Their fists collided in a relentless barrage. Each strike was answered instantly, shockwaves stacking one after another until the air itself fractured under the pressure.

  Vacuums formed and burst in rapid succession, filling the battlefield with a deafening, concussive rhythm. The ground beneath them couldn’t withstand the exchange, the crater floor splintered, then caved in further, expanding outward as if the earth itself recoiled.

  In that chaotic maelstrom, the Beast King’s other fist, wreathed in the same storm of crimson annihilation, shot forward like a cannonball. It bypassed Lucien’s guard and slammed directly into his chest.

  A sickening, thunderous CRUMP echoed. Lucien’s feet left the ground as he was hurled backward, his body carving through the air like a projectile.

  But midway through his flight, his core tightened. His body twisted sharply, bleeding the momentum in a single, brutal corkscrew. The air itself seemed to scream as he reversed course, the shockwave of his turn pulverizing the earth where he'd just been.

  In an instant, he was on the Beast King again, erasing the distance he’d lost. His plain, unadorned fist, driven by cold, focused fury, slammed into the Beast King’s jaw with bone-shaking force.

  The impact was colossal. Tarruk’s head snapped to the side, his eyes rolling back into his skull as he nearly lost consciousness. He stumbled, his massive form swaying, only staying upright by digging his giant foot into the earth.

  With a guttural snarl, Tarruk’s free hand shot out. His claws, wreathed in crimson aura, slashed horizontally.

  The attack was faster than sound. Lucien covered his body in a dense layer of his own aura just as the claws struck.

  The impact was a deafening. The hostile aura shattered against Lucien's defense, dissolving into harmless motes of red light. The whiplash of the collision shook the surrounding ground, but he stood firm.

  The Beast King didn't waste a moment. He vanished, reappearing behind Lucien in a burst of speed. A colossal punch, a condensed orb of crimson aura, detonated against Lucien’s back.

  The explosion sent Lucien flying forward, scorching his clothes. The Beast King laughed, a raw, triumphant sound. He leaped, appearing midair above Lucien’s trajectory. His aura flared as he grabbed Lucien by the tunic.

  "You’re nothing but meat for my claws!" Tarruk roared.

  He spun and slammed Lucien into the ground. The impact created a new crater. Before the dust settled, the Beast King was on him, driving an aura-enhanced fist down into the pit.

  The ground quaked.

  Leaning over the crater, the Beast King opened his maw. Energy gathered in his throat, swirling into a hyper-condensed orb. The air grew hot.

  "BURN!" he bellowed.

  A hyper-beam of pure flame, thick as a tree trunk, erupted from his jaws. It lit the landscape in a hellish red light, aimed directly into the crater to vaporize Lucien where he lay.

  Lucien’s His right hand, sheathed in a dense, visible aura that made his fist look like polished stone, shot forward. It was not a punch. It was a piston strike, driven straight into Tarruk’s open, roaring mouth.

  The sound was a sickening crack of bone and shattered fang.

  Tarruk’s head snapped back. Before he could even register the pain, Lucien’s aura-enhanced fingers clamped onto his jaw. With a brutal twist of his hips, Lucien lifted the massive Beast King from his feet and hurled him like a sack of stones.

  The hellish beam of fire vanished, leaving the crater glowing with molten rock. From within the pit, Lucien walked out.

  His clothes were scorched, but the skin beneath was whole, protected by a layer of aura that now faded from sight. He brushed a fleck of ash from his shoulder.

  Tarruk tumbled through the air, crashing into a jagged outcrop of rock. The stone shattered under the impact. He slid to the ground, his face a bloody ruin. One of his fangs was gone, his lip split open to the bone. He pushed himself up, his body trembling not from pain, but from pure, unadulterated rage.

  “I will tear you apart!” he bellowed, the words slurred by his broken jaw.

  He launched himself forward. Lucien met him in the middle of the shattered plain.

  Tarruk launched himself forward, not with technique, but with raw, bestial power. He swung a clawed hand, wreathed in fire, at Lucien’s head. Lucien dropped his level, the heat singing the air where his neck had been.

