The revelation of her face sent a shock of cold fury straight to my core. I didn't care if she carried my eyes, my hair, or my features… she was an abomination wearing a mockery of my flesh.
"Shut your mouth!" I roared behind my canvas mask.
I violently kicked off the fractured boulder, launching myself forward with all the physical might I could muster. Closing the distance in a fraction of a second, I leveled the Death Chant Shotgun right at her pulsing chest core and fired multiple shots in rapid succession.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The cavern erupted in crimson fire, but the devastating blood pellets never touched her. Inches from her slime bodysuit, an invisible, translucent shield flared to life, absorbing the kinetic force of every single bullet and dispersing the blood into a harmless red mist.
The girl let out a cruel, melodic laugh, her twin jade-green eyes gleaming with mockery.
"Is that all, winged demon? Your primitive powers will not work on me!"
Before I could chamber another round, her organic bodysuit peeled back from her sternum, exposing her beating biological heart. She didn't even blink as she unleashed a massive, concentrated shockwave of kinetic energy directly at my chest.
The attack was too fast. I couldn't react in time to deploy my wings as a shield. The invisible wall of pressure slammed into me, lifting my body off the ground and sending me flying backward over a massive distance. I crashed violently into the jagged rocky floor of the ravine, rolling through the gold dust until I smashed into a structural pillar.
This time, I suffered major, catastrophic injuries. I coughed up a thick torrent of dark blood, my ribs were shattered, and my vision swam as the agonizing burning sensation of the residual slime acid flared across my newly regenerated skin. Even with Pain Manipulation active, the sheer internal trauma was threatening to short-circuit my nervous system.
The girl slowly glided across the ravine, hovering just above the jagged rocks as she looked down at my broken form.
"Pathetic, It is I, the Guardian of the Ravine. Master called me the ultimate creation and the true offspring to Master. I will use all of my strength to kill everyone who steps into these depths, just to protect my Master!"
As I struggled to push myself up with my lone right hand, my analytical hunter instincts forced their way through the blinding pain. I focused my single jade-green eye on her form, tracking the strange, dense distortion in the air tightly wrapping around her slime bodysuit.
"It wasn't a slime barrier, that was a thick, impenetrable layer of Reinforced Mana." I realized, my blood running cold.
It was a highly advanced, unique Human Skill… an innate magical talent gifted by the gods exclusively to humans at birth. Slimes could mimic magic by consuming people, but they could never naturally cast a pure, soul-bound trait like Reinforced Mana unless the core hosting the parasite was originally human.
Then it all clicked into place. The devastating blast that had caught me earlier wasn't just a monster's kinetic shockwave. She possessed a second innate Human Skill: Explosion Magic. It allowed her to manifest highly volatile, invisible bombs that detonated instantly on impact… dense enough to violently blow human body parts to pieces, yet perfectly calibrated to create a high-concussive explosion. By flawlessly synergizing her biological kinetic shockwaves with her Explosion Magic, she had created a catastrophic, armor-piercing ultimate attack.
She wasn't just a mutant bio slime. She was a former human. She possessed two high-tier, god-given human skills. She had been born right here in these very mines, six years ago, during the catastrophic breach... the exact same time and place my mother was lost.
I stared at her through the shifting, toxic purple mist, my heart hammering violently against my fractured ribs as the horrifying, unthinkable truth began to piece itself together in my mind. She wasn't just a random guardian. She was born from the abyss, wearing my face, carrying my bloodline, and wielding the stolen gifts of humanity to protect the monster that started it all.
I dragged myself up from the debris, my boots sliding in the spilled kerosene and mining tar painting the gold-dusted floor. My fractured ribs grated against each other, but the cold, chaotic fire in my chest burned past the physical trauma. I glared at the girl through my lone jade-green eye. Beneath my canvas mask, I began muttering a low, gravelly chant, my non-existent tongue making the words sound like the dark, rhythmic growl of a feral beast.
Seeing me rise, the girl's elegant face contorted into a sneer. She began hurling cruel, venomous taunts at me, her voice echoing off the ravine walls.
"Look at you, broken and pathetic! You are nothing but a defective beast. Give up, winged demon! Your mother abandoned you to the dark, and you will die in it just like she did!"
A white-hot wave of absolute fury snapped the final thread of my restraint. I clenched my fangs so hard I could taste copper, my jaw locking into a silent, murderous snarl.
"I am not dying here." I thought
I violently channeled my volatile blood magic. A massive surge of my own life force erupted from my left shoulder, instantly hardening and molding into a jagged, gleaming prosthetic arm of crystallized blood. Without pausing, I extended the fingers of that crimson arm, lengthening the blood manipulation until it formed a heavy, razor-sharp blood sword. In my right hand, I raised the Death Chant Shotgun, focusing my mana into the stock until the silver runes flared a blinding, hungry red. The internal mag-tube clicked, fully reloaded with eight armor-piercing, defense-reduction blood shells.
