NOVEL ONLINE FREE 269. Hand-to-Hand Combat
While the others fled, Ike leaped up to meet the hand. He was no larger than a wasp compared to the immensity of the hand, but he jumped up anyways. The trees shattered under the hand, brushed aside like blades of grass. Ike bounced off the falling trunks, leaping higher and higher. Every grain of the hand stood out, every whirl and swirl of the palm. The being's body glowed through the black ash.
Putting all his aether into the strike, Ike unleashed the most powerful blow he'd ever unleashed. The Hammer Sword's unsubtlety meant it was easier to pump raw power and raw aether into it than the River-Splitting Sword had ever been, and he pushed as much as he could muster into this blow. His sword lashed out. A torrent of sword energy tore into the monster's palm. Cinders flew, obscuring his vision. Ike fell back. He unleashed a Shockwave Punch to blast the cinders away. How much damage did that do?
A slender cut appeared on the claw's palm, barely deeper than a papercut. Not even a drop of blood emerged.
Ike swallowed. Holy shit.
He fell back into the falling trunks, then turned and dashed out from under the palm. The hand struck down. A shockwave rolled through the earth, tripping Ike up from behind. He caught himself before he hit the ground and ran on, glancing over his shoulder at the monster.
The hand lifted back up to the rift. A second hand appeared, and the two hands pushed, prying the rift open. Backlit by the red glow, a cracked, blackened face appeared. It was human, but barely. One eye was missing, nothing left but a burning red crater. Tombstone teeth bared at the sky, and a thick stream of hot steam hissed from between them. The rift cracked at the edges, widening. Two hands passed through the rift, then the arms, then the head. The whole enormous humanoid spilled out like a stream of thick oil, slopping to the floor. For a moment, it just laid there, and Ike paused and looked back, taking it all in.
It was unlike the other monsters. All the other monsters had borne horns, big, curving, oxen horns on their brows, and exaggeratedly muscular bodies. This one was just… human. Burned to charcoal, seething with fire, but human. Ordinary proportions. No huge muscles or curling horns. Even the claws on its hand were only overgrown fingernails. Its body was charcoal, but human. So very, normally human. If not for its huge size, Ike might have mistaken it for—well, a black-burned dead body, but nonetheless, a normal charcoaled body.
It was impossible to tell whether it had been man or woman. Its body burned from the inside out to the point he could see the flames flickering through its ribs. All the flesh had burned away, leaving only scraps of charcoal clinging to the bones. Enough was left to give it the shape of a body, rather than a skeleton, but not enough to tell any features or characteristics. Just a burned corpse, a corpse that still burned as it laid there.
It lifted its head to the sky and roared. Mindlessly, thoughtlessly, roaring, with such sheer venom and hatred that Ike's heart raced in his chest. A wave of extreme heat rolled off the core of the body, smashing into his face and chest like a physical object. It was too hot to approach. He'd take damage just from getting close.
But I have to. Pushing his pain down, he charged in. The heat slowed him, almost a physical force. He struggled against it, one step at a time.
The body pushed its chest up, slowly gathering its legs under it. The forest all around it burned, set alight by its sheer heat. The other three rushed toward it as well, visibly fighting against the heat. Mag tried to dart at it from ahead, but hared off sharply when the tips of his wings caught fire. It simply wasn't possible for his feathery body to approach the burning figure without setting alight. He hovered at a distance and launched a glowing blue projection of a magpie at it. The magpie swooped in, but as it approached, the construct melted. The blue aether trembled under the heat of the body. The bird drooped, trailing aether behind it. Before it ever struck the burning figure, the bird melted into nothing but a blob of aether.
Ike grimaced. No good.
Almost at that exact moment, the figure lifted its head. Its gash of a mouth opened wide and slammed down on the blue blob. It swallowed, taking in the aether, and its fires burned brighter.
"Shit! No one launch any long-range attacks!" Ike snarled. From the looks of it, any mana or aether not contained in their bodies would be eaten by the figure.
Too late. Rufus had already launched a beam of red power from his hand. It flashed across the distance to the figure in the blink of an eye, too quickly for anyone to intercept, not even Ike.
The figure's cheeks pulled upward in a pained grimace of a smile. It sucked in a deep breath. A hurricane of air rushed toward its mouth, whistling through those boulder-like teeth. The wind grasped the beam and distorted it, pulling it toward the figure's mouth. It shot into the back of its throat and vanished, and once more, the heat grew stronger.
"Motherfucker, did you not hear him?" Scar admonished Rufus.
"I was already—" Rufus protested, but he stopped when he realized no one was listening.
Ike gripped the Hungry Sword tight. He gazed up at the figure. His heart didn't waver. He felt no fear. He didn't have time for such things. Wasting his thoughts, his energy, on them would only slow him down, and there was nothing he prioritized above speed. There was only one question in his mind:
How do I destroy it?