Chapter 57 Slaying the Beast

When the grey giant stag appeared before Rean, it meant that regardless of victory or defeat, this battle was drawing to a close.

One side was already thoroughly dead.

The former Maria—or rather, the composite abomination wearing Maria's skin—had completely perished alongside the birth of this new life.

"From a single cell, has it devolved into a drop of blood...?"

In the ancient Era of Beasts, the beasts, who were the children of the world, roamed the earth alone.

Later, perhaps out of loneliness or simply mimicking other living creatures, they grew weary of a solitary and uninteresting existence.

They shared their blood with their followers, forming packs that trailed behind them.

And now, Maria's remains seemed to be attempting an atavism? Trying to transform into a member of an ancient beast pack?

The giant stag continued to swell and grow. The "narrow" cavern seemed to restrict its further expansion. Accompanied by the boiling of beast blood, pairs of murky, yellowish beast eyes snapped open.

It began to gaze at Rean, but the look was mostly one of blankness and fearlessness.

It did not rush to act, much like a well-fed lion that pays no heed to a nearby herd of deer.

Rean shook his head. The pack was not reviving; records explicitly stated that "atavism" was impossible in the current era.

The beast factor would naturally self-destruct once a certain genetic concentration was reached. The elemental tides of this age were not sufficient to sustain ancient monsters. Perhaps once the "beasts" truly awakened, it would be a different story.

Experimental Subject 113 was merely a opportunistic fluke, forcibly raising the beast blood concentration using multiple fusions and ultimately reducing it to a hybrid beast with some diluted ancient beast blood.

With the further increase in beast blood concentration, the originally "human" part had naturally and completely vanished.

"Awoooo..." The monster, no longer Maria, let out a howl resembling the cry of a stag.

The roar echoed through the cavern. It recalled that the small creature before it had previously injured it with a toothpick.

Beasts, after all, hold quite grudges.

Rean simply and calmly raised his longsword, shifting the "Halo of the Holy Flame" from its burst mode back to its standard state.

"Boom!"

Soon, flames descended from the sky once more, striking the back of the creature's head.

"Snap!" The power was not great, but it caused the monster to instinctively touch its wound and turn its head toward Rean, its suspected assailant.

Yet its eyes remained somewhat bewildered—how had it been struck?

"Has the sense of pain returned as well?"

Rean took a deep breath. It seemed a head-on clash was inevitable.

The fool from before, who let itself be slowly scorched without feeling a thing, was completely gone.

"O Holy Flame, reignite once more."

Beneath Rean's feet, a faint ring of fire flickered for a split second, only to vanish without a trace the next moment under its master's control.

Yet during this period, it would continue to output damage steadily and inefficiently.

The Halo of the Holy Flame, a third-circle divine spell notorious for being utterly useless, had been the unsung hero that allowed Rean to win the deathmatch just moments ago.

He had awakened this divine spell upon successfully taking the Oath Knight class, considering it a "class perk."

Generally speaking, classes like clerics, paladins, and warlocks that required awakening and realization to master spells would receive a low-tier spell upon successful induction.

Serving as the beginning of their vocational path, it was both a gift from higher entities (bloodlines or deities) and the key and starting point to entering the class.

Normally, paladins awakened first-circle divine spells, but Oath Knights were effectively an advanced class of paladins, and their spell lists were far richer.

Just as Dimond had awakened the ability to Cure Light Wounds—something even second- or third-rank paladins might lack—Rean had directly snatched a third-circle Halo of the Holy Flame as his perk.

"Hum!" An echo that tore through everything signaled that the upcoming strike would be immensely fierce.

Prepared in advance, Rean slid to the left, dodging the suddenly descending claw... and the accompanying gravitational distortion!

"Rumble!"

A gravitational wave directly pressed down upon the earth, indenting it into a crater!

The descendant of the beast instinctively wielded its divine authority.

Yet as a beast, it hardly knew how to conceal the use of its abilities.

Rean had to remain strictly on guard; taking a direct hit from that might genuinely mean the end.

Having come this far with such difficulty, he absolutely could not flip over in the gutter.

"Snap!"

And the heavenly fire, arriving punctually once more, dealt another blow to the beast.

The damage was negligible, but the insult was immense. It grew increasingly irritable, and its attacks became even more driven by instinct.

How could dragon eyes miss such an obvious attack trajectory? A purely instinct-driven beast was actually easier to evade.

Especially a pure newborn completely devoid of actual combat experience, Rean could often anticipate the landing point of its attacks a full second in advance.

