Chapter 221: An Awakening…?

“Like hell I’m dying here!”

[Dark Step]

Space twisted and I blinked mid-air, reappearing over the shattered road just as another massive head lunged. Jaws snapped shut where I’d been a heartbeat ago. I hit the broken asphalt hard, boots skidding, barely dodging getting both eaten and smeared into paste.

White-hot pain flared from my missing hand. I clamped my remaining hand over the ragged stump, fingers digging in to slow the bleeding.

[Dark Recovery]

“Come on, you bastard…”

Black light crawled over torn flesh, but it wasn’t enough. Again, the spell fizzled against the limits of what darkness could patch up. [Dark Recovery] was a bad joke compared to light magic.

BANG!

I threw myself into a roll. A shadow slammed down where I’d just been—a gigantic, unseen mass hitting like a falling building. The street exploded into dust and debris, a long gouge torn into it like some colossal sausage had just tried to crush me flat.

The False Hydra writhed and convulsed, its invisible bulk distorting the rain. The more damage it took, the harder its camouflage trembled and flickered under the strain of pure agony.

Just a little more… just a little…

My knees buckled.

I didn’t even feel them give out. One second I was standing, the next I was on the ground, legs dead weight beneath me. The exhaustion I’d been ignoring crashed over me all at once.

“Y-You’ve gotta be kidding me! Move, damn it!”

I tried to get up. Tried to limp. Anything. Just reach that half-collapsed building while my spells kept chewing through the monster and the countdown kept ticking.

But nothing…

My legs might as well have belonged to a corpse.

Crawling wasn’t an option either. If I stopped focusing on healing—even this pathetic excuse for healing—I’d bleed out before the Hydra finished me.

FWOOSH!

The air above me screamed open. Rain veered away as if terrified, warping around a massive, invisible shape. A colossal, writhing bulk emerged from the sky and began to descend, blotting out everything.

Another attack.

And I had nothing left.

What about Beelzebub!?

Or Nyx!?

I ground my teeth.

No.

Making a deal when I still had cards to play was one thing. Begging while I was already half-dead?

That was suicide with extra steps. I’d have no leverage. The only contract they’d offer would chain me up as a slave in exchange for dragging my broken body off the chopping block.

Not happening.

If I was going to be anyone’s slave, it’d be Evelina’s. Hers, and no one else’s.

Dying here to save her territory might’ve been poetic… but making her cry over my corpse? Also not an option.

I had to live. No matter what.

Even if it meant bullshitting my way through magic.

ZIP!

Time stretched thin.

I forced every last scrap of mental strength into overdrive. The descending head above me slowed to a lazy drift, like it was falling through syrup instead of air.

Too slow to be real.

But not slow enough to save me.

I needed something. Anything. Now.

[Dark Step] was out. That thing was too big—trying to precisely calculate a safe teleport around that gargantuan mass in my current state was suicide. The spell formula I’d get would be a tangled mess I couldn’t solve in time.

I needed another way.

Something.

Think!

THINK—!

Ah, screw it.

Magic here was math, right? Then I’d just start throwing equations together until something broke.

Umbral Cataclysm. Requiem. Black Sun. Every high-level spell I’d ever touched, I dragged their formulas into my mind, jumbling them together. Instead of casting them one by one, instead of releasing each cleanly, I held them back, stacking them, forcing their energies to coil tighter and tighter around my body.

It felt like I’d plunged to the bottom of the ocean. Pressure crushed in from all sides, my organs threatening to burst under the sheer magical overload.

Didn’t matter. If I didn’t do this, I was dead anyway.

“Die!”

I roared, completing the twisted knot of magic I’d cobbled together. I opened my mouth wide and aimed it like a cannon.

[Significant Breakthrough Achieved!]

[Adept: Lvl 2] -> [Adept: Lvl 5]

[Malignant Heavenly Eclipse]

The world went silent.

Not quiet.

Silent.

Like someone had reached over and shut reality off.

Then—

I screamed.

It wasn’t a beam. Well, it moved like a beam—but its form was definitely something else.

Darkness pulled inward first, dragging light, sound, and air into a tight point in front of me. Space pinched, like everything there was being pressed together.

Then it snapped.

The point burst, sending a rough wave of black and violet outward. It didn’t burn or explode in fire; it just wiped through, stripping away whatever it touched.

As for the descending mass above me?

It vanished.

Not pushed back.

But completely devoured across a line and spat out like it was nothing.

For a heartbeat, rain fell straight through where it had been, drops slipping through empty air with nothing to hit.

Then the backlash hit.

“—!”

Sound rushed back all at once, along with the delayed recoil.

BOOM!

The shockwave drove the street down, carving a rough circle around me. Stone and asphalt cracked and slid inward before grinding into dust. Anything standing nearby buckled and tore loose as the force dragged it toward the center.

Buildings leaned, then folded, then were simply… gone in chunks, eaten away and scattered like someone took a bite out of them.

The air roared, thin and hollow, like something enormous had just been torn out of it.

And at the center of it all—

Me.

Or what was left of me.

My body didn’t feel like mine. Pain had burned out into a dull, buzzing numbness, like my limbs were being worked from somewhere else.

My vision stuttered.

Black.

Clear.

Then black again.

Then clear again.

Somewhere inside that flicker—

[Capturing Spirit… 91%]

Still not enough…?

You’ve gotta be kidding me…

A low, warping shriek rolled through what was left of the street.

The False Hydra wasn’t dead.

Of course it wasn’t.

Its presence flickered now, easier to see, huge, twisted shapes phasing in and out, like something half-finished.

Chunks of it were missing.

Not bleeding.

Missing.

Whole pieces of its body simply weren’t there anymore, cut out cleanly as if they’d never existed.

But the rest—

Was still coming.

FWOOSH!

A half-formed head snapped into being a few meters away, its outline unstable, jaw crooked, like it had been put back together wrong.

And it was angry.

No.

Not angry.

But panicking…?

“Heh…”

A wet laugh scraped out of my throat, bringing blood with it.

“C’mon… just a little more…”

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