Blazing Claw's Revenge: The Hunt for Shuks
On the other side, Kayla unleashed a roar that shook the heavens. The colossal beast soul form of her fifth-stage transformation erupted with earth-shattering momentum. Her massive claw, wreathed in thunder and frost, pointed directly at Shuks, who was rampaging wildly among the beastkin warriors, sowing slaughter:
"Shuks! Your end has come! Father! General Miasis! General Balg! In the name of the Blazing Claw Empire!"
"For the glory of the Blazing Claw Empire! For all our fallen kin!" The veteran General Kyle's eyes blazed crimson with blood. Endless grief and rage transformed into pure killing intent. Wielding the epic war axe "Rockbreaker" passed down through generations, he joined forces with Fire Gun · Miasis, Iron Wall · Balg, and Kayla in her ultimate transformation, instantly forming a deadly quadrangular encirclement.
Shuks, in his five-headed hyena beast form, let out a shrill, grating cackle filled with twisted confidence:
"Come! Come! Let you stubborn remnants of the old era witness the true power of the Doomsday Rebirth organization!" All five grotesque heads opened their maws at once, spewing five streams of utterly distinct yet equally lethal corrosive elemental venom that blanketed the four attackers.
But the avengers of Blazing Claw coordinated flawlessly:
Kayla charged first. Her fifth-stage beast soul form was like a moving mountain, bulldozing through the venom barrage. Her thunder-frost interwoven claw descended with unmatched ferocity, instantly exploding one of Shuks's heads—the one spewing flame venom—into a sky full of bloody mist!
The battle-hardened General Kyle, relying on a lifetime of combat instincts, anticipated the trajectory of Shuks's sweeping tail. "Rockbreaker" whistled through the air as it sliced cleanly through the tail strong enough to level boulders!
Fire Gun · Miasis's flame lance struck like a serpent darting from its hole. The extreme high-temperature flames not only incinerated the incoming acid venom mist but seized the momentary stiffness from the severed tail, thrusting like lightning to fully pierce and char the head spewing frost venom!
Iron Wall · Balg stood like the sturdiest fortress. Roaring, he raised his massive shield and withstood Shuks's frenzied frontal charge head-on. The tremendous impact sank his feet deep into the ground, yet he didn't budge an inch. Seizing the counterattack opening, he smashed with the heavy edge of his shield, coordinating with Kayla's suppression to crush the third head that tried to bite her to pieces!
Shuks let out a howl of agony. The remaining two heads flashed with madness and desperation. One head's energy core suddenly became extremely unstable, attempting a self-destruct to gravely wound or even kill the four besiegers.
"No you don't!" Kayla roared. The ice power of her beast soul form exploded to its limit. An extreme chill spread like a domain, forcibly freezing that self-destructing head and the surrounding energy, preventing the explosion from fully releasing and greatly reducing its power.
"It's over! Shuks! Thunder-Frost Cataclysm—Final Impact!" Kayla gathered all her thunder and ice power. On her giant claw condensed a sphere of destructive aura, entwined with lightning and frost, which she smashed down onto Shuks's final head!
At the same moment, Kyle's war axe, Miasis's flame lance, and Balg's shield smash all struck together!
BOOM——!
Under the combined might of the four's ultimate strike, Shuks's remaining head—along with his massive body—was utterly torn apart, pulverized, and reduced to an unrecognizable puddle of flesh! This traitor who had brought endless suffering to the Blazing Claw Empire finally met a gruesome death and received his rightful judgment!
The Siege of Virginia
The cunning Virginia, expert in concealment and biochemical assaults, saw the tide turning against her—especially with Cthulhu sealed and Shuks surrounded and slain. She immediately tried to release thick, vision-and-perception-obscuring bizarre toxic mist and nerve-paralyzing gas while commanding the remaining mechanical units to perform suicide explosions, creating chaos so she could slip away and escape the battlefield.
However, two figures clung to her like shadows that refused to let go.
