Chapter 58: Beast Slaying

When the gray great-horned stag appeared before Li En, it meant that regardless of the outcome, this war was about to reach its end.

One side was already utterly dead.

The former Maria, or rather the hybrid thing wearing Maria's skin, had completely perished with the birth of new life.

"It has already turned from a single cell into a drop of blood?"

In the ancient Era of Beasts, the World Children's beasts roamed the earth alone.

Afterwards, perhaps out of loneliness or simply to imitate other living beings, they grew tired of the boring life of being alone.

They shared their blood with their followers, forming herds that followed them.

And now, Maria's remains seemed to be attempting atavism? Attempting to transform into a member of the ancient beast herds?

The great-horned stag constantly swelled and grew; the "narrow" cave seemed to limit its further growth. Accompanied by the boiling beast blood, a pair of dim yellow beast eyes opened.

It began to gaze at Li En, but mostly with confusion and fearlessness.

It did not rush to act, just as a satiated lion does not care about a nearby herd of deer.

Li En shook his head; the beast herds had not revived. The data explicitly stated that "atavism" was impossible in the current era.

Beast factors would naturally self-destruct once they reached a certain bloodline concentration; the elemental tides of this era were insufficient to sustain ancient monsters. Perhaps, if the "beasts" truly awakened, it would be a different matter.

Experiment Subject 113 was merely a shortcut, forcibly raising the beast blood concentration through multiple fusions, ultimately resulting in a mongrel beast that had reverted some ancient beast blood traits.

With the further increase in beast blood concentration, the originally "human" part naturally vanished completely.

"Woo woo woo." The monster, no longer Maria, let out a roar resembling a deer's cry.

The howl echoed through the cave; it recalled that it seemed to have been injured by the small thing before it with a toothpick.

Beasts hold grudges quite well.

Li En calmly raised his longsword again and switched the "Holy Fire Halo" from burst mode to normal mode.

"Boom!"

Soon, fire descended from the sky once more, striking the back of its head.

"Crack!" The power was not great, but it made the monster subconsciously touch the wound, and its head turned toward Li En, the suspected attacker.

Its eyes were somewhat confused; how had it been hit?

"Pain sensation has returned as well."

Li En took a deep breath; it seemed he could only meet force with force.

The fool who had let himself be slowly scalded without feeling before was completely gone.

"Holy Fire, reignite."

Beneath Li En's feet, a ring of fire flickered briefly, but the next second, under his master's control, it vanished without a trace.

But for this period of time, it would continue to output damage steadily and inefficiently.

The Holy Fire Halo, a third-tier divine spell of the Paladin, was notoriously useless, yet it was the unsung hero that allowed Li En to win the death match just now.

He had awakened this divine spell just now upon successfully swearing the oath as a Vow Knight; it counted as a "class benefit."

Generally, professions requiring awakening or enlightenment to master spells, such as Priests, Paladins, and Warlocks, receive a low-tier spell upon successful initiation.

As the beginning of the career path, it is also a gift from a higher existence (bloodline, deity), and simultaneously, the key and starting point for entering the profession.

Under normal circumstances, Paladins awaken first-tier divine spells, but the Vow Knight is actually an advanced class of the Paladin, and its divine spell list is richer.

Just as Dimon awakened a spell to heal minor wounds that even second or third-tier Paladins might not have, Li En directly snagged a third-tier Holy Fire Halo as a benefit.

"Voom!" The tearing echo meant this strike would be extremely fierce.

Li En, prepared in advance, slid to the left, dodging that suddenly descending claw and the gravity distortion that followed!

"Boom!"

The earth, directly compressed by the gravity wave, squeezed out a pit!

The descendants of the beast herds instinctively used their authority.

But being beasts, they were not very skilled at concealing the use of their abilities.

Li En had to be careful and vigilant; one hit from this could truly end him.

Having finally reached this step, he absolutely could not fail.

"Crack!"

And the sky-fire, arriving on time once again, delivered another strike to the beast.

The damage was small, but the insult was strong; it became increasingly irritable, and its attacks became more instinctual.

How could the Dragon Eye miss such an obvious attack trajectory? An instinct-driven beast was actually easier to dodge.

Especially a pure newborn with absolutely no combat experience; Li En could even know its attack landing point one second in advance.

