Numbness.
That was all Theon felt as his arm was torn from his body in a brutal, bloody instant.
Agony erupted from the stump, a white-hot inferno searing through his nerves, but there was no time to scream. No time to collapse. The sound that ripped from his throat was raw, primal, more beast than man, yet it did nothing to dull the torment.
Then came the Voltaic Blaze Lu, now unleashed from his severed limb like a storm breaking free of its cage.
Blue and red lightning roared into the abomination, its grotesque body lighting up from within, veins of blue lightning crackling beneath its hide. Theon, through the haze of blood and pain, watched as the creature's flesh became a prison for the storm, its silhouette glowing like a lantern in the abyss.
There was no turning back.
Gritting his teeth, Theon shoved the remnants of his ruined arm deeper into the abomination's maw, ensuring the fire crystals and pills were lodged in its gullet. Then, with the last of his strength, he kicked off—tumbling to the ground as the beast thrashed in wild, uncomprehending fury. Blood gushed from his wound, the world narrowing to a tunnel of crimson and pain, but he forced himself to move.
To survive.
Inside the abomination the Voltaic Blaze Lu rebounded off the inside of his hide, his strong armor becoming his downfall as the lightning could not break out. It had no escape—no release. It danced between bone and sinew, a caged tempest searching for a way out—until it found it—the fire crystals.
A blue hue flickered across their surfaces.
Then—vibration.
Cracks spiderwebbed through the crystals, thin as spider silk at first, then widening like fractures in glass.
Boom.
One fire crystal detonated.
BOOM BOOM
Then another. Then another.
The chain reaction was unstoppable. One detonation became two, then three, each burst of fire Lu feeding the ravenous storm within. The abomination thrashed, confusion twisting its grotesque features into a rictus of pain. Its six limbs clawed frantically at its own body, futilely trying to tear the lightning out—but it was already too late.
The inferno had already claimed it.
BOOM—BOOM—BOOM—BOOM
Crystal after crystal shattered, the fire Lu fusing with the Voltaic Blaze energy in a catastrophic surge. The abomination's massive body trembled violently, it's dark energy flickering as the flames consumed it from within. Its roars of fury became cries of agony, its grotesque form collapsing under the force of the internal destruction.
Theon could barely keep his eyes open as the abomination's death throes wracked its body. Flames erupted from its core, reducing it to a smoldering husk.
With one last shuddering gasp, the abomination collapsed, its life extinguished.
And then, the death Lu burst forth.
A dark, malevolent cloud spilled from the corpse, filling the cavern, withering the very air. Plants blackened. Stone cracked. But as quickly as it surged, the oppressive energy dissipated—sucked into the mountain's depths, absorbed by something far below.
Silence.
Theon staggered, his vision blurring. Exhaustion and pain threatened to drag him under.
But he had won.
The abomination was dead.
But at what cost?
He collapsed onto his knees, clutching the stump where his arm had been, blood soaking the ground beneath him. His breath came in sharp, uneven gasps as his mind raced—victory meant nothing if he bled out here.
Already, his body was failing. His limbs weighed him down like lead, and his vision swam at the edges. Worse yet, his meridians were in chaos.
The delicate balance of Lu that had kept him alive and fighting had shattered the moment his arm was ripped away. Without it the energy inside him had no clear path—no order. it flowed erratically, crashing into itself in violent waves. Theon could feel it—his body was failing, unable to handle the strain of the disordered energy. His control was slipping, and he was running out of time.
Barely clinging to consciousness, Theon summoned all his remaining willpower to repeat the technique he'd used earlier to expel the volatile Voltaic Blaze Lu from his meridians. The storm of energy within him began to settle as he directed it out, discharging every trace of the aggressive Lu until none remained.
He was burning his only trump card.
But what use was a future battle if he died here?
As the last of the lightning Lu bled from his body, only the neutral Lu remained—steady, calm. With painstaking precision, he guided it to the severed stump, sealing the broken pathways like barricades on a shattered road. The chaotic energy, once careening like runaway carriages, now flowed in a desperate, redirected current.
It was enough.
Theon slumped forward, his body trembling violently. His breath rattled in his chest, each inhale a battle. His mind flickered at the edge of unconsciousness, but he couldn't let go. If he did, the fragile balance would collapse—and with it, his life.
The only thing anchoring him was the Scarlet Lifeblood Pendant at his throat. Warm pulses of life-giving Lu radiated from it, slowing the bleeding, feeding his ruined body just enough to cling to survival.
Time became a blur as Theon lay there, caught in a fragile state between life and death. Every second felt like an eternity. His focus wavered, slipping in and out of awareness, but he forced himself to stay conscious. How long he remained in that limbo, he couldn't say.
It didn't matter.
All that mattered was the next breath. The next heartbeat. Survival.
Eventually—slowly—Theon stirred.
Many cycles of light and dark had passed through the clearing above, casting shifting shadows across the ground. Slowly, cautiously, Theon stood. His balance was off—his body struggling to adjust to the missing weight of his arm.
It had finally sunk in: he had lost an arm.
Theon had prepared for such an eventuality back when he was a part of Veritas. He'd often considered what would happen if he lost a limb during a mission. But theory was nothing compared to the raw, hollow absence where his arm had been.
Yet, even now, his mind cut through the shock with clinical precision.
He was ambidextrous. Adaptation would be painful, but manageable.
No, the true problem wasn't the arm itself.
It was his meridians.
The flow of Lu through his body had always relied on a cohesive, mirrored pattern. The balance that he had tried so hard to recover. Techniques demanded that Lu circulate through all parts of the meridians, from one side of the body to the other. Now, with a significant portion missing, that balance was shattered. Without an arm, his meridian system was incomplete.
So what option did Theon have now? Preferably, he could find a way to recover his arm. After all, the technology on Spectra had been able to do this for centuries, though this wasn't something he wanted to rely on. For his knowledge, his home planet wasn't even familiar with the concept of Lu, let alone meridians, so who knew if they would be able to recover them?
Though this didn't matter much. As long as he had an arm that he could perfectly control then he could manually carve out his meridians once again, as he had done.
Though this brought another issue: where and when would he find Lightning Lu strong enough for him to be able to repeat the process of carving meridians, especially now with his increased resistance. It, again, wasn't something he wanted to rely on.
His second option was to find a "miracle medicine".
Though this may have seemed more "luck-based" than repairing his arm and re-carving his meridians, from Theon's estimations it would actually be quite straightforward.
After all, not only existences up to the 7th plane exist, Theon was a first planar, less than mortal - more like an ant beneath a god's boot. Yet this very insignificance worked in his favor. Healing such a low-level body would be below child's play for any advanced being. Additionally, there was interplanetary trade and exposure, as Theon had seen from the logs of the Sylvian Empire, so surely one planet or organization would be willing to trade for it with Theon.
Pushing future concerns aside, Theon turned to his immediate predicament. Firstly, he was practically stuck in this hole.
This was something that Theon had been ruminating over while he was stuck in his vegetative state, recovering.
The vertical route presented obvious challenges. Not only did he not have the tools to climb it, the walls were too straight and well…. his newly acquired one-armed condition posed a little bit of a difficulty…
While he could theoretically force his way up through sheer determination, such an approach would be a last resort, far from optimal.
Far more promising was the wind current he had long noticed. It was of quite a sizable volume in the clearing that not only flowed up and down but also sideways, meaning that there was another entrance and exit to the clearing.
But before following the current, there was something else that had caught his eye.Where the abomination's corpse had collapsed, only scorched earth should remain. Yet there, winking at him from the ashes, sat a silver ring.
Perfectly untouched.
Impossibly pristine.