Chapter 452: Battle of Life and Death [2]
Blood poured from the wound and from his mouth. His staff threatened to slip from his fingers but he summoned it back to his storage ring.
The spirit leaned close, her face inches from his, a cold smile spreading across her lips.
"You are dead, human. No matter how many times you will revive, I will continue to kill you, over and over again. I will make sure to savor every scream you utter, and every blood you drop."
Moon looked at her calmly, his hands rising to hold the frost sword that remained in his chest. His blood was pooling on the ground beneath him. His vision dimming at the edges.
"I will give you another chance." He coughed, blood spattering across her pale skin. "Surrender and serve me. Or die."
The spirit stared at him. The smile on her face froze.
He was dying on her blade. His heart was punctured. His blood was leaving his body with every beat. And he was still making demands. She couldn’t understand where the confidence of this frenzied beast came from.
"Just where do you get this confidence from?"
"You haven’t answered my question." Moon coughed out more blood, once again. His voice shaking a little near the end of his sentence.
The spirit’s expression darkened. "Never. Now die!"
She twisted the sword in his chest, rupturing his heart, and all the organs nearby.
Moon’s irises shrank, the light in his eyes dimming till they became dark.
[You have died.]
[You have lost 2500 Lives]
His body vanished and spawned in the same spot once more.
"Aah." Moon gasped back to life, his chest whole, the phantom agony of a twisted blade still echoing through his ribs.
The spirit was on him instantly. She knew better than anyone that revival wasn’t invincibility. She had the upper hand, and she would keep it as long as she pressed forward without mercy.
Her sword was already raised. It descended toward his neck like a death sentence being carried out.
Moon didn’t dodge or move. He simply stared at her deep eyes.
"Farewell... ice queen." Moon muttered.
~Whoosh~
The blade cut through the air.
A body hit the ground.
The frozen earth cracked beneath the weight of it. The sound echoed across the empty flatlands, carried by the howling wind, fading into the grey sky above the floating island.
Complete, absolute silence. The wind itself seemed to stop for a moment, as if the island was holding its breath to see whether the body would stand back up again or not.
One figure remained standing. The other lay motionless on the frost-covered ground, eyes open, staring at nothing.
Moon glanced down at the corpse of the pavilion spirit.
She lay at his feet. Her pale skin had lost its luster. The diamond on her forehead was dark, its white flame extinguished for the first time.
Her twin ice swords had shattered into fragments. Surprisingly, not a single wound covered her body, she was completely spotless. Yet, she was dead.
The fury that had burned behind her eyes were gone. What remained was surprise, frozen permanently into her expression.
Moon’s eyes rose from the spirit’s body. Landing on the fox approaching him from the direction of the peak.
Small, battered, limping slightly on its front leg. Between its fangs, crystal shards glinted in the grey sky.
Had the ice queen been alive, the sight would have shattered her more than any attack Moon had landed. The beast that destroyed her core wasn’t the Hydra, wasn’t any of the powerful creatures that had fought openly in her sanctum, neither was it Moon...It was a weak fox she had assumed was already dead.
Moon walked toward it, a soft grin crossing his face.
"I almost thought you might fail." He crouched down and rubbed the fox’s head gently. "I’ve been buying you as much time as I could."
The fox dropped the remaining crystal fragments at Moon’s feet and pressed its head into his palm. It was exhausted. The task had clearly pushed it to its absolute limit.
This fox was the sole survivor among Moon’s peak First Star beasts from the earlier battle inside the pavilion. When Moon had felt the pavilion spirit’s aura approaching the peak, he had issued a single command through their connection—play dead.
The fox was a master at deception. It had dropped to the ground among the other corpses, seized its breathing, suppressed its aura, and gone completely still. When the pavilion spirit arrived and saw the massacre, her attention had been consumed entirely by the human standing over the bodies of her people. She hadn’t spared a second glance at one more dead beast among dozens.
From that moment, every decision Moon made served a single purpose. Keep the spirit’s focus on him.
The taunts. The offers of surrender that he knew she would refuse. The arrogant smile in the face of her fury. The corpses of her kin piled near his feet like a deliberate provocation. All of it was designed to keep her emotions in turmoil, her attention locked on him, her thoughts consumed by the need to kill the human who dared to desecrate her home.
She never looked back at the pavilion. She never considered that one of the dead beasts might not actually be dead. Before following him down, she had made sure that the Hound and the Hydra were not hiding.
Once Moon identified the core’s location beneath the meditation platform, the rest of the plan fell into place. Fight her. Find a way to lure her beyond the revival range. Then, while she chased him down the mountain and across the flatlands, the fox would enter the sanctum, find the core, and destroy it on command.
The command had been complex for a cursed beast. Finding a hidden object and breaking it required more cognitive processing than simple directives like "kill" or "defend." The fox had struggled with it. Nearly half an hour passed before it finally located the core beneath the rubble and crushed it between its jaws.
Half an hour that Moon had to fill by fighting defensively against a Three Star spirit without dying permanently.
Every parry, every retreat, every moment he absorbed her attacks without retaliating had been deliberate. He wasn’t afraid. He was stalling. Buying the fox time, minute by agonizing minute, while praying that the animal would figure out the task before his body gave out.
Of course, Moon had contingency plans if the fox failed. He always did. But in the end, none of them were needed.
The fox had come through.
Moon picked up the crystal fragments and stored them in his ring. They still contained some spiritual energy within them that he could use. He looked back at the body of the pavilion spirit lying on the frozen ground, her diamond’s white flame extinguished, her expression still locked in surprise.
Killing the spirit had granted him an enormous amount of spiritual energy, filling up his sixth acupoint, and increasing the progress of the seventh one by a large margin. The battle had been fruitful and well worth his time.
"You were strong...but not enough." Moon said quietly.
[You have killed the Level 50 Three Star Pavilion Spirit]
[You have gained 600 Lives]
[You have levelled up!]
[Inheritor of Flaws has partially activated]
