Chapter 58: Beast Slaying

When the gray great-deer appeared before Li En, it meant that regardless of victory or defeat, this war was about to end.

One side was already dead.

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

“Has it reduced from a single cell to a drop of blood?”

In the ancient Beast Era, the Children of the World’s Beasts roamed the earth alone.

Later, perhaps out of loneliness or merely imitating other lifeforms, they grew tired of solitary existence.

They gave their blood to their followers, forming herds that followed them.

And now, Maria’s remains seemed to be attempting ancestral regression? Trying to become one of the ancient herds?

The great-deer continuously swelled and grew; the “narrow” cave seemed to restrict its further expansion, and as its beast blood boiled, pairs of dull yellow beast eyes opened one by one.

It fixed its gaze on Li En, but more than anything, it was blank and fearless.

It did not rush to act, like a full-grown lion unconcerned with nearby deer herds.

Li En shook his head—the beast herd had not revived; the records clearly stated that “ancestral regression” was impossible in this era.

Beast factors naturally self-destruct once blood concentration reaches a certain threshold; the elemental tides of this era are insufficient to sustain ancient monsters. Perhaps, if the “Beast” truly awakened, things would be different.

Specimen 113 was merely a shortcut—a forced fusion of multiple bodies that artificially raised beast blood concentration, ultimately producing a hybrid beast with traces of ancient beast blood.

As beast blood concentration increased further, the original “human” component vanished entirely.

“Ooooh.” The creature, no longer Maria, emitted a cry like a deer’s bellow.

The howl echoed through the cave; it remembered it had been wounded by this tiny thing with a toothpick.

Beasts are notoriously vengeful.

Li En simply raised his sword calmly, shifting the “Holy Flame Halo” from burst mode to steady mode.

“Boom!”

Soon, flames rained down again, striking its occiput.

“Crack!” The impact was weak, but the creature instinctively touched the wound, turning its head toward Li En—the suspected attacker.

Its eyes were confused: how had it been struck?

“Has pain sensation returned?”

Li En took a deep breath; it seemed he had no choice but to meet force with force.

The fool who had endured slow scorching without feeling anything was gone.

“Holy Flame, reignite.”

Beneath Li En’s feet, a faint ring of fire flickered, then vanished instantly under his control.

But over this period, it would continue to output damage steadily and inefficiently.

The Holy Flame Halo, a third-rank holy knight spell, was notoriously useless—but it had been the unsung hero that won Li En his previous duel.

He awakened this spell when he successfully swore the Oath Knight vow; it was a “vocation benefit.”

Generally, professions requiring awakening or enlightenment to master spells—such as priests, holy knights, and sorcerers—receive a low-rank spell upon successful vocation initiation.

As the starting point of their path, it is both a gift from higher beings (bloodline, deity) and the key and beginning of their vocation.

Normally, holy knights awaken a first-rank spell, but Oath Knights are an advanced subclass with a richer spell list.

Just as Dimon awakened a healing spell even most second- and third-rank holy knights lacked, Li En directly gained the third-rank Holy Flame Halo as his benefit.

“Hum!” The shattering resonance signaled this strike would be brutal.

Li En, prepared, sidestepped left, evading the sudden claw—and the gravity distortion that followed.

“Crash!”

The ground, crushed by the gravity wave, sank into a crater.

The beast’s descendant instinctively wielded its authority.

But it was still a beast, and poorly concealed its ability use.

Li En had to remain vigilant; one hit could truly be the end.

He had come this far—he absolutely could not fail now.

“Crack!”

And again, timely heavenly fire struck the beast.

The damage was minor, but the insult was great; it grew angrier, its attacks becoming more instinct-driven.

How could Dragon Eyes miss such an obvious attack trajectory? A beast acting purely on instinct was easier to dodge.

Especially a pure newborn with zero combat experience—Li En could predict its strike point a full second in advance.

