A New Weapon

The adventurers picked themselves up off the ground as they brushed aside rubble and dirt that had collected on top of them. Lyze took the more violent way and punched off a boulder that had fallen on top of him. Superhuman physique was a wonder. Had he been a normal 9 year old, his body would have been made into an omelette.

Which was a very fitting description of what he wanted to do to that monster out in the middle of the 49th Floor who had just absorbed Lyze's magic and used against him. Fortunately, it seemed that the beast didn't know how to use it properly since Lyze sensed that the magic behind the attack was severely lacking considering what the monster had absorbed. It used the Flame in a very inefficient way.

Lyze stood up and saw that his shirt was in complete tatters and his chestplate was nowhere to be seen. The legs of his pants were in little better condition as well and his weapons had been lost to him since his belt had snapped off and he'd lost all his equipment with it including the holster for Geranos and the scabbard for Excalibur. Around him were the other adventurers picking themselves up from the ground and dusting themselves down as some wiped off blood that was trickling down their heads.

He stared over at where they had last seen Typhon, and sure enough the abomination was still there, with all of his heads looking straight at him, its arms still stuck in the ground where it had struck. There was now a very large crater beneath its fists with spider cracks stretching all around. Lyze grit his teeth as he flew over the adventurers and perched on top of a rock as he pulled both hands together and formed a normal fireball in his hand, and kept on funnelling more power into it until it was roaring purple with heat.

The magical attack streamed right towards the monster like a comet and hit it square in the face with a terrific explosion, and heat that turned the sand underneath the monster to glass while the brightness of the explosion momentarily blinded everyone. When the smoke cloud cleared, there the bastard was with nothing more than a scuff mark on the skull helmet.

"Don't bother." Finn said as he climbed up beside Lyze. "If your spells can't put a dent in that creature, then there's no way anyone else is doing anything. The mages are all out of steam. The only thing that seems to do any damage is your silver fire."

"Because of soul damage." Lyze said as Typhon picked itself up from the ground and shook all of its dragon head. "But the problem is that I have to be careful about using that. That thing is able to absorb my Flame and use it. I have no idea whether or not it might have done something to all of you since we all got hit by that shockwave. What are our options Finn?"

Finn looked back at the adventurers and saw that fear and panic was starting to settle in. On top of their exhaustion from fighting Balor, seeing Lyze's spell do absolutely nothing to the monster made them hyperaware of their own potential inadequacy against this monster. Finn knew that fighting spirit was at an all time low, and even those brave enough to hold their weapons were trembling with fear.

"We run." Finn said. "Lyze, you join the digging team, and dig out that entrance. The executives will keep it engaged while you all unplug the entrance."

"No!" Lyze said as he grabbed Finn's arm when the Pallum made to turn away. "I'm not running. You said it yourself. This monster is affected by my fire and I just got a really huge boost from absorbing Balor's soul. I can fly and evade, I can keep it distracted and on me while everyone else digs their way out."

"No Lyze." Finn said. "We need you to survive. You and everyone else have to survive and live to to fight another day. We the adults will stay behind. That's an order."

"And a stupid one." Lyze argued. "You really think that this freak is going even let any of us dig our way out?"

They looked to the side to see a large boulder coming their way, courtesy of an outstretched arm from Typhon. It flew towards them at comet-like speed. Lyze's fist glowed silver as he punched at the boulder and smashed it into hundreds of fragments. Only then to be met with the looming body of typhon as it stretched its arm out and punched towards them both. Both the boy and the Pallum were caught off guard.

'Such speed! From something this big!?' Finn thought as he was clipped by one of the fingers and sent flying into the rubble pile again.

The true target was Lyze as the fist smashed his body into the ground, the weight of that arm and the force from that blow crushing down on him like a whole mountain had just been placed on his body, pressing him deep into the dirt to leave an imprint. Typhon lifted its fist up and watched as some adventurers came running forwards to save the boy. It roared and swiped one of its arms, and from the ground came great black spikes, Udaeus's signature area attack only much faster and bigger and setting a clear barrier between the boy and his friends.

Typhon then looked down at the boy who was still buried in the imprint and opened its mouth as it released a Goliath Howl point blank at the boy. Lyze had nowhere to escape to as he could barely concentrate as it was and so had no choice but to reinforce his body with the Flame and activate its regenerative factor, kicking it into overdrive as the sonic blasts made contact.

From there he was faced with unbelievable agony as shockwaves flayed off the skin from his flesh and his bones which kept on regenerating thanks to his healing, only for it to flay again and be healed again. But it was either put up with this pain or be disintegrated to a point beyond regenerating. Lyze did not bear it in silence though as he screamed in his throat at the pain being inflicted on him.

