Chapter 112: Devouring of the Heart
Kale Ardentis drifted through a sea of molten agony. The stomach of the gargantuan magma leviathan was an ecosystem of liquid fire, a place where the laws of physics were replaced by the crushing weight of thermal density.
Every breath he attempted to take was a death sentence, as the superheated gases of the internal chamber sought to vaporise his remaining internal organs.
His Hexarion human physiology, usually a fortress of biological stability, was being dismantled by the second.
He found himself in the gullet of a creature that defied all common sense, a biological anomaly of the highest order that had slept beneath the molten river for centuries.
He didn’t wait for the system to offer tactical options. With a final, agonising effort of his mental pathways, he willed the pulsing orb he had snatched from the vortex into the system storage.
The light of the so-called mythical core vanished from the hellish chamber, leaving him in a dim, orange gloom where his own charred flesh was the only landmark.
He could feel his life force flickering at the threshold of 1%, a falling cinder clutching at the edge of biological cessation.
His body was burning constantly, or at least the part that was left of it, and the moisture was being sucked from his lungs with every desperate gasp.
Neo was there, its three heads weaving through the fire with a frantic, desperate grace.
The hydra’s scales were a vibrant, pulsing orange, having already integrated the passive heat-absorbing skin of the flame salamanders during their previous trials. Yet the creature was terrified.
Through their shared soul bond, Kale felt a wave of unbridled panic and grief that threatened to snap his own tenuous grip on reality.
Neo nudged his charred shoulder, its six golden eyes reflecting the absolute horror of losing the person who had manifested its existence.
Kale had no lungs left to speak, his vocal cords nothing but scorched silk, yet he forced the command through their spiritual bond with the weight of absolute authority.
He drew upon the remaining strength in his body, a minuscule pool of energy that was being devoured by the environmental furnace.
"Go into the core of the creature", he ordered, his mental voice sharp despite the suffering. "Only you can kill it. You must kill it from the inside."
At the same time, he addressed the mechanical entity that lived within his neural pathways. He commanded the system to utilise the power of the core he had just stored to protect his broken frame and place him into a state of terminal hibernation.
Furthermore, he demanded that a portion of that energy be diverted to empower Neo, to give his beast the strength to survive the leviathan’s internal biology.
The system processed the command with its usual clinical detachment, but the blue windows that flickered across his scorched retinas delivered a blow to his analytical expectations.
[WARNING: CORE EVALUATION COMPLETED]
[THE OBJECT IS NOT A MYTHICAL BEAST CORE]
[SIGNATURE IDENTIFIED: CORE OF AN APEX RANK BEAST]
Kale’s mind, even in its shattered state, felt a flicker of mirthless amusement. He had gambled his life for a mythical treasure, only to find that it was merely equivalent to an Apex rank beast core.
However, the system added a secondary prompt, explaining that while the rank was lower than anticipated, the flame elemental essence within the object was unusually pure, refined by thousands of years of proximity to a mythical will.
[SYSTEM VERDICT: TO ACTIVATE THE PROTECTIVE BARRIER AND INITIATE SPECIMEN EMPOWERMENT, TWO THIRDS OF THE TOTAL CORE ENERGY WILL BE EXPENDED]
Kale agreed without a moment of hesitation. He had built his monster from a million failures, and he would not let a lack of resources be the end of their journey.
The trade was finalised. Neo watched with a desperate, lingering gaze as a shimmering, translucent protective barrier manifested around his master. The barrier pulsed with a rhythmic green light, acting as a specialised filter for the corrosive gastric juices and the scorching heat.
As the system initiated the slumbering state, Kale felt the agony recede, replaced by a cold, creeping dread that felt like a slow biological corrosion. His consciousness slipped into the dark, leaving Neo alone in the fire.
The hydra was only vaguely aware of the system’s existence, yet it could always feel something foreign attached to the soul of its master.
It was something alien, something that didn’t belong to the world will of Nergal, yet it was the source of the power that had saved them countless times.
Neo’s six golden eyes flashed as a voice rang in its four brains, a frequency that carried the inexhaustible power of the Apex core. A burst of pure flame essence seeped through its bones, turning its green blood into liquid starlight.
