The appearance of the horrifying monster could not have come at a worse time. Arden and Podren were separated from the girls by a mere door, but it had changed when the cracks ran through the building.

  Arden and Podren also felt the thing out there release its aura, and it slammed into them like a truck. Without hesitation, the pair of them summoned their Satellites and tried to open the door. Arden summoned his Bone Talons and Podren brought forth a scalpel that seemed to vibrate. In the half second before Arden touched the door, the tainted green energy poured into it, cracking it but not completely destroying it.

  Arden found his hand being repelled by the unusual energy, and he was unable to even approach the door. A look to his side saw that Podren was also unable to get through.

  Fear gripped Arden’s heart when he heard what sounded like something crash outside. Sya, Vera, and Cirai were out there, and he was unable to join them.

  Arden punched the air in front of him, trying and failing to break through the strange energy guarding the door. The only thing that broke were his Bone Talons, as several shards of bone fell from his fingers, causing him to pause. Clenching his fist several times, he thought aloud.

  “The Bone Talons were damaged, but they never actually hit anything…they weren't even damaged by the Maverick’s spear…”

  Arden realized what the barrier was immediately after. He turned to the Starborn next to him, hoping that he would be able to help knowing his affinity.

  *****

  “What the hell is that?” Sya asked, notching a rock in her slingshot.

  “It doesn't look like anything from any of the reports,” Cirai answered, bringing up her knife with a trembling hand. “I’m not sensing any essence from this thing either. I’m not sure if we can even call this a Celestial.”

  “Judging from its aura, it seems to be red-tier. Mid rank,” Vera observed.

  With an animalistic howl, the beast lopsidedly charged forward. With its uneven limbs, it came as a surprise that it was even able to move at all, much less at a decent speed. It moved like it had a semblance of humanity, but couldn’t quite actually grasp the subtleties that made the movement fluid.

  With the obvious telegraphing of attacks that came from a mindless beast, it extended one of its elongated arms as it lunged forward.

  Reading the attack, Vera didn’t fall back. Instead she challenged it. With Frozhe’s old Satellite, she swiped upward with the back end of the axe. Trying to cut the hulking monstrosity's mass with a simple axe was a fool's errand, especially when Vera couldn’t infuse her weapon with stellar essence. Trying to smash it would be better.

  When the two connected, there was a sound like a watermelon being smashed, and a spray of red viscera. Vera was pleasantly surprised that the hand of the monster was gone, pulverized by the impact of her axe. Cautioning herself not to get arrogant just from a single hit, she continued. A putrid smell wanted through the air when the blood sprayed against the walls and furniture. Naturally, Sya was the first to take notice.

  “Watch out for its blood!” She called out. “It causes necrosis!”

  The cracks covering the abominations body pulsed with green light, and more cracks rushed through the floor, causing it to break. It immediately followed up with a stomp, sending jagged shards of concrete up all around it.

  It took everything in the girls’ arsenal to not be struck with the many mini meteors. Reacting with extreme speed, they quickly put some of the surviving furniture between themselves and the monster. Sya glanced back at the monster when the attack finished just in time to see its cracked form pulsate again.

  This time, it's target was the couch that she was hiding behind. As she threw herself back from the rapidly decomposing loveseat, she noticed something. Beneath the shifting layers of fractured flesh, she could see it's glowing green core.

  She didn't have time to consider the implications of a green core. Instead, she yelled.

  “Obvious glowing weak spot!” She exclaimed.

  As soon as she said it, she saw it stop glowing. She gnashed her teeth, disappointed that it would be hard to see the core now that it wasn't obvious anymore.

  “Where!?” Cirai yelled, trying to maneuver around the necrotic cracks that ran along the ground.

  Jumping backwards, Sya shot a rock towards the beast, relying on the passive aspect of the slingshot.

  “Right there!”

  The rock flew through the air with nothing to impede it. Cirai was able to see where it hit the monster. The core that Sya shot at was hidden, but if she was to be believed, it was located under the layer of fleshy mass right where all of the cracks intersected on its round pudgy body, slightly lower and to the right of the center.

