Chapter 142: Sever
The demon girl’s fingers had already torn into the cliff edge, her claws carving deep grooves through solid rock as she leaned forward over the drop.
Below her, Hajin was sprinting straight into the heart of a collapsing singularity, the monster’s entire mana reserve compressing into a single point that screamed with critical mass.
"Let go," she said, her voice stripped of its usual edge. "He’s running to his death."
The demon boy’s hand clamped around her wrist, absolutely immovable. He didn’t look at her, his gaze fixed on the crater floor where gold and purple light clashed in Hajin’s chains.
"He’s not stupid," the boy said, his tone flat. "If he’s moving in, he has a plan."
"A plan?" She whipped her head around, violet eyes blazing. "That thing is condensing its whole core. The blast will vaporize this entire ruin. He’s one human with a burned-out core, that’s literally suicide."
She twisted against his grip but it didn’t budge.
"I said calm down."
"Don’t tell me to calm down!" Her elbow drove backward toward his ribs with enough force to shatter boulders.
He caught it with his free hand without turning. The impact sent a hairline fracture spiderwebbing through the cliff face behind them.
The playfulness drained from her face, the easy mask she wore cracking and falling away, replaced by something lethal. Dark purple mana began leaking from her pores in thick, violent wisps. The pressure of it pressed against the cliff, cracking the ground under her.
Her canines elongated and her pupils slit into thin vertical lines.
"Let. Me. Go." Each word dropped like a hammer. "Or I swear on the Abyss, I will kill you right here and jump down myself."
The boy’s expression didn’t shift, if anything, his grip tightened, fingers digging into her wrist hard enough to bruise.
"Then you’ll die too and the human dies alone. Is that what you want?"
She bared her teeth, a low growl rumbling in her chest. The bloodlust rolling off her in waves was suffocating, enough to make lesser demons flee on instinct. It promised violence and death but it didn’t move him.
"Three seconds," she whispered, the threat carrying more weight than a scream. "One."
The cliff groaned under her rising mana.
"Two."
Her tail lashed once, the blade tip carving a furrow through solid rock.
"Two and a half."
The boy exhaled slowly, his own mana stirring, a quiet counter-pressure rising to meet hers.
"Look at his chains."
She didn’t look, her eyes stayed locked on his face, burning.
"Look at them."
Something in his tone, quieter and sharper, pierced through the red haze. Her gaze flicked downward for a second.
The chains weren’t just glowing anymore.
The golden links wrapped around Hajin’s forearm were blazing with a searing white edge that cut through the dust and mana-saturated air like a blade through smoke.
The corrupted purple light threaded through the metal wasn’t fighting the gold, it was feeding it, the two energies fused into something she had never seen before.
Down in the crater, Hajin closed the last ten feet in a single desperate lunge.
The singularity in the monster’s chest was screaming, the compressed mana vibrating so violently the air itself was distorting in waves around it.
The beast’s cracked visor locked onto him, its broken jaw splitting open in what might have been a final laugh or a final scream, it was impossible to tell anymore.
He drove the severed edge of the chain directly into the center of the monster’s chest like a spear, the white-hot tip piercing clean through the compressed core.
"Sever," he whispered.
The skill activated instantly, the divine edge cutting through the condensed mana the way a knife cuts through water, splitting the singularity open before it could detonate.
The compressed energy didn’t explode outward, instead it unraveled, the tightly wound mana rapidly bleeding out of the wound in long, wild streams that scattered harmlessly into the air above the ruins.
The monster went rigid, its entire body locking up as the core in its chest was carved apart from the inside. The purple aura around it flickered once, twice, then died completely.
Its legs gave out first, then its arms, followed by its body slowly tipping forward, the cracked visor going dark as the last flicker of light behind it faded. It hit the ground face-first with a heavy, final thud that echoed across the silent crater.
[Gate Boss Eliminated.]
He stood over the body, the chains going limp around his arm as the white glow faded. His legs were shaking so badly he could barely stay upright, his breathing coming out in thin, desperate gasps while fresh blood dripped from his nose and the corners of his mouth.
He stared down at the dead beast for a long, quiet second. Then his knees buckled and he collapsed sideways on the ground.
Up on the ridge, the demon girl’s claws slowly retracted from the stone. Her dark mana receded, the violent pressure dropping as her pupils dilated back to normal. She stood perfectly still, staring at the motionless human lying in the dust next to the dead monster.
"Told you," the boy said, finally releasing her wrist.
She didn’t respond, just kept staring, her expression unreadable as the wind picked up across the silent ruins below.
"Hajin!" Juna yelled, her voice tearing through the ruins as she sprinted toward his collapsed body, her silver wings dissolving into light the moment she moved.
Loccy and Vella were right behind her, completely abandoning the dead monster as they rushed to his side. Loccy dropped to her knees, her hands hovering nervously over him, afraid to touch him, while Vella immediately pressed her glowing palms against his chest to force whatever healing mana she had left into his burned-out core.
Across the crater, behind the safety of the rubble, Helen finally moved.
She vaulted over the broken stone without a second thought, completely ignoring the exhaustion burning through her own legs as she sprinted toward the center of the crater.
The ice armor covering her body had long since shattered, her breathing heavy and ragged, but her eyes were entirely locked on the unmoving Hajin surrounded by his summons.
The Captain stayed where he was, slumped against the remains of a pillar.
He let his head fall back against it, a slow, exhausted smile spreading across his face as he watched Helen sprinting across the crater.
"I thought you hated him," the Captain murmured to himself, closing his eyes as the adrenaline finally started leaving his system. "Look at you now, running towards him."