  He pivoted on his back foot and drove an aura-enhanced elbow into Tarruk’s ribs. The sound was like a hammer striking an anvil.

  Tarruk grunted, ignoring the pain to wrap his massive arms around Lucien in a crushing embrace. His muscles bulged, his aura flaring to intensify the pressure, meant to snap spines and pulp organs, his claw attempting to pierce his defenses. Lucien didn't struggle.

  Lucien wrapped his own arms around the Beast King’s trunk in a sudden, almost intimate embrace. Then, with a sharp shift of his hips, he dropped his weight backward.

  Tarruk’s bulk, already driving forward, tipped over Lucien’s center of gravity. In an instant, the Beast King was wrenched off his feet, his massive form arcing over Lucien’s shoulder as they fell. The ground shook as Tarruk slammed down on his back, Lucien rolling free in one smooth motion.

  Lucien was on him in an instant. He put both fists together, sheathing them in a dense, silver aura, and hammered them down into the Beast King's exposed back.

  The first blow drove Tarruk's face into the dirt. The second made his whole body convulse. A spray of blood burst from his mouth, soaking the ground beneath him. All desire for this close-quarters fight vanished, replaced by the primal need to escape.

  With a pained roar, he tried to kick backward, a wild, scrambling attempt to knock Lucien off his feet.

  Lucien didn't even shift his stance. His hand snapped out and caught the Beast King's leg by the ankle. Then, with terrifying strength, he began to spin.

  He whipped Tarruk's massive body off the ground, whirling him through the air once, twice, in a violent circle. On the third rotation, he let go.

  The Beast King was flung across the ruined plain. He tumbled through the fog, a limp weight, before crashing against the ground and lying still.

  Frustration twisted Tarruk’s features. He broke away with a powerful leap, putting twenty meters between them. “Burn to ash! Scatter!” he roared, his hands weaving in the air.

  The space around Lucien shimmered with heat. A dozen orbs of solid fire burst into existence, shooting towards him from all sides. At the same time, the air crackled, and multiple forks of lightning split the sky, all aiming to converge on his head.

  Lucien moved without panic. His body flowed between the incoming fire orbs, each movement minimal, each dodge precise. He saw the ozone gathering, felt the building charge in the air—the distinct rhythm of the lightning’s formation. He took a single, calm step to his left.

  A fork of lightning blasted the earth where he had stood a heartbeat before. He took another step, and another, each movement a subtle shift that placed him just outside the path of the crashing bolts. The result was always the same: a scorched crater where he was not.

  Tarruk thrust his free hand forward, launching a relentless volley of crimson fire blasts, each one a condensed sphere of destruction.

  Lucien simply did not bother to defend. As a sphere of fire screamed toward his face, his hand would flick out, his fingers moving in a short, precise motion.

  He didn't block the blast, he simply cut through the rhythm of its existence. The spell would stutter, its form unraveling, and dissipate into a harmless shower of fading red sparks before it could even reach him

  Seeing his assault was useless, Tarruk’s hand dropped to his waist. With a metallic shriek, he drew a great sword from a scabbard at his hip. The dynamic of the fight shifted instantly.

  Now, Lucien was barehanded against a blade humming with destructive aura.

  For a few moments, it was a deadly dance. Lucien flowed around the sword’s killing arcs, the edge passing so close it sliced the fabric of his tunic. He used sharp, slapping motions against the flat of the blade to knock it off course, but the weapon’s reach kept him from closing the distance to strike back.

  They became a whirlwind of violence on the misty plain. On the ground, Lucien weaved under a horizontal slash and drove a fist into Tarruk’s ribs, only to have to leap back from the return swing.

  Then they were in the air, having leaped dozens of meters to clash midway. Lucien’s aura-sheathed fist met the descending sword edge-on. The collision created a shockwave that ripped the mist away from them in a perfect circle.

  It was less a duel and more a cataclysm. Two monsters, one of cold precision, the other of feral rage, trying to erase the other from existence.

  Lucien’s eyes, cold and calculating, scanned the battlefield even as he moved. He gave ground, stepping backward with careful precision. Tarruk advanced, each heavy step shaking the ground, his relentless force driving Lucien back.

