Chapter 552: Failure

The sun wheel ground on. Starlight was swallowed up. Muen temporarily halted all unnecessary expenditure of mana; every bit of his focus was poured into controlling the black flame.

He raised his hand, aimed at the little girl, and pressed downward in the air.

More black flames leapt forth, falling like tiny sprites onto the grotesque beast limbs growing from the girl’s body.

But what these cute sprite-like flames carried over was not any kind of blessing—

It was calamity.

In an instant—

The hard scales on the claw were burned away.

Flesh and blood were burned away.

Bone was burned away.

Like ordinary white paper catching fire, those mighty beast limbs were devoured in the blink of an eye by that inconspicuous black fire, leaving not even ash behind.

And as more of the “blood food” was consumed, the black flames burned all the more joyfully.

There seemed to be nothing that could halt their spread. Even the sun wheel in the depths of Muen’s consciousness seemed to be tugged along, its rotation quickening. But the instant a sharp pain stabbed through Muen’s mind, he forcibly forced the sun wheel back into stability.

No. Too fast and he wouldn’t be able to take it.

“Rooar—”

The little girl’s pained sobs suddenly turned into a jumble of bestial roars. Countless blood-red threads writhed in chaotic squirming, trying to mend the wounds left by the black flame—only to be swallowed up along with everything else.

It was as if the girl realized something. Another sharp claw extended from a stitched seam and ripped open the burning bear claw.

“Severing your own limb to survive... is that... instinct?”

Muen was a little surprised by the girl’s reaction—but only a little.

Because the black flames would not stop.

The bear claw was completely devoured in short order. Unsatisfied, the flames, under Muen’s control, swept rapidly toward the girl herself.

The distance between them had never been great. At the speed with which the flames spread, even with the acceleration granted by dragon wings, there was no way the girl could evade.

But to Muen’s shock, the little girl didn’t dodge.

Facing the black flame, her pale little face took on the startled look of a cat encountering something even more terrifying—but the fear was quickly replaced by boundless ferocity.

She let out another of those strange, jumbled roars.

Then her body—

Suddenly swelled.

No. Not swelled.

It was that an unknown number of stitched seams all over her body, in that instant, burst open.

Clanng—

Scales shining with cold steel light scraped and flexed, producing a shrill metallic screech. Those massive scales crawled out from the opening seams like giant centipedes entwining each other, wrapping the girl up and forming a sphere that came crashing toward Muen.

“Defense is useless against me!”

Muen let out a cold laugh and closed his fingers toward the scale sphere.

In the blink of an eye, dancing black flames fell upon the sphere, happily chewing away at that seemingly impregnable defense. While guiding the black fire, Muen could clearly feel that the mighty beast scales had no effect on it at all. Within just a few breaths, they were almost entirely burned away.

That intoxicating ease, as if he could burn the world to cinders, made Muen’s very soul feel light, like he could just stop holding back and let the black flames use all creation as fuel, devouring everything.

But he quickly crushed that feeling down.

He was here to control the power—not to be controlled by it. If he let himself be swept away by the black flame’s might so easily, then what had all his years of bitter cultivation been for?

He still remembered clearly what the old loli had told him.

Muen again focused his mind and drove the sun wheel, launching a final strike at the little girl, who now had nowhere left to retreat.

The flames surged once more.

And then—

Pft.

The sound of flesh tearing, and the stabbing agony from his chest, made Muen’s eyes go wide with disbelief.

A sinister bone spear had darted out from a gap in the surging black flames and pierced straight through his chest.

Through those seething, leaping cracks in the fire, Muen saw more beast scales and limbs sprouting from the stitched seams all over the girl’s frail body, hurling themselves into the black flames like moths to a torch.

Using the time bought by those limbs to block—or rather, to “be burned by” the black fire—the little girl, her face twisted, now fully a monster through and through, dove at Muen.

“I see... this is another instinct that beast blood has given you?”

In that instant, Muen understood.

The little girl truly no longer possessed reason or thought—but the instincts granted by the beast blood within her, just like when she had first faced the black flame, had found the flame’s only weakness for her.

That was—

Black flame needed time to burn. Or rather, the level of black flame Muen could currently wield was not yet enough to consume her completely in a single instant.

So she could keep “severing limbs to survive” and carve out room to maneuver.

And the prerequisite for this was...

“How much have those bastards stuffed into you, exactly?”

Priceless, powerful beast limbs were being treated purely as consumables. Even Muen—who liked to think of himself as a properly pedigreed wastrel—couldn’t help roaring inwardly at # Nоvеlight # such outrageous waste.

And at the same time, his pity deepened.

