"Hahaha!"
The brawny figure let out a mocking laugh, deep and cruel, despite the smirk on his lips. His gaze locked onto the artifact in Soren's hands.
"You think that you can deal with me?"
Without waiting for an answer, the giant roared and stretched both arms behind his back. His fingers curled, claw-like, as though grasping for something hidden beneath his flesh. A flicker of pain crossed his face, but it was fleeting, drowned beneath rising fury.
His muscles bulged grotesquely as he pulled hard.
Schlkkk!
A sickening, wet sound echoed as his hands pierced into his own back. Blood gushed. Sinew tore.
Soren's eyes narrowed. He could feel it, the air pressure mounting like a tidal wave.
Recognizing the Titan designation too late.
The giant pulled harder, and from the depths of his spine, he wrenched free a grotesque weapon, a jagged, metallic spine fused with flesh, glistening with blood power.
With each inch drawn out, more gore clung to it like it belonged inside him. Because it did.
And then~
BOOM.
A sonic shockwave blasted through the air, shaking the ground. The space around the weapon cracked, unable to contain the sheer force.
"Now I'll show you what a real artifact looks like."
His body rose taller, broader, his skin now glowing molten red, as if fire pulsed beneath it. Flames licked from his eyes, his presence was overwhelming, an engine of destruction made flesh.
"This… is no ordinary Titan."
What Soren didn't know, what he couldn't have known, was that this being was part of the ancient and feared Flame Titans, a primordial race bred for war and devastation.
Not gods, but something dangerously close. Bound by ancient pacts with the Elder Creators, their warriors were forged in flame and fury.
Unlike conventional artifacts forged from stellar cores or planetary star marks, the Flame Titans became their weapons. The mightiest among them embedded the artifact into their own bodies, fusing flesh and metal through ritual and blood.
And when needed, they tore it free.
"You shouldn't have come here, little thief." the Flame Titan growled, flames curling from his lips.
After the transformation, the true power of the Flame Titan is revealed. Seeing Soren struggle, the red giant activates the transformation without hesitation.
He knows that if he keeps attacking Soren, the Collector might intervene, and dealing with the Collector won't be easy.
"Now burn with your regrets."
The artifact pulsed in his grip, resonating with the rage in his veins. Space bent around it.
"Repent in the midst of my wrath!"
The Flame Titan's roar thundered across the ruins of the city like a divine decree, his towering form, easily ten stories high, casting an ominous shadow that swallowed entire buildings.
The very street beneath his feet cracked and crumbled under the pressure of his weight and heat. Terrified citizens and soldiers scattered in every direction, desperate to escape the furnace-like temperature that now consumed the district.
In his flaming hands, he gripped the spinal artifact, a grotesque weapon forged from his own backbone, each vertebra the size of a truck and now ablaze with hellfire.
Soren stood his ground… for a moment.
FWOOOSH!
With a low hum and a crack of displaced air, he vanished just as the Titan brought the weapon crashing down. The blow struck the earth like a meteor strike.
BOOM!
A cataclysmic shockwave exploded outward, obliterating the street and leveling buildings in a fiery tsunami of destruction. Steel melted like wax.
Entire blocks fell as the artifact ripped through the infrastructure like paper.
Soren reappeared behind the Titan, panting lightly, cold eyes fixed on the chaos.
"Slow."
The ground continued to shake violently.
The location they fought in, once built atop the petrified skull of a dead god, began to give way. The internal framework cracked and crumbled, a massive landslide of stone and sanctum dust pouring into the void below.
"Fantastic."
"Just another Tuesday."
He turned his gaze back to the Flame Titan, who stood in the inferno, unbothered by the destruction he'd caused.
His aura pulsed violently, each breath another furnace blast, and molten cracks began forming along his arms, glowing like magma veins. Even worse, he was healing rapidly.
Soren narrowed his eyes.
"Magic resistance… regeneration… and that artifact's putting out enough heat to cook the moon." He exhaled sharply. "Damn thing's a walking war engine."
Soren raised his hand, and a mysterious blue glyph spun into existence above his palm, the Titan hesitated.
The magic circle shimmered with ancient runes and spatial distortions, like reality was being rewritten around it.
꧁𓊈𒆜༺⚜༻𒆜𓊉꧂
PhantomDream