Corruption traveled through the seven primary channels of my body, and I burned out the channel linking my arm to my body, restricting the change from crossing my shoulder.
This transformation usually comes with great pain, but I felt nothing, although I knew that in this pain was an opportunity that could be grasped.
I sought clearance from the Stone Oracle, but I received none, so I proceeded with the change. To effectively kill the enemy, you have to know them better than they know themselves.
My skin was distorting into something that was no longer human muscle under my guidance. The bone was lengthening, hardening, taking on a configuration the horde of Khaaz watching would have recognised.
I had killed thousands of them by now, and I was familiar with their structure, although I was not using the weak limb structure of a Khaaz, but of their higher variant, the Khaazim.
These creatures had decimated worlds for a reason.
My left arm was becoming a weapon.
The Avatar is using the Corruption, I understood. Letting it work, but only in the contained region, only in the arm. Turning the demon’s own spell into a tool.
The mutation became complete in the left forearm, and I no longer had a hand. It was a black chitin claw with glowing red streaks as if flames were burning beneath, four-jointed, ending in a tapered point that was harder than most metal alloys on this world.
The Narghul Sorcerer’s three remaining eyes registered the change, and his mouth opened.
"You should not be able to direct the Corruption. There are no more Achons in the heavens. Who holds your leash, cattle?"
The Avatar did not answer. My body was just left with a mutated left arm, lightning-cloaked right arm, broken ribs, burned shoulder, no staff, and approximately twenty percent of the soul-burn loading lightning, and all of this went towards the demon with a singular purpose.
The mutated arm swept out and caught the Narghul Sorcerer’s reaching wrist. The chitin claw closed on the demon’s forearm and held. The grip strength had exceeded a human’s limit and was the grip strength of a higher-ranked demon applied through human will, and the Narghul Sorcerer could not pull free.
He was royalty, so his Abyssal heritage would give him great strength at his fourth horn, and that strength would become apocalyptic at his eighth, but at his present condition, this demon was not escaping my grip.
The Avatar’s right fist, lightning-cloaked, drove into the demon’s solar plexus, causing the Narghul Sorcerer to double forward.
My right knee came up and struck the demon’s face, and the right horn cracked.
The demon’s third eye, the one on the right side that had not yet burst, flickered in rage and fear. A Narghul Sorcerer drew power from their horns, and breaking them would cut down their ability by half.
Most of their strength was focused on the soul and mental manipulation, but those would not work on me.
What I had to focus on were the demon’s other weaker aspects, although his weakness was enough to kill me many times over.
The Avatar pressed. Punch. Punch. Knee. Punch. Each strike connected, and they all flowed into the next, leaving no space for the demon to recover, while my left claw ensured that the demon was kept in place.
Each strike was lightning-cloaked, and in three seconds, the Narghul Sorcerer was bleeding from a dozen impact points now, the dark fluid smoking in patterns across its red hide.
The shadow construct had pulled back from my lock and was floating loose at the demon’s left side, disoriented without coherent direction from the demon’s overwhelmed attention.
Every blow was powered by the fading lightning inside my veins, and they slammed into the demon with enough force that the sound would deafen a man.
"Enough," the demon roared.
The word was a wave, carrying a pulse of force that erupted from the demon’s chest and threw my body backward across a dozen metres of charred earth and broken chitin.
The mutated arm’s grip on the demon’s wrist tore free, taking a strip of the demon’s hide with it.
I landed in a heap among Khaaz corpses, my broken ribs grinding against each other, the burned shoulder seizing. There was no pain, but that seizing meant I was pushing the limits of my muscles, and the bones of my arm should be cracked.
The Narghul Sorcerer stood at the centre of the bowl. The demon was bleeding from a hundred points. Two of his four eyes were now dark.
Both horns were cracked, and his body was visibly degraded.
"You have cost me cattle," the demon said as his black tongue tasted the blood running down the side of his lips. His voice was quieter now, almost weary. "More than I have been cost in centuries. I shall take your skull in remembrance."
The demon raised both of his hands and began to ready a cast that would finish the engagement.
He began to make a configuration that I did not recognise, but I was not too surprised because I could not connect to the Stone Oracle, and I suspected that my pool of knowledge was restricted.
However, the gathering force at the demon’s palms was sufficient to suggest the cast would not require precision aim. The demon was simply going to discharge enough magic to terminate everything within its range.
The Avatar had time for one more action, and I took it.
∞
The Hollow Avatar had been concentrating reserves throughout the engagement.
The channels that held lightning were nearly empty, but before I began to spend the lightning in combat, I had reserved a portion of it in my core.
I could not manipulate Anima, so instead of leaving this empty reservoir empty, I had placed a portion of the lightning inside it.
This would damage this internal construct, but this reservoir was already a defective method of storing Anima or Essence, so it was not much of a loss.
I had concentrated half of the lightning inside my core, compressing it until it reduced to a tenth of its size, and when the demon reached the height of its cast, I released all that compressed power from my Anima Depth, and it flooded through my channels, burning through half of them.
And in that moment, I became lightning.
This state would turn me to ash in fifteen seconds, so it was a good thing that it would only last for five.
So, I had to kill the demon in five seconds.
One...