He consistently sidestepped in advance; both its bites and its furious claws were a step slower than him.

"Snap!" In the midst of all this, the holy flame continued its steady output.

The Halo of the Holy Flame required no aiming. Once activated, it would periodically deal extremely low damage to a target within range... Yes, extremely low. As a third-circle divine spell, its damage was even lower than a first-circle cantrip like *Firebolt*.

This was the root cause of why ordinary paladins viewed it as useless. By the time a paladin mastered third-circle divine spells, who still lacked that bit of damage? Weren't *Divine Smite* and *Greater Divine Smite* (split into two spells here) far more appealing?

In Rean's hands, however, it was an entirely different story.

On one hand, this divine spell allowed the caster's internal fire source to substitute for normal holy fire. Rean had unhesitatingly used dragon breath as a replacement. On the other hand was its fundamental trait: the longer it burned, the worse the wound became.

[Soul & Mind - Wall Breaker (Diamond): Your will is your heavy hammer. Transcendent abilities imbued with your will and fury can partially ignore the enemy's defenses.]

All along, this embarrassing circle of fire had actually been scorching Rean's opponent, stacking the armor-breaking effect of Wall Breaker.

Its raw damage was low, but its property of shattering the opponent's defenses—an effect akin to "Corrosive Strike"—had been continuously piercing through "Maria's" defenses.

Skin, flesh, and bone were growing increasingly fragile with each successive shock.

This was also the root reason why Rean had previously struggled to cut through a single bone spur, yet later cleaved through four or five with a casual slash; she had been reduced to a state of negative defense by the slowly outputting Halo of the Holy Flame!

Leveraging this class ability, Rean had successfully combined his soul-mind abilities with vocational techniques, forming his own unique combat system.

"Only an amateur like Maria would treat the sensation of pain as a burden..."

Even the beast before him was growing annoyed by the unavoidable holy flame attacks, yet Maria had previously endured it completely numb and insensate—truly far too foolish and unprofessional.

If pain were truly a burden, the human body would likely have evolved it away long ago.

Nowadays, most organisms possessed the sensation of pain. It was life's alarm system against danger and crisis, a benign mutation preserved through natural selection.

"Clang!"

The next instant, Rean's preemptive slash severed one of the giant stag's massive arms.

The monster could not comprehend how this "toothpick" had managed it! How had its iron-hard skin and muscle failed?

Yet Rean merely smiled.

"As expected, the defense is still as brittle as paper; the skin and flesh have already been burned to rot..."

Reality was not a performance in an anime or a video game where protagonists and bosses transformed and instantly healed all injuries and negative statuses; that was simply too unreasonable.

So-called transformations were merely shifts in life form, requiring the expenditure of even more vitality and energy as a price.

Transformations were usually adjustments of bodily resources under abnormal conditions; there was no logical reason for previous wounds and negative statuses to simply vanish. To put it bluntly, the only thing a magical girl could restore upon transforming was her clothes.

This, too, was the root of Rean's unwavering confidence in victory.

Even after growing stronger and larger, a beast that had lost higher intelligence became all the easier to predict.

Even if the wounds on its body surface had healed during the physical transformation, the deeper, more essential state of "fragile flesh" could not be excised.

On one side was heavy armor and a heavy sword; on the other was a seemingly massive yet fragile target. The scales of victory had been tilted from the very beginning.

"Crushing Sword." At this moment, Rean chose to use the Crushing Sword—a technique capable of creating larger trauma—to attack this overly massive monster.

"Awoooo!" After every strike, the wounds Rean inflicted resulted in massive arterial sprays, accompanied by the giant stag's impotent rage.

Rean was not in a rush, knowing full well that rushing was useless.

The acceleration boots on his soles helped immensely. As long as he steadily avoided the opponent's critical gravitational bursts, this beast posed even less of a threat to him than the previous one.

The confined space of the cavern also restricted the movements of such a giant monster.

In truth, fate had been quite kind to Rean and his party.

If the battlefield had not been located within a cavern, the gravitational field's "float then drop" would have truly been a despair-inducing attack.

Rean responded with patience, eroding the opponent's vitality bit by bit. Even with accumulated injuries and exhaustion, he retained the confidence to survive until the end.

"Ha... ha..." After an unknown passage of time, Rean leaned on his sword, panting. At this point, his confidence was likely waning.

Not only were his hands and feet numb, but he could no longer feel his physical body. Blood loss had lowered his body temperature, yet his opponent remained full of vigor and life.