  Cirai berated herself. She wasn't a good fighter, but she felt that she really should have known that the epicenter of the cracks was a weak spot.

  As Sya said, it was obvious. Not that it being obvious made attacking it any easier.

  When Sya’s rock hit the beast, the rock shattered, doing absolutely no damage to it.

  That didn't stop Vera.

  She was already up close to the monster, and also saw the presumed weak spot of the abomination glowing from when it released the rotting fractures. Getting closer, Vera rushed until she was next to where she saw the core.

  It took one second for her to bury the business end of the axe into the beast's writhing mass. It took half of that time for the monster's arm to regenerate and smash into Vera's side, knocking her away before her attack landed, sending her crashing into a pile of rubble.

  *****

  Arden heard the strike and continued to worry. Unfortunately, he and Podren were still locked behind the door suffused with life energy.

  Arden felt like he was useless here. He couldn't fight the monster attacking the girls, and he couldn't break down the door. He paced back and forth in the infirmary, waiting for an update from Podren who was currently kneeling next to the door.

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  “Strange…” Podren murmured. “The energy infused here is similar to that of life energy. But its so much more than that. So much purer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How do I put this?” Poren said, prodding the door with his aura. “All of us are filled with life energy, and dead things are filled with death energy. But for us, it's not just life energy. There's something else inside. Humanity, a soul, whatever you want to call it. The same goes for every other living thing. But this, it's just pure, refined life energy. It’s like life itself.”

  “Is there a way through it with your healing powers? Can you control it or something?”

  Podren shook his head.

  “Controlling it is out of the question. Only something of a terrifyingly high tier can possibly control life like this.”

  The sounds of fighting continued just beyond the door.

  “Judging by the fact that they’re still fighting, we can rule out a high tier Celestial. This place would have been erased if it was a high tier Celestial,” Arden noted. “Is there anything we can do?”

  Podren sighed, feeling the vibrant energy of the door.

  “If it were weaker, or less pure, I’d try to disrupt it with my own life energy, but it's so vast that it wouldn’t be affected. If anything, I'd probably receive quite a lot of backlash from the colliding energies.”

  Arden swore and continued pacing around the room.

  ‘Think. There’s gotta be a way to break through. There are no locked doors without keys. You just need to find the key. Or…’

  “Or just smash in a window.”

  “What?” Podren asked.

  Arden looked to the right of the door, at the wall. It was covered in cracks, but there was no energy being emitted from it. Red sparks coalesced to form a large spear in Arden’s hand.

  “How strong are the walls?” Arden asked.

  *****

  Vera coughed up a small amount of blood and sat up, thankful to be alive. If she hadn’t reacted at the last second and blocked the monster’s attack with the axe, she had no doubt that she would have resembled one of the destroyed pieces of furniture scattered around the room. Even though she managed to defend against it somewhat, she was definitely not alright.

  A hand axe would never shield someone as much as a shield. Instead, she relied on the unique properties of a Satellite, meaning its durability.

  Miraculously, she came out of the attack alive.

  Clenching her teeth, she stood up to continue the fight, despite being the bearer of a bruise on her side the size of a large dinner plate. More than the pain, she felt the warmth of internal bleeding.

  The same fist that injured Vera came rocketing towards her again. This time, she was able to smash it to pieces like the first time. She took care to block some droplets of blood that sprayed in her direction with the axe.

  Somehow, she managed to block most of them.

  Some however, were able to slip past her defenses, and landed on her arms and legs. There was a sizzling sound that was barely audible behind the sounds of combat, but the effects were surely felt by Vera. Another fist came towards her, and again she was able to block it, getting more of the poisonous blood on her in the process.

  She swallowed a cry of pain as she struggled to fight back against the arms that continued to regenerate. She could feel her skin melting off of her in places thanks to the power of the blood.

