Thousand-Faced Dragon

Chapter 58 Slaying the Beast
When the gray stag appeared before Rean, it meant that regardless of victory or defeat, the war was about to come to an end.

One side is already completely dead.

The original Mary, or rather, a hybrid cloaked in Mary's skin, has vanished completely with the birth of new life.

"Has it already transformed from a single cell into a drop of blood?"

In the ancient Age of Beasts, the Beasts, the Children of the World, roamed the land alone.

Afterwards, perhaps out of loneliness or simply to imitate other creatures, they grew tired of the monotonous life of being alone.

They shared their blood with their followers, forming herds that followed them.

And now, Maria's remains seem to be attempting to revert to their ancestral state? Trying to transform into a member of an ancient beast herd?
The giant deer continued to swell and grow, but the "narrow" cave seemed to limit its further growth. Accompanied by the boiling of beast blood, one by one, the dim yellow eyes of the beast opened.

It began to look at Rean, but with more bewilderment and fearlessness.

It didn't rush to act, just like a well-fed lion that doesn't care about the nearby herd of deer.

Rean shook his head. The beast horde had not recovered. The data clearly stated that "reversion" was impossible in the current era.

The beast factor will naturally perish once it reaches a certain bloodline concentration. The elemental tides of this era are not enough to support the ancient monsters. Perhaps, once the "beasts" truly awaken, it will be a different story.

Experiment No. 113 was merely a shortcut, using multiple fusions to forcibly increase the concentration of beast blood, ultimately recreating some hybrid beasts with ancient beast blood.

As the concentration of beast blood further increased, the original "human" part naturally and completely disappeared.

"Woo woo woo." The monster, no longer Maria, let out a roar similar to that of a deer.

The howl echoed through the cave, and it remembered that it seemed to have been hurt by the little thing in front of it with a toothpick.

Wild beasts are quite vengeful.

Rean simply raised his longsword calmly and switched the "Holy Flame Aura" from burst mode back to normal.

"boom!"

Soon, flames fell from the sky again, hitting the back of its head.

"Snap!" The force wasn't great, but it made the monster instinctively touch its wound and turn its head towards Rean, who seemed to be the attacker.

His eyes were somewhat dazed; how had he been beaten?
"Has your sense of pain returned?"

Rean took a deep breath; it seemed he had no choice but to confront them head-on.

The fool who used to let himself get slowly burned without feeling anything is completely gone.

"May the sacred flame be rekindled."

A ring of fire flashed briefly beneath Rean's feet, but vanished without a trace the next second under his master's control.

However, during this period, it will continue to output damage in a stable but inefficient manner.

The Holy Flame Aura, a third-circle holy spell for paladins, is notoriously useless, yet it was the unsung hero that enabled Rean to win the deathmatch just now.

He awakened this divine spell when he successfully became a knight of oath, which can be considered a "professional perk".

Generally speaking, professions like priests, paladins, and warlocks, which require awakening and enlightenment to master magic, will receive a low-level spell upon successful job selection.

It serves as the beginning of one's career path, a gift from higher beings (bloodline, deities), and also the key and starting point for entering a profession.

Normally, paladins awaken first-circle divine spells, but Oath Knights are actually an advanced class of paladins, and their list of divine spells is much richer.

Just as Dimon awakened a healing ability for minor injuries that even second- or third-tier paladins might not possess, Rean also directly received a third-circle Holy Flame Aura as a bonus.

"Whoosh!" The echo that tore everything apart meant that this attack would be extremely fierce.

Rean, who was prepared, slid to the left, avoiding the sudden claw strike and the ensuing gravitational distortion!
"Boom!"

The gravitational waves, directly pressing down on the earth, shaped a crater!
The offspring of the herd, instinctively wielding their authority.

But being a beast, it doesn't really know how to conceal its abilities.

Rean must be careful; one hit could really be fatal.

We've come this far, we absolutely can't afford to fail.

"Snapped!"

The heavenly fire, which descended once again right on time, dealt another blow to the beast.

It doesn't cause much damage, but it's very insulting. It becomes increasingly irritable, and its attacks become more and more instinctive.

How could Longan miss such an obvious attack trajectory? Wild beasts, following their instincts, are more likely to dodge.