He always dodged ahead—whether bite or rage-claw, it always arrived a step too late.

“Crack!” The Holy Flame continued its steady output throughout.

The Holy Flame Halo required no targeting; while active, it inflicted extremely low damage on a random target within range every few seconds—yes, extremely low. As a third-rank spell, its damage was even weaker than a first-rank Fire Trick.

This was why ordinary holy knights deemed it useless: by the time a holy knight mastered third-rank spells, who needed this tiny damage? Wouldn’t Great Demonic Slash or Great Holy Slash (here split into two spells) be far better?

But in Li En’s hands, it was an entirely different matter.

On one hand, this spell could substitute the caster’s own fire source for holy fire; Li En unhesitatingly used Dragon Flame as the substitute. On the other, it was the core mechanism: the more it burned, the worse the damage became.

【Soul. Wallbreaker (Diamond): Your will is your hammer; your infused will and fury can partially ignore the target’s defenses.】

All along, this humiliatingly weak fire ring had been burning Li En’s opponents, stacking Wallbreaker’s armor-piercing effect.

Its base damage was low, but its armor-piercing trait—similar to “Armor Shi ” effect—had been steadily piercing through Maria’s defenses.

Skin, flesh, bone—all grew increasingly fragile with each impact.

This was why Li En had struggled to sever a single bone spur earlier, yet later sliced through four or five with a casual strike: she had been slowly reduced to negative defense by the Holy Flame Halo’s steady damage.

By leveraging this vocation ability, Li En successfully fused his Soul ability with his vocation technique, forming his own combat system.

“Only an amateur like Maria would treat pain as a burden.”

Even the beast before him was enraged by the unavoidable Holy Flame strikes, yet Maria had endured them silently without feeling a thing—she was utterly foolish and unskilled.

If pain were truly a burden, humanity would have long since evolved it away.

Most creatures today retain pain sensation—it is life’s alarm system for danger and crisis, a beneficial mutation preserved by natural selection.

“Clang!”

The next instant, Li En’s surprise slash severed one of the great-deer’s massive forelimbs.

The creature could not comprehend: how had this toothpick done this? How had its iron-hard skin and muscles failed?

Li En smiled.

“Indeed, its defense is paper-thin—skin and flesh have been burned to ruin.”

Reality is not an anime or game where the protagonist or boss transforms and instantly heals all wounds and debuffs—it’s absurd.

Transformation is merely a shift in life form, demanding greater life force and energy as cost.

Transformation is usually an emergency adjustment of bodily resources; prior injuries and debuffs have no reason to vanish. Simply put, only clothing should be restored in a magical girl’s transformation.

This was the root of Li En’s unwavering confidence.

Even if it grew stronger and larger, the beast, having lost higher intelligence, became more predictable.

Even if surface wounds had healed through bodily transformation, the deeper “fragile flesh” state could not be purged.

One side wore heavy armor and wielded a heavy sword; the other was a massive, fragile target. The scales had tilted from the start.

“Shatter Blade.” At this moment, Li En chose the Shatter Blade, which created larger wounds, to strike this monstrous beast.

“Ooooh!” Each strike left by Li En caused massive blood spray and the great-deer’s furious helplessness.

Li En was not in a hurry; he knew haste was useless.

His footspeed boots had been invaluable—so long as he consistently evaded the beast’s critical gravity bursts, its threat to him was even less than the previous one.

The confined cave also restricted the movement of such a large monster.

In truth, fate had been quite kind to Li En’s group.

Had the battlefield not been inside the cave, the gravity field’s “float-then-fall” attacks would have been truly despair-inducing.

Li En patiently responded, slowly draining the beast’s life force; even with accumulated injuries and exhaustion, he still had confidence he would outlast it.

“Ha… ha.” After an unknown length of time, Li En panted, sword in hand—his confidence was nearly gone.

Not only were his limbs numb, he felt no sensation in his flesh; blood loss had lowered his body temperature, yet the beast remained vigorous.