He always dodged in advance; whether it was a tear or a furious claw, it was one step slower than him.

"Crack!" The Holy Fire, throughout this process, continued to output damage steadily.

The Holy Fire Halo required no aiming; while in the activated state, it could deal extremely low damage to a target within range after a certain interval. Yes, extremely low; as a third-tier divine spell, its damage was even lower than a first-tier fire cantrip.

This was the root reason why ordinary Paladins regarded it as useless; for a Paladin who truly mastered third-tier divine spells, who would lack this bit of damage? Wasn't Great Evil-Cleaving Slash or Great Holy Slash (here divided into two divine spells) better?

But in Li En's hands, it was a completely different matter.

On one hand, this divine spell could use the caster's fire source to replace normal Holy Fire; Li En unhesitatingly used Dragon Flame as a substitute. On the other hand, there was the root cause that the more it burned, the heavier the injury became.

【Soul: Wall-Breaker (Diamond): Your will is your warhammer. Supernatural abilities infused with your will and anger can to a certain extent ignore the opponent's defense.】

All along, this shameful damage-dealing fire ring had actually been burning Li En's opponent, stacking the Wall-Breaker's defense-breaking effect.

Its own damage was very low, but its characteristic of destroying the opponent's defense, an effect similar to "Armor-Eroding Strike," had been piercing through "Maria's" defense.

Skin, flesh, and bones all became increasingly fragile with each of these impacts.

This was also the root reason why it was difficult for Li En to cut off a single bone spike before, but later he could casually cut off four or five with a single slash; she had been turned into negative defense by the steadily outputting Holy Fire Halo!

Borrowing this class ability, Li En also successfully combined his Soul ability with class techniques, forming his own combat system.

"Only an amateur like Maria would mistake pain for a burden."

Even the beast before him was irritated by the unavoidable Holy Flame attacks, yet Maria kept taking hits without any sensation, which was truly too stupid and amateurish.

If pain were truly a burden, the human body would have evolved it away long ago.

Nowadays, most creatures possess pain; it is life's alarm for danger and crisis, a beneficial mutation left behind by survival of the fittest.

"Clang!"

In the next instant, Li En's surprise slash severed one of the Great Antler Deer's massive hands.

The monster could not comprehend how this toothpick had done it! How had its iron-hard skin and muscles been breached?

Yet Li En smiled.

"As expected, the defense is still as brittle as paper; the skin and flesh have all been burned to a crisp."

Reality is not like the performances in animations or games, where protagonists and BOSSes heal all injuries and negative statuses just by transforming; that is truly too unreasonable.

The so-called transformation is merely a change in life form, which instead demands paying a higher price in vitality and energy.

Transformation is often an adjustment of bodily resources under abnormal conditions; there is no reason for previous injuries and negative statuses to simply vanish. To put it bluntly, what a Magical Girl can recover through transformation should only be her clothes.

This is also the root of Li En's unwavering confidence in victory.

Even if it becomes stronger and larger, a beast that has lost higher intelligence becomes easier to predict.

Even if surface wounds are healing during the physical transformation, the state of "fragile flesh and blood" that penetrates the essence cannot be removed.

On one side, heavy armor and a heavy sword; on the other, a seemingly massive glass-cannon target. The scale of victory and defeat has been tilted from the very beginning.

"Shatter Sword." At this moment, Li En chose to use Shatter Sword, which can create larger wounds, to attack this overly massive monster.

"Woo woo woo!" With every strike, the wounds Li En created caused massive spurts of blood, along with the Great Antler Deer's impotent rage.

Li En was not in a hurry, and he knew he could not rush.

The acceleration boots on his feet were a great help; as long as he steadily avoided the opponent's critical gravity bursts, this beast posed even less threat to him than the previous one.

This narrow cave also restricted the movements of such a large monster.

In fact, fate has been quite kind to Li En and his group.

If the battlefield were not within a cave, the gravity field's "floating up then falling down" would be the truly despair-inducing attack.

Li En responded patiently, draining the opponent's vitality bit by bit; even with accumulated injuries and exhaustion, he remained confident he would survive until the end.

"Hah, hah." After an unknown amount of time, Li En held his sword and panted, having little confidence left.