But he also very clearly recognized—

This little girl—or rather, the beast blood within her—was something even more terrifying and dangerous than he had imagined.

Beast blood whose vitality had grown this monstrous; an immense quantity of stitched-on beast limbs—put together, they had created the unspeakable horror now before his eyes.

If she hadn’t met a power that happened to counter her as well as the black flame did—and if he hadn’t cut off her food source—her threat level, purely in terms of destructive power, might already have surpassed King Yintuo’s avatar from back then.

If any ordinary fifth-rank warrior had come here, they would probably already be food in her belly.

But he...

Was just a late-stage third rank. For fuck’s sake.

“So there really are more freaks in this world than just me... Not that I personally think I’m any kind of freak.”

Muen grabbed the bone spear lodged in his chest. Black flame leapt, and the spear was devoured in an instant. Sprite-like sparks then skittered across his body, healing his wounds at a speed visible to the naked eye.

“But...”

Looking at the ferocious girl lunging toward him, a savage smile slowly curved Muen’s lips.

“When it comes to going crazy, I’ve never lost to anyone.”

Muen stomped hard. Black flame tore open the defenses surrounding the little girl. While the fire and the limbs were still locked in a stalemate, Muen charged straight in with his twin blades—

He took the initiative to meet her head-on.

Of course—the clash of blades and claws, the spray of blood and sparks—that was what really—

“...Hm?”

Muen suddenly frowned.

Because he heard an extremely sharp sound coming from a certain direction.

It sounded like some sort of instrument, but the tone was stiff and lifeless, more like a whistle. That unfamiliar sound drilled directly into his skull right as he was fully focused on the battle in front of him.

It felt like you were just about to hit the very peak while doing that, and a phone suddenly started ringing off to the side.

Of course, it’s only if your phone rings that you’d feel that kind of annoyed, violated mood. If it’s the other person’s phone... odds are you’d only get even more fired up.

To Muen’s surprise, the little girl seemed to hear it too. Her savage lunge faltered; her face tilted slightly toward the direction the sound came from, as if she were listening to something.

Then she let out a long howl.

More armored limbs burst from her body and rapidly swelled, shoving the black flames outward toward the edges. In a short span of time, they opened a gap in the fire.

And in that instant, she abandoned those beast limbs, beat her dragon wings, and slipped out through the opening.

“So you’re... trying to run?”

Muen reacted immediately, his expression sinking.

At this point, how could he possibly let her go?

Not being able to fly was a common hard flaw for brute-force warriors. Muen gripped his blades tighter and hurled both of them at the little girl in the air.

The pure-white blades tore through space, arriving before her almost instantly.

Her attention fixed on the blades, the girl’s body twisted in a reflexive attempt to dodge.

But perhaps because she had just discarded too many beast limbs at once, her movements were a shade stiff. With Muen pushing himself again to his limit, he truly did manage to catch up to her.

He seized her in one arm, his expression vicious.

“Stay. With. Me.”

Black flame surged from his body once more. Muen held the struggling girl tight and met her gaze.

Starlike sparks lit in the black of his eyes—and at the same moment, faint firelight surfaced in the little girl’s pale, dead pupils.

The black flame had begun burning the girl’s soul.

With her soul itself being scorched, she could no longer sever anything to survive. A shrill, agonized wail erupted from her small body. But as the slag of her soul—or fragments of it—flowed along the black flame into Muen’s consciousness—

Kill kill kill kill kill kill...

Die die die die die die...

Blood blood blood blood blood blood...

It hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts...

Endless ferocity, endless **, endless pain and endless wailing—mixed into those soul fragments like a deadly toxin—ate away at Muen’s mind, which was already at its breaking point.

The sun wheel hung high. Pages turned.

The poison was quickly eradicated—

But because of that sudden assault, his shaken mental strength reacted on instinct, drawing the black flames back into his body.

“That was...”

Muen blanked for an instant.

His awareness cleared again.

And he saw that perhaps because he had ripped away part of that **, one of the girl’s eyes was no longer pale and dead. A hazy, childlike gaze met his—

And a single, warm tear slid down.

“...”

Her lips moved, as if she were saying something.

Bang.

But before Muen could hear it clearly, the girl in his arms suddenly exploded—splitting into countless chunks of flesh that sank into the darkness of the Lower District and vanished.

“Damn it... what kind of ‘Heaven-Demon Self-Detonation Escape Art’ was that...”

Muen’s hands clenched on nothing.

He fell from the sky and crashed to the ground.

Staring at his empty grip, he let out a bitter laugh.

“Pushed so far I actually went after a pitiful little girl’s soul... and still failed. Looks like I really do... need more practice.”