"That''s a Corpsefiend Dracolisk born right here in the Godgrave Mountains!" Luther breathed, excitement cutting through his whisper.
He added under his breath, "Years of drinking in death energy and ancient wraiths have mutated it. Its strength rivals High Immortal Realm Level Six, and that hide is nearly imprable."
The monster caught the scent of living flesh.
Slowly its massive head lifted, crimson pupils locking onto the two intruders while fresh saliva fell in thicker ropes.
"It''s guarding something," Jared said, voice low but certain.
His stare fixed beneath the statue''s base where a pinprick of ghostly light flickered
like an eye.
Luther followed the look and nearly vibrated. "A Ghost n relic, maybe! Mr. Jared, if we "
He never finished. The Corpsefiend Dracolisk lunged.
For all its bulk it moved like an arrow, dark-red scales blurring as it tore across several dozen feet in a heartbeat.
The tail-bristling with bone spikes-whipped sideways like a siege ram, the air itself screaming at its passage.
"Back!" Jared barked, yanking Luther into sudden retreat.
Both men shed rearward, feet barely skimming the dusty floor.
Boom! The tail smashed the spot they had upied, sting a crater and hurling shards of stone in every direction.
The massive tail mmed the spot where they had stood, blowing a deep pit into the floor and spraying stone shards.
The violent shockwave made the whole stone hall tremble; dust sifted down in sheets.
Thwarted, the Corpsefiend Dracolisk grew even more frenzied; it threw its jaws wide and spewed a dark-red breath of death.
Where that breath swept, even space itself corroded, webbed with fine ck cracks.
Jared''s gaze tightened; instead of dodging, he nted his feet, lifted his palm, and shoved the air ahead.
Chaotic force burst from that hand, swirling into a broad gray shield that locked itself in front of him.
The shield hissed, a sharp "tss-tss-tss" ripping through the hall.
The dracolisk''s death breath hammered the barrier, throwing off a shrill, corroding screech.
Breath that could chew through steel met the chaotic shield and unraveled, its toxic haze shredded and swallowed in a blink.
The Corpsefiend Dracolisk''s crimson eyes flickered with confusion, unable to grasp why its breath had failed.
Yet it did not hesitate; the hulking body lunged again, ws, bone spines, and that wrecking-ball tail sweeping toward Jared in one murderous surge.
"Luther, get the relic. I''ll handle the beast."
Speaking with the same calm, he flickered forward and met the dracolisk head-on.
Luther, trusting Jared''s strength, spared no words; his form dissolved into a ribbon of ck smoke that slid toward the statue''s base.
The dracolisk spotted the intruder near its prize and exploded in fresh rage, beginning to pivot-yet Jared was already in its face.
"Your fight is with me."
Jared said it without heat; his right hand formed two straightened fingers, chaotic force gathering as he stabbed at the dracolisk''s brow.
The strike looked almost casual, yet it carried the annihting edge of chaotic force and shed out faster than lightning.
Instinct screamed; the dracolisk jerked its skull off-line and swung a forew down toward Jared in the same breath.
A wet pop split the air.
The Chaos Shatterfinger skimmed the beast''s scalp, carving a deep trough through its hardened scales; gray energy clung to the wound like a cancer and burrowed inward.
The monster roared, the sound shaking old stone.
Pain spurred it; the descending w snapped forward harder, faster, the roar deafening.
Jared held his ground; his left hand balled up, swathed in swirling gray, and he drove the fist straight ahead.
Fist hammered w.
Boom thundered through the chamber.
The impact birthed a savage st that spider-webbed the floor and peeled huge swaths of mural from the shaking walls.
Jared wavered and stepped back three paces.
The dracolisk screamed; the struck forew now sported shattered scales, drippin blood, even cracks along the bone.
Jared''s brow drew tight; for a creature sitting at High Immortal Realm Level Six, its raw power was outrageous.
Any ordinary cultivator of Level Six would have been blown to ash by that punch. Terror finally surfaced in the dracolisk''s eyes.
The hulking creature stared, as though just now recognizing the horrifying strength packed inside the small human frame.
And that gray force-able to slice through the defenses it had always trusted-only deepened the shock stamped across its face.
In that sliver of hesitation, Jared moved.
This time he held nothing back.
"Chaos—Hellbind!" he called, voice low and steady.
His hands snapped through a seal; chaotic force boiled off him and spun into countless gray chains that whipped toward the dracolisk like living serpents.
The dracolisk thrashed, yet the moment the first chain touched scale it cinched tight, drinking both the death aura and the thin spark of life inside.
The harder it fought, the tighter the drew and the faster the draining went.
Within a handful of breaths its struggles faded, aura copsing, the feral light in its eyes guttering out.
Jared stepped up to the hulking form, gaze void of pity.
"Feeding on stray souls and death mist is your nature. Attacking us was your mistake."
He said it evenly, pressing a palm to the dracolisk''s brow. "Your power now belongs to me."
The chaotic force poured through the open wound, dragging swirling motes of gray light into the beast''s core.
The Corpsefiend Dracolisk jerked once, scales scraping stone, and loosed a final, furious scream that rattled the cracked pirs around it.
That roar died as its hide sank against bone. Muscles copsed, joints shriveled, and the whole hulking frame crumbled like sun-dried y.
Momentster only drifting ash remained, save a dark-red core the size of a fist and a single unbroken length of spine, hard as iron.
Jared swept the core and the spine into a prepared jade pouch.
To a craftsman, both pieces were rare steel and furnace-grade fuel; to an alchemist, they were heatless embers ready to refine pills that bent life and death.
Across the broken floor Luther rose from the statue''s base, fingers curled around a dim, greenish glow. He had pried it loose while the dracolisk died.
The object he carried fit easily in one palm. It was pitch-ck metal, roughly rectangr, its outline echoing an ancientmand token.
Dense Ghost n runes covered every inch of that metal face. Several corners had chipped away, yet a cold,her aura still seeped from the grooves and lingered around the edges
"This... a fragment of the Ghost King Token!"
Luther''s hands shook hard enough
to scatter dust. "With a full Ghost King Token one can summon Ghost ndegions or unlock sealed domains Even a fragment is worth whole cities!"
Jared epted the shard. Cold seeped through his sleeve. Inside the metal, pureher aura pulsed once and brushed against the storm of chaotic force sleeping in his
veins. .