It was the perfectly coordinated Yuyuer and Zhamisi. One from the deep sea, one from the swamp—these two warriors formed an ideal pincer attack, one overt and one covert.
Yuyuer raised her dragonbone gem staff high, chanting ancient sea clan incantations. She summoned illusory deep-abyss sea beasts that opened their massive jaws and devoured Virginia's released biochemical legions and mechanical units in a frenzy.
Zhamisi moved like a venomous snake in the night. Her poison-fang curved blades whipped through the air, trailing ink-green toxic mist that actually neutralized, canceled out, and even counter-eroded Virginia's biochemical fog. Her stealth was masterful, always striking from the most unexpected angles with lethal precision.
Virginia was furious and shocked. Beneath her hood, her face twisted. She unleashed her trump card—a bizarre magic that summoned swarms of biochemically modified mutant insects surging toward the pair like a tidal wave.
"Aqua Slash · Break!" Yuyuer slammed her staff down. Surging water elements surged forward like high-pressure water jets, blasting the dense insect swarm into disarray.
"Venom Fang · Shadow Instant Kill!" Zhamisi seized the moment. Her figure melted into the shadows, instantly breaking through the insect barrier to close in on Virginia's true body. Her poisoned curved blade traced a sinister arc, precisely slicing open Virginia's wide hood and carving a bone-deep gash across her arm. The specially crafted neurotoxin flooded in instantly!
"Ah!" Virginia screamed in pain. Her movements immediately became sluggish and stiff. Madness flashed in her eyes as she tried to detonate the pre-set biochemical energy core inside her body for a final mutual destruction.
"Poison Dominion · Reverse Flow!" Zhamisi had anticipated her desperation. She formed hand seals, forcibly disrupting the energy flow within Virginia's body. Yuyuer's ice wall rose instantly, temporarily sealing and suppressing the erupting energy.
The self-destruct sequence was forcibly interrupted. Energy backlash caused Virginia to violently cough up blood. She completely lost the ability to move and collapsed limply to the ground. Alliance soldiers swarmed in, securing her tightly with specialized manacles and suppressors. One of Doomsday Rebirth's leaders was captured alive.
The Ultimate Battle Between Fa and Roman
At the very center of the battlefield, the duel between Fa and Roman had already ascended to a level beyond ordinary comprehension. Their fight was no longer mere energy clashes or martial skill contests—it had evolved into a collision of understanding, mastery, and control over the fundamental laws of the world.
Roman's attacks were ferocious, precise, and utterly destructive, perfectly blending cutting-edge technological computation with profound magical knowledge. With a wave of his hand, he generated ultra-compressed high-temperature plasma spheres capable of melting through anything. At the same time, he tore open spatial rifts on the other side, creating devouring shadow fissures that bombarded Fa from multiple inconceivable angles simultaneously. His left eye glowed with an ink-green halo, interfering with the laws and instantly liquefying the ground beneath Fa into a devouring quicksand abyss; his right eye flared with blood-red light, causing the sky to rain down blazing, soul-defiling crimson meteors!
Yet the awakened Fa had elevated her perception, understanding, and mastery of energy to an entirely new dimension. In her left eye, a twelve-colored galaxy flowed at unprecedented speed, deducing, deconstructing, and reconstructing every incoming force.
Facing the plasma torrent hot enough to vaporize steel, she merely tapped the void lightly with a fingertip. A seemingly fragile yet infinitely profound composite barrier of the "Water and Ice Origin" laws appeared instantly. It didn't block head-on but guided and deflected the energy trajectory in a mysterious way, letting the violent plasma sphere narrowly pass by her—only to slam precisely into the shadow fissure on the other side. The two clashing extremes mutually annihilated in a violent explosion, yet not a shred harmed Fa.
For the sudden quicksand abyss beneath her feet, she didn't even look down. She lightly tapped the air with her toe. The "Earth and Wood Root" laws activated simultaneously. The boiling quicksand instantly solidified and hardened beyond steel, even sprouting countless incredibly tough magical vines that reversed and coiled toward Roman's feet to restrict his movement.
