Chapter 58: The Great Slice

Elias had barely moved from his spot in his effort to consume less stamina as he fought, no, defended himself from being torn to pieces. After his left hand was mangled, Elias had begun to truly focus on his defense as he used the swarm he could control to flow over his head and his torso, in order to reduce the damage he was taking.

A pool of blood and flesh covered the ground around him, and while most of it was the stinking black blood of his prey, many liters of red blood and several pounds of his flesh and pieces of his bones were littered around him. It was as if he were placed in a slow blender.

The tongues of these creatures were like large whips soaked in acid, and if not for what Elias suspected was the Pillar of Sorrow that had seemed to strengthen his bones, and his Ascendant Swarm that added another layer of offense and defense, the tongue swipes from the monsters would not just be peeling his skin, but would be cutting straight through him.

However, his stubborn endurance had paid off. He had been suffering damage all this time, but Elias had not just been taking it; he had also been giving it back. He chose to remain in one place, not just to conserve stamina, but to ensure that the creatures kept him in their sights and continued using their tongues on him.

One by one, he slowly whittled down their tongue, and with the aid of his Swarm, his Titles, and his Unique traits, his body was harvesting the Lumina inside any flesh that he cut off, making them collapse into ash.

He knew that this was not a normal thing, and he would not be using his Swarm to fight in a place where he could be observed by others. To protect his ridiculous ability to suck up every piece of Lumina inside the bodies of others, slowly but surely, the flood of Lumina that had been entering his body had been growing.

Elias knew that these creatures must be at the Fury Forged Level, most likely the peak, but the amount of Lumina in their bodies would rival that of a human at the Mist phantom level, and if he were a normal person, he would have leveled up several times from his killings.

However, at this point, his goal was not to level up, but for something else… he was here to hunt!

Elias lunged forward, his motion so unexpected and quick that none of the creatures here responded until it was too late. They had slowly broken him to pieces and had not been expecting him to move for a while.

His right hand was held in front of him like a spear, and when he lunged forward, his bladed fingers pierced deep into the eye sockets of the creature directly in front of him, directly piercing through its brain.

Cutting apart the heads of these creatures had been energy-intensive and could be considered overkill, but Elias had not done this because he was in a frenzy. His memory was perfect, and every skull that he had cut open revealed its inner workings to him, and so he was able to discover all the important organs in the heads of these creatures.

They had brains, but it was a rotten and shriveled thing, as if whatever was commanding them did not want their brains to develop, and so it quickly rotted it out from the inside. The brains of these creatures had no weaknesses; however, at their centers was a strange cluster that was clearly foreign, like a mass of worms.

It was this mass that directed the motions of these monsters’ bodies, and cutting them apart was equal to destroying the thing coordinating the movements of these creatures. What Elias found particularly disturbing was that although the brains of these creatures were dead and rotten, some parts of it was still being kept alive and maintained by the unknown mass in its center.

If Elias’s guess was correct, from the many books of anatomy he had read and his equally many experiments, the part of the brain that remained alive was the one that was made to register pain when the body was damaged.

Elias did not know whether this was done for the sake of pragmatism, so these creatures did not harm themselves by mistake, but when he thought about their heads and how they disfigured themselves merely by moving, he knew that whoever was in charge of these pitiful beings just wanted them to suffer.

If Elias was using a normal blade, then even cutting through this mass would not kill the creatures; it would only stun them for a moment, and he was sure that whatever controlled these creatures would be able to regenerate that mass in no time.

His greatest advantages came from his Swarm, as the Vessel of Hunger; they were able to draw out and consume Lumina and Divinities, and so every creature that fell under his blade, even if they could recover from damage, without a high willpower, their Lumina and even something more precious to them would be taken away.

The right hand of Elias digging into the head of the creature could feel the life leaving it, and flood into his body, but Elias counterattack was not over yet. Gritting his broken teeth and yelling aloud for the first time since the battle began, Elias set his feet against the rough stone, and he began to move.

Even as a mortal, Elias’s body could be considered perfect as long as he was killing and pushing away the Inevitable decay. With his analytical mind, which could break complex actions and techniques into simpler forms, he became quite adept at using his body, and if he wanted, he could exert almost every power in every inch of his muscles.

Getting so many Attributes the moment he became a Siphon was not a mistake. Elias may not have any scars on the surface, but he alone knew how much he had pushed himself to improve over the years, and despite being held back by a mortal body, all of that training had borne fruit.

He may not be perfectly adapted to his new, powerful body, but he could use it more effectively than most people ever dream of.

Elias pushed himself to the left, his bladed hand still stuck inside the head of the dying creature, whose shrivelling body was dumping tons of Lumina into Elias’s body.

As he moved, his blade carved through flesh and bone and burst out of the side of the dead creatures head, but because all of these monsters had squeezed their heads together in order to enclose Elias in a tight space, his bladed hands were able to effortlessly slice into the next creature, and the only thing Elias had to do while maintaining his momentum was to angle his blade a bit to adjust for any slight inconsistency in size and position as his blades swept into the brain of the creature and cut through the mass living in its center.

Elias felt the bones of his arms beginning to disintegrate, but he did not stop his movement, as his bladed hands plunged into the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and finally the eighth creature before with a shriek of rage, whatever was controlling them pulled back the rest, but Elias smiled, as this was what he had been waiting for.

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