With a deafening roar, I snapped my massive, blood-red wings outward and launched myself off the ledge, charging straight across the yawning ravine at the girl.
The Guardian of the Ravine reacted instantly. Her twin jade-green eyes flared with malice as her translucent bodysuit peeled away from her sternum, exposing her beating biological heart. She didn't just fire one blast… she began frantically spamming her ultimate attack, rapidly synergizing her biological kinetic shockwaves with her high-density Explosion Magic.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
A rapid-fire barrage of invisible, highly volatile explosive bombs tore through the cavern air, detonating all around me. I swerved and dove through the colorful, toxic fog of the ravine, utilizing every ounce of my aerial agility to weave through the strobing shockwaves. The concussive heat singed my feathers, but I kept my trajectory locked dead on her.
The moment I reached striking distance, I unleashed a devastating, simultaneous assault.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
I fired three consecutive shots from the Death Chant Shotgun, the defense-reduction blood pellets screaming through the air to shatter her outer defenses. At the exact same fraction of a second, I brought my left blood sword down in a brutal, sweeping arc, imbuing the blade with the same defense-reduction curse to slice directly into her Reinforced Mana shield.
SHATTER!
The blade hissed violently as it grated against the thick, god-given human barrier. The Reinforced Mana was incredibly strong, absorbing the brunt of the kinetic and magical impact, but I didn't let up. Trusting my hunter instincts, I spun mid-air and repeated the brutal combination two more times, pouring my entire life force into the shotgun blasts and sword strikes.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The invisible shield began to crack, spiderwebbing with fractures under the relentless, armor-piercing pressure.
"Insolent insect!"
The girl shrieked, thoroughly annoyed and enraged that a defective demon was pushing her back. She hurled a barrage of rude, frantic insults at me, her elegant demeanor completely breaking.
"You think you are special? You think those filthy red feathers make you superior?!"
Suddenly, the blue-green bio slime of her organic bodysuit violently expanded, surging outward from her shoulder blades. In a grotesque display of biological mimicry, the slime molded itself into a pair of massive, translucent wings made entirely of pulsing bioluminescent slime.
She hovered in the air, her face twisted in a predatory grin.
"You are not the only one who has wings, you demon!"
With a sudden, powerful snap of her gelatinous wings, she flew straight at me like a bolt of toxic lightning, her hands mutating into massive, calcified slime claws aimed directly at my throat.
The air pressure dropped as she closed the gap, her claws cutting through the mist. Reacting on pure instinct, I tilted my body backward in a mid-air hover, leveled the smoking barrel of my shotgun right at her incoming chest cavity, and emptied the remaining shells of my magazine directly into her face.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The deafening roar of the final shots echoed through the deep ravine, but her calcified, razor-sharp claws were already tearing through the smoke. The tips of her talons ripped directly across my face, slashing through my canvas mask and drawing a spray of hot crimson.
In that split second of chaotic, mid-air combat, my magazine ran dry. Zero rounds. With my left hand holding the blood sword, I had no free hand to rack the slide. Relying on sheer muscle memory, I slammed the pump-handle of the shotgun against my own knee with a brutal, single-handed yank.
Clack-clack.
The weapon greedily drank a fresh surge of my life force, instantly chambering three high-pressure, defense-reduction shells.
I fired them consecutively right into her face at point-blank range.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The explosive blood pellets detonated in a blinding flash of red light, but her shimmering layer of Reinforced Mana flared violently, absorbing the catastrophic impact. Through the smoke, her massive slime claws lunged again, snapping forward to gouge out my remaining sight. I contorted my body mid-air, executing a desperate, high-speed aerial dodge. The sharp tips of her calcified claws whistled past, a mere fraction of an inch away from my lone jade-green eye.
I couldn't pierce her shield from the outside… so I had to blind her.
Clenching my fangs, I channeled a low-tier, rudimentary application of Blood Manipulation. I built up a pressurized surge of raw, volatile blood in my throat and spewed a thick, blinding torrent of crimson directly into her face. Because her Reinforced Mana acted as a solid, physical outer shell, the sticky, heavy blood didn't touch her skin, instead, it splattered flat against the translucent barrier, completely coating her eyes and blocking her vision in a mask of red.
"Ah! You filthy…!" she shrieked, her trajectory faltering as she flew blind.
"This is my chance." I thought
I violently flapped my massive, blood-red wings, cutting through the toxic purple fog of the ravine like a raptor. I slammed my entire body weight directly into her, locking my prosthetic blood arm around her torso. She thrashed furiously, her translucent wings of bioluminescent slime beating against the air, but my S-rank physical strength held her fast.
