87 Feeble Point

'No!'

Darkscale's mind was filled by his will of refusal. He refused to die in such pathetic conditions.

He didn't come that far to die like that. Never before he had lost his confidence in himself. He wouldn't start now.

The snake though back at all the moments in his life that he almost died: from before he started this path of cultivation, his fight against that little blue tailed mouse to his battle in the Blood Woods.

He never gave up. Not even when he was being hunted down by dozens of Forest Will Tribe people when he had no power of his own.

Now he was a rank 2 Devil! He was mighty! In the entire Extreme Wilderness Region he was between the stronger living beings!

How could he leave his own damned energy to take him down in front of his worse enemy? No. That would not happen!

He stopped operating the vortex and fell towards the ground. Cracks formed in the hard surface when he laded, unharmed. There was no point on continuing trying to absorb the white flame. He now knew that Carelia was only pretending to be completely unable to attack him, and he was literally dying.

If he didn't solve the problem of the energy that was burning him from the inside, everything else didn't quite matter.

The snake threw his head back and roared. The very air shattered under the pressure from that scream, and a wave of power with him at the center devastated the zone he landed into.

A deep luminous purple light shined in both his eyes. The purple flame that ran around his body formed the image of a large cat.

"Oh, you… are…from… th..Blood"

A surprised look appeared on Star Leaf's face. She seemed honestly surprised by that. Even after she had lived for him for so much time she had no idea he was a bloodline user.

"Your bloodline… must b… very sha…llow, I nev…er fel…t… it"

Darkscale ignored the chatter of the woman in the sky, and roared again, forcing all his Bloodline Energy to counter the flow of Ghost Power.

Around him, the figure of the long-legged cat wavered, taking a strange form before turning again into the silhouette of a cat.

In the air, Star Leaf's red eyes, widened, almost popping out from her sockets. For a moment she could swear of having seen a bat around the snake. It was only for a single instant, a small fraction before the image became again that of a cat.

"Impossible."

Inside of Darkscale, the purple flow of power emerged from his flesh, acting like a shield against the Ghost Power. Darkscale knew that now he wouldn't be able to use his limited awareness and control to keep his Ghost Energy from killing him.

He survived that fat because of the insane resistance of his body, but any normal person would have been killed on the spot.

His plan was to use the Bloodline power to contain the Ghost Energy until it calmed down. The snake also didn't understand why the new Devil Core hadn't appeared yet. What the hell was it waiting for?

He started using the Bloodline power to push back the silver waves, but he suddenly felt that also his bloodline power was out of his control.

Panicking, he tried anything to take it back, but the violet power ignored any of his attempt to rein and started to autonomously push back the Ghost Energy, compressing it into the zone where the Core was supposed to be.

In the air, Star Leaf vomited a large amount of black liquid. Her senses were pointed towards the large black snake in the ground and she noticed that the painful look on his face was gone. He looked… concentrated.

Suddenly, a wave of potent pressure exploded from the snake's body, shaking the world around him.

'That was close…'

A new Devil Core shined near his heart. It had formed itself in the same moment the Bloodline Energy ended gathering all the Ghost Power in that same spot.

It was way more powerful than the previous version.

The was a new power that was seething inside of him. He could feel it. His entire body was healed and then strengthened by several streams of silver energy.

The agonizing pain that he had felt previously, was gone. He sent a small fraction of his consciousness inside his body, he could immediately tell that the New Core looked slightly different from the precedent. It was bigger, and the shape of its irregular form was different. Round, with many sharp spikes all around its surface.

Once he examined the content of the Core inside it, he discovered that the power that completely filled his previous one, only occupied a small portion of the new one. In fact, it could not even be considered one-tenth of the total space.

'Good!'

Suddenly, a scent of death and agony filled his nostril. Without even moving his head towards the sky, he darted toward the right. A large ball of white fire hit the place where he was sitting just a second before. He had dodged it, but it had been very close to hitting him.

He didn't even sense it coming. He could feel it now, that it was under his eyes, but before the only thing that announced it was the smell.

He moved his eyes towards the sky, and noticed the incredulous look in Star Leaf's eyes.

Yes, there was something of peculiar in that attack. She wasn't expecting him to dodge it.

Darkscale gave a large sniff to the air, and noticed that he could tell the scent of things in a bigger area than before. Not only, he could feel them even more in detail. His smell sense had become way stronger.

An idea popped in his mind, and he directed his smelling sense towards the woman inside the white flame.

He knew that he could use it almost as an energy probe. He never tried to probe Carelia because of the flame around her. Any energy probe would definitively get destroyed by the Ghost Energy around the woman.

There was no chance of ever touching her body, let alone getting inside her and examining her condition.

However, his smell sense was quite different, when he tried before he had managed to get some odors out of the woman, even if she was protected by the white flame. Now that the serpent's power had evolved, maybe it would bring him some other information about her.

In fact, he was completely correct: focusing his powerful sense on her, he managed to get a feel for several flows of power that were fighting inside Star Leaf's body.

Her internal energy was a complete mess!

He also realized that there was a link between her and the flame around her that was very similar to the one between him and the Devil Core.

It wasn't just an armor of energy, it was her Energy Container! It was a very strange way to conserve energy, definitely not a way that could be maintained forever. An Energy Container was a way to gather power without having to keep controlling it at any single moment. Doing so was incredibly stupid and consumed too much concentration. However, that was exactly what she was doing.

'I don't think she has too much choice though… Star Leaf's Natural Heart won't be able to contain that much power… plus… it looks incredibly contaminated by Corruption Bloodline.'

That was another thing he could feel inside the body of the green haired girl: Corruption Power. A lot of it.

Carelia was using a large amount of Ghost Energy to contain it, making sure that it didn't touch a very specific area between the lungs of the body that she was inhabiting.

Yet, the Ghost Power was rapidly corrupted by the Bloodline force and then had to be continuously changed and expelled in form of a black dense liquid.

That was what she was vomiting all the time. Each time she expelled that black glue, she also expelled part of the corrupted power. If she was to be given enough time she would surely be able to spit out all of it.

However, it was also true that she had to keep the changing going. If she didn't want that single point that she was trying to keep safe from the corruption to suffer the same fate of the rest of the Star Leaf's body.

A vicious smile appeared on the mouth of the snake. He knew what to do now.