CHAPTER 129: CHAPTER 129 | TICKING

"Seriously?" Zendrell cracked his neck side to side, a tired look on his face as he stared at the abomination Malgareth had become.

The writhing mass of black flesh and armor snarled at the sound of his voice.

And then—

*ROOOOAAAAARRRR!!!

A guttural cry ripped through the air as Malgareth’s monstrous mouth gaped wide, stretching unnaturally until it looked like it would tear in half.

And from it came a wave of thick, black liquid—like puke—shooting straight into the sky.

The stream hissed and boiled as it climbed upward before reaching its peak.

Then, after just a few seconds—

*Plop... *Plop... *Plop...

it began to fall.

Dark droplets descended like rain, slow at first, then faster.

Each one sizzled and hissed violently upon contact with the earth—

*Zzzshh! *Sssssk!

—melting rock, disintegrating the ground like acid.

But Troy had already moved.

Before the first drop had even fallen, he stepped forward, his eyes focused, calm.

His staff glowed, then spun—

*Whrrrm!

—and slammed into the ground.

A large, dome-shaped dark barrier expanded from the impact, wrapping around the entire group just as the rain began to pour.

*Pshh! *Pshh! *Pshh! *Pshh!

Each drop struck the shield like a hammer, sending subtle ripples outward through the transparent dome.

*Rrrrrip... *Wobble... *Shhhhn!

The dark barrier held strong, absorbing every single drop without fail.

It shimmered with every impact, bending slightly but never breaking.

Zendrell glanced at Troy from the side of his eye and scoffed.

"Good job, bookworm ," he muttered.

Troy didn’t even look back.

The sky above continued to rain down Malgareth’s foul corruption, but inside the barrier—they were safe.

For now.

And then there it was, as if on cue—

Malgareth charged forward.

His sword now grotesquely larger than before, its jagged edge dragging along the shattered ground as his monstrous, writhing body moved like a hulking beast without direction.

There was no more grace in his movement.

No sentience behind his eyes.

No voice.

No mind.

It was as if the man that was once Malgareth had been completely consumed—devoured—by the very eidra injected into him.

So much so that the eidra no longer served him... but turned against him, feeding on his form like a parasite that now moved the host.

Jinn’s mechanical eye flickered.

A faint pulse in its lens.

He narrowed his gaze.

There—deep within Malgareth’s corrupted mass—something was wrong.

Something different.

A strange core-like shape was pulsating violently inside his chest, hidden beneath layers of black flesh and twisted armor.

The pulse was irregular, unstable.

It wasn’t beating like a heart—it was accelerating with each second, vibrating faster and faster, almost like a ticking timebomb.

*Dumm... *Dumm-Dumm... *DumDumDumDum...

Jinn’s eye caught the buildup—eidra was being siphoned, drawn from every inch of Malgareth’s twisted form, rushing toward that central point.

It was subtle at first, but now it was clear.

All of Malgareth’s remaining eidra—his corrupted power, his strength, his very essence—was gathering into one single place.

And it was still growing.

"Something’s building up," Jinn muttered under his breath, eyes glued to the growing mass of concentrated eidra within Malgareth’s body.

It was more than just power.

It was an eruption waiting to happen.

Yet Jinn wasted no time.

He turned his head quickly, calling out to the one person who might already understand what he just saw.

"Hey—Troy," Jinn called, voice urgent. "I think something’s about to erupt from within that guy. It’s like all his eidra’s converging into one place."

Jinn pointed towards the pulsing core inside Malgareth’s chest, his eyes never leaving the grotesque figure.

"I know," Troy responded calmly, his voice steady—like he had known all along.

"I’ve sensed it the moment that thing inside him began to beat faster."

His eyes remained on the battlefield, unfazed by the horror in front of them.

"The fight’s over," Troy said flatly.

"Venedix will handle it herself."

And just as those words left his lips, Venedix stepped forward.

The glaive-like weapon she wielded earlier—no longer in her hands.

It was gone.

In its place, her two original swords had returned, whirring softly, wrapped in steady crimson light.

She didn’t need the glaive anymore.

Not for what stood before her now.

Not for the creature that Malgareth had become.

Both of her swords cracked with raw power.

One surged with the deep, pulsing thrum of crimson eidra—wild and electric, lightning dancing around its frame.

The other hummed with a calm yet overwhelming glow of gold, the color of prime eidra itself, pure and absolute, radiating divine pressure that shook the very air around her.

Venedix exhaled slowly.

She shifted her stance, taking one leg back, lowering her frame as her hands tightened on her hilts.

Her body leaned forward, her hair lifted by the energy coursing off her frame like wind caught in a storm.

And then—silence.

Just a brief moment of stillness.

Her breath held.

*FWOOM!

She launched.

In a blink, the ground cracked beneath her feet as she burst forward with such speed that she became a blur of red and gold, streaks of lightning dancing across the dark void left in her wake.

The air split apart behind her, her swords trailing twin arcs of destruction.

Malgareth let out a roar—a sound befitting a beast.

A guttural scream that echoed from the depth of a broken creature, hollow and distorted.

He lifted his sword, massive and bloated with dark eidra, dragging it clumsily to his side before he heaved it upwards with all the weight he could muster.

But it was slow.

Too slow.

His form had lost all grace, all composure.

His attacks were nothing more than desperate swings from a bloated abomination that barely remembered what it was to be a warrior.

Venedix’s eyes locked on his.

And she didn’t slow.

"This ends now."

Her voice rang out with a finality that cut through the battlefield louder than any thunder.

The final battle—no, the final execution—had begun.

And Malgareth... would finally be silenced.