Not only were his hands and feet numb, but he felt his body had lost all sensation; the bleeding had lowered his body temperature, yet the opponent remained vigorous and lively.

The entire battlefield had turned into a pool of blood; Li En could not even remember how many times he had used Shatter Sword.

Even the temporary Holy Power reserves of an Heroic Soul level felt barely sustainable.

For such a monster, is vitality truly infinite?

"No, it just ate too much." Li En took a deep breath and pulled himself together again.

Life is not without source; a fusion body five times or even ten times larger very likely has an appetite of the same magnitude.

Terrifying vitality reserves combined with atavistic hybrid regeneration abilities; relying solely on Li En's damage to deplete them is still somewhat insufficient. Similar to the battle situation with Heike, Li En's profession level is too low; facing an opponent with too high a life level, it is difficult for him to inflict a fatal wound.

Li En's stamina and wounds have already begun to drop below the line between life and death; at this rate, it is hard to say who will die first.

"It's about time to use this."

Sighing, if he could, Li En truly did not want to gamble at all.

He pulled out a small knife; at the length of a fountain pen, it looked like a toy.

The "treasure" that had shown no reaction before finally began to emit red light in the face of this monster.

It had met the activation prerequisite; this was indeed an overly powerful demon.

This was a support item sent by Miss Shaliman, specifically targeted for this very moment.

"Come on. Lex's Blade of Seeking Death, find the fatal point of the creature before me!"

The casually thrown small knife paused for a moment; when Li En's Heroine's Sword emitted red light, it suddenly transformed into a long rainbow and stabbed toward the giant monster before him.

"Snap!" The blade embedded directly into some flesh, yet the giant beast seemed to feel nothing at all.

However, within Li En's senses, a skull icon appeared on the monster's abdomen.

It was certainly not the name Li En had come up with (Blade of Seeking Death).

But compared to its true full name, perhaps the alias Li En gave was more fitting.

【Lex's Blade of Desperate Counterattack (Unknown Level): Facing a monster that crushes your life level, this blade will create a 'weakness' for it that gathers all its vitality. Shatter it within sixty seconds, and it will suffer a Death phase critical wound. If time runs out without successfully shattering the weakness, you die.】

【User Prerequisite: One must possess the courage of a savior and the aptitude for a desperate counterattack; both must be present simultaneously.】

It is, in fact, a secret treasure used to select a Heroine.

This seems to be a set with the Heroine's Sword; one increases the user's power and luck in desperate situations, while the other creates a fatal strike capable of turning the tide.

In fact, Li En has disappointed Princess; if not for certain causality and accidents, he would not have been qualified to activate this weapon.

But at this moment, Li En also saw that constantly counting-down skull icon.

"As expected, the fatal weakness is in that position." The user, Li En, knew the true nature of this unknown weapon.

The Blade of Seeking Death marks a fatal weakness; if the opponent is an undead type with no fatal weakness, it will forcibly create one and gather all their vitality there.

That place will be the opponent's most fragile spot, but often also their strongest.

"It really is that part; can one say it was unexpected?"

The mark of death appeared on the Great Antler Deer's lower abdomen; that is where life is nurtured.

It... Maria used this method to condense life after life into one, refining beast blood through quantity into a qualitative change.

This is the reason it evolved to this stage, and also its greatest weakness.

Under normal circumstances, even piercing it would be meaningless (it can regenerate), but now, that is the beast's Death phase.

The giant beast was somewhat dazed; it felt a change, sensing its vitality seemed to be flowing into its lower abdomen, yet it did not know what this meant.

"Break Evil." Li En did not wait; he simply swung his sword again.

The beast had already grown numb to the accumulation of wounds.

Before, it had not even bothered to dodge, but this time, its instinctive evasion was sluggish and slow, arriving a step too late.

Accelerated, Li En completed his thrust; the Courage Sword, corroding the armor, drove hard into the mark on the skull.

He swung his sword again with a sudden force, and the shattering Holy Sword erupted within it once more!

"Boom!"

When the wound was pierced, the beast's Death phase had already descended.

As Li En slowly sheathed his sword, behind him lay the beast's remains, turning into dancing black ash.

"Rest in peace, the former Holy Mother." The drifting black ash of life became the backdrop for the man's departure.

(End of this chapter)