Chapter 976: Sealed Spring [Part 5]
Chapter 976 – Sealed Spring [Part 5]
The main Devourer roared.
The chamber shook.
The remaining spawn answered, turning toward Lux at once.
He wanted attention.
Lux straightened slowly.
His white shirt, already torn from root strikes and splashed with dark water, clung to him. His sleeves were rolled, his hair shadowed his eyes, and both daggers hummed in his hands.
He looked like a banker at the end of patience.
"Come on," he said softly.
The spawn surged.
Lux met them halfway.
His fighting style changed.
No longer careful.
Unhinged did not mean reckless.
His madness had structure.
He cut the first spawn’s knee, not to kill, but to make it fall into the path of the one behind it. He drove his other blade into the second’s throat, leaving it stunned and blocking a third. His elbow snapped into a fourth’s cracked mask. His heel crushed a fragment hand reaching for his ankle.
Every critical strike took something.
Blood if there was blood.
Mana if there was mana.
Fortune if there was a fate-thread to bite.
Power if the creature had anything resembling a stat.
[Critical Strike]
[Financial Resource Pool: +Minor]
Lux laughed.
A low sound.
Not happy.
Predatory.
"You’re making deposits."
Gula, while pinning one spawn with her fork-spear, stared at him. "That is the most Greed thing I’ve ever heard!"
Lux ducked under a root whip, spun, and drove both daggers into a spawn’s side. The creature tried to wrap around his arm, roots coiling like snakes. Lux let it.
For one second, everyone thought it had caught him.
Then the black-gold veins of Voracitas spread through the roots.
The creature stiffened.
Lux leaned close to its stone face. "Bad collateral."
He yanked his arm back.
The roots tore free from the creature’s own body, still wrapped around Lux’s forearm like dead vines. He shook them off, then kicked the spawn into Sira’s path.
Sira’s claws ripped it apart with offended elegance. "Send cleaner ones!"
"I’m repossessing, not curating!"
"Do both!"
"Busy!"
Another spawn lunged at Ely from the side.
Lux’s head snapped toward her.
He threw his blade.
The dagger spun across the chamber in a crimson arc and struck the spawn’s shoulder. The creature froze before it could reach Ely.
Lux raised two fingers.
Telekinesis caught the hilt.
The dagger twisted deeper.
The spawn jerked backward like an invisible leash had caught it.
Lux stepped once. Vanished.
He appeared beside it, caught the blade, and slammed another one into its chest.
The core fragment screamed out of the body.
[Spring Core Fragment Seized]
Ely stared at him.
Lux glanced at her.
"Just relax."
He turned away before she could see the relief in his eyes.
The main Devourer dragged itself farther from the broken spring, its massive body swelling and collapsing as the stolen fragments weakened. It realized too late.
The fragments were not only its children.
They were its reserves.
And Lux was stealing them one by one.
"Food..."
The Devourer’s voice changed.
Less hungry.
More angry.
It slammed both arms into the ground.
Roots erupted everywhere.
Not one.
Hundreds.
They burst from the floor, walls, and ceiling, stabbing toward Lux like the grove itself had decided to impale an accountant for tax crimes.
Lux’s eyes sharpened.
The ring on his finger flashed.
[Sovereign Event Horizon Ring: Micro-Dominion Field]
[Localized Spatial Pressure: Active]
Space tightened around him.
A small field.
A bubble of ownership.
The roots entered that space and slowed by a fraction.
A fraction was enough.
Lux moved between them like a blade slipped through falling rain.
He twisted left. A root grazed his shoulder and tore fabric. He ducked right. Another cut through his hair. He stepped on one root as it rose, used it as a platform, then flipped over a cluster that would have skewered his chest.
Midair, he snapped his fingers.
[Telekinesis]
A broken stone slab ripped from the floor and slammed into three roots, pinning them down.
Lux landed on the slab.
Then ran along it.
Toward the Devourer.
The spawn tried to intercept.
He didn’t slow.
The Lust Blade in reverse grip, the greed blade forward.
One slash across the first mask.
Stun.
One stab into the second torso.
Drain.
A knee into the third.
Crack.
A Teleportation through the gap.
Then he was in front of the main Devourer.
Too close.
The massive creature opened its mouth.
The drain hit him like a collapsing vault.
Mana, demonic energy, even the warmth in his limbs, everything tugged toward that hollow mouth.
[Warning: Direct Exposure To Universal Mana Consumption]
[DP Drain: Rapid]
[HP Drain: Minor]
[Recommendation: Retreat]
Lux smiled. "No."
He drove both daggers into the Devourer’s open mouth.
The chamber went silent for half a breath.
Even the creature froze.
Lux leaned in, both hands gripping the hilts. "You opened an account." His eyes glowed black-gold. "I’m closing it."
Voracitas drank.
Euphoria screamed.
Not with sound, but with crimson distortion.
The main Devourer’s hunger collided with Lux’s Greed.
The pull reversed.
For one impossible second, the creature tried to consume him, and Lux tried to collect what it had consumed first.
[Drain Contest Initiated]
[Authority Conflict: Extreme]
[Spring Residue: Reacting]
[Warning: Overload Possible]
Lux’s arms shook.
His boots cracked the stone beneath him.
The Devourer bent over him, enormous and starving, its branch crown scraping the ceiling. Blue-white light surged inside its hollow torso, rushing toward its mouth.
Lux’s teeth bared.
Not a grin.
A snarl.
"Mine."
The word hit the chamber like a seal.
Dark-gold lines burst from Lux’s feet across the stone floor, forming a circular ledger pattern beneath him. Not a spell. More like Greed authority writing itself into the battlefield.
A contract circle without consent.
The spawn around him shrieked.
The stored spring fragments behind Lux pulsed in response.
[Greed Authority Expansion]
[Temporary Claim Established: Repossessed Spring Fragments]
[Dominion Logic: Stolen Assets Must Return To Owner]
[Owner Identification: Pending]
Lux’s eyes flashed. "Ely!"
She stiffened.
"Name the spring!"
"What?"
"Your blood opened it. Your ancestor guarded it. Name it!"