In a flash, Jared understood. The chains and the demonic aura have poisoned his mind. This entire fourth level was nothing but a snare, one that magnified every dark impulse and baited intruders with mirages of treasure. Coall’s heart was uncomplicated, leaving an easy doorway for madness to slip inside.
Jared could not land a killing blow on Coall. He was forced into a clogged, stumbling defense.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Coall’s fists crashed down like meteors; every strike shook the stone floor as though mountains cracked in two.
Jared weaved through the onslaught, sword in hand. Steel screamed against flesh, sparks and ringing metal filling the air. The collision rattled his bones. Warm blood seeped from the split web of his palm.
*Stopping him without hurting him is easy to promise, hell to perform…*
Jared retreated, step after pressured step.
“Mr. Chance, at this rate, we’ll be crushed. We have to wake him!” Cyanna shouted, voice almost lost beneath the clangor.
She strummed the Azure Dragon’s Chant, ethereal notes meant to soothe, but the melody struck Coall‘s shrouding fumes and ricocheted away like pebbles on iron.
“I know,” Jared gritted out.
Parrying another hammer-blow, he let his eyes track every coil of burning chain that bound the giant man. Those chains, wreathed in black fire, were the heart of it all. They did not merely restrain; they pumped fresh darkness straight into Coall’s veins.
“Cut the chains first, or nothing ends,” he decided.
Jared’s gaze sharpened. He summoned every flicker of sword intent until his own silhouette became a drawn blade, cold, bright, uncompromising.
“Slash!”
A thread-thin arc of light, keen enough to divide night from day, lanced toward the burning fetters rather than the man they bound.
Snap!
Links screeched, snapped, and unraveled into curling smoke, their death-cry fading with the vanishing black mist.
The iron chains exploded with a shrill crack. Coall’s hulking body jolted, the hellish crimson that had drowned his pupils flickering like a candle in sudden wind.
“Now!” Jared darted in. His palm slapped against the dragon’s scaled brow, and a tide of Golden Dragon Nascence Energy, pure, regal, irresistible, flooded straight into Coall’s consciousness field.
“Coall, wake up! You are a noble black dragon; no stray demon thought gets to steer your soul!” Jared’s voice thundered, more command than plea.
The radiant energy blazed through the darkness inside, melting clots of demonic miasma the way a noon sun erases night frost.
Coall howled, every muscle quivering under invisible fire, yet the red in his gaze drained away by the heartbeat.
One last convulsion ripped through him. With a guttural groan, he bent forward, spewing a torrent of foul black blood across the stones.
When he straightened, the madness was gone; lucid amber eyes searched the shaking tower once more.
“M-Mr. Chance… I nearly… I’m so sorry…” Coall panted, staring at his own blood-spattered talons. Shame and lingering fear tangled across his reptilian features.
“It’s over…” Jared’s answer was soft yet certain, the kind of promise that props a friend back onto his feet.
He withdrew his hand. The color drained from his face—too many battles, too much essence spent—but his eyes still held an unbroken blaze of purpose.
No time to rest. He pivoted toward the staircase that spiraled up to the fifth level.
A translucent barrier, thick as glacier ice, sealed the steps. Runes slithered across it like living tadpoles, each glyph leaking a pulse of spatial repulsion that made skin crawl.
“The Veil Dragon Branch skulks on the fifth floor,” Jared growled. “Cunning snakes, last time they ambushed us…”
“Then we attack together!” Coall rumbled, battle hunger rekindling in his throat.
Cyanna planted herself at Jared’s left, Coall at his right, the trio forming a perfect wedge.
Jared summoned the Five-Element Nascence Power and his sword intent; prismatic force spiraled around him. Cyanna’s Azure Dragon power sang through the air, while Coall clenched his fists, Black Dragon brawn coiling like thunder behind steel.
“Strike!” A rainbow sword arc, a roaring emerald breath, and a pitch-black shockwave slammed into the barrier in the same heartbeat.
Booming detonations rocked the tower. The light-screen spasmed, runes blinking on and off, spiderweb cracks racing across its surface, but stubbornly it refused to fall.
“Not enough!” Jared barked, teeth clenched. He could feel it; the shield fed directly on the tower’s heart, drinking power in an endless river. To shatter it, they would have to cut the river itself.
