Chapter 1282: Taming the Old World - Shadow Dragons - Last Front - 7

Ren had just arrived at the city, and the flying distance for helping the south would take him almost an extra hour. Sadly, there would be no last second heroes this time.

But Sirius was no longer just an exhausted soldier throwing desperate scratches…

He was a master of darkness, temporarily fueled by the very corruption trying to kill him, and the Diamond mutant was about to experience that difference firsthand.

"Hold the line, Liu!" Sirius yelled, descending upon the beast with a flurry of claws woven from a now purplish light and deep black shadows. "Do not let it eat you from the inside! You already know how to fight this!"

Sharing the horrific burden was exactly what Liu needed. The concentrated venom threatening to shatter his sanity was effectively halved. With the internal pressure drastically reduced, Liu regained the clarity that the dark energy had been stealing from him.

The reckless maneuver also yielded a surprisingly lethal side effect…

With the corrupted ether pumping through his own veins, Sirius was hitting noticeably harder. Handled with iron-clad control, the poison that was supposed to cripple them became a raw amplifier for his strikes.

Liu's breathing steadied as his mind cleared. He looked at Sirius, awestruck that the older man had willingly infected himself just to share the load. Then, his thoughts drifted to Ren. His friend carried an ocean of this exact corruption every single time without uttering that many complaints, no matter how much it burned.

And if also Sirius could weaponize the pain, if Ren could live with it, then Liu could certainly fight through it too.

The two warriors launched themselves at the Diamond behemoth in perfect synchrony.

It was no longer a solo, desperate retreat… It was a coordinated execution.

Sirius jumped with the terrifying speed of a man wielding a shadow elemental ring, his strikes carrying an extra fifty percent output, his light claws rendered heavy and brutal by the lingering corruption in his blood. Liu anchored the assault in his blood wendigo form, his mind crystal clear. He unleashed devastating sonic howls that rippled through the air, vibrating the mutant's carapace until the armor splintered from the inside out.

Their synergy was flawless. Liu would unleash a deafening roar, the sheer acoustic pressure fracturing the Diamond's outer shell and creating deep, jagged fissures. Sirius would instantly blink through the shadows, materializing right beside the newly opened cracks to sink his glowing claws deep into the unprotected flesh, carving significantly deeper than he ever could have managed alone. One strike perfectly paved the way for the next.

The Diamond mutant desperately tried to heal, but for the first time since it had crawled out of the dark, its regeneration was simply not fast enough to save it. It roared and charged, attempting to crush them against the tunnel walls.

Liu launched himself upward, also kicking off the rough crystal ceiling. From that elevated angle, he unleashed a concentrated sonic howl directly at the monster's back. The acoustic pressure acted like a blade, carving a deep, jagged fissure straight down the creature's loin side.

Sirius seized the small fleeting window. He shadow-jumped directly onto the beast's back with his hands coated in the dense darkness provided by the shadow sovereign ring.

He plunged his claws deep into the fresh fissure and instead of retracting them for a second strike, he anchored his grip and forced his arms apart. Empowered by the artifact, he physically pried the corrupted flesh wider, tearing the armor open to expose the most vulnerable organs and systems underneath.

The mutant thrashed, desperately trying to dislodge him and force the wound shut.

"NOW, LIU!" Sirius commanded with a roar.

Liu plummeted from the ceiling like a meteor woven from blood and shadow. He landed with his full power, blood cutting directly onto the gaping wound Sirius was holding apart. And at point-blank range, Liu also fired one final, devastating howl straight down into the beast's exposed viscera.

The sonic wave bypassed the external armor entirely thanks to their strategy and detonated inside the creature's body.

The Diamond mutant ruptured from the inside out… A beast of that caliber did not die a clean death. The internal acoustic detonation, magnified by their combined fusion output, shredded its central systems and tore its massive frame apart but it still trashed wildly for a while. Until it collapsed into the center of the corridor in a heap of convulsing muscle.

That victory was huge but immediately presented a new logistical nightmare.

The Diamond mutant was colossal. Dead or dying, its massive bulk now served as a physical plug of rotting meat completely barricading the path back to the exit.

"We have to follow this trench and cut it fully in half," Sirius panted, his chest heaving. "We cannot go around. The trial chamber gave us room to maneuver, but this tunnel is too narrow. That massive tail of this carcass fills the entire passage for many meters."

They had no choice but to push through... Exhausted and running on the last fumes of their ether, the two commanders set to work butchering the corpse.

Liu used short, controlled bursts of sound to blast craters into the dead flesh. Sirius wielded blades of light and shadow, slicing through thick muscle and dense exoskeleton, physically clearing a crawlspace through the mass. It was a vile, gruesome task completely devoid of martial elegance.

They were just two exhausted men desperately tunneling through over three hundred tons of corrupted meat to reach the other side.

By the time they finally breached the far end of the carcass, they were drenched in dark blood and bits of unknown origin, their mana cores practically scraping the bottom.

♢♢♢♢

Breaching the blockage had brought a wave of dread... They had fully expected to find the rest of the horde waiting for them just there.

"We are not going to have the energy for much more of this," Sirius murmured, his breathing ragged. "If the rest of the tunnel is packed with mutants like I suspect, we die here… Sorry boy, I can not lie to you, we need a miracle. If even one more Diamond rank mutant forms, it is over for us."

But they had to try...

They cautiously pushed into the final stretch of the meat corridor, bracing themselves for a wall of teeth.

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