And then came the rage...his pain acting as pure fuel for the resent and contempt forming in his heart for this creature that had just come out of nowhere and started terrorising them when they should have been gone for safety in the safe zone. He was tired, and exhausted and he just wanted to go home, to spend time with his loved ones, to cuddle with his little sister and with the girl he loved, to see his stupid goddess again, to see the sky which he hadn't seen for weeks and to smell the fresh air of the outside world.

Home.

His home. With his family. The one that this bastard was trying to kill again as he sensed the dragon heads begin charging up their fire breath and aiming at the adventurers who were trapped between the monster and the wall.

Ais was among them.

Rage and hatred surged through his body as his mind began growing crazy with bloodlust as he focused all of his negative feelings on this monster. And his eyes began to tingle, the intensity increasing every fraction of a second until they started to burn for him. What he didn't realize was that his eye sockets were starting to get engulfed in bright silver light as it looked like a pool of fire was replacing his eyeballs. The nail in the coffin was when through the Howl, he saw a red glow begin to build up in the monster's throat, similar to Balor's blast attack. The freak was pinning him down with the howl while trying to incinerate him.

That realization prompted an anger and hatred so black and venomous to pour out of heart and into his powers as {Cratus} was activated and provided a boost to the Flame in his body.

Two blazing hot streams of silver energy, like pillars of fire shot out of his eyes like some kind of Kryptonian heat vision into the throat of Typhon and blasted right through the back of its head, a moment before the entire skull exploded into black bone fragments and pieces of flesh as the heat vision burned canyons into the ceiling. Lyze directed it to burn through all the dragon heads, decapitating them as his body shot out of the ground and he landed an eardrum splitting punch into the monster's chest, making it straighten its back.

Lyze now powering his flight with the Flame flew backwards in a loop before slamming his fist into the bone plate above heart, fractures appearing in the plate as he pushed the giant body of the 200 foot monster. With another burst of strength from the skill that was named after the divine Greek embodiment of strength, he flung the monster's entire body a few hundred yards away on its back as its snake tail frolicked about.

He flew after it, intending to land some sort of finishing blow when quicker than he expected, the arm grabbed ahold of him and began squeezing tight, crushing past even his body reinforcements. And then the truly devastating thing began to happen as the Flame from inside Lyze's body started to drain into Typhon's while the boy could do nothing but watch as rivers of his power flowed through the skin to the sites of the wounds and all the heads regenerated as did the heart plate. Typhon squeezed him tighter, making him yell out as his Familia members cried out.

Gareth immediately began using his axe and started hacking the forest of bone spikes out of his way at lightning speeds to get to the boy with the adventurers following behind. Typhon noticed this and timed its counter right. Just as Gareth broke through the other side of the spike wall, the giant serpent tail swung in from their blind spot and swiped the executives away with such casual force that the Udaeus spikes that survived Gareth's onslaught were snapped easier than toothpicks.

Typhon grinned as it continued to drain the power from Lyze at an alarming rate. And as it did so, veins began to appear all over its body as the heads of the dragons came around its shoulders to stare at Lyze with the same demented smiles. And Typhon's body started to grow even bigger, as more and more Origin energy was poured into its body. From 200 feet, it quickly grew to 300 feet as its arms became even bulkier and more ripped with muscles and Lyze began to be smothered and suffocated by the fingers closing over him.

Just as his head began to disappear into the folds of its finger, Lyze saw a flash of gold on the ground and saw Ais sprinting towards them with Desperate in her hands and the green glow of her Ariel covering her body as {Tempest} blasted her across the distance. Her eyes were focused, dangerous and sharp and her face was set in a stony gaze as she glared in hatred at the monster that was stealing power from her beloved. The was a red glow to her pupils.

Her {Avenger} skill.

Lyze looked up at the dragon heads and realized they were black dragon heads. To Ais, it was living her trauma all over again as she was forced to relive the time that the Black Dragon ripped her parents away from her. And now the boy she'd had fallen in love, who had saved her so many times already, was now also about to be taken away by an equally horrible monster with dragon heads that sported vicious and sadistic grins as they took pleasure in causing pain to him.

'Why?' She wondered. 'Why do these monsters always like creating pain?'

But there was even more powerful force at play here within her.

{Lionors} burned with power as it filled her with energy. Her heart burned with desperation and panic for Lyze, and proportionate to her feelings for him, the skill filled her with new power as her dash was provided with the biggest boost to her speed she'd ever felt in her life. She raced towards Typhon filled with confidence and drive to save Lyze.

...

