Chapter : 981
From her pained, agonized vantage point behind the granite rock, Rosa watched in a state of stunned, profound, and absolute silence. This wasn't speed. Speed was a blur of motion, a continuous, understandable path from one point to another. This was… something else. It was a series of still, perfect images, flickering in and out of existence. He was a glitch in the fabric of reality, a ghost in the machine of the world.
The man she had accompanied on this insane quest, the man she had grudgingly come to respect as a competent, if brutal, warrior, had just revealed another, deeper, and far more terrifying layer of his impossible being. He was not just a warrior. He was not just a genius. He was a monster. A beautiful, terrifying, and utterly untouchable monster.
And he was, at this moment, the only thing standing between her and a swift, brutal, and very certain death. She watched, her pain forgotten, her mind a silent, awestruck void, as the Void Dancer began his deadly, impossible waltz with the god of the mountain. He was not just fighting it. He was analyzing it. He was frustrating it. He was baiting it. He was waiting. Waiting for the single, perfect, and absolutely final opening he needed to end the fight.
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The clearing had transformed into a surreal and deadly stage, the dance of the phantom and the beast a spectacle of impossible physics and primal rage. Lloyd, now fully embracing the disorienting power of his [Void Steps], was no longer just a fighter; he was a living embodiment of tactical chaos. He had become an untouchable ghost, his every movement a jarring, instantaneous leap across space that defied the very laws of motion.
The Monolith Bear, the apex predator of this magic-dead world, was being systematically, psychologically dismantled. Its greatest assets—its overwhelming strength and its unstoppable, earth-shaking charge—were rendered utterly, comically useless. Every time it committed to an attack, its target simply ceased to be, reappearing in a new, infuriating location with a flicker of blue-white light.
It was a battle of attrition, but not of a physical nature. Lloyd was not wearing down the bear’s body; he was eroding its will. The creature’s initial roars of pure, territorial fury had slowly devolved into bellows of frustrated, confused rage. It would charge, only to crash into an empty space, its momentum carrying it into a rock face or a petrified tree. It would swipe with its massive, obsidian claws, only to have its prey vanish a microsecond before impact.
From her hiding place, Rosa watched, her mind a whirlwind of awe and a new, more profound kind of fear. The man she thought she was beginning to understand was, once again, a complete and utter enigma. She had seen his brute strength, the power of his Steel Blood that could shatter bone. She had seen his elegant swordsmanship, a deadly dance of precision and control. But this… this was something else entirely. This was not the power of a warrior. This was the power of a god. A trickster god who treated the very fabric of space as his personal playground.
She saw the method in his madness. He was not just toying with the beast. He was conditioning it. He was teaching it a new and terrible lesson: that its power was meaningless, that its rage was futile, that its every move was predictable and, ultimately, pointless. He was a matador, and the great bear was the bull, being led in a slow, exhausting, and utterly humiliating dance towards its inevitable demise.
Lloyd, in the calm, cold command center of his mind, was a supercomputer processing a flood of tactical data. Each Void Step was not just a dodge; it was a repositioning, a change in angle, a new probe to test the bear’s reactions. He was mapping its movements, its attack patterns, its moments of hesitation. He was learning its rhythm, the deep, primal cadence of its rage.
He felt the drain. Each step, though instantaneous, consumed a significant chunk of his Void energy. This was not a power he could use indefinitely. He knew he had a limited window, a finite number of steps he could take before his reserves were depleted. The dance had to have a purpose. It had to have an end.
Chapter : 982
After what felt like an eternity of this maddening, disorienting chase, he saw it. The opening. The bear, its mind a chaotic storm of rage and confusion, its massive body heaving with exhaustion, made a final, desperate, and utterly predictable move. It abandoned the chase. It stopped, reared up on its hind legs to its full, terrifying twenty-foot height, and let out a final, soul-shaking roar. It was a challenge, a declaration that it would no longer be led. It was inviting a direct confrontation.
It was the mistake Lloyd had been waiting for.
He did not hesitate. He did not wait for the bear to complete its roar. He took a final, decisive step.
The world dissolved into a blue-white blur. He did not reappear at a safe distance. He did not reappear to its flank. He appeared directly in its path, a calm, silent specter materializing a mere ten feet from the roaring, towering behemoth. He was a man standing willingly in the path of a falling mountain.
The bear’s roar choked off, its small, intelligent eyes widening in a flicker of pure, animal shock at the sheer, suicidal audacity of its prey.
In that single, frozen instant, Lloyd activated his second, and far more terrible, secret weapon.
His sclera, the whites of his eyes, flashed pitch black, and his irises became luminous, glowing rings of pale, bluish-white light. The air around him seemed to grow cold, to thin, as if a hole had been punched in the very fabric of reality.
He did not summon a constricting ring of force. He did not try to attack the beast’s body. He reached out with the subtle, insidious power of his Austin heritage and touched its mind.
He did not place a seal of pain or confusion. He placed a single, elegant, and absolutely devastating seal directly on the concept of its own forward momentum. He placed a "Seal of Inertia."
The effect was instantaneous and profound. The Monolith Bear, which had been a twenty-foot-tall, half-ton engine of pure, kinetic fury, was frozen. It did not turn to stone. It did not slow down. It simply… stopped. Mid-roar. Its massive arms, which had been raised to crush him, were locked in place. Its legs, which had been about to propel it forward, were rooted to the spot. Its very nervous system, the conduit for its will to move, had been told, in a language it could not disobey, to cease all function. It was a living statue, trapped for a single, eternal, and absolutely fatal second in a prison of its own arrested motion.
It was the opening he had created. It was the opening he needed.
In that same frozen instant, Lloyd’s Steel Blood answered his will. He did not forge a chain or a blade on his gauntlet. He channeled his power inward, focusing it, compressing it, into his own arm. He then unleashed it outward.
His right arm, from the elbow down, dissolved and reformed in a blur of dark, metallic light. It was no longer flesh and bone. It was a single, vicious, three-foot-long spike of pure, unadulterated, and brutally sharp Ferrum steel.
With a final, desperate, and all-consuming surge of his remaining Void power, he lunged forward. He did not aim for the beast’s thick, granite-laced hide. He did not aim for its chest. He aimed for its one, true vulnerability, a vulnerability he had identified with his [All-seeing Eye], a weakness that only his impossible powers could exploit.
He aimed for its eye.
The steel spike that was his arm, a weapon forged from his own life force, drove forward. It punched through the soft, yielding tissue of the creature’s eye, shattered the bone of the socket behind it, and plunged deep, deep into the primordial, raging brain within.
The Seal of Inertia shattered.
The Monolith Bear, its life extinguished in a single, silent, and perfect instant, crashed to the earth. The sound was a deafening, final thud, a sound that marked the fall of a god. The apex predator of Mount Monu was dead.
The colossal body of the Monolith Bear hit the ground with a sound that was both a thunderclap and a final, shuddering sigh. The impact sent a tremor through the black rock, a last, dying pulse from the heart of the mountain’s king. Then, silence. A profound, ringing silence, broken only by the thin, keening whistle of the wind.