Chapter 186: Fatality

’Must be its golem summoning skill, good thing it didn’t create it here,’ he thought.

The thought was half relief, half irritation. Two extra problems on top of one was how you got buried alive. Ifrit alone was bad enough. Ifrit with helpers was an obituary waiting to happen.

Then the explosions continued; this time, they were coming closer and closer. Kael could see it on the map as the Ifrit was coming back to get its revenge. The red dot didn’t move in clean lines anymore. It lurched. It ricocheted off buildings. It overshot corners. Momentum was forcing it to move like a living battering ram.

Yet, this one was far faster. Far faster than before.

’This guy isn’t even slowing down,’ Kael smiled.

It wasn’t a warm smile. It was the kind you wear when you’re watching something dangerous self-destruct, and you’re too tired to feel guilty about enjoying it. Speed was good, until it bared its teeth against you. And Kael had just turned speed into a collar around the Ifrit’s neck.

The Ifrit shoved past another block of building tearing it away and emerged out. It didn’t “step” into the street; it arrived, bursting through debris in a hail of molten fragments. Far more cracks visible on its body, one of its horns broken, and one of its gauntlets gone completely. Stone plates dangled in places, held together by flames that were starting to look frantic rather than controlled.

It aimed at Kael, but its arm aimed wrong and the fireball shot wrong, an explosion echoed behind Kael, who simply remained standing where he stood.

He didn’t even flinch. Not because he was brave, because he finally understood the pattern. Momentum didn’t just make the Ifrit fast. It made it inaccurate

. Every correction became an overcorrection. Every aim became a gamble.

The creature howled in a rapid pitch, then tried to charge at Kael, being slightly off-course, Kael, who stood still, didn’t need to move as the Ifrit flew past him, shooting through another set of buildings.

“How satisfying,” Kael muttered as he saw the Ifrit slowly break itself apart.

Each crash peeled more of it away. Each collision widened the fissures until the thing looked like it was held together by stubbornness and spite. The city around them groaned under the abuse, buildings collapsing in slow-motion waves. Heat poured out in pulses, making the air shimmer and dance.

Once it stopped again, or was made to stop, it turned to rush through more buildings and walls, emerging this time with its flames no longer the mix of gold and blue, but that of red.

’Its combustion is failing,’ Kael thought.

The color shift wasn’t subtle. The fire looked angrier, dirtier, less stable, like the Ifrit was burning hotter out of desperation, not control. More cracks, more fissures, its stone-made armor barely holding on. Yet the flames kept gushing out like they had no cost, like it was trying to brute-force reality into obeying it.

The heat increased further and further, even for Kael. It pressed against his helmet, seeped into seams, made sweat gather under the leather where it couldn’t evaporate fast enough. Even with 99% resistance, overheating still mattered. He could feel his breath turning too warm, his chest tightening like the air was growing thick.

“It would be a shame for you to just die like this. You’re a ’boss’ class monster after all,” Kael said as he took a couple of steps forward.

He didn’t say it out of mercy. He said it like he was talking to a broken tool. Part mockery, part confirmation.

The ifrit’s flames sputtered and stuttered, it could barely hold on to its flight form, and when it tried to take a swing at Kael, who took a single step back, it missed and swung, forcing his whole body to spin after the swung fist. The momentum in its own motion betrayed it again, its swing dragged the rest of its mass around, a clumsy rotation that cracked more stone loose. The creature looked furious about it, like it was being laughed at by the laws it once ruled.

The flames died out once, and the Ifrit fell on its chest.

The impact shook the street. Not a dramatic explosion, just a heavy, final slam. A creature of fire forced to behave like a boulder.

The belt behind its back was cooking at this point; the heat-resistant leather was failing, burning even. Kael could smell it now, that sharp scent of scorched hide and heated metal. The belt had done its job. It was dying for it.

’You did well,’ Kael muttered as he approached the heaving structure of fire and stone.

It had reached its limits. It could fight no more.

The Ifrit tried to lift its head out, but it didn’t have any flames to guide it; it barely moved. Its stone face scraped the asphalt, leaving a faint line like a knife dragged over glass. A tremor ran through its body, then another, like it wanted to rise but had nothing left to burn with.

It groaned and roared weakly, even that was accelerated. The sound came out wrong, too fast, too sharp, like a scream played at the wrong speed. Momentum was still forcing reactions even when the body couldn’t keep up.

“Such a shame,” Kael muttered, “But enough is enough, have a good night,” Kael said as he raised his left hand since the right one had the Fire Rune, useless against a creature of flames.

He shifted his stance, boots planted, shoulder squared. He didn’t want to “cast.” He wanted to hit. He wanted to see what it meant when Darkness wasn’t thrown like a projectile but delivered like a fist.

He wanted to test out what punching using the Darkness Rune would do.

The impact came in against the Ifrit’s head, and the contact of the gauntlet and the stone head made Kael’s shoulder scream. The jolt ran all the way down into his spine. Even crippled and cracked, it was still stone. Still dense. Still heavy enough that punching it felt like punching a wall, except this wall hated you.

Yet, something new occurred.

A Drak spiderweb-like energy spread all over the creature’s head and some of its chest. It wasn’t flame. It wasn’t shadow the way people imagined shadow. It was… absence made visible, lines of wrongness creeping outward like cracks in glass. The pattern raced along the fissures already carved into the Ifrit, using them like roads, spreading surprisingly along the fractures that were covering its body, then they simply disappeared.

Along with a portion of whatever substance made the Ifrit.

Its head collapsed on its own, revealing dying flames, and its chest burst apart into bits and pieces. The internal fire sputtered like a candle drowning in water. One flare, weak. Another, smaller. Then nothing but ember-glow fading into dead air. Leaving a rolling fist-sized Soul Orb, this one glowing red. And Kael’s burnt belt on the ground.

Kael stood there for a beat, staring at the orb like it might be a trick. Like the Tower might laugh and tell him it didn’t count. His shoulder still ached from the punch, heat still clung to his armor, and the distant noises of movement, footsteps, skitters, the hungry shuffle of things drawn to violence, kept creeping closer.

The notifications soon followed.

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