Especially for a complete newborn with absolutely no combat experience, Rean could even know the location of the attack a second in advance.

He always dodged ahead of time; whether it was a bite or a furious claw, it was always a step too late for him.

"Snap!" The sacred flame continued to burn steadily throughout the process.

The Holy Flame Aura doesn't require aiming. When active, it deals extremely low damage to a target within its range at intervals. Yes, extremely low. As a third-circle divine spell, its damage is even less than that of a first-circle spell like Fire Trick.

This is also the reason why ordinary paladins regard it as useless. When a paladin has mastered the third-circle divine spells, who would lack this little bit of damage? Wouldn't Great Evil Slash and Great Holy Slash (here divided into two divine spells) be better?

But in Rean's hands, it was a completely different story.

On one hand, this divine spell can use the caster's fire source to replace the normal holy fire, and Rean used dragon flame as a substitute without hesitation. On the other hand, it is the root cause of the more severe the burns.

[Heart Soul. Wall Breaker (Diamond): Your will is your hammer, infused with your extraordinary ability of will and rage, able to ignore the opponent's defense to a certain extent.]

This seemingly insignificant fire ring has actually been burning Rean's opponents and stacking the Wallbreaker's guard-breaking effect.

Its own damage is very low, but its ability to break through the opponent's defense, similar to the "Armor Erosion Strike" effect, has been constantly piercing through "Maria's" defense.

With each impact, the skin, flesh, and bones become increasingly fragile.

This is also the reason why Rean used to have a hard time cutting off a single bone spur, but later she could easily cut off four or five with a single slash. She had been reduced to negative defense by the slowly outputting Holy Fire Aura!

Using this professional ability, Rean successfully combined his mental abilities with his professional skills to form his own combat system.

"Only an amateur like Maria would consider pain a burden."

Even the beasts before her were getting annoyed by the unavoidable attacks of the sacred fire, yet Maria just kept taking them without feeling anything, which was incredibly foolish and amateurish.

If pain were truly a burden, the human body might have evolved to eliminate it long ago.

Most living things today have the ability to feel pain. This is life's alarm against danger and crisis, and a benign mutation left by the survival of the fittest.

"Dangdang!"

In the next instant, Rean's surprise attack severed one of the Great Horned Deer's large hands.

The monster couldn't understand how that toothpick could do that! What about its own iron-hard skin and muscles?
Rean, however, laughed. "As expected, the defense is still as fragile as paper; the skin and flesh have been burned away."

Reality isn't like the scenes in anime or games, where the protagonist or boss can simply transform and be completely healed or have negative status effects removed—that's just too illogical.

The so-called transformation is nothing more than changing the form of life, but it requires paying a greater price in terms of vitality and energy.

Transformation is often an adjustment of bodily resources under abnormal circumstances. There's no reason for previous injuries and negative states to simply disappear. To put it bluntly, the only thing a magical girl can restore after transforming is her clothes.

This is also the source of Rean's continued confidence in victory.

Even though they have become stronger and larger, and have lost their higher intelligence, these beasts have become more predictable.

Even if the wounds on the body's surface have healed during the physical transformation, the state of "fragile flesh" that penetrates deeper into the essence cannot be eliminated.

On one side, there were heavily armored soldiers and swords; on the other, there was a seemingly massive but fragile target. The balance of power was tilted from the very beginning.

"Broken Sword." At this moment, Rean chose to use the Broken Sword, which could create larger wounds, to attack this excessively large monster.

"Waaaah!" After each strike, the wounds Rean created would spurt out large amounts of blood, along with the impotent rage of the Great Horned Deer.

Rean wasn't in a hurry, and he knew that rushing things wouldn't work.

The speed boots on my feet were a great help. As long as I could steadily avoid the opponent's crucial gravity bursts, this beast was not even as threatening as the previous one.

The cramped cave also restricted the movement of this large monster.

In fact, fate had been quite kind to Rean and his group.

If the battlefield weren't located inside a cave, the gravitational field causing people to "float up and then fall" would be a truly despairing attack.

Rean patiently dealt with the situation, gradually depleting the opponent's life force. Even with accumulated injuries and exhaustion, he remained confident that he would survive to the end.

"Ha, ha." After an unknown amount of time, Rean, holding his sword, was panting, probably having lost his confidence.

