Chapter 347: Do You Still Want This Water Bottle?
Steven had fought these Collapsals before. He knew what they were worth.
And from what he could see now, Patriot's unleashed aura was undeniably stronger than the creature before him.
Yet… he couldn't shake the feeling that this fight wouldn't end so simply.
Half-lidding his eyes, he continued to watch.
Patriot, now burning at full power, had no attention to spare for onlookers. His world contained only the monster before him—the abomination that had struck fear into all of Ursus.
Nothing else mattered.
The great trident-like halberd in his hands thrummed with destructive force. His movements were so fast they blurred, air itself torn apart by his strikes. The blast of the shockwave engulfed the Collapsal before it could even attempt to flee.
Escape was impossible. Dodging, meaningless.
All the Collapsal could do was curl inward, wrapping itself in its own tentacles to try to stave off the incoming blows. A futile defense.
Patriot's halberd tore through its grotesque barrier with ease, ripping tentacles aside and carving gaping wounds into its body. Before it could heal or even scream, the halberd plunged in again, and again—each strike carrying the weight of a blow that could pierce mountains themselves.
In the span of an instant, Patriot unleashed his famed five-hit combo.
The black-red Originium energy surged around him, cloaking his entire frame. He was no longer a man—he was a demon king striding up from the abyss, an unstoppable god of war incarnate.
As for his foe? The Collapsal was reduced to a rag doll, flailing helplessly as it was ripped apart, piece by piece.
Every time Patriot's halberd punctured its flesh, the strange Originium power within clashed with the monster's own pollution, devouring it. The process halted the Collapsal's natural regeneration, locking it into a cycle of decay.
But even for Patriot, this power came at a price. Steam, tinged crimson like blood, hissed from his body, spilling into the air. Each strike drained him heavily.
Still, the tide had turned. For the moment, at least, the Collapsal had no chance of recovery. Tentacles and eyeballs burst one after another, its body unraveling.
Yet Patriot's expression only grew more grim.
"…Time to leave."
His halberd struck again, this time pinning the monster to the ground. But he did not pull it free. Instead, he turned his head slightly, calling in Steven's direction.
As a veteran soldier of Ursus, Patriot knew these things too well. He had once fought them on the front lines himself.
And he knew the truth. Their terror wasn't their appearance. Nor even their regeneration.
It was what happened when they died.
The flood of pollution that erupted from their collapsing bodies—the death throes that could warp the battlefield itself.
That was why he had evacuated his Shieldguards earlier. That was why he frowned now, grim and resolute.
Perhaps the Emperor's Blade had methods to suppress such a detonation. But Patriot did not. His only option was to accelerate the process.
He could not stop it.
Patriot had noticed Steven the moment he arrived. After all, the man hadn't bothered to conceal his presence at all. His parting reminder had been nothing more than a precaution—he didn't want his "daughter" to be saddened should anything happen to Steven.
"No finishing blow?"
Steven tilted his head, studying him—Patriot's towering form still radiating that dreadful battle aura.
Honestly, when you placed him beside the Collapsal, it was hard to tell which of the two was the real monster.
Small wonder Ursus legends called Wendigo a beast of myth. With a figure and presence like that, the name fit all too well.
But what piqued Steven's interest most was how the man stopped.
Rather than finishing his foe, Patriot was already withdrawing, back turned, leaving the Collapsal to its own devices.
That didn't match the image he had of him.
"It'll explode."
Patriot shot him a glance, voice as flat as stone, then charged away without waiting for a reply.
As if to prove his point, the Collapsal's twitching abruptly ceased. Then, its body began to bloat and swell, veins engorged until its flesh pulsed visibly.
Eyes embedded in its trunk burst one by one, spraying gore. From the wounds, a tide of noxious black miasma billowed outward, sweeping across the battlefield.
Steven, however, remained calm.
Watching Patriot's retreating back grow smaller in the distance, he called out, his tone maddeningly casual:
"So basically… you don't want this thing anymore, right?"
The words were delivered in the exact tone of a scrap collector auntie asking if someone really wanted to toss away an empty water bottle.
Patriot's stride faltered.
For a heartbeat, the unstoppable Wendigo actually stumbled, unsure what on earth this boy was thinking.
Still, he gave a short nod.
Who in their right mind would want a self-destructing Collapsal?
And it was precisely that tiny gesture that made what followed impossible to describe.
Because instead of retreating like a sane man, Steven strolled toward the swelling Collapsal, letting its miasma swallow him whole.
The creature's body had already swollen to three times its size, grotesque like some parody of a creeper primed to blow. The resemblance only made Steven chuckle—except, honestly, even a blocky green creeper had a better design than this lump of flesh and eyes.
"Now, now. No sense wasting all that. Better than polluting the air, why not come sit in my inventory instead?"
Smiling faintly, Steven raised Yamato. With one decisive stroke, he cleaved through the Collapsal's body. The sword's arc ripped apart not only its flesh but the choking miasma itself, cutting off its self-detonation mid-process.
Against a blade sharp enough to split space itself, even blowing yourself up wasn't so simple.
Steven didn't bother theatrically dicing the thing into mince this time. Instead, he cleaved it into a few large chunks with cold efficiency, then stuffed them straight into his inventory.
He has no time for posing. If he was going to use it to brew something, speed and decisiveness were the order of the day. Besides, Patriot was watching—too much showmanship might come off as rubbing it in.
He gave his hands a casual clap, then glanced at the lingering black miasma still hanging in the air. After a moment's hesitation he produced a bottle and scooped up that foul vapor too—one never knew when "materials" might come in handy.
Patriot stood frozen, watching this young man casually package the Collapsal's remains and, as if by magic, erase its presence—down to collecting the pollution itself.
For a long moment the guerrilla leader felt his worldview rattle.
Since when did these things go down so easily?
True, the monster had been weakened in the fight, but its self-detonation wasn't something trivial to stop.
Even the Emperor's Blade would have had to stand back and wait for it to blow then mop up the aftermath. Who just sliced it up and stored it like grocery meat?
It should have exploded the moment someone struck it, right?
What unsettled Patriot more than anything else was the kid's apparent immunity to the pollution. The young man moved through the black gas with the indifference of a man strolling through a cool breeze—handling the tainted air, touching the corpse, even holding a chunk of the thing's tentacle like it was a trinket.
If he were a normal person, one sniff would be enough to turn him into a lost automaton.
How did he pull off any of this?
Patriot had already suspected Steven could do impressive things—after all, the youth had pulled Yelena back from the brink of death—but watching him now, he realized he had seriously underestimated the boy's absurdity.
If earlier recognition was merely tentative respect, this display burned understanding into certainty: this "man" was beyond ordinary rules.
"All done. You don't mind if I take some of this back for study, do you?" Steven asked, casually twirling a portion of the Collapsal's tentacle between his fingers as he approached Patriot, breaking the older man's stunned trance.
"Of course—just be careful with its pollution. Conversion caused by it is irreversible." Patriot nodded, but his warning came out automatic; he'd called himself a doctor after all, so collecting remains for research made sense.
Yet watching Steven handle the remains with such nonchalance, Patriot couldn't help but feel his warning was probably useless.
Could this kid possibly be affected by that stuff?
He looked less like a pollution risk and more like someone who'd be apt to skewer the tentacle, sprinkle some cumin, and call it tonight's extra course.
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Note: Character Illustration is in this Google Drive:
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