A low, guttural hiss rolled across the wasteland.
Scythe-Bone King lowered its body, pupils contracting into narrow slits as it stared up at Miraluz.
Even as the undisputed overlord of the First Layer of the Inner Earth and the king of the Skeleton Lizard clans, the creature felt something it had not felt in centuries.
Threat.
Miraluz hovered above the cracked ground, silver-white wings pulling the storm around him in a slow spiral.
The air thinned, the pressure grew heavy, and arcs of golden lightning danced across his scales.
He didn't roar.
He didn't boast. His presence alone made the air vibrate.
The Skeleton Lizard struck first.
With a sharp crack, the bone spines along its back snapped loose, transforming into javelin-like projectiles that fired upward like bullets.
"Tch."
Miraluz's form blurred. A silver comet streaked through the air, slipping between the hurtling bone javelins with impossible precision.
The spikes slammed into the ground behind him.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Each impact carving deep tunnels into the earth, pulverizing stone into dust.
Even an Alpha-class Titan would have been shredded by that barrage.
Miraluz twisted through the air, wings folding sharply as the next volley fired.
A machine-gun burst of bone spurs tore upward from the Scythe-Bone King's spine.
Hundreds of projectiles. Faster and denser than before.
From the ground below, a smaller Skeleton Lizard watched its king's attack and trembled.
Miraluz dropped low, swept sideways, then shot upward again.
The bone shots rained past him like a storm of white meteors.
The king hissed furiously, tail slamming the earth.
"HISSSSS!!"
Miraluz let out a dry, amused snort.
"If that's all, this will be quick."
He stopped dodging.
The storm above him instantly condensed, spiraling into a vortex.
A massive thundercloud formed over the Skeleton Lizard.
Crimson lightning gathered, crackling like molten veins running across the sky.
Then Miraluz dropped his wings.
Lightning Judgment.
A pillar of red lightning fell like the fist of a god.
The Skeleton Lizard didn't run.
Instead, its bones shifted with loud cracks as a thick periosteum grew over its body, like armor forged from white steel.
The lightning hit.
KRA-KOOOOOM!
The ground collapsed into a deep crater.
Earth vaporized. Everything within hundreds of meters was scorched black.
Miraluz hovered inside the swirling smoke, watching.
When the dust cleared, the Scythe-Bone King twitched violently, its limbs spasming.
Golden arcs ran across its body.
Blood seeped from under its cracked bone armor.
Its insides were burning.
Yet instead of retreating. It roared louder.
Bones exploded outward as its entire body erupted with new, jagged spines.
They grew from joints, ribs, tail, and neck, turning it into a walking fortress of bone.
More monstrous than before. More feral. A Titan unbent to pain.
Miraluz narrowed his eyes.
"Persistent."
The ground suddenly trembled.
'Something's wrong. Beneath me, multiple signatures. Fast growth. Vertical. They're trying to trap me.'
The earth burst open.
A forest of titanic bone spires, each more than 200 meters tall, shot upward, forming a spiked labyrinth in every direction.
The sheer density made even wind unable to pass through.
The Bone Forest.
It swallowed Miraluz whole.
Dozens of bone spines stabbed toward him from every angle, front, back, below, above.
He didn't panic.
The diamond-hard scales of his Level-4 strengthened body rang like metal as the spikes snapped against them.
Bright cracks. Shattered bone dust.
That was all.
Miraluz exhaled softly.
"If Godzilla or the Supreme MUTOs were here, maybe this trick would threaten them."
He flexed his claws, brushing away a broken bone shard.
"Unfortunately for you it won't work on me."
His wings spread.
He thanked himself for luring the battle far from the main dinosaur forces.
If this attack had erupted near them, hundreds, maybe thousands, would have died instantly.
Below, the Skeleton Lizard's pupils widened in disbelief.
"Hiss…?"
The monster stared at Miraluz standing unharmed inside the spiked labyrinth.
Even its greatest killing technique, its Dance of Bones, had done nothing.
Miraluz descended slowly, wings folding at his sides.
"You fought hard. I'll acknowledge that."
He raised a fist.
"Now survive this, and you may walk away."
The ground shook. Cracks spiraled outward.
Earthquake Wave.
Miraluz's tail slammed into the ground.
RUMBLE
A shockwave exploded outward, devouring the Bone Forest in a single breath.
The massive spires shattered like glass columns crushed by a titan's stomp.
Dust and bone fragments billowed into the sky.
The Scythe-Bone King, directly in front of Miraluz, barely had time to register what had happened.
The periosteum armor cracked.
Then shattered.
Then the shockwave hit its organs.
The Titan king was thrown like a ragdoll, its bones imploding. Internal organs liquefied.
The ground cratered where its body struck.
It twitched once.
And stopped.
Dead.
The mighty Scythe-Bone King, Alpha-class Titan of the Inner Earth's first layer, had fallen to a single decisive strike.
A cold breeze swept across the wasteland.
Miraluz exhaled through his nostrils, a faint glow fading from his claws.
[You hunted a Scythe-Bone King (Titan). Gained 50,000,000 Gene Points.]
Not bad.
[Extractable Gene Detected — "Bone Manipulation: Level 1.]
[Extract?]
Miraluz tilted his head, a faint grin beneath his silver scales.
"A new Titan gene… Not a bad reward."