For the falling rain of foul, evil blood-colored meteors, she calmly raised her left hand. The seemingly opposing origin forces of "Light and Dark" manifested together, intertwining and rotating into a constantly flowing black-white Taiji pattern hovering above her head. The countless blazing blood meteors, upon contact with the Taiji diagram, melted silently like snowflakes in a furnace—along with their attached vicious blood flames—purified and devoured without a trace of aftermath leaking out.
She didn't even need her eyes to observe. Her powerful mental field had already covered the entire battlefield like radar. Every subtle energy shift, muscle twitch, or even thought fluctuation from Roman was crystal-clear in her pure silver right eye—dedicated to analysis and computation—and instantly parsed and predicted.
The short blade in her hand had yet to truly be drawn. She merely used her fingers as a blade, lightly tracing through the space ahead.
"Spatial Severance." She murmured softly. A hair-thin yet absolutely lethal spatial black line flashed past. Roman's meticulously constructed composite attack magic—blending psychic shockwaves and ultra-high-speed metal storms—was neatly sliced at its most fragile structural weak point, causing the massive energy construct to collapse instantly. It disintegrated before it could even detonate.
"Time… Slow Flow." She whispered again. Her right eye flickered with silver light. Roman's lightning-fast charge, beyond visual capture, suddenly slowed by a mere instant within ten meters around her! Though only a negligible moment in real time, it was enough for Fa to calmly sidestep with millimeter precision, evading the sharpest edge of his assault. She countered with a finger sword fused with "Thunder and Fire" origin power, striking preemptively at the weak point in Roman's protective energy.
BOOM——!
Roman was blasted staggering backward by this seemingly casual strike. His heavily fluctuating protective energy emitted an overburdened hum. For the first time, the arrogance and madness on his face were replaced by shock, disbelief, and a faint trace of fear.
His attacks were undeniably ferocious, his techniques impeccably honed, and his fusion of super-technological computation with magic reached the pinnacle of mortal intellect. Yet Fa's responses felt like a higher-dimensional being toying with a child—always resolving his proudest, fiercest assaults with the most precise, efficient, and perfectly timed methods. The twelve origin powers obeyed her like loyal servants, wielded effortlessly, transitioning seamlessly without the slightest hitch, even producing marvelous combinations and reactions that even Roman couldn't comprehend, defying conventional magical theory. What terrified him most was her elusive, unpredictable mastery of space and time—this had already touched the domain of the gods!
"Impossible! This is absolutely impossible! You've only just awakened! How can you wield multiple origin powers with such flawless harmony?! This defies calculation! It violates the law of energy conservation!" Roman roared in denial. His attacks grew even more frenzied, yet beneath it all lurked impatience and a growing sense of powerlessness. He tragically realized that his proud, hyper-precise magical control—bolstered by super-technological computation—appeared clumsy and superfluous before Fa's almost world-origin-instinctive intuitive mastery.
The Descent of the Thirteen-Element Magical Beast
Roman · Chronos grew more alarmed the longer they fought. Deep-seated fear and unwillingness spread like poisonous vines in his mind. Fa's growth rate and precision in power control far exceeded even his most extreme simulated calculations. If this continued, forget seizing the Star Pupil—he might not even escape with his life. There was a real risk of total defeat or even death!
He could not allow it! The divine throne he had pursued his entire life could not slip away when it was within reach!
An extreme, insane idea—one willing to destroy everything—formed in his mind in an instant and overwhelmed all reason.
He feinted, then abruptly retreated to create distance. At the same time, he sent a strong, unquestionable mental command toward the laboratory hidden deep within the living vine fortress:
"Dr. Zheng! Execute the final protocol immediately! Release the 'Elemental Beast'! Now! Right now! This is an order!"
