“That’s a Corpsefiend Dracolisk born right here in the Godgrave Mountains!” Luther breathed, excitement cutting through his whisper. He added under his breath, “Years of drinking in death energy and ancient wraiths have mutated it. Its strength rivals High Immortal Realm Level Six, and that hide is nearly impenetrable.”
The monster caught the scent of living flesh. Slowly, its massive head lifted, crimson pupils locking onto the two intruders while fresh saliva fell in thicker ropes.
“It’s guarding something,” Jared said, his voice low but certain. His stare fixed beneath the statue’s base where a pinprick of ghostly light flickered like an eye. Luther followed the look and nearly vibrated. “A Ghost Clan relic, maybe! Mr. Jared, if we…”
He never finished. The Corpsefiend Dracolisk lunged. For all its bulk, it moved like an arrow, dark-red scales blurring as it tore across several dozen feet in a heartbeat. The tail, bristling with bone spikes, whipped sideways like a siege ram, the air itself screaming at its passage.
“Back!” Jared barked, yanking Luther into sudden retreat. Both men flashed rearward, feet barely skimming the dusty floor.
Boom! The tail smashed the spot they had occupied, blasting a crater and hurling shards of stone in every direction. The violent shockwave made the whole stone hall tremble; dust sifted down in sheets.
Thwarted, the Corpsefiend Dracolisk grew even more frenzied; it threw its jaws wide and spewed a dark-red breath of death. Where that breath swept, even space itself corroded, webbed with fine black cracks.
Jared’s gaze tightened; instead of dodging, he planted his feet, lifted his palm, and shoved the air ahead. Chaotic force burst from that hand, swirling into a broad gray shield that locked itself in front of him. The shield hissed, a sharp buzz ripping through the hall. The dracolisk’s death breath hammered the barrier, throwing off a shrill, corroding screech. Breath that could chew through steel met the chaotic shield and unraveled, its toxic haze shredded and swallowed in a blink.
The Corpsefiend Dracolisk’s crimson eyes flickered with confusion, unable to grasp why its breath had failed. Yet it did not hesitate; the hulking body lunged again, claws, bone spines, and that wrecking-ball tail sweeping toward Jared in one murderous surge.
“Luther, get the relic… I’ll handle the beast.” Speaking with the same calm, Jared flickered forward and met the dracolisk head-on. Luther, trusting Jared’s strength, spared no words; his form dissolved into a ribbon of black smoke that slid toward the statue’s base.
The dracolisk spotted the intruder near its prize and exploded in fresh rage, beginning to pivot, yet Jared was already in its face. “Your fight is with me,” Jared said without heat. His right hand formed two straightened fingers, chaotic force gathering as he stabbed at the dracolisk’s brow. The strike looked almost casual, yet it carried the annihilating edge of chaotic force and flashed out faster than lightning.
Instinct screamed; the dracolisk jerked its skull off-line and swung a foreclaw down toward Jared in the same breath. A wet pop split the air. The Chaos Shatterfinger skimmed the beast’s scalp, carving a deep trough through its hardened scales; gray energy clung to the wound like a cancer and burrowed inward.
The monster roared, the sound shaking old stone. Pain spurred it; the descending claw snapped forward harder, faster, the roar deafening. Jared held his ground, his left hand balled up, swathed in swirling gray, and he drove the fist straight ahead. Fist hammered claw. Boom thundered through the chamber. The impact birthed a savage blast that spider-webbed the floor and peeled huge swaths of mural from the shaking walls.
Jared wavered and stepped back three paces. The dracolisk screamed, the struck foreclaw now sporting shattered scales, dripping blood, and cracks along the bone. Jared’s brow drew tight; for a creature sitting at High Immortal Realm Level Six, its raw power was outrageous.
Terror finally surfaced in the dracolisk’s eyes. The hulking creature stared, as though just now recognizing the horrifying strength packed inside the small human frame. And that gray force, able to slice through the defenses it had always trusted, only deepened the shock stamped across its face. In that sliver of hesitation, Jared moved. This time, he held nothing back.
“Chaos Hellbind!” he called, his voice low and steady. His hands snapped through a seal; chaotic force boiled off him and spun into countless gray chains that whipped toward the dracolisk like living serpents. The dracolisk thrashed, yet the moment the first chain touched scale, it cinched tight, drinking both the death aura and the thin spark of life inside. The harder it fought, the tighter the net drew and the faster the draining went.
Within a handful of breaths, its struggles faded, its aura collapsing, the feral light in its eyes guttering out. Jared stepped up to the hulking form, his gaze void of pity. “Feeding on stray souls and death mist is your nature. Attacking us was your mistake.”
He said it evenly, pressing a palm to the dracolisk’s brow. “Your power now belongs to me.” The chaotic force poured through the open wound, dragging swirling motes of gray light into the beast’s core. The Corpsefiend Dracolisk jerked once, scales scraping stone, and loosed a final, furious scream that rattled the cracked pillars around it. That roar died as its hide sank against bone. Muscles collapsed, joints shriveled, and the whole hulking frame crumbled like sun-dried clay.
Moments later, only drifting ash remained, save for a dark-red core the size of a fist and a single unbroken length of spine, hard as iron. Jared swept the core and the spine into a prepared jade pouch.
Across the broken floor, Luther rose from the statue’s base, fingers curled around a dim, greenish glow. He had pried it loose while the dracolisk died. The object he carried fit easily in one palm. It was pitch-black metal, roughly rectangular, its outline echoing an ancient command token. Dense Ghost Clan runes covered every inch of that metal face.
“This… This is a fragment of the Ghost King Token!” Luther’s hands shook hard enough to scatter dust. “With a full Ghost King Token, one can summon Ghost Clan legions or unlock sealed domains. Even a fragment is worth whole cities!”
Jared accepted the shard. Cold seeped through his sleeve. Inside the metal, pure nether aura pulsed once and brushed against the storm of chaotic force sleeping in his veins.
