“Interesting… You actually roused that old relic‘s soul remnant.” Radmus licked his lips while the blood corpse’s energy raged through his veins. “But a soul remnant is still a soul remnant, does it truly dare come forth just to die again?”
The Ancestor offered no reply; simply raised one titan-sized skeletal palm and brought it crashing down toward Radmus.
Even before the wind from the attack arrived, the ground beneath split into a bottomless chasm, and compressed air exploded outward in visible shockwaves that pulverized every shattered wall and broken pillar nearby into dust.
Radmus neither dodged nor retreated. Forming seals with both hands, conjured a gigantic blood-red coffin before him, the very coffin that had earlier imprisoned the blood corpse.
The coffin lid flew open, disgorging an odor so foul it made souls shudder. A multitude of blood-colored tendrils shot out from within, coiling around Radmus and knitting themselves into a formidable crimson shield.
Boom!
The skeletal palm slammed onto the blood-red shield; the entire Bloodbane Palace ruins heaved, storm clouds churned overhead, and lightning forked across the sky.
Web-like cracks spidered across the crimson barrier, yet it ultimately withstood the strike.
Radmus grunted, a ribbon of blood spilling from the corner of his mouth, but excitement danced in his eyes. “Not bad at all… Is that truly everything you’ve got?”
He thrust both arms into the coffin. A shrill, desolate screech erupted from within as wrenched forth an even vaster tide of blood corpse energy, compressing it into a scarlet beam that blasted toward the Ancestor.
Where the beam passed, space itself splintered like glass. Struck squarely, the Ancestor’s bony torso cracked apart with a chorus of snaps, the golden flames in his eye sockets flickered violently, almost guttering out.
“No! Ancestor!” Dincelius’ eyes nearly burst from their sockets, could feel the Ancestor’s soul remnant bleeding away at terrifying speed.
With a sorrowful roar, the Ancestor detonated his skeletal frame, scattering countless bone blades in every direction in a final bid to drag Radmus down with him.
Radmus merely flicked his wrist; blood-red tendrils shredded every bone blade before they could raise so much as a ripple.
The Ancestor’s soul remnant was utterly snuffed out, and the ancient pressure blanketing the land vanished with him.
Radmus began walking toward Dincelius, each step landing on the corpses of Bloodbane Palace disciples, the splashing blood dyeing his robe ever redder.
“Now your tricks are exhausted.” His voice was icicle-cold. “For the last time, where is the Bloodbane Crystal?”
Dincelius looked at the mountains of bodies, at the shattered remnants his father had left behind, and the final hesitation in his eyes disappeared. He knew there was no path left open to him.
“If you want the Bloodbane Crystal… Then walk over my corpse to claim it!”
He straightened abruptly, the once-dull light in his eyes flaring to blinding brilliance. The blood essence in his elixir field no longer burned away; instead, it condensed madly into a dazzling scarlet sphere.
“Bloodbane Palace… Would sooner die than yield!”
Radmus’ pupils constricted, had not expected Dincelius to choose to self-detonate his elixir field.
“You’re courting death!” He sprang backward while hurling the blood-red coffin up as a shield.
Boom!
A deafening explosion tore the air apart as Dincelius’ body became a towering, blood-colored mushroom cloud.
The catastrophic shockwave rippled outward from him, sucking every fragment of ruined architecture and every shredded corpse into the sky to form a swirling, gore-stained tempest.
The blood-red coffin shuddered violently beneath the blast, a mesh of hair-thin cracks crawling across its surface, Radmus himself felt his vital energy churn, another trickle of blood seeping from his lips.
But when the blinding light finally faded, Radmus parted the lingering blood-mist before and found only an empty wasteland.
Dincelius‘ self-destruct, though monstrous in power, had failed to wound Radmus at his core, it had merely blown Bloodbane Palace‘s last shred of dignity to dust.
“Foolish man…”