  There. His gaze locked onto an object half-buried in the scorched earth. The very axe the Beast King had taken from Tobias and discarded a day prior.

  As Tarruk roared and brought his sword down in a devastating overhead chop meant to split Lucien in two, Lucien moved.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  He sidestepped the killing blow, the sword embedding itself in the earth where he had stood. In the same motion, his hand shot down and snatched the axe from the dirt.

  The first clash of sword and axe sent a visible ring of force through the mist. Tarruk pressed his attack, his swordsmanship a frenzied, powerful style, all heavy chops and brutal thrusts.

  Lucien met him, his movements economical. He deflected, parried, and countered, the axe moving with a rhythm that was almost musical.

  Lucien saw it. The rhythm in Tarruk’s onslaught, the predictable, rage-fueled pattern. He waited for the moment. As Tarruk committed to an overhead smash, Lucien sidestepped, the sword embedding itself in the ground. In that split second of vulnerability, Lucien’s axe moved.

  It wasn't a chop. It was a precise, fluid drawing motion. The aura-enhanced edge passed through Tarruk’s sword arm at the shoulder. There was no resistance, only a wet, parting sound. The limb, still clutching the sword, fell to the ground, a torrent of blood spraying from the cleanly severed stump.

  A choked gurgle was all that escaped Tarruk’s throat as the axe’s trajectory continued unimpeded. It sliced a deep, horrific gash across his torso, from hip to opposite shoulder.

  The cut was so deep it gleamed for a moment against his ribs and spine, a crimson canyon torn through fur and muscle. Lucien reversed his grip on the axe, the motion seamless, and swung for the neck.

  Instinct and desperation saved the Beast King. He threw himself backward, the axe blade whistling past his throat and taking a chunk of his mane.

  He landed hard on his knees, a geyser of hot blood pumping from his shoulder and pouring from the massive wound in his torso, pooling around him in a rapidly expanding circle.

  His body was a mutilated wreck, his breathing a wet, ragged struggle. But his eyes, staring up from a mask of his own blood, burned with a final, desperate light.

  “You… think this is my end? Fool… it’s not over…” Tarruk gurgled, blood bubbling from his lips. His body began to convulse. A terrifying white energy erupted from him, cracking the ground beneath his knees.

  His form swelled, muscles expanding and tearing through his skin, only to be instantly rebuilt. His fur bleached to a deathly white. The grievous wounds sealed over in seconds, the flesh knitting together without a scar.

  His severed arm regenerated in a grotesque display of snapping bone and weaving muscle. He stood, now a foot taller, radiating immense pressure. Black flames, cold and silent, wreathed his body. This was his berserker form, the ultimate power every beastmen of his caliber possess.

  He was stronger. Faster. And completely, utterly insane with power.

  He let out a roar that shattered the ground at his feet and charged.

  The transformation meant nothing to Lucien.

  He watched the entire display with a detached calm, then spoke as the beast closed in. “Looks like you’ve shown me all of your cards. You get a six out of ten. Congrats, you didn’t fail.”

  Having already achieved what he wanted, Lucien extended his hand. His fingers traced a quick, complex symbol in the air. “Attack Zone.”

  Deep within him, astral plates reacted. Mana surged through him, and for an instant, complex, glowing marks—a script of gibberish, flashed across the Beast King’s body from head to toe.

  Tarruk skidded to a halt, sensing the foreign energy clinging to him. With a snarl, he abandoned his charge, using his new speed to zigzag erratically.

  He vanished and reappeared above Lucien, a claw sheathed in hungry black flames swiping down at his head.

  Lucien didn't dodge backward. He jumped up, his boot planting squarely on the Beast King’s descending head. He used it as a platform to launch himself higher, flipping once before landing cleanly ten meters away.

  As his feet touched the earth, his mana surged again. His hand carved another symbol in the air. “Star Shell.”

  Lucien's voice was a flat, surgical instrument. In its wake, the air birthed light. Not a brilliant flash, but a swarm. A hundred motes, each the size of a firefly, shimmered into existence.

