Chapter 48: Two Monsters
The Dragon’s jaw opened.
"Shit—" Alden threw himself backward as a torrent of flames swept the ground where he’d been standing. Heat blasted across his face as he hit the snow and skidded. He caught himself on one hand and pushed back upright immediately.
Glacius moved with him, claws digging into the frozen surface to hold position. Pyrion broke left, vanishing behind a cluster of rocks.
The Thunder Ape didn’t wait. Lightning exploded around its arms as it charged, building pressure with every step, and swung a fist the size of Alden’s whole torso straight at him.
"Already?!" He twisted sideways.
BOOOOM.
The fist hit the ground where he’d been standing and cracked it open, stone and ice erupting in every direction. The shockwave alone knocked him sideways and he had to dig his heels in to stop himself from going completely off his feet.
Glacius read the opening immediately. It planted both feet, dropped its head forward, and opened its jaws.
FWOOSH.
Cyan frostfire poured out in a concentrated stream, cold and blue-white, rolling across the ground toward the Ape.
Alden thrust his palm forward the same instant.
[Breath: Fire — Activated]
Flames erupted from surroundings, a full torrent, crashing into Glacius’s frostfire from the opposite angle.
The two attacks met on either side of the Thunder Ape simultaneously.
BOOOOOOM.
The combined impact folded around the Ape and forced it few meters back, its feet carving deep grooves into the frozen ground before it finally stopped.
Alden’s eyes narrowed.
’It’s still standing?’ He kept the flames going.
’S-Rank strength. Even with both of us hitting it, this is barely slowing it down.’
The Ape’s muscles corded as it pushed through the fire and frostfire, forcing its way forward through the combined attack like it was walking into a strong wind rather than a wall of elemental force.
"You’re kidding me—"
It roared and thrust one fist forward.A compressed burst of lightning shot out like a projectile.
"Glacius!"
The Frost Bear was already moving. It shifted its body between Alden and the incoming blast and took it straight in the chest.
CRACK-BOOOOM.
The impact drove Glacius backward, claws gouging through the frozen ground, leaving four long scratches before it stopped.
It growled. Still upright.
Alden exhaled through his teeth.
’We can’t breathe. Every second one of them is coming at us from a different angle.’
Across the battlefield, Pyrion was doing everything right.
The fire wolf darted between the Dragon’s legs, a white-orange blur moving too fast to track cleanly. It vanished behind the Dragon’s right wing and reappeared on the left side. The Dragon snapped at empty air and caught nothing. Its head tracked left, Pyrion was already right, its head tracked right and Pyrion was gone again.
"Keep it busy!" Alden shouted without taking his eyes off the Thunder Ape.
The Dragon stopped. Its head stilled, eyes tracked Pyrion differently this time.
Alden caught it a half-second too late.
"Pyrion—"
The Dragon’s jaws opened.
The breath attack came out wide, not aimed at where Pyrion was but where it was going to be.
Pyrion twisted midair, changing direction and the flame caught it anyway, clipping it from the side.
BOOM.
The fire wolf launched sideways like a thrown stone, tumbling through the air, landing hard, bouncing once across the snow before rolling to a stop.
"PYRION!" Alden turned towards the fire wolf.
The Thunder Ape read his distraction perfectly. Lightning surged up its legs as it wound its body into a brutal kick aimed straight at Alden’s ribs.
’Predator’s Instinct— Shit! it has Cooldown.’
The foot was already there.
Alden got his arms up—
FWOOSH.
Cyan frostfire hit the Ape’s leg from the side, not enough to stop it but enough to slow it. Ice crawled up the fur. The kick landed with a fraction of its force.
It still launched him sideways. It hit the snow, rolled, came back to It’s feet faster than his body was happy about.
"Nice one, Glacius!"
The Frost Bear stood between him and the Thunder Ape, frostfire still streaming from its jaws, holding the line.
But Alden’s eyes had already moved across the battlefield.
Pyrion was on its side in the snow.
The flames that danced around its ears and tail had gone down to almost nothing. Just tiny flickering points, struggling.
Alden started moving toward it.
