CHAPTER 173

FWOOOSH! FWOOOSH! FWOOOSH!

Rock projectiles tore through the air in another desperate attempt by Jennifer to kill Deucalion but like the others before, few nicked his skin while the others simply broke to splinters upon impacting his body.

A blur was all she saw as Satomi and Deucalion flitted around each other, the former stopping the force in Deucalion's strike by weaving her hand around his and making his hand sail harmlessly in the air.

She tried retreating but Deucalion refused to give her that respite. His form towered menacingly over her as his left hand went for her head, an attempt she redirected, only to see his right hand coming for her.

In such a close space, fatalities in combat are majorly done by the combatant with greater dexterity and overall speed.

Satomi was as dexterous as a deer than any 100+ year old woman had the right to be, but Deucalion was faster. She spun backwards with her hands raised to block but his punch still hit against her chest and sent her skidding backwards.

His ominous laugh bellowed through the dark forest with his blind yet overwhelmingly bright red eyes peering through the trees.

"Yes! Come on!" The full attention of the stirring beast had finally been captured. "This level of poison have no effect on me. I heal faster than it can act."

A red missile slammed into Deucalion's outstretched hands in an 'X' block, grunting as he did so, tilting his head in a near-instant reaction as a piercing blood from Tristan's mouth sailed past the side of his head and pierced through a few trees before losing its force.

Derek and Satomi tried the best they could, that apart from a few instances where they hit Deucalion when he was open, they hardly did much, more so Derek than Satomi.

Despite being past the age for such brutal fights, Satomi held her own to an extent when she came in front of Deucalion.

Had it not been for the nature of the current situation, she would have fully admired how far Tristan had come.

He was still not at Deucalion's level, a few steps away from it, but that was more than enough to show how competent of an Alpha he had become.

They clashed for minutes on end, 1v4, and Deucalion single handedly held them back, though not with a few bruises to show for it. His regeneration on the other hand was frightening, arguably as fast, if not faster, than Tristan's. The only reason some small wounds were still left on him was that because they came from Alphas like him.

He snorted. Alphas like him? There are no Alphas like him.

He lashed his leg towards Tristan's stomach but what they impacted was the crystallized blood around that area and unlike how it used to play out before, the blood casing around Tristan's stomach only cracked a good section of it but didn't shatter like it used to under Deucalion's force.

With the beast of an Alpha's insane physical strength and speed, plus being a better monster than all of them, Deucalion stood above Tristan in every way except for how annoyingly nimble the boy was.

Even his venomous bite was so strong that Tristan actually felt it and had to concentrate in order to expunged it from his system. Werewolf venom was potently dangerous to vampires being their natural opposite, doubly so when it came from an Alpha of Deucalion's status.

Derek took the chance he got and kicked Deucalion in the chest twice, going ahead to use it as a balance to twist himself midair and kick him across the jaws, but all that did was move Deucalion's head to the side.

As soon as his feet touched the ground they were lifted from it as Deucalion grabbed Derek's face as charge straight through a bunch of trees, but he had to stop his charge as he heard Jennifer muttering something that made his senses ring.

Seeing the dead red stare from Deucalion to her, she wasn't told before she sped up what she was intoning and brought her hands close to her mouth, speaking in an archaic language to the special ash she held in her hands.

"Mortuus cinis occisio fluxus."

"Nothing you do will be of help against me. Your people accepted the natural truths as law, why can't you?"

Deucalion's face contorted as he heard the words she spoke that sounded Latin.

She blew it as soon as she finished her words and saw that he was about to come for her.

Unlike what was the natural reaction of blowing ash in the night wind, the ash Jennifer blew turned into a dark grey black plume of smoke and instantly moved to cover Deucalion.

Deucalion released an extremely pained grunt and moved away from the plume but a sizable part of it stuck to him, causing him to grunt more.

Mortuus cinis occisio fluxus, roughly translating to 'Dead ash killing flow' in Latin, was a little archaic concoction that used mountain ash along with some specially gathered ingredients and when channeled with energy became known as 'dead ash'.

The second part, 'killing flow', refers to the instance that the smoke enters a naturally flowing body, a stream of water or the bloodstream of the human body, and starts burning up anything that flows in that habitat. In Deucalion's case, it was causing his blood to boil and evaporate in a red mist.

'My chance!'

Satomi and Derek were heavily wounded and were in no shape to give her a long chase. Tristan was a coin toss but she was confident she could lose him.

Unknown by either Jennifer or Tristan, Deucalion felt something, or rather the loss of something. The thin link he shared with his betas had snapped.

His pain and anger spiked and with a red haze of his evaporating blood all around him, it painted an even sinister image than what he already was.

Not knowing what Deucalion was going through, Jennifer attempted to leave but Tristan could already smell her desires and the moment she turned back to face where she was to run in, Tristan was already descending upon her.

His blood-thin needles rained down unforgivingly on her with different blood bladed constructs aimed to lop off her head.

Vines sprung up from every place she stepped on and tried slowing down Tristan's advance but the pale teen just cut through them.

She dodged one of his tails, and then another, and another, plus one more - even going as far as to sever the ones she could but nothing seemed to phase Tristan's pursuit.

She called upon the wind as she ran, increasing her speed but Tristan easily kept up and was progressively decreasing the short distance between them.

Trying to close the distance as fast as possible, Tristan's attention was piqued while in pursuit as his blood and instinct seemed to have reached a level of synchrony that had been slowly building up during the fight with Deucalion.

The black veins around Tristan's eyes spread out even more and covered half of his face, giving him a sickly wraith-like appearance, while the veins all over his body became visible as if they were stretched taut.

By increasing his blow flow in large pumps, a feat unachievable by humans, his brain ran in overdrive as adrenaline flooded every part of his nervous system, he was able to temporarily increase his speed and strength a few notches high. This was something he had been thinking about during his fight with Deucalion in his bid to try and match the man.

She was almost at the clearing and could see Argent resting against the Nemeton, the thought of quickly killing him as her first guardian crossed her mind but before she could decide, she heard and felt a heavy gust of wind behind her.

Tristan's pupils were as thin as needles as he shot towards Jennifer like a red bullet of flowing bloodlust.

His tails whipped out and sent two crescent cross blood slashes at her and broke through whatever she had conjured up for an hasty defense before he speared her into the ground which resulted in a long trench line that stretched out halfway to the Nemeton.

"Arkkgh…" She violently coughed out blood in huge amounts as intense pain assaulted her from every nervous point that made her eyes spin.

"You forget you're still human." Tristan's low growling voice filtered into her ears, causing her to cough up more blood as she attempted to chuckle.

He was right. She was stronger than the average Alpha, and even the skilled ones, but she was still human at the end despite the healing, speed and strength.

It was a sacrifice for an oath to kill Deucalion. It was never meant to be a permanent boost and while it was long lasting, recovering borrowed power wasn't a quick and instant affair, and she also didn't have the supernatural body of werewolves. Fighting against Deucalion for such a long amount of time that tired out three Alphas was a testament to the powers she wielded through her sacrifice, but she was still a human at the end of the day.

She couldn't tolerate pain as well as the Alphas did, and even if she still had more than enough power to blast Tristan away and continue her escape, the pain that was all over her body that was slowly healing blanked out any extreme thoughts.

"I – glurkgh…" She couldn't even say a word, and Tristan didn't need her to which he let her know by swiftly ripping out her throat with his claws.

With how tired he was and the exhilarating feeling of finally killing his prey, also something about her blood that called out to his watering appetite, he didn't care for the sole audience watching them and brought his mouth to the geyser of blood that was her open neck and hungrily drank the flowing blood of his dead prey.

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