  They pulsed with a soft, silvery luminescence, their collective hum a sound that was somehow both beautiful and utterly profane in the tension-filled clearing.

  They drifted towards the Beast King, not like projectiles, but like moths drawn to the dying embers of his aura.

  A primal terror, deeper than any he had ever known, seized beast king.

  He ran.

  He became a blur of white fur and black flame, zigzagging across the glassed crater, leaping over fissures, moving faster than he ever had. It was useless. The swarm adjusted, flowing around obstacles, their paths curving with an unholy, collective intelligence.

  The first one touched his shoulder. It didn't burn or cut. It simply stuck, its light gluing itself to his fur and skin. He swatted at it, his aura flaring to incinerate it. The aura washed over the mote harmlessly. It clung, a cold, unwavering star on his flesh. Then five more landed on his back. Then ten on his legs. Thirty. Sixty.

  Soon, his entire massive form was covered, a terrifying spectacle of a monstrous beast illuminated by a thousand points of cold, unwavering light.

  He thrashed, roared, unleashed pulses of fire and raw magical pressure that should have scoured the land clean. The motes did not even flicker. They simply clung, their numbers silently swelling, a judgment that could not be appealed.

  He saw Lucien then, standing at the edge of the crater, watching with the dispassionate interest of a man observing a lab experiment. Their eyes met. In the Beast King's, there was a final, dawning horror of comprehension. This had been a trap laid long before.

  Lucien snapped his fingers.

  The sound was small, crisp, and final.

  The first mote on his shoulder detonated.

  It was not a fireball. It was a localized, hyper-condensed unmaking. A sphere of space the size of a grapefruit around the mote simply ceased to exist. Flesh, fur, muscle, and a chunk of his collarbone vanished into a perfect, spherical void. There was no blood, not yet. Just a clean, horrifying absence.

  BANG.

  Then the next one on his back exploded, vaporizing a section of his spine and the organs behind it.

  BANG. BANG-BANG-BANG.

  The sound became a staccato rhythm of erasure. A storm of tiny, precise apocalypses rippled across his body. His aura was meaningless, the explosions ignored it, targeting the very space his body occupied. His magical defenses were a joke, they were bypassed entirely.

  He was being taken apart, piece by piece, in a spectacle of bloody, yet unimaginably brutal, disassembly. The bright lights flared and died, and with each one, a part of the Beast King was unmade.

  For a full minute, the crater echoed with the sound of a body being systematically deleted from existence. The light show was terrifyingly beautiful, like a constellation going supernova at the same time.

  What remained of the Beast King was not a corpse. It was a ruin. Half of his face was gone, revealing the skull beneath, one crimson eye staring sightlessly at the churning mist.

  His torso was a hollowed-out cavern, ribs jutting like the ruins of a burned-out cathedral. One leg remained, attached to a pelvis that was mostly gone. He lay in an expanding pool of gore.

  Miraculously, hideously, he was still alive. His remaining lung hitched, drawing a wet, sucking breath. His single eye blinked, the light in it not of life, but of a trapped, suffocating consciousness. His throat was gone, so he could not scream. He could only wait, trapped in the horror of his own dissolution.

  Lucien walked towards him. He did not slow. He did not look down at the twitching, half-vaporized wreck that had been a king. He did not offer a word, a glance, or a final, merciful strike.

  He simply stepped over him, his boot coming down within an inch of the Beast King's remaining eye, and continued walking towards the pulsing veins of the purgatory flame.

  The last thing Tarruk, the Beast King, ever knew was the sight of his killer's retreating back, and the agonizing, airless struggle of his own body as it finally, and without grace, gave out.

  A memory surfaced, clear and precise, as Lucien walked toward the purgatory flames.

  Two months prior. The Hall of Genesis.

  He stood in front of his sister, Selena, her usual mocking demeanor replaced by a flicker of clinical interest.

  "You want to learn a spell?" she had asked, one eyebrow arched. "You, who breaks everything with your fists? Or slash it with some rod or stick. How quaint."

  "Having more tools in my arsenal is not a bad thing," Lucien had replied, his tone even.