Using my wings to gather terrifying downward momentum, I drove her straight toward the side of the ravine, angling her body toward a dense cluster of massive, ancient dripstones protruding from the cavern walls like jagged stone spears.
CRASH!!!
We smashed into the first massive stalactite at sixty miles an hour. Her thick layer of Reinforced Mana held, causing the solid rock of the dripstone to violently shatter into a million flying fragments, but the sheer concussive force rattled her core.
I knew I couldn't break a god-given human skill with a single strike, I had to force her to constantly expend her energy until her pool of mana completely depleted.
"Get off me, you defective demon!" she screamed, blindly swinging her claws as the blood on her shield began to slide off.
I ignored her completely. With a savage, unyielding snarl, I beat my wings harder, dragging her down the length of the ravine and forcefully plowing her body through even more dripstones.
CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!
As we rocketed through the jagged stone formations, shattering columns of rock left and right, I raised my left blood sword. Channeling the defense-reduction curse into the crimson blade, I began hacking away at her shield with brutal, relentless strikes. Every swing of my blood sword hissed violently against her Reinforced Mana, carving deep, glowing fractures into her outer defenses and draining her magical reserves by the second.
The constant, overwhelming pressure of the crashing stone and the relentless hacking of my cursed blade finally pushed her to her absolute limit. Her organic slime bodysuit pulsed erratically, and the translucent shield around her began to flicker wildly, thinning out as her energy bottomed out.
"ENOUGH… !" she howled, her elegant voice cracking in pure, frustrated agony as the shield gave a loud, brittle ring.
The Guardian of the Ravine was suffocating under the weight of my assault, and her absolute defense was finally on the verge of shattering.
The momentum shifted with terrifying, unnatural speed.
Driven to absolute desperation as her shield fractured, the girl let out a primal shriek. Her bioluminescent slime wings violently expanded, pulsing with a blinding, toxic light as she unleashed a sudden, catastrophic burst of speed that completely outmatched my own. With a savage twist mid-air, she reversed our positions.
Now, she was the one driving me downward. I hacked frantically at her thinned Reinforced Mana with my blood sword, trying to shatter it before we hit, but she pressed on mercilessly, plowing my body straight into a dense cluster of jagged dripstones.
Seeing the stone spears rushing up to impale me, I reacted on pure, frantic survival instinct. I dissolved my blood sword into a rapid, volatile sphere, manifesting a thick blood bubble around my body to cushion the impending impact.
"CRASH!"
The dripstones shattered against the barrier, but the girl didn't stop.
Seeing the crimson sphere protecting me, her twin jade-green eyes flared with murderous intent. She brought her massive, calcified slime claws down with the full weight of her momentum, using her raw strength to violently shatter the blood bubble I had just made.
The defense failed. Her jagged claws cut through the collapsing crimson mist, piercing straight through my stomach and tearing a catastrophic, horizontal gouge across my entire torso.
The physical trauma was absolute. The brutal slash left my abdominal cavity wide open, leaving my intestines trampled and spilling out of my body onto the cold stone as we hit the ravine floor.
I collapsed into the dust, my massive blood-red wings going completely limp and pooling beneath me. I was about to die at this point. The sheer, overwhelming reality of the damage was too much… my Pain Manipulation began to stutter and fade, unable to cope with the absolute failure of my internal organs. A wave of white-hot, agonizing torment flooded my nervous system, stealing the breath from my lungs.
"I lost." I said through my non-existent tongue
The gold-dusted floor beneath me stained dark crimson with my life force. The girl stood over my broken, unmoving frame, her thinned mana shield flickering as she looked down at me and openly mocked my failure. Her voice echoed elegantly through the colorful fog, but it felt incredibly distant now.
A crushing, suffocating weight settled over my chest. The bitter cold of regret rushed in.
"I failed... I couldn't stop the infection. I couldn't avenge my mother, Linera. And worst of all... I couldn't avenge my unborn baby sister, Evelyn, who had been taken from the world before she ever had a chance to breathe." I thought.
The cold darkness of the abyss was pulling me down, my lone jade-green eye slowly losing its focus.
But just as the shadows encroached and I was about to completely black out, a sudden, bizarre shift happened.
The girl's mocking laughter abruptly died. She froze, her twin jade-green eyes widening to twice their size as a look of absolute, paralyzing shock and horror washed over her facial features. She stared at my pooling blood, or perhaps at something shifting within my dying aura, her mouth hanging open in utter disbelief.
I couldn't understand what she saw. My vision went entirely black, my heart gave one last, heavy shudder against my shattered ribs, and my consciousness slipped into the quiet void.
The winged demon of the Caria Mines was dead.