Demonic Po*nstar System Chapter 808: Spitting Balloon

"Let's try this, Alice."

<Yes, big brother!!>

Then, the monster opened its jaws wide and unleashed a torrent.

The stream erupted, a pressurized ribbon of stolen river, so dense and orange-white that the toxic haze ignited upon contact, carving a tunnel of superheated nothingness in its wake.

Kaiden’s body was already shifting sideways as the shadow intercepted him.

Vespera, having sealed a mask of braided shadow over her lower face to combat the Mire’s air – a measure akin to Kaiden’s own blood mask from their shared family toolkit – had her shadows intercept the fiery torrent six meters from his chest. They formed a braided wall, splitting the magma into two arcing sprays that incinerated the ground spores wherever the splash landed.

She didn't wait for the stream to fully dissipate. Her shadow lattice surged past her own deflection, piercing the glutton’s swollen torso from four distinct angles. Barbed shadows plunged into the cherry-red hide, stretched taut like a drum by the sheer volume of river packed within.

The creature's body held for a single beat, then ruptured.

Magma erupted from every puncture wound in pressurized jets, bathing the Mire in an orange glow from wall to wall. The glutton’s body launched off the ground, propelled by its own decompression, careening across the toxic haze in a wild, spiraling arc that spewed stolen river in all directions. Ground spores ignited in its wake, knee-high clouds combusted into nothingness, and ceiling vapor scattered upward as superheated air displaced the toxic layers along the creature’s tumbling trajectory. A path of clean air, nonexistent mere seconds before, opened through the Mire’s defenses.

The glutton shrieked as it traversed the basin.

The sound emanated from the wounds themselves, a high, pressurized whistle tearing from every rupture as magma vented in wild arcs. The body, once the size of a delivery truck, was now a careening, deflating mass that impacted the Mire’s far wall with a wet, concussive boom. It bounced, spraying a fan of orange across the stone, struck the opposite wall with greater force, and continued its trajectory. Each impact altered its path, and each altered path scoured another strip of the Mire’s haze clear. Spores were cooked off in the splash zones, knee-high clouds parted in thermals around the tumbling mass, and the whistle climbed in pitch as pressure dropped and the wounds stretched wider.

Vespera’s crimson eyes narrowed as she tracked the deflating body across the basin, a flicker of dissatisfaction crossing her features.

She intercepted it on its third bounce. Her shadows seized the diminishing mass mid-ricochet and whipped it backward in a single clean arc. The glutton’s remaining substance slammed into the rock at the column’s entrance with enough force to crack the stone beneath it. The cleared lanes crisscrossed behind it, testament to each burning impact that had vaporized the toxic layers before they could resettle over the superheated ground. The column behind the glutton recognized the clean air and advanced, its occupants filing into the Mire along the burned corridors without a single spore to impede their progress.

The creature stirred and reanimated. Its hide hung loosely where the internal pressure had been released, folds of cherry-red skin sagging off its frame like a deflated wineskin. The puncture wounds along its torso were already sealing as the flesh rapidly knitted itself back together. By the time Kaiden registered the spectacle, the creature was back on all fours, its head turning toward them.

<Big brother, even Mom couldn't take that thing down!> Alice’s telepathic communication flooded his mind, rapid and unsettling. <It turned into a balloon and sprayed fire everywhere, the poison is clearing!! What do we do?!>

'What we always do, Alice,' he stated, raising both blades. 'Fight until the very end. Utilize your tracking abilities, employ every sense you possess. Nothing will bypass our vigilance.'

<Yes, big brother!!>

The gap behind the glutton was rapidly filling with bodies as the column recognized the cleared air and committed to the advance. Both Ashborns moved in unison, the son surging forward while the mother flanked him.

Kaiden shifted into Wrath mid-stride, feeling its power surge through every fiber of his being simultaneously. His eyes blazed red, heat climbed his arms and flowed into both blades, intensifying the harvested blood along their edges from dark to brilliant crimson. The Sin Fusion's sixty percent stat boost resonated through his frame, elevating his Strength to 320 and Agility to 317. His body moved with a speed and force befitting a fighter far above his current level. Alice’s halo tightened above his head, its gold-violet light flaring as the Wrath’s heat reached her.

<Let’s go, big brother!>

The first soldier cleared the lane at a full sprint, a Wraithstride reading in the high nineties, with three more close behind. Kaiden, at the peak of his Wrath charge, drove his right blade through the soldier's skull without altering his stride.

A concussive blast ripped away the dorsal scales from the creature's head, incinerating the scales of the one behind it in a flash of heat. The latter cultivator was already turning his left blade toward a second foe before the first even hit the ground. Alice's energy beam struck a third assailant from above, its gold-violet light piercing straight through the tough hide. Before the fourth enemy's carcass finished its descent, Kaiden launched a Wrath-charged projectile that he reeled back in using a blood-thread.

[You’ve slain invading Wraithstride (Level 94). +580,000 XP. +800 DMP.][You’ve slain invading Wraithstride (Level 92). +490,000 XP. +760 DMP.][Champion Kill: invading Wraithstride (Level 93). +780 DMP.][You’ve slain invading Wraithstride (Level 95). +640,000 XP. +820 DMP.]

As the elite enemies launched their assault on her flanks, Vespera had been focused on the gluttonous monster. Three of these elite foes, sturdier and clad in bone armor matching the gate's boss monsters, had pushed past the initial soldier wave through the cleared paths. They utilized the bodies of the soldiers as cover while Vespera's attention was fixated on the glutton. Breaking formation, they advanced low, aiming to sever her lattice at the points where the darkness met the walls.

The lingering mist of the Mire retracted from Vespera in a singular, swift motion, as if the very air recoiled from the figure at its center. Shadows bled from her form, a slow, black tide that had once engulfed an entire mountain range. Her hair stirred in a phantom wind that affected nothing else. The lattice unfurled into a legion of hooked tendrils, intercepting all three attackers simultaneously from every angle they had advanced.

The charge of the first elite enemy collided with an unyielding wall of darkness that surged through its bone armor at the shoulder and continued its advance. The remaining two adjusted their attack, pressing onward relentlessly, for their coordinated tactics remained unbroken despite the loss of one of their unit.

Alice's halo deflected a secondary beam from its primary assault, a pencil-thin streak of gold-violet light that sliced through the Mire. It intercepted a soldier on Kaiden's flank before reaching him. Her Dominion Convergence pulsed through the Conduit link, and a healing aura radiated outward from his body in a warm, ambient glow, primed and ready for the first wound.

Kaiden plunged into the enemy ranks, Wrath-infused energy superheating the air around his every swing. His twin greatswords moved in the opposing arcs that had become his signature, accumulating harvested blood with each successful strike. Thirty meters to his left, his mother engaged the elite enemies in a brutal clash that tore the very ground asunder. Her shadows penetrated deeper into the enemy formation with every exchange. Above them both, Alice's beams autonomously tracked targets, her halo rotating in deliberate quarter-turns, sweeping fields of fire across the battlefield whenever groups of soldiers attempted to advance in unison.

Mother and son, separated by thirty meters, fought the same war from opposing ends of the same front line. And the younger sister bathed her brother in healing gold-violet fire that mended wounds as swiftly as it inflicted damage.

Between his powerful swings, the system notifications chimed. Soft pulses echoed in the back of his skull, one after another, denoting champion kills accumulating from the gate. His companions were fighting valiantly, and the XP flowed into them just as it did into him. Somewhere beyond his domain, five women who had urged him to go were proving their resolve.

They were striving to evolve.

The Paragon of Sin refused to be left behind!