  Selena smirked. "Sure. But just any random tool will not be of use. You need to pick and build your arsenal very thoughtfully. Filling it with garbage won't be a good idea, my baby brother."

  "That's why I came to you," Lucien stated, unmoved by the condescension. "So, what would you recommend for a beginner?"

  Selena had laughed, a short, sharp sound that echoed in the vast hall. "Two. A perfect combo, made by me."

  She conjured a faint, intricate sigil in the air between them. "A special spell I crafted to mark a target's mana signature. It is called attack zone. Once set, it ensures any subsequent projectile attack you launch cannot be evaded. It ignores barriers and speed. It will keep following its target until it reaches them or your mana is exhausted. The outcome is a statistical certainty."

  She let the sigil fade. "A caveat: it must be a spell-based attack. Do not couple it with just your average normal spell, or even a very high-tier one for the best effect. Always use a spell capable of one-hit devastation, not just damage. There is another way to bypass the 'spell-only' limitation, but for a beginner, it might be a bad choice. So, stick to the rule."

  "And the other?" Lucien asked, his interest purely pragmatic.

  "The one which will do all the heavy lifting," she said, a cruel smile touching her lips. She flicked her wrist, and a single mote of light, serene and deadly, floated beside her finger. " Star Shell. It converts raw mana from the surrounding area into condensed orbs of pure kinetic force. Individually, they are irritants. A distraction. But against a target locked by the first spell..." Her smile widened. "They become an inescapable storm. A beginner's spell because construction is simple. A master's weapon because of its potential lethality. You can even use it solo if you ever decide to cause... widespread chaos."

  The memory faded, the cold, logical lesson perfectly applied to the brutal reality.

  Before him stretched a nightmarish landscape. The ground was webbed with veins of that same deep, bloody red, pulsing like a subterranean heart.

  The air shimmered with heat, and the thick, gray mist poured from countless fissures in the earth. At the very center, the veins converged into a raging, magma-like pool of concentrated energy, a miniature sun of perverted purification.

  He walked directly into the web, his boots scorching on the hot stone. Reaching the epicenter, he knelt. He placed his bare hand directly on one of the thickest, brightest veins. The heat was immense, but he ignored it.

  Following the flow, he drove his fingers into the solid-looking ground. It gave way like cooled slag, revealing the seething, magma-like core below. And there, at the very center of the inferno, was the source.

  A small, white rectangle amulet artifact, was burning away, dissolving as it fed the flames. It was the anchor, sacrificing its own existence to maintain this blasphemy.

  Without a second thought, Lucien leaped into the magma.

  He did not summon his aura. He did not defend himself. The moment the flames touched him, his entire body was seized by a violent, full-body shudder. A wave of goosebumps erupted across his skin.

  As at that moment, the Astral Plate within him flared.

  A voice, both divine and utterly robotic, echoed in the vault of his mind, drowning out the roar of the fire.

  `EXPERIENCING PURGATORY FLAME.`

  `INSCRIBING ON PROCESS.`

  `INSCRIBING... INSCRIBING... INSCRIBING...`

  `DONE.`

  `CALIBRATING... CALIBRATING...`

  `SUCCESSFUL. PURGATORY FLAME ACHIEVED.`

  The voice ceased. The sensation vanished. The judgment was over. The flame’s essence had been captured, codified, and bound.

  In the same instant, his hand shot out. He grabbed the dissolving obsidian artifact. The moment his fingers closed around it, the connection was severed.

  The effect was instantaneous and absolute.

  The deep red glow in the veins vanished, snuffed out like a candle. The searing heat was replaced by a sudden, shocking cold. The magma-like pool solidified into dull, black rock.

  As he drew his hand away, the once powerful artifact shattered, collapsing into a fine black dust that sifted through his fingers.

  Lucien stood amid the sudden hush and chill, at the heart of a ritual now undone. The mist still lingered over the land, but it was only ordinary fog now, mingling with the smoke it's animating force snuffed out.

  "Now that the wind is carrying this mist away… this place… it’s actually quite beautiful. Such a shame it had to end up like this."