Elijah slammed into the wall with enough force to break bones. Thankfully, the impact was spread across most of his torso, so he didn’t shatter his skeleton, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t afflicted with an enormous amount of pain. Agony shot through him as the breath left his body, but he didn’t get a chance to recover before Nasir rammed a fist into his stomach.

He collapsed onto his hands and knees, then took a foot to the ribs that sent him flipping over to land on his back.

“You disappoint me,” the man known as Al-Abadi said, massaging his knuckles as he circled Elijah. “I expected more from the man at the top of the power rankings. Did you merely get lucky? Is that how you gained all those levels? I suspect you never had to work for anything. You simply gained a powerful class and have been coasting along ever since. No talent, just persistence.”

Nasir aimed another kick at Elijah – this time, at his head – but even though he saw it coming, he was too slow to stop it. The enchantment had robbed him of more than half his attributes, and because of that, he simply didn’t have the power to avoid the oncoming blow. It took him in the jaw, and a mixture of blood and teeth went flying.

Elijah didn’t allow himself to feel it.

Instead, he continued to pull at the ambient ethera as he tried to drain the area of the energy the enchantment needed to maintain its function. As he pushed his Jade Mind harder than he ever had, he focused the other facets on mitigating the damage aimed in his direction by Nasir.

It was a fruitless quest. Nasir was not weakened by the enchantment, and he had the full suite of his own abilities available. The only reason Elijah wasn’t immediately killed was because the man’s class didn’t seem to have much going for it in terms of direct combat ability. Instead, his power was wrapped up in giving his underlings their immortality.

He was not a man who normally fought his own battles. He was personally weak, which just made Elijah’s situation all the more frustrating. And painful, given the beating he was forced to endure.

Soon enough, that frustration turned to anger. And that anger became an untenable rage that encompassed his own body. However, it wasn’t like what he normally felt when he used Shape of the Guardian. That was bestial. Uncontrollable. It was reactionary. There were elements of that fury coursing through him, but it felt as if it had been used as fuel to create something else.

Something stronger.

In his state, steadily getting pummeled by the leader of the Immortals, it took Elijah some time before he remembered the breakthrough he’d made in that ruined Druid circle. It had let him progress to the Jade stage of his Mind cultivation, but that was almost a side effect of the real gain, where he’d begun to fuse the three parts of his identity.

There was the human, which was the most familiar. He’d been a man his whole life, and he knew himself well enough to recognize his strengths and weaknesses. Humanity wasn’t as strong as the elder races. It wasn’t as focused as some of the other species he’d seen. But what the human race did have was simple endurance. For all of history, humanity had persevered regardless of what stood before them. Some might call it stubbornness, but Elijah preferred to think of it as the result of the human spirit.

Then, there was the beast. The primal creature who brought with it a feral intensity that humanity often lacked. The most easily understood example was the rage he felt as a lamellar ape, but that same trait was present in the hunter’s instincts he’d embraced in the Shape of the Predator and later in the Shape of Venom.

Then, there was the dragon.

In many ways, it was the most powerful of the three, and it encompassed traits associated with the other two. However, above it all was a simple refusal to be dominated. Dragons were not just an elder race. According to Kirlissa, they were the founders. And the notion that such a creature would succumb to any force was an insult that Elijah could not let stand.

The three pieces of his identity came together. Human perseverance. Bestial instincts. And draconic dominance.

The enchantment never stood a chance.

Elijah used that to push his Mind to new heights, straining his Soul with the sheer weight of the ethera he absorbed and filling his Core so rapidly that the drain could not keep up. The glow of the enchantment flickered as it strained to overcome the sudden increase, but after only a moment, tendrils of smoke drifted up from the carved runes.

Then, finally, it exploded.

Elijah felt the return of his attributes, and when the unsuspecting Nasir kicked him again, he found something far more durable at the end of his foot. Elijah barely felt the attack as he pushed himself to his feet.

That was when Nasir figured out that something was wrong. He looked around, panic in his eyes as he realized that the enchantment had gone dark.

“What? How?”

“A dragon does not yield.”

Elijah stepped forward. Nasir tried to retreat, but he tripped over his own feet. Before he could fall, Elijah snapped out a hand and caught the man’s shirt. Then, his fist descended, destroying the so-called Al-Abadi’s face. The delicate bones of his nose were the first to break, but the rest of his skull soon followed suit. When Elijah pulled his fist back, Nasir’s face was unrecognizable.

Yet, he was not dead.

So, Elijah hit him again. This time, there was almost no resistance as his fist crashed through Nasir’s skull and destroyed the man’s brain. An influx of experience told him that Nasir was dead.

“Eternal One?” Elijah spat, using the system’s translation for Nasir’s chosen title. He dropped the limp body and shook his head. “I think not.”

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* * *

Dat leaped over the monster’s head, flipping as he let loose a trio of darts at the creature. They thudded into its back, eliciting a howl of pure fury as purifying energy tore through it. The thing wasn’t evil, per se, and so, many of Dat’s most powerful abilities were far less powerful than they would’ve been against the foes he’d fought against in Hong Kong. Yet, they were still strong enough to do some damage.