WHOOSH.
A wing swept toward him from the right, the Dragon having closed the distance while he wasn’t looking.
He had no time. The wing connected with his stomach.
The air left his body all at once.
He went backward, feet off the ground, and the world rotated once before he hit the snow and kept going, rolling and rolling until he stopped.
He coughed. Pressed one hand to the ground and got up and moved to Pyrion.
He dropped to one knee beside the fire wolf, close enough to feel what little heat remained.
"Hey, buddy." He put his hand gently against its side. "You okay?"
Pyrion made a sound. Like something running at a fraction of what it was built for.
It pushed itself up slowly and pressed its head against Alden’s shoulder.
Alden’s jaw tightened.
Then, black smoke seeped from his palm.
He stared at his hand.
’What?’
The smoke wasn’t coming from Pyrion. It was coming from him, moving outward from his skin and flowing into the wolf’s body.
A screen materialized.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Soul Healing Activated]
Beast: Firewolf — Pyrion
HP: 27 → 42 → 60 → 84 → 99 → 100/100
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The flames came back all at once.
FWOOSH!
The fire at Pyrion’s ears shot back to full. The tail blazed. The wolf sprang onto all four legs.
"AWOOOO!"
Alden sat back on his heels and stared at his own hand.
’They heal just from contact with me? The forged souls are connected to me?’
’There are still things about Soul Forge which I don’t know about.’
ROOOOOAR.
The Thunder Ape’s roar pulled him back. He pushed to his feet.
Glacius was already intercepting it.
The Frost Bear dropped its weight low, claws biting into the frozen ground, and took the Ape’s downward fist on crossed arms.
BOOOOM.
The impact drove it back several feet. Its claws left deep grooves in the ice. It didn’t fall.
Frostfire burst from its body as the Ape swung again. Glacius ducked under the punch and drove its shoulder into the Ape’s chest.
The Thunder Ape staggered backward.
Glacius didn’t let it reset. One paw hit its stomach. Then the other. Then it pressed its jaws close and released a point-blank stream of frostfire with no distance between them at all.
BOOOOM.
The Ape went down. It crashed through the snow in a heavy rolling slide before stopping.
Glacius stood in the silence after the impact. Its breathing had gone heavy. Its frostfire had dimmed slightly at the edges.
Alden checked.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Name: Glacius
HP: 63/100
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
He crossed the distance and pressed his hand flat against its massive side.
The black smoke flowed again.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Soul Healing Activated]
HP: 63 → 79 → 92 → 100/100
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The moment it finished, frost cracked outward from Glacius’s feet in a ring, ice spreading across the ground beneath it. The frostfire at its neck and shoulders burned back to full intensity. Its breathing steadied.
Alden pulled his hand away. "Good job."
He hadn’t even finished the sentence.
WHOOOOOOSH.
A violent gust tore across the entire slope. It came fast and hit hard that Alden’s clothes snapped backward, snow and loose rock launched into the air around him, and he had to plant his feet just to stay where he was.
He looked up.
The Dragon had spread its wings completely.
One powerful downbeat sent another wave of force across the battlefield, and Alden had maybe a second before the next one.
’This Dragon is so damn annoying! First we have to deal with the Thunder Ape, then this thing comes after us!’ His eyes darted between the two monsters.
’If we focus on the Dragon, the Ape attacks us. If we deal with the Ape, the Dragon attacks us.’
’And fighting both at once is—’
KRAAAAAACK.
The sound came from Glacius.
Alden turned.
The Frost Bear had stepped in front of him and Pyrion. Its eyes were forward.
Ice erupted from the ground in front of it into a wall. A full crystalline barrier rising fast, thick and translucent, the cyan frostfire running through it in veins of color, three meters high and still growing.
The Dragon’s wind hit it.
BOOOOOOM.
The wall shook. Cracks spread across the surface in spiderweb patterns as the full force of the gust slammed against it. Snow exploded around the edges. The frozen ground shook.
But the wall held.
Alden stood behind it, Pyrion at his side, and stared at the back of the enormous dark-furred bear in front of them holding them safe.