The communicator immediately carried Dr. Zheng's panicked, almost wailing voice:
"No! Lord Roman! Absolutely not! Absolutely not! The 'Elemental Beast's' gene sequence is only 78% complete! Its energy core is extremely unstable—the thirteen elemental forces inside are constantly on the verge of conflict! Forcibly awakening it now, it won't distinguish friend from foe! It's a monster that knows only destruction and devouring everything! This will ruin my life's work! Ruin this ultimate masterpiece! I cannot… I cannot release it before it's perfected…"
Dr. Zheng was a pure scientific fanatic. He regarded this fusion of thirteen elements as his greatest creation ever. He would rather continue researching and wait for perfection than release it with such glaring flaws.
"Shut up!" Roman cut him off brutally. His eyes gleamed with ultimate coldness and cruelty, without the slightest pity for his creation—only obsessive fixation on his goal.
"78% completion… that's enough! Its power is sufficient to stall her, even wound her gravely! As long as it buys me enough time, that's all I need! Execute immediately! This is the final command!"
"But… my lord! The risk is truly—"
"No buts!" Roman's voice was as cold as the deepest winter ice, devoid of any human emotion.
"Mandras! Execute cleanup protocol!"
Mandras, who had stood silently as the most loyal guardian, showed no hesitation. A metallic-glinting, ink-green sharp vine shot up from the ground beneath Dr. Zheng's feet like a lurking serpent. In a flash, it pierced straight through his white lab coat and the flesh beneath!
"Urgh…!" Dr. Zheng stared down in disbelief at the blood-dripping vine spike protruding from his chest. His mouth opened, fresh blood gushing out. His eyes were filled with endless regret for his unfinished "perfect creation," deep terror at Roman's mad decision, and despair over his own fate. Finally, his body went limp and collapsed. His life force faded rapidly.
"No… my… masterpiece…" These were his final faint mutterings in this world, filled with boundless sorrow.
With Dr. Zheng's death, the highest-security biochemical pod deep within the living fortress—containing the terrifying entity—lost its final control lock and the only person still trying to stop it.
BOOM!!!!!!!!
A roar beyond any known biological vocal structure—one that could tear souls and shake space—exploded from the fortress's deepest core! The entire massive living vine fortress began to tremble, twist, and contract madly, as if an unimaginable colossus inside was struggling in pain and fury, on the verge of breaking free!
Immediately after, an indescribable aura—fused from thirteen utterly distinct and mutually conflicting terrifying elemental forces—erupted skyward like a volcano that had accumulated fury for ten thousand years! Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, Earth, Thunder, Ice, Wind, Mind, Poison, Light, Dark, and even Blood magic… These thirteen attributes were forcibly crammed together, forming a chaotic, violent, insane aura brimming with the purest desire for destruction and devouring!
This aura instantly overwhelmed every killing intent, energy fluctuation, and law tremor on the battlefield. Both Alliance warriors and Doomsday Rebirth soldiers involuntarily halted, feeling a primal, soul-deep shudder and terror—as if the apocalypse itself was descending.
Even Fa, who had remained utterly calm until now, showed unprecedented gravity and solemnity in her starry, revolving eyes for the first time.
Under countless horrified gazes, one side of the living fortress suddenly exploded outward!
A terrifying magical beast—mountainous in size, its form violently, distortedly, unstably shifting every second—slowly crawled out from the ruptured depths of the fortress and descended upon the battlefield!
Its skin flickered between hard, icy metallic sheen and cracking fissures spewing magma-like scorching fluid; parts of its body melted into flowing corrosive venom, then suddenly sprouted countless wildly writhing shadow tendrils and pale bone spikes… Thirteen utterly different colors surged, clashed, annihilated, and reborn across its surface. Its very existence was the crudest, most barbaric trampling and negation of this world's stable laws!
It had no fixed form, no reason—only endless hunger and the instinct to destroy everything! The 78%-complete thirteen-element hybrid mutant magical beast, the ultimate doomsday weapon, had been forcibly thrust onto the battlefield in its highly unstable state by its creator!
What it brought was pure, indiscriminate, despair-inducing… apocalyptic destruction!
The battlefield's finale plunged into an unpredictable, utterly mad abyss!