The problem was that even if they managed to bring the creature down, it would simply rise from the dead. Such was the issue with fighting an Immortal.

Dat landed in a roll to dissipate his momentum, then wheeled around, his crossbow already in hand. He loosed seven bolts in quick succession, and each one found a home in the creature’s exposed chest. They exploded a moment later, tearing a hole in its torso. However, because the creature was far more durable than any monster Dat had ever seen, the results were less than spectacular. The injury barely qualified as a flesh wound, and it did nothing to slow the monster down.

Sadie lashed out, her greatsword glowing with white light, but even with that spell active, the blade barely cut into the creature’s durable skin. Its clothing had been ripped to tatters, exposing its entire body. Dat knew that the monster had once been a person – he’d seen her with his own two eyes – but what was left was entirely unrecognizable as a human being. It wasn’t just the mass of scar tissue, either. Instead, it was the way the creature moved. The sheer disregard it had for its own safety, the ferocity of its attacks. But more than anything, Dat’s perception was influenced by the results of Hex of Scrying, which he’d used the moment the thing came into view:

Name: Undying Minion

Level: N/A

Archetype: Monster

Class: N/A

Highest Attribute: Strength

It was a familiar reading, though one he never would have expected to see when using the identification ability on a human being. The entire notification had been troubling, but two things stood out above everything else. First was the fact that it had been reclassified as a monster by the system. Dat had had no idea such a thing was even possible, but seeing the thing in action made it easier to accept.

Second, the creature didn’t even have a level, which was quite a shock for Dat. Even the monsters he’d encountered back in Hong Kong had levels. The only things he’d encountered that did not were the wraiths, though Dat had no idea what any of that meant. It wasn’t good, though. He was certain of that much.

Even worse were the whispers that came with Hex of Scrying, which had told him that the woman had been altered on such a fundamental level that her spirit had fractured from the strain. The result was the monsterhood displayed in the notification.

A tragedy, to be sure, but the situation didn’t allow for pity.

Dat continued to fire at the monster, though he knew it would do little good. Even his Miracle had failed to kill the thing, which was a first for Dat.

Avenging Strike

Call upon your angelic heritage and enact a Miracle. Cooldown based on accumulation of Faith.

Just like Sadie’s and Nico’s Miracles, the description was vague, but he’d used it often enough to know what it did. When activated, it allowed him to augment a single attack to the point where it did an incredible amount of damage. He’d used it eleven times since acquiring the ability – most recently against the fallen Druid in the second challenge – and each instance had resulted in the immediate death of the target.

Until the current fight.

In fact, the monster had shrugged off the attack without issue, leaving Dat to wonder if it could even be defeated. Not that they had much of a choice in the matter. It was trying to kill them, and it didn’t seem keen on stopping anytime soon.

Dat kept firing until his crossbow clicked:

Endless Quiver

Use upon a ranged weapon to create enchanted ammunition. Power of projectiles based on Ethera attribute and Core cultivation.

The name of that ability was a little misleading. Technically, the number of crossbow bolts it could create was endless – so long as he had the Ethera to support the ability. Normally, the drain was low enough that his enemies would die before his Core ran dry. However, in this instance, he’d been firing so often that the ability had no more fuel to create new bolts.

So, if he wanted to continue to contribute to the fight, he needed to get closer to the monster. With that in mind, he embraced Ghost Cloak, then dashed into the fight. As he sprinted toward the monster, he drew his shortswords and used Curse Blade before ramming the weapons into the monster’s back. They bit deep, carving into the creature’s scarred flesh. At the same time, the curse took hold, draining some of the monster’s attributes.

But Dat could sense that those few points were nothing compared to the total. He also knew that a few of Benedict’s spells had similar – and far more powerful – effects, so if the Warlock’s abilities had been ineffective, then Dat’s weren’t likely to be any better.

Still, he had no choice but to do what he could. After all, it wasn’t as if the monster was just going to stop. It was too far gone. Too gripped by rage. The only answer was to somehow put it down. Anything else would result in everyone’s deaths.

The monster wheeled around, and with a roar, threw itself at Dat. He used Ghost Clone and dove aside.

Ghost Clone

Create an illusion that draws your enemy’s attention. Grants brief invisibility. When contacted, the enemy is afflicted with Curse of Weakness, draining Strength attribute. Potency of illusion based on Ethera attribute. Duration of invisibility based on Dexterity attribute. Current: 2.1 seconds.

Even as the invisibility took hold, Dat dove to the side. The monster hit his illusion, passing through and letting out a roar as it hit a nearby wall. Dat came up, ready to dart back into battle. However, before he could do so, a hulking beast landed between him and the creature.

In a vacuum, Dat would have flinched away from the draconic beast, but he’d been fighting with Elijah long enough to recognize his ally’s Guardian form.

Elijah shouted, “The leader is dead! We can win this!”

Then, he sprinted forward to ram his shoulder into the much smaller creature. Even as the wall collapsed around the two figures, Dat knew it wouldn’t be enough. As strong as Elijah was in that form, he couldn’t hold up to the monster. If they were going to survive, it would take everyone.

So, he braced himself for the ongoing battle.