Chapter 562: Die
Sylas' Aether was forcefully reined back into his control. It was so easy that it almost felt like a rubber band had snapped within him, and he nearly sent his Aether reversing in the opposite direction.
He coughed again as the pressure building in his body was released, but terrible bruises had already begun to blotch beneath his skin. If not for the black scales that coated his body, he would have begun as a man of purple-black right before the eyes of the Violet Rose Heart and Nosphaleen.
The aching of his body came in rapid pulses, but he didn't have the time to nurse his injuries.
With a shove of his elbow to the flexible ground of vine beneath him, he pushed himself to the side and up. Gritting his teeth, he brought out one of the many salamander corpses in his Madness Key. His fingers fleshed and dug into their open wounds, the Greed Seed flashing with life as veins crawled up his arms.
Blood Essence flooded Sylas' body as he ran, knowing he didn't have much time left at all.
The Violet Rose Heart was frozen in place, not just because of his <Woodland Frost Spike>, but also because of the fact Sylas had destroyed its body. It was trying to rebuild its lower half, yet another foolish decision to make in the middle of a battle, but the impact of Sylas' Advanced Slow Ice-Poison Rune was making it a living nightmare.
Sylas' wrist flickered, and the salamander's body turned to ash. He brought out another one and swallowed its Blood Essence as well. The bloating and bulging of his torso lowered, but it was clear that the salamanders weren't nearly as effective at healing Sylas as the Sylphs had been. But this would have to do for now.
Making it back to the space beneath the Violet Rose Heart, Sylas did something that made Nosphaleen's expression change.
He jumped into the open cavity of its body.
Pulses came from the heart, but Sylas ignored them entirely.
SKREEEEEEE!
The Violet Rose Heart gave up on trying to reform itself finally, instead controlling the vines inside of it to attack Sylas one after another.
Each one carried a shocking amount of strength, moving so fast that Sylas could swear they were maybe only a few dozen miles an hour from breaking the sound barrier.
The outer shell of the Violet Rose Heart was heavily influenced by Sylas's Ice-Poison, but the inside wasn't nearly as much.
However, Sylas still didn't hesitate to take this step. His body billowed with alternating currents of steaming heat and flowing frost. Ice coated in scales in one moment, only to be melted into water and steam soon afterward.
He pushed himself to his absolute limit, abandoning his <Chilling Rise> and <Surfing Frost> in favor of <Phoenix's Embrace>.
His short burst movements became sharp.
A vine burst from his right and he reached out and grabbed it. His wrist twisted around its form until he braced it against his forearm.
The vine ripped into his skin, its thorns pumping him with poison he didn't even give a second glance to.
His body used the momentum of the vine to dodge a more lethal blow. Sylas bent, twisted, and rotated, jumping from attacking vine to attacking vine like a man possessed.
Every maneuver he made brought him closer to the heart, and the pulses only became more powerful.
LUBDUB. LUBDUB. LUBDUB.
Sylas' eyes darted around, his senses using a combination of his visualization, his sight, and his Luck to form a net of sensory perception that had him reacting long before attacks reached the point of lethality.
He unleashed a roar and jumped into the air, reaching the deepest part of the Violet Rose Heart's body's chest cavity.
For the first time, he got a true look at the heart.
It looked no different from a human's heart in shape. However, it stood twice as tall as Sylas, its chambers covered in a protective violet-brown bark that revealed an elastic, rubbery flesh between every time it pumped and pulsed.
There were no veins or arteries that extended from it. Instead, there seemed to be roads of Aether that formed illusory pathways that extended across its body of vines.
Sylas looked at it with blazing eyes, his leap having taken him right into the middle of the air. He extended a palm forward slowly and pulled back a fist at the same time. His torso flexed and a fiery intent blazed in his eyes as a pair of golden slight eyes appeared to his back.
<Psychedelic Punch>.
His legs landed on a solid sheet of ice in midair, so thin it looked completely transparent from all angles. And yet, the moment his feet collided with it, a burst of power came up Sylas' torso, following through to his legs, up the torque of his hip and the winding of his torso before exploding out from his shoulder.
There was a whipping sound that came from Sylas' tendons, and all his skill in the art of the fist was concentrated into a single blow.
All he could imagine was punching right through the heart.
Aetherflow.
His fist collided with the heart, and then a fist aura extended past it.
At that moment, the Scorned Wraps emitted a pulse that resisted the destructive might of the Violet Rose Heart.
'Die.'
BANG!
The heart deformed like a bowling ball meeting a trampoline. It completely lost its form and shape, flattening out before curving into a concave shape.
A great amount of destructive might ripped through it in a torrent.
Sylas had given it everything he had, unleashing his absolute strongest attack. And yet...
The heart rippled, rebounding away from Sylas... and then rebounding toward him exactly like
a trampoline would.
Sylas' pupils only had time to sharpen before the elastic walls of the heart collided against
him, sending him flying so fast that he left a sharp whistle in the air.
All the bones in his arm shattered, and his ribcage went with it.
And that was all before he collided with the wall of vines behind him that formed the inner lining of the creature's chest.