The entire battlefield had transformed into a pool of blood. Rean could no longer remember how many times he had used the Crushing Sword.

Even his temporary reserve of soul-knight saintly power felt somewhat strained.

Could the vitality of such a monster truly be infinite?

"No... it simply eats too much." Rean took a deep breath, steeling himself once more.

Life did not come from nothing; a fusion mass five or ten times normal likely possessed an appetite of a corresponding tier.
A terrifying reserve of vitality coupled with the regenerative powers of atavistic hybridization meant that relying solely on Rean's damage output to exhaust it was still somewhat insufficient. Much like his battle with Hake, Rean's class level was simply too low; facing an opponent of a vastly superior life level, landing a fatal blow was exceedingly difficult.

Rean's stamina and wounds had begun to slip below the line of life and death. At this rate, it was hard to say who would die first.

"It's about time to use this..."

He sighed. If he had any choice, Rean truly did not want to gamble.

He drew a small blade. Fountain-pen length, it looked like a mere toy no matter how one inspected it.

The "treasure" that had previously shown no reaction at all finally began to emit a red glow when faced with the monster before him.

Its activation prerequisite had been met—this truly was an overwhelmingly powerful demon.

This was a support item sent by Princess Sariman, a targeted countermeasure sent precisely for this moment.

"Come. Rex's Suicidal Blade, seek out the fatal point of the creature before me!"

The casually thrown little blade paused for a single moment. As Rean's sword of bravery flared with red light, it abruptly transformed into a streak of rainbow light, piercing straight toward the giant monster before it.

"Snap!" The blade directly embedded itself into its flesh, yet the behemoth seemed completely oblivious.

Within Rean's perception, however, a skull icon materialized on the monster's abdomen.

This, of course, was not the name generated by its creator (Blade of Desperate Counterattack).

Yet compared to its true full name, the moniker Rean had given it seemed far more apt.

[Rex's Blade of Desperate Counterattack (Unknown Grade): When facing a monster that overwhelms your life level, this blade will forge a 'weakness' that gathers all its vitality. Shatter it within sixty seconds, and the target will suffer a death-tier grievous wound; if the time expires and you fail to shatter the weakness, you die.]

[User Prerequisite: One who possesses the courage of a savior, one who possesses the aptitude for a desperate counterattack—both must be possessed simultaneously.]

In reality, this was a secret treasure used to select heroes.

It appeared to be a set alongside the sword of bravery—one increased the user's power and luck in desperate straits, while the other forged a fatal blow capable of turning the tables.

Truth be told, Rean had let Her Royal Highness down; if not for certain karma and coincidences, he would have been unqualified to activate this weapon.

Yet at this very moment, Rean also saw that skull counting down incessantly.

"As expected, the fatal weakness is in that spot..." As the user, Rean understood the essence of this unknown weapon.

The Blade of Desperate Counterattack marked a single fatal weakness. If the opponent was an undead entity devoid of a fatal weakness, it would forcibly manufacture one and concentrate all its vitality into it.

That spot would be the opponent's most fragile point, yet often its strongest armor as well...

"To think it really is that area. Should I say this is within expectations?"

The mark of death appeared on the lower abdomen of the giant stag—the place where life was conceived.

That was how Maria had managed to condense multiple lives into one, utilizing quantity to achieve a qualitative leap in purifying beast blood.

This was the reason it had evolved to this stage, and simultaneously, its greatest weakness.

Under normal circumstances, even a complete piercing would be meaningless (due to regeneration), but now, this was the end of the line for the "beast."

The giant beast was somewhat bewildered. It sensed a change, feeling its vitality seemingly draining toward its lower abdomen, yet it had no inkling of what this signified.

"Smite." Rean did not wait, swinging his sword once more.

The beast had grown numb to the accumulation of wounds.

Previously, it couldn't even be bothered to dodge... but this time, it instinctively attempted to evade, yet its reflex was numb, and it remained a step too slow.

The accelerated Rean completed a thrust, and his armor-corroding sword of bravery plunged viciously into the skull mark.

He abruptly swung his sword again, and the fracturing holy sword burst forth from within!

"Rumble!"

When the wound was breached, the giant beast's doomsday had arrived.

As Rean slowly sheathed his sword, behind him stood the skeletal remains of the behemoth, dissolving into swirling black ash.

"Rest in peace, former Holy Mother..." The drifting black ashes of life served as the backdrop for the man's departure.