Chapter 94: You Crave Challenge

Elias could feel a haze of bloodlust beginning to rise inside his heart. It was worthy to note that while he had killed at least a hundred and fifty people, these killings were spaced out over years, but with the time he had spent inside the Fragment, and the last few hours, Elias had killed thousands.

The statues of Asulon he had shattered with the surprising eruption from his Ascendant Swarm, in addition to the monstrous mother and her children he had killed below, was just the spark that was igniting a fire inside him, and if he had been allowed to rest so he could process these changes slowly, perhaps this fire would have died down, but he was thrown into combat once again, and all of these accumulated killings were awakening something inside of him.

His senses already sharpened beyond mortal limits by the unfiltered reality outside the Heavenly Restrictions became even more focused than usual, and Elias experienced a state where it seemed as if he was picking up everything. The rustle of leaves in the breeze. The distant gurgle of water underground. The faint, wet sounds of tearing flesh. The low moans of the dying.

This entire forest was a hunting ground, and although Elias knew that he was not at the heart of this frenzy, he could hear growls and cries of pain around him, and he knew this was where he would be starting from.

Elias flexed his fingers, and the pearly nails lengthened slightly, claws ready but not fully extended. The swarm inside him stirred, eager, waiting for the command alongside the strange flower that looked like a rose at his hip.

He had noticed that the more he fought and killed, the more this activity of the flower seemed to be increasing. He knew that it was poisonous, and if he was going to discover how lethal this poison was, it was going to be soon.

Suppressing the swarm inside him, since using them at this point would make the fight too easy and this was not what his talent demanded, Elias set himself in front of a group of cannibals who were emerging from an underbrush.

There were five of them, fewer than the first group of seven he had fought, but they were all Fury Forge peak, with bodies twisted in the same feral way as the last. Black void eyes, serrated teeth, and matted hair strung with bone beads.

However, of these five, two stood out: one carried a crude spear made from a sharpened femur, and the second had a necklace of human ears dangling from his neck.

Elias did not hide himself, allowing them to see him, and as he had expected, there was no hesitation or caution; the five cannibals just screamed and charged at him.

“Good,” Elias whispered. He did not care if the cannibals were arrogant after killing and eating the people here and saw him as prey; the fact that they charged at him with clear intent to kill in their eyes was enough for him to commend them.

A part of Elias knew that these thoughts in his head were strange, but at this moment, he had no time to analyze his mind; he was already charging at the cannibals as well, as the cold part of his mind that was all hunter was challenging him on how fast he could kill these five prey.

Elias met them halfway, angling his body so he met the spear-wielder first. The cannibal, knowing the phrase, distance was king in a fight, grinned like a shark and thrust his spear at Elias. He aimed low for the gut, and with Elias’ speed, if he was careless, he would be speared through like a fish.

For a very brief moment, a part of Elias wanted to push himself into the path of the spear, so if he was injured, the battle would become harder, and in the end, he would be able to grow stronger.

This thought was so tantalizing, but it was brief as Elias sidestepped the thrust and grabbed the shaft just behind the bone tip, and yanked.

The cannibal may have a strength similar to his own, but thrusting the spear had placed his body in an imbalanced position, and so when Elias yanked on the spear, he stumbled forward, and he was about to face-plant on the ground, but Elias was already close enough to drive his knee upward into the man’s falling face.

Even protected by his thick robes, he could feel the cartilage of the man crunching, and his nose flattening into a ruin of blood and bone. However, Elias had not placed much force behind the action because he was setting the man up for the kill.

The cannibal reeled back, dazed and in pain. He wanted to scream, but his jaws had also cracked in several places, and his mind was scattered… the perfect prey.

With the spear still in Elias’s hand, he reversed it in one fluid motion and hurled it straight through the cannibal’s closed mouth, but the power behind this throw was so great that the spear pierced through his mouth and out the back of his skull.

The body dropped, twitching as the lifeforce of a Fury Forge took some time to dissipate. Elias had brought himself extremely close to the cannibals, and they had not even fully comprehended that he had just killed one of them.

Since he was so close to them, the two that were nearly beside him used their claws to rake for his throat and eyes.

Again, there was that urge inside him to allow their blow to hit so he could become blind and have a severed throat. He would not die, but the difficulty of this fight would suddenly increase from zero to a hundred.

This is becoming annoying, Elias thought as he went against that line of thinking and dropped low, sweeping his leg in a wide arc.

Memories of the many hand-to-hand combat practices he had done with Anya, who, despite her small frame, had broken Elias down again and again. He had never won a single fight.

Although Elias pretended that he had normal mortal limitations when they sparred, it did not matter because it proved to him that he had much to learn and improve.

Under his sweeping strike, the first cannibal’s ankle shattered like dry wood, and Elias only felt a brief ache in his shin before his body fixed that annoyance.

The cannibal went down screaming, as Elias assumed that having one of your legs blown up in this manner cannot feel good.

Elias rose inside the second’s reach, elbow smashing into the windpipe. The man flinched back, but he did not retreat far enough, as his elbows still reached his throat, but his neck was not totally crushed; however, his throat and all the soft bones around it had been crushed.

The man gagged, hands clutching at his crushed throat; what should have been a quick death was now an extended torture.

Elias grabbed the dying man by the hair and slammed his face into a tree trunk, once, twice, until the skull caved in with a wet crack. The man was not dying fast enough, and leaving a dying foe behind was a recipe for disaster.

He had used less force, so he did not harm the tree.

While he had been killing the first three cannibals, the fourth came from behind, thinking he was silent and sneaky, but Elias had already felt the air shift, and the faint rush of Lumina gathering in the man’s muscles.

From what he could infer, the man most likely wanted to bear hug him from behind so the last of the cannibal would have free access to Elias’ body.

’A foolish move, I would have gone for the blasted long hair.’

Elias spun, claws extending mid-turn, and raked across the surprised cannibal’s chest, feeling the flesh part like wet paper, leaving ribs and other internal organs exposed.

The man staggered, entrails spilling out of his stomach, but surprisingly, he was still swinging wildly; perhaps it was adrenaline or shock that reduced his pain.

Elias watched the man for a second, understanding the pattern of his wild punches before he stepped inside the punch, grabbed the swinging arm, and twisted.

The bone snapped, and the joint popped free at the elbow. Now, it seemed as if the adrenaline had worn off as the cannibal howled.

Elias silenced him with a palm strike to the nose, driving bone shards into the brain.

It was a good thing that although these men’s bodies had changed, their overall physique still shared the same characteristics as men, and if there was any prey that Elias truly understood, then it was humans.

The last one, the one with the ear necklace, had hung back, watching. Elias had noted that he was smarter than the others, or perhaps more afraid.

Cowardice and intelligence went hand in hand, Elias had always noticed, because the smarter you were, the more careful you became, and sometimes it was easy to forget the line between caution and cowardice.

The eyes of the cannibal looked around in shock while he growled and circled around Elias, who had noted that there was a sharp stone dagger now in the hand of the cannibal.

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