Not only were his hands and feet numb, but he also felt that he had lost all feeling in his body. He was bleeding so much that his body temperature dropped, while the other person was still full of energy.

The entire battlefield had turned into a pool of blood, and Rean couldn't even remember how many times he had used the Crushing Sword.

Even with the temporary reserves of holy power at the level of a heroic soul, it felt somewhat unbearable.

Is the vitality of such a monster truly limitless?

“No, it just ate too much.” Rean took a deep breath and rallied.

Life is not without source; a fusion of five or even ten times the size could very well have a similar appetite.

With his terrifying life force reserves and regenerative abilities as a hybrid, Rean's damage alone was still insufficient to deplete his life force. Similar to the battle with Hek, Rean's class level was too low, making it difficult for him to inflict fatal damage on opponents with high life levels.

Rean's strength and injuries have begun to deteriorate below the critical point of life and death. If this continues, it's hard to say who will die first.

"It's about time, it's time to use this."

With a sigh, Rean really didn't want to gamble at all if he could.

He pulled out a small knife, about the length of a pen, which looked like a toy.

The "treasure" that had previously shown no reaction suddenly began to emit a red glow in the face of the monster.

Its activation of the prerequisite for use indicates that it is indeed an excessively powerful demon.

This is a support item sent by Suliman, and also a targeted item sent for this moment.

"Come on. Lex's suicidal blade, find the fatal spot on this creature before me!"

The casually tossed knife paused for a moment, and as Rean's Hero Sword emitted a red light, it suddenly transformed into a long rainbow, piercing towards the giant monster before him.

"Snap!" The blade pierced through flesh and blood, but the giant beast seemed completely oblivious.

In Rean's senses, a skull symbol appeared as the abdomen of a monster.

It was certainly not a name Rean came up with (the Blade of Suicide).

However, the nickname given by Rean is perhaps more fitting than its real full name.

[Lex's Blade of Desperation (Unknown Rating): When facing a monster whose life level is significantly higher than yours, this blade will create a 'weak point' that gathers all of its life force. Destroy it within sixty seconds, and it will suffer a fatal blow. If you fail to destroy the weak point before the time runs out, you die.]

[User prerequisites: A person with the courage to save the world and the ability to fight back in dire straits; both must be possessed simultaneously.]

It is actually a secret treasure used to select heroes.

This seems to be part of the same set as the Sword of the Warrior: one increases the user's strength and luck in dire situations, while the other can deliver a fatal blow that can turn the tide of battle.

In fact, Rean disappointed the princess. If it weren't for certain causes and coincidences, he wouldn't have been qualified to activate this weapon.

But at that moment, Rean also saw the skull that was constantly counting down.

"As expected, the fatal weakness is in that spot." Rean, the user, knew the true nature of this unknown weapon.

The Blade of Despair marks a fatal weakness, but if the opponent is an undead without a fatal weakness, it will forcibly create a weakness and concentrate all its life force on it.

That will be the opponent's weakest point, but it is often also their strongest point.
"It really was that spot, isn't that unexpected?"

The mark of death appears on the lower abdomen of the great deer, where life is conceived.

Maria uses this method to unite individual lives into one, and to purify the beast blood through quantitative transformation.

This is the reason it has evolved to this point, and also its greatest weakness.

Under normal circumstances, even if it were penetrated, it would be meaningless (it could regenerate), but now, that would be the "beast's" death.

The giant beast was a little confused. It sensed the change, felt its life force flowing into its lower abdomen, but it didn't know what this meant.

"Break the evil." Rean didn't wait; he simply swung his sword again.

The beast has become numb to the increasing wounds.

Previously, it was too lazy to even dodge, but this time, it instinctively tried to avoid it, but its reaction was numb, and it was still a step too slow.

After accelerating, Rean completed his thrust, the armor-piercing sword of courage plunging fiercely into the skull mark.

He suddenly swung his sword again, and the shattered holy sword erupted once more from within!

"Boom!"

When the wound is breached, the behemoth's death is imminent.

As Rean slowly sheathed his sword, behind him lay the remains of a colossal beast turning into swirling black ash.

"Rest in peace, former Holy Mother." The drifting black ashes of life became the backdrop for the man's departure.

(End of this chapter)