The Felguard's charge was not the nimble pounce of a predator. It was an avalanche of muscle and obsidian hate, a walking mountain of death that made the very ground shudder. Its target was Li Wei, the wounded, bleeding meal whose scent was a clarion call to its starving senses.
For Li Wei, the world compressed into a tunnel of pure, white-hot terror. All his training, all his dreams of glory in the Inner Sect, evaporated in the face of this walking extinction event. His mind went blank. He did the only thing his body screamed at him to do: he scrambled backward, his injured arm a screaming nerve of agony, his feet slipping and sliding on the treacherous ice Aurelia had created. The Felguard's axe didn't just swing; it displaced the very air in the clearing. Irelion saw Li Wei's training evaporate, replaced by the primal, scrambling panic of prey. The boy threw himself sideways—a clumsy, desperate lunge that would have gotten him killed against a skilled opponent. But the Felguard was a creature of brute force. The axe blade passed so close to Li Wei's head that the foul wind of its passage plastered his hair to his skull. A hot, gagging stench of rot and sulfur washed over them all, the demon's personal miasma of death. A sloppy dodge, but a successful one. It's working, Irelion thought, his own heart a cold, steady drum against his ribs. Keep it angry. Keep it clumsy. The weapon slammed into a rock outcropping behind him, not just breaking it, but utterly annihilating it in a cloud of dust and stone shrapnel that stung his skin.
The demon roared in frustration, its momentum carrying it a few steps past him. It turned, its massive hooves struggling for purchase on the slick ground, preparing for another, final charge.
"Hey! You ugly, overgrown lizard!"
The voice was thin, reedy, and shaking with a terror so profound it threatened to shatter with every syllable. From behind the relative safety of the rotting log, Zhang Min held a fist-sized rock in his trembling hand. Irelion's command echoed in his mind, a strange anchor in a sea of panic. Keep it angry. Keep it off balance. His own survival instinct screamed at him to stay hidden, to be silent, to pray for a quick death. But the image of Irelion's calm, certain eyes overrode his fear. With a sob of desperate effort, he heaved the rock with all his might.
The stone sailed through the air in a pathetic, wobbling arc and bounced harmlessly off the Felguard's thick, lava-like hide with a dull thump. It was an insect stinging a battleship.
But it worked.
The Felguard's burning green eyes swiveled from Li Wei to the new annoyance. It let out an irritated snort, its simple, violent brain momentarily distracted by the sheer audacity of the gesture. That second of distraction was all Li Wei needed to scramble back toward the relative safety of the rockfall, his chest heaving with ragged, desperate breaths.
The demon, enraged by the flies buzzing around it, began to lash out wildly. Its axe became a whirlwind of destruction, each swing a force of nature that tore deep gouges in the earth and sent nearby trees cracking and splintering under the impossible force. It was no longer hunting. It was rampaging, its fury making it predictable. Clumsy.
Irelion, watching from the shadows, felt the rhythm of the battle, the ebb and flow of the demon's rage. He saw the pattern in its wild swings, the way it overcommitted its weight. His own heart was a slow, steady drum in the chaos. He gave a sharp, almost imperceptible nod to Aurelia.
The Felguard, tired of the games, focused on Zhang Min. It raised its axe high over its head, preparing a devastating vertical chop that would annihilate the boy and the log he was hiding behind. It put all its weight, all its momentum, into the downward swing. It was the massive, committed attack he had been waiting for.
Aurelia moved. She didn't shout a technique name. She thrust her palm forward. A wave of concentrated, absolute cold shot across the clearing. The ground directly beneath the Felguard's raised front foot, already slick, flash-froze into a patch of perfectly smooth, mirror-like ice.
The demon's foot came down.
There was no purchase. Its immense weight and the downward momentum of its swing betrayed it. Its leg slid forward, its body twisting in a grotesque, unnatural angle as it fought to stay upright. For a single, critical second, its entire left side was exposed, its pauldron lifting as its arm flailed for balance.
The target was open.
Irelion exploded from the shadows.
He was a silent, lethal thought given form. His feet barely seemed to touch the ground as he covered the distance in a blur of grey cloth. The other disciples didn't even see him move; one moment he was by the rocks, the next he was upon the stumbling demon.
He held his cheap iron sword in a two-handed grip, channeling every last shred of his 7th Stage Qi into the blade until it hummed with a faint, deadly light. His soul remembered this strike, a move of perfect, divine precision. His body, however, was a crude instrument. He poured his rage, his grief, and his desperate will to live into this single, imperfect blow.
He didn't aim for the thick hide. He aimed for the one spot his memory provided: the small, almost invisible gap where the neck met the shoulder, under the raised pauldron.
The tip of the sword struck home.
There was a sickening, wet CRUNCH as the blade punched through the thinner layer of chitinous armor. It wasn't a clean cut. The cheap iron blade groaned under the strain, resisting the unnatural toughness of the demon's flesh. He felt the blade sink a hand's-breadth deep, severing thick, ropey tendons and puncturing something vital.
A spray of foul, black-green ichor, hot as acid, erupted from the wound, spattering across his face and arms. It burned. The pain was immediate and searing, like being splashed with boiling oil.
The Felguard let out a sound that was not a roar, but a high-pitched, piercing shriek of pure agony and disbelief. It had been wounded. Truly wounded.
But it was not dead.
Irelion's soul screamed in frustration. A Saint's strike would have vaporized the demon's heart. His body's strike had merely given it a mortal wound. The iron sword, unable to withstand the pressure and the corrosive ichor, cracked and shattered in his hands, leaving him with nothing but a useless hilt.
Before he could leap back, before he could even process the failure, the demon reacted with a speed born of pure agony. Its massive, clawed left hand, the very arm he had just crippled, shot out. It ignored the searing pain, its fingers wrapping around Irelion's torso in an iron grip.
Bones creaked. Air rushed from his lungs in a pained gasp. He was lifted off the ground, helpless, his limbs dangling.
The Felguard brought him close, its face a mask of hellish fury. Its burning green eyes, now inches from his, stared into him, seeing not an insect, but the source of its agony.
He was caught.