  Sya wouldn’t let her friend draw all of the aggro. She began pelting the monster with rocks, eventually succeeding in drawing its attention. Like before, she might as well have been using a pea shooter. She learned in the fight against Frozhe that it didn’t matter if she had a Satellite, if she had no essence or no real ammo, the slingshot was almost useless against strong foes.

  Regardless, she didn’t stop firing. She needed to give Vera some time to recover. She led the beast away from her injured friend so that she could recover. If there was one good thing that came from dealing almost no damage, it was that she wasn’t spraying any more of the beast's decaying blood. Sya vaulted over furniture and rubble alike, trying to put distance between her and the abomination. For a while, she was successful. She could see Ciria tending to the injured Vera.

  Now, it was just Sya and the monster.

  She grinned nervously.

  She realized that Vera was right about only relying on a ranged weapon when she realized she was cornered. With the infirmary’s wall behind her and the abomination right in front of her, she realized she would have to either somehow destroy the monster’s core right now, or she would die.

  The abomination didn’t give her a chance to even notch a rock. It wrapped one of its regenerated hands around her neck, and lifted her up by her throat. When it slammed her against the wall, she coughed up some blood of her own.

  Unlike everyone else’s here, her blood was black, with a silver sheen to it like liquid mercury.

  Sya noticed her acrid blood burning through the beast's flesh like acid. She wanted to act on it, but the beast wouldn't let her. It squeezed tighter, and she began flailing around.

  Her vision started fading as she was slammed into the wall again. She thought of her brother, mentally apologizing for leaving him to continue on this path alone. She could swear that she could hear his voice even now.

  “Now!” came Arden’s muffled voice from just beyond the wall.

  Right before Sya blacked out, there was a great crash from below and behind her, and a pained roar from the abomination. The vice grip that was holding Sya up in the air slackened, and she fell to the ground, coughing and gasping for air.

  Looking up, she saw Arden and Podren holding the Maverick's great spear like a battering ram, impaling the monster, right through the weak spot that she was targeting.

  The monster roared in pain, and slowly collapsed to the ground, splashing both Arden and Podren in its blood.

  Their merriment was short lived when they noticed their skin turning black and rotting. Acting quickly, Podren used his life energy powers to cleanse both of them of infection.

  The felled beast gave one last roar, before its cracks ignited once more with green light, attempting to rend apart everyone present.

  Arden didn’t miss its obvious glowing weak spot. He summoned his Bone Talons to strike it down.

  But Sya was faster.

  Before it could discharge its attack, Sya plunged her fist covered in her own blight blood into the monster's glowing weak spot. The fleshy mass dissolved around her blood covered hand. Digging deep, she found what she was looking for. She grabbed onto the green marble-like structure and retracted her hand, yanking it out. It only took a few seconds for the green core to dissolve.

  The green light covering the monster dissipated, and chunks of flesh fell from the central mass. Some were tiny, masticated fragments, and some were the size of T-bone steaks. As the monster started dissolving without the power of its core powering it, Podren left Arden and Sya to go heal Vera.

  Arden glanced at his sister. She had the torn clothes representative of a challenging fight, a bright red mark around her neck from when she was choked, and her hand covered in black blood that was still leaking from her mouth.

  He put the pieces together.

  “Acidic blood, huh? I didn’t know Blight Walkers could do that.”

  “I don’t think it's actually acidic. I think this thing was just weak to the Blight. If Blight Walkers could produce poisonous blood, they would be a resource important to the safety of Foruta.”

  Arden knelt down next to the melting monster, and began to rifle through it.

  “Whatever the case, it worked out. Do you think there are more cores in here or just the one?”

  “I don’t know what rank it was. I have no Status, so I can’t see any notifications.”

  The mass of flesh continued to melt, and when not all melted away, both Arden and Sya gasped in shock, recoiling. There was a man smiling maliciously beneath the caked on viscera. It was a familiar man.

  “You…” Arden said with fury in his voice.

  Other-Arden merely laughed.