CHAPTER 346: FIGHT AMID THE FOREST

Fight amid the forest

The sun had ascended to its pitiless throne, a burning eye of molten fire at the heart of the heavens. Its radiance fell in waves of liquid gold, drenching the world with a light that blinded the eye and seared the flesh. Heat shimmered off the ground, curving the air like twisted glass just from the furnace. Afternoon in the Moonstone Kingdom was no soft, yielding thing—it was crucible, fierce and relentless, but lovely in its ferocity. All blades of grass, all leaves that quivered in the glare, were trapped within that fierce radiance, as though the world had been contained within a furnace.

Far to the west, beyond the villages and worn stone roads, beyond the rolling valleys where fields surrendered to wildness, the big forest lay like an infinite sea congealed in green. Its canopy lifted dense and high, a wall of leaves that consumed the sun’s wrath. Shafts of light flickered through in infrequent slivers, piercing downward in golden beams that transformed the floating motes of pollen into falling stars. The earth beneath was an ever-shifting tapestry of shadow and radiance, alive with the fluttering beat of concealed wings and the low rumblings of unseen creatures. And the farther one descended, the more heavily silence pressed in—dense and ancient until it shattered with a lone, thunderous cry.

A bellow shattered the silence.

It was no ordinary beast’s cry, no transient creature interrupted in its lair. It was the roar of something titanic, a voice unearthed from the very depths of earth itself—ancient, raging, immense. The forest trembled beneath the pressure of it, leaves shaking loose from branches in a hail of green. And then an echo. A second roar, harsher, more raw—so primitive it appeared to gnaw through bone. The canopy above burst, birds frantically taking flight, their wings flapping against the sky like a tempest of feathers.

And then the forest floor became a battleground.

The air reverberated with the power of impact—metallic crashes echoing like the clashing of unseen swords, snarls and guttural roars ripping through the darkness. Ancient roots creaked under duress, shaking as if the earth itself were being compelled to recall wars it had long forgotten. The smell of iron and smoke hung in the air, biting and choking, as if concealed blades grated against the land’s marrow.

BOOOM!

The sound explosion tore the silence apart. A roar followed, savage and guttural, so deep it shook the ground below. There was another one immediately afterward—louder, heavier—such as molten iron crashing against solid stone.

Behind the dense thicket, the pandemonium came into sight at last.

A solitary form huddled low among the bushes, his muscles stiff with control. Each muscle was coiled tight, every move sharp and slick with precision and deadly quiet. His eyes were focused ahead, unflinching, trained on the storm of combat unfolding in the clearing.

Two giants stood opposed. Not the sort men spoke of in bars, nor the sort decorated in overblown hunting legends. These were monsters from myth, beasts whose names were etched on the very marrow of the land they had taken over.

The first was flesh given fire.

The Red Devil Elephant stood like a walking fortress, its massive body covered in a hide of obsidian-black armor, seamed with radiant fault lines of magma. Under that hide foamed the rage of a dying star, molten veins pulsating with volcanic life. Five gargantuan heads topped its body, each bellowing fury, tusks jagged and smoking, sharp enough to cleave mountains. Heat radiated off it in waves, fire climbing and crackling over its mass until the creature itself appeared to be a rolling furnace—a fiendish center of flame, bringing ruin with every stride.

Across from it towered its adversary.

The Blue Fist Ape faced the fire like a warlord sculpted from the lower depths of ocean. Its night-blue coat glimmered with an unnatural, wet sheen, glittering as if moon-moistened. Each breath it drew sent mist winding into the air, hissing where the foe’s fire met the cold damp atmosphere issuing from its skin. Its arms were huge, long and thick enough to shatter oaks with a desultory swing. Its fists dangled like boulders carved for devastation, bulbous with raw destructive potential.

But it wasn’t sheer strength that the creature instilled with terror. Its eyes had something more—animal intelligence honed by instinct, cold burning certainty in the eyes of a predator who knew patience as well as strength. Every movement weighed heavy with purpose, the beat of a veteran pugilist who lived and killed with his fists.

It was no common creature. It was vengeance taken flesh—an ocean’s fury woven into flesh and bone, a storm that rose to fight against fire’s unyielding wrath. Every motion was violence hewn by water’s fury, every gasp bearing the force of a tide that would drown the world.

And yet, facing such a nightmare, was a man who stood nearly out of place. His smile pulled at the edge of his lip, serene amidst pandemonium, as if enjoying a moment and not getting through it.

His hair, black as the night and silky as smoothed obsidian, received what little light filtered through the flaming canopy. Strands curled with a savage beauty, encasing a face that was beautiful in its severity—not gentle, not merciful, but seized with a sort of fierce energy. His eyes were liquid gold, blazing with a light that was almost as bright as the sun itself, with a killer’s spark that could fell gods and monsters with equal ease. His body was honed like a weapon—wide shoulders, hard muscle sculpted to perfection like a warrior. Each subtle movement of his body was tense, the poised immobility of an animal waiting to pounce.

Leon.

And he smiled there, tension-free. Fearless. Just smiling, as if all of this was just something to him, a glass of good wine placed before him to be sampled.

"Two of you, then?" His voice was deep, even, laced with fire, his golden eyes burning with hunger. "Good. Don’t let me down."

The Red Devil Elephant spoke first. Its five great heads tossed back and let a roar split the woods, a chorus from hell shuddering the air. Flames burst from its trunks in deluges, waves of fire blazing ahead like rivers of hell. The creature charged, every massive step thudding against the ground, its trunks lashing through the air with horrible power. Fire coiled from their tips, giving life to storms of flame in midair that devoured everything in their path. Trees blazed, their bark cracking as they fell into ash. The earth itself seared beneath the heat, burned into a molten battlefield.

Leon moved.

His form dissolved, a line of black and gold against the blaze. His feet ripped through the earth, propelling him forward—not back, but into the gale. He did not flee. He charged headlong, naked hands raised into fists, black sorcery already writhing in heavy darkness around them.

["Dark Fist!"]

The spell burst to life, darkness curling around his knuckles, thick with suffocating weight. He shoved his punch upward, colliding with the charging trunk of the Red Devil Elephant. His fist landed squarely on the middle of its forehead, a savage flash of strength exploding on contact.

BOOM.

The world shattered. The earth cleft open, earth and rock crumbling beneath the impact. Fire and darkness burst in a surge, the blast tearing outward with a shockwave that consumed the clearing. The great elephant reeled backward, its melting tusks scoring deep furrows in the ground as it struggled to stay on its feet. The impact pushed its huge body back a step, its skin shaking, embers bursting from the gash like beads of blood. Its bellow trembled the air, agony and fury contorting into one.