The transformation was violent. Neo’s small, palm-sized frame shuddered as its muscles and skeletal structure were rewritten by the concentrated energy.
The hydra expanded rapidly, its body stretching until it reached the size of a large dog. Its draconic features grew much more threatening, with the long necks thickening and the claws turning into hooked obsidian talons.
The system notifications, invisible to the sleeping Kale, recorded the breakthrough.
[THE NEMESIS HYDRA HAS ADVANCED TO ALPHA RANK]
[FIRE AFFINITY INCREASED: 60% TO 70%]
[SKILL EVOLUTION: FLAME ABSORPTION HAS EVOLVED INTO FLAME DEVOUR]
A layer of intense orange energy appeared all around Neo, providing an almost absolute type of immunity against the scorching flames that ran through the leviathan’s stomach.
No longer just absorbing the heat to replenish its reserves, Neo was now a predator that sought to consume the very environment that tried to kill it.
The hydra flapped its powerful wings, the sound like a cracking whip in the viscous medium, and began its journey toward the creature’s heart.
The internal geography of the leviathan was a labyrinth of pulsing veins and cooling stone ridges.
Neo faced countless dangers as it swam through the rivers of magma that served as the beast’s blood. The system, operating on a secondary subroutine to guide the specimen, cautioned the hydra that the leviathan was likely the manifestation of the remnant will of the Mythical Flame Salamander.
It was an entity that should have already passed away, yet it clung to reality with terrifying tenacity, and it would try its best to eliminate Neo.
To the leviathan, the hydra was a virus, a threat that needed to be deleted, because anything else devoured by the creature would have been dead instantly.
When Neo finally reached the central chamber, it saw the grotesque fiery heart of the leviathan. It was a sun of cooling stone and pulsing muscle, a magnificent sphere of incandescent energy that radiated a brilliant orange light.
But the heart was not unguarded. There were almost hundreds of parasitic creatures swarming the chamber, entities that looked like needle-shaped golden fish but had grown to the size of wolves.
These were peak Ravager-rank creatures, predators of the flame that lived within the leviathan’s biology.
Neo was not afraid. Its powers had grown exponentially due to the increase in its rank and the influx of the Apex core’s energy. As the swarm of parasites lunged with mandibles made of obsidian and stingers of liquid fire, Neo activated its new Flame Devour ability.
The scary offensive might of these creatures, which would have incinerated even High-Lord in this environment, was almost useless against the hydra.
Every blast of fire they hurled was simply sucked into Neo’s scales, converted into raw beast force that fueled its own counterattack.
With scary efficiency, Neo began the slaughter. It was no longer a terrestrial predator struggling with its grounding; it was an aerial monarch of the flame.
Its three heads snapped independently, cracking the obsidian carapaces of the parasites and tearing through their mana circuits with draconic strength.
Neo moved with a speed that left trails of green starlight in the orange air, its movements fluid and precise. The Ravager-rank creatures, lords of the shadows in any other context, were treated like cattle in a slaughterhouse.
But Neo did not devour them. Its hunger was directed at something much greater, something that pulsed with the absolute purest flame essence it had ever encountered.
Its six monstrous eyes went to the massive heart of the leviathan. The hydra landed on the pulsing organ, its claws digging deep into the cooling stone ridges that served as the heart’s protective shell.
The remnant will of the mythical salamander screamed in Neo’s mind, a psychic frequency that sought to crush its spirit into the dirt. But the hydra’s mental bastion trait held firm, its draconic pride acting as an anchor against the pressure of the dying monarchy.
Neo unhinged all three of its maws simultaneously, the jaws widening with wet clicks to accommodate the high-density biological material.
The hydra started to devour the heart. With every bite, it tore away chunks of the incandescent muscle, swallowing the concentrated essence of a mythical legacy.
The energy was so refined it felt cool against its senses, a contrast to the corrosive fire of the stomach.
As Neo consumed the core of the leviathan, the green patterns on its scales began to glow with a brilliant, blinding light, and the biological discord within its frame reached a new climax.
The monster was evolving once again, feeding on the very engine of its predator’s life.