream, toward the past.
After thinking for a while, he decided to head downstream. Eventually, he might manage to obtain five Supreme fragments to upgrade the Dark Cloak.
After storing the corpse and eating something, Uriel transformed back into an aquatic creature, this time a two-hundred-meter sea serpent, traveling downstream.