Chapter 105: You Smell Blood

Elias moved back, his eyes observing the wounds of the giant for less than a second before he had to dodge another incoming swing that blasted five bodies into a mist of fragmented flesh and bones.

He discovered that the giant was not technically healing as fast as him; rather, the control of his muscles was so potent that he could hold his wounds together, and the silver mist acted like a sort of glue that sealed them shut, so he did not continue to bleed.

Despite all that, it only showed how durable and hard to kill a Siphon became after they reached the Mist Phantom level. Elias had long suspected that anytime an attribute passed a hundred points, special effects would be born, because that seemed to be the true realm of the supernatural.

Although this giant was not healing as fast as him, and should take a week or so to completely recover, at this point, Elias was not going to be doing enough sustained damage to him to make it count.

Elias was faster, but the giant was stronger and more durable. The slim chance he had at the beginning to end this fight in a single thrust was gone, since the giant was not giving him the chance to try such a move again.

So, the only way forward for Elias was to fight a battle of attrition; he would kill the giant with a thousand cuts!

Sure, the giant was sealing his wounds, but every cut still bled before it was sealed, and as the injuries compiled, his attention would begin to lessen as the weight of the wounds increased.

This was not even adding the fact that if the silver mist was sealing the giant’s wounds, it was not being used to suppress Elias, making it possible for him to be moving freely near the giant and not feel as if he was wading through water.

However, it could not be denied that every exchange cost Elias more than it cost his opponent.

A club swing grazed his side, and his armor of swarm threads barely held, but the vibration travelled through the armor and fractured his ribs that had barely healed from the last break.

Elias had begun wrapping his body in small pieces of armor so he could tank a bit of the hits that were coming through. The problem was that the pain he was feeling seemed to be growing every time he was hit.

Elias’s mind was extremely used to pain, but due to his unique constitution, his nerve endings could not become deaden his pain receptors, making it so that he felt everything at its most potent, and Elias suspected that the only reason he had collapsed to the ground and foaming in the mouth with pain was simply due to the adrenaline flooding through his body as he fought a being that could kill him in a single direct hit.

Still, that pain was growing and drawing on his concentration as his Vitality dropped to 1674 / 2385.

All of these thoughts had passed briefly through his mind, and the giant swing had barely brushed past him before continuing into the air. Elias countered when the giant gave him this opening.

His spear reformed in his hands, becoming longer and thinner, but he made it as dense as possible, even removing all the armor in his body so it could be fused to the spear. With a grunt of effort, he thrust at the giant’s thigh.

The spear cut through the skin and the muscle, and for a brief moment, the bone of the giant stopped the spearhead, but then the head shifted to the side and continued through the thigh before it erupted from the other side.

Elias was already moving back as the giant roared, and it was just in time as silver mist bubbled around the wound before it ignited, and then flames burst outward in a concussive blast.

Despite moving back, the explosion still hurled Elias backward, and he crashed through a pile of corpses, bones snapping under him and cushioning some of the bone-crushing force he had taken from that blast. Still, he rolled and came up spitting blood.

Vitality: 1398 / 2385

Stamina: 298 / 613

The giant advanced towards him, but now he was limping; however, he was silent, but his rage seemed to have reached beyond any reason as the mist around him roiled thicker, and now it was not just silver, but red.

It was as if the giant was burning his own blood into the mist, causing the flames surrounding his body to lick higher and hotter, and the flame was vaporizing every piece of ornament on the body of the giant, plus the hundreds of cuts Elias had made, and the giant was now naked and covered in flames.

Elias laughed, low, raw, exhilarated. Suddenly, finding it incredibly funny that even a powerful Mist Phantom had to endure nakedness in the heat of battle without proper armor.

He had always wondered how the heroes and villains in some of the stories he had read had been able to fight through battles and wade through fire and still be able to come out with just a few rough tears on their immaculate clothes.

The laughter was freeing, and it broke any shackle of fear he had in his heart, as he admitted to himself that at this moment, he had never felt more alive.

This time, he did not wait for the giant to reach him; blood dripping from his mouth, he was the one who was charging towards his foe, no, his prey. Underneath his bleeding skin, the swarm surged as they felt his hunger and resonated with it, and even the flower at his hip burned against his skin, as if it was becoming more alive.

The increasing activity of the rose reminded Elias of the bleeding heart he had seen in the hands of the giant, and he quickly looked through his memory and saw that the giant had placed the bleeding heart onto the unfinished altar.

Dismissing that thought from his mind as he was now close to his prey, Elias reformed the spear, and this time it was longer, sharper, edges serrated to the point of invisibility.

Despite holding back his advancement, the weapons he was creating were becoming better, more dangerous, and Elias twirled the spear once, causing the flame that surrounded the body of the giant to blow to the side, and then he thrust the spear straight for the giant’s heart.

Thousands of repetitions and practice with his teachers and his secret practice gave his spear a piercing momentum that made it seem as if he could pierce through anything.

The giant was not just anything; he parried that thrust, his club meeting the spear in a burst of sparks and shattered bone. Elias twisted, yanked the spear free, spun it in a blur, and slashed across the giant’s chest.

His spearhead parted flesh more easily than before, but from that wound, mist flared and combusted, pouring flames outward in an arc.

Grinning like a demon, Elias leaped through the fire, his skin began to blister, and his hair was singeing. In the center of the flame, Elias dissipated his spear and formed bladed hands as he landed on the giant’s chest, his blades sinking deep into muscle through the muscle that he had torn open with his spear, and then, like a monkey, he climbed upward and reached the giant’s face while tearing at his throat.

The giant roared, mist detonating in a shockwave that hurled Elias off. He twisted mid-air, landed on his feet, skidding through blood, but he was already charging again.

Elias smelled blood, and nothing would shake him off.

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