Demonic Po*nstar System Chapter 685: Fury

The ascent spanned three hundred meters of utter torment.

Fighters under Chinedu’s command clambered up the cliffside in groups of two or three, their bloodied palms clutching at rocks that gave way beneath them, footwear sliding over smooth ore residues as Slashers lunged at their heels from underneath. Those who had reached the topmost points sat at sixty meters and were utterly drained, limbs trembling, gear weighing them heavily, each grip a fierce battle against the pull of the earth and the frantic urge to escape the valley below.

The valley had transformed into a deadly chasm.

The Colossus ceased its pursuit of Chinedu’s team. The enormous beast shifted focus to simpler targets, and such victims abounded. One warrior, tumbled from Nyx’s second rock, sprawled broken beside a chunk of shadowy rock, attempting to haul himself to the barrier using his sole functional arm. The Colossus spotted him and stomped him flat.

Stacy had scaled thirty meters when her arm failed her.

The chain arc from Luna had locked the muscles of her blade arm and forearm into a stiff talon, and the injury lingered. She had ascended using only one arm, with Trisha hauling her higher, jaws clenched against the useless drag of her afflicted limb. Each meter brought torment. Each stretch with her healthy arm required relying on her feet on rock that moved and fractured.

She lost her footing.

Her healthy hand snagged a shelf and clung fast, yet the shock ignited searing pain in her injured arm, and the cry that ripped from her throat was primal and unchecked. She swung just five meters over the valley bottom, one grasp on friable stone, limbs flailing for footing that did not exist.

"Ash!" Her call echoed through the valley. "Ash, help me!"

Ash caught the sound.

He positioned forty meters leftward and higher, bones in his torso scraping with each shift, crimson still slick on his jaw, dragging himself skyward via sheer S-tier resolve. His gaze whipped toward her cry and locked on her right away, tiny and suspended on the immense black barrier, heels pawing at emptiness.

Beneath her, the Colossus pivoted.

Six orbs fixed on the yelling, thrashing shape on the cliff with the deliberate, hunting intent of a monster that had always been the hunter of all others. Its colossal form adjusted, ore segments rasping like shifting crustal slabs, and it advanced on the barrier supporting Stacy.

"Stacy, climb!" Ash bellowed.

She was unable. Her blade arm hung limp and her healthy hand weakened its hold, digits pale on the rock, the shelf eroding bit by bit beneath her. Trisha extended downward from higher, straining, their finger ends separated by six inches.

Five.

Four.

The Colossus lifted a single leg.

The appendage matched the bulk of a cargo wagon, covered in ore armor, solid to the point where its shade alone pressed down. It hovered over the wall's foot for an instant precisely sufficient for Ash to grasp the impending doom and realize, through the unyielding facts of space and mechanics, that he would arrive too late.

"No!"

The leg descended.

It struck the wall at Stacy's position like an express locomotive smashing a doll. The cliff buckled inward, pulling Stacy's form along, pulverized amid the ore slab and the rock in a squeeze beyond any magic or protection could endure. Her torso collapsed. The noise combined moisture and solidity, skeleton and alloy and boulder compressing into an area too confined for them all.

The Colossus twisted its leg laterally.

Stacy endured that phase still breathing. The wail escaping her was faint and piercing and unnatural, the noise of collapsed lungs at partial volume forcing breath via a passage scarcely linked to them now. Her healthy hand raked the ore slab crushing her torso, digits etching lines in the material, and her legs jerked twice in void before the beast leaned in and the barrier rearward entirely collapsed.

Trisha and Brittany wailed.

As the Colossus withdrew its leg, the mass that tumbled along the cliff and struck the valley ground did not drop like a human form. It dropped like a sack of sodden pebbles, dense and formless, trailing a streak of scarlet and shattered gear over fifteen meters of ebony rock.

Ash halted his ascent.

His digits remained clamped to the stone, his frame flattened against the barrier, yet the spark in his stare had vanished. For three complete moments he dangled still, gazing at the spot where a comrade from their initial practice session now smeared the dark rock.

Brittany’s cry drifted to him from deeper down, fractured and weeping and invoking Stacy’s name, yet Ash ignored Brittany. He tuned out Chinedu’s barked commands or the Slashers’ howls or the faint buzz of fresh projectiles powering up on the overlook overhead.

He glanced upward.

Hundreds of meters overhead, Kaiden Grey perched on the overlook, arms crossed, observing the valley with total indifference.

The fury that struck Ash was foundational. It was essential. It delved into the area of his fractured ribs and blood-flooded lungs and his frame urging halt, and it commanded every such warning to cease.

"KAIDEN GREY!"

His shout ripped through the valley and along the cliff, hoarse enough to nearly crack the rock.

The S-tier core within his torso flared.

Ash’s form burst into power. His sword glowed brilliant pale-yellow as all untapped stores poured forth. The stone under his soles shattered and he propelled from the barrier, soaring straight aloft with his weapon pulled ready and lethal intent in his every strand. The gap to Kaiden Grey shrank swiftly, the initial hundred meters vanished in less than two heartbeats.

"I’LL KILL YOU!"

A vow from one who had abandoned all thought of repercussions, of the contest, of all save thrusting his sword into the torso of the one guilty for Stacy’s remains in the valley.

Two hundred meters.

One fifty.

Kaiden remained still.