The entire battlefield had become a pool of blood; Li En could no longer recall how many times he’d used Shatter Blade.

Even his temporary Hero-Soul-level holy energy reserves were beginning to falter.

Could this creature’s life force truly be infinite?

“No—it’s just eaten too much.” Li En took a deep breath and rallied himself.

Life is not boundless; a five- to tenfold fusion body likely had a corresponding appetite.

Its terrifying life force reserve, combined with ancestral hybrid regeneration, meant Li En’s damage alone could not exhaust it. Like his battle with Heke, his vocation rank was too low—he struggled to land fatal blows against a foe of such high life grade.

Li En’s stamina and wounds had already fallen below the line between life and death; it was uncertain who would die first.

“It’s time… to use this.”

He sighed. If he could avoid it, he truly didn’t want to gamble.

He pulled out a small knife—its length, like a pen, looked like a toy.

The “treasure” that had never reacted before now glowed red before the beast.

It had been activated—the prerequisite was met; this was indeed an overpowered demon.

It was a support item sent by Sallyman, specifically prepared for this moment.

“Come. Lex’s Death-Seeking Knife—find the fatal point of this creature before me!”

The small knife he casually threw halted for a moment; when Li En’s Hero’s Sword glowed red, it surged like a rainbow and stabbed the monstrous creature before him.

“Snap!” The blade embedded itself directly into the flesh, yet the giant beast showed no sign of feeling it.

In Li En’s perception, a skull icon appeared on the monster’s abdomen.

It was, of course, not a name Li En had invented (Death’s Blade).

Yet compared to its true full name, perhaps Li En’s nickname was more fitting.

【Lex’s Desperate Counterblade (Unknown Rank): When facing a monster whose life rank crushes yours, this blade will create a “weak point” that concentrates all its life force. Shatter it within sixty seconds, and it will suffer a death-level wound; if you fail to break the weak point before time runs out, you die.】

【User Requirement: One who possesses the courage to save the world, and one who possesses the aptitude for a desperate counterattack—both must be present simultaneously.】

In truth, it was a secret artifact designed to select heroes.

It seemed to form a set with the Hero’s Sword—one enhanced the user’s strength and luck in desperation, the other created a decisive, game-turning strike.

In reality, Li En had disappointed the Princess; had it not been for certain karmic connections and accidents, he had no qualification to activate this weapon.

But at this moment, Li En also saw the skull icon counting down.

“So the fatal weak point is right there.” The user, Li En, understood the true nature of this unknown weapon.

Death’s Blade marked a fatal weak point; if the opponent was an undead creature without one, it forcibly created a weak point and concentrated all its life force there.

That spot would be the opponent’s most vulnerable point—but often also its strongest.

“So it really is that spot. Should I say it’s no surprise?”

The death marker appeared on the great stag’s lower abdomen—the place where life is born.

It, Maria, used this method to condense countless lives into one, refining beast blood through quantity into qualitative transformation.

This was the reason it evolved to this state—and also its greatest weakness.

Under normal circumstances, even piercing it would be meaningless (it could regenerate); but now, this was the beast’s hour of death.

The giant beast was bewildered. It sensed a change, felt its life force flowing toward its lower abdomen, yet did not understand what it meant.

“Exorcise evil.” Li En did not wait—he swung his sword again.

The beast had grown numb to new wounds.

Previously, it had barely bothered to dodge—but this time, though it instinctively tried to evade, its reaction was sluggish, and it was still a fraction too slow.

Accelerated, Li En completed his thrust; the Armor-Eroding Hero’s Sword slammed deep into the skull marker.

He swung again violently—the shattered Holy Sword erupted once more within!

“Boom!”

When the wound was pierced, the giant beast’s death had arrived.

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

“Rest in peace, former Holy Mother.” The drifting black ashes of life became the backdrop to the man’s departure.

(End of Chapter)