But reality was cruel. Impressive as her power was, it had nowhere near the amount of explosive force as Lyze's power...nor was she anywhere near as fast as him. Typhon lifted his other arm and punched the ground in front of her, uprooting stone plates from the ground as a violent blast wave slammed into her body and instantly made her limp and unconscious, her ribs pulverized and her nose broken as she went bouncing across a great distance, leaving bloody splatters where she would bounce.

"AIS!" Lyze shouted before another burst of anger made his brain fizz with madness. Typhon though taken aback was pleased as more Origin energy surged in the boy for it to drain. But Lyze was not focused on that as he summoned Geranos to him. From the rubble pile, the dagger came screaming forth, still shining with power it had gotten from the time it had cleaved Balor in two. It sailed through the air with bullet accuracy and lodged itself in the wrist of the Desecration. Typhon felt only a prick.

Lyze charged up electricity and fire in his hands and channelled it through the monsters skin to the dagger as he began to supercharge the weapon inefficiently, which he knew by now made magic in the dagger very unstable...and very dangerous. The dagger hit its limit before long and explosion rocked the Moira sands as Typhon's arm was blasted off right down to the elbow as it screamed in pain.

Lyze was also hit with dizzying pain. Suspended in the air, he looked down to see that both his arms had been blown off too, leaving stumps at his elbows. Geranos hovered in front of him, cracked and dull, completely and perhaps irreversibly damaged from being overloaded with Primordial cosmic energy. Typhon shrieked angrily and swiped at him with its other arm. Its hand smashed into Lyze's body and the dagger and sent them both flying towards a wall.

Lyze's body broke the rock face which was surprisingly hollow and Lyze found himself rattling amongst jagged and hard edges as spiky and knobbly structures dug into his skin. He shook the daze from his eyes as he looked around at where he'd come to a rest. And momentarily he was taken aback in amazement. He was situated in what looked like a geode...where there were crystals of dark purple and shining grey strewn about everywhere, and sticking out of the rock.

The texture and appearance of these things were very different to their surroundings but Lyze recognised what these things were as he'd seen only small and raw fragments of these things on Tsubaki's workshop bench during his lessons with her.

He was in a geode of raw Adamantite and Orichalcum ore! And there was so much of it here that if a singular person were to be able to sell all of this, then even their great grandchildren would be set for life! This novelty however wore off soon enough as Lyze was still without his arms, and with Chaos no longer responding to him, he couldn't regenerate automatically. He was also experiencing a lot of pain of pain along his back area and a slight shuffle revealed the sensations of deep cuts and bruises on his body. Lying near to him was Geranos, looking ever so pathetic and lost to him, a useless relic now that he'd destroyed it.

But now that was not his concern. He needed to get to Ais and make sure she was okay. He moved his legs and bent his back to help himself up since he was missing his arms but he sensed a great charge up of magic and looked out the hole he'd made when he'd come flying in hear.

Typhon had opened all of its mouths and was charging up another blast, one that he could not stop this time. Typhon fired Balor's blast and Amphisbaena's fire breath at him. The attacks converged to created one giant laser beam that smashed into the geode and engulfed Lyze in magic as hot as magma from the great deep. Lyze could not even scream as he felt himself burn, and the regeneration of the Flame kept on healing him over and over so he would keep living through this pain, just like it was under the Howl. Only this time, it was a far more horrible and devastating attack from the freak's mouth.

The blast attack burned so hot that all the ore around Lyze began to melt, Orichalcum and Adamantite mixing together to create a pool of molten metal in which Lyze was submerged, filling him with pain and agony unlike anything he'd felt before.

Amidst all the melting ores, Geranos also began to melt and joined the metals in the liquid metal pool.

He should have died a thousand times over, but he knew he couldn't die lest all he cared for be destroyed again. So he released his pain into his anger, and his anger charged up the {Cratus} skill which in turn supercharged the Flame since Lyze had linked the two.

Slowly his durability began to build up under the effect of the skill until his skin was no longer being melted off. But his clothes were a different matter as they all completely burned into him, sticking to his body like hardened plastic or something as the created a burning shell around him which gave him new sensations in his genital areas that gave him plenty to be more enraged about.

Typhon finally let up as it stopped its blast attack, feeling assured that the boy had died. After all, that blast attack had been fuelled by the same Origin Energy that it drained from Lyze. To the Desecration, there was no way Lyze could have survived. It was distracted though as a tidal wave of fire hit its giant body, making it turn around to see Riveria's eyes blazing in anger as her Magna Alfs was poised right at it.

Gareth and Finn appeared on Typhon's back and began attacking the dragon heads as they tried to get to the main head. Their attacks were futile though as they could barely scratch this monster, let alone pierce its skin. Typhon screamed, its dragon heads flooding the area where Riveria and her mage team had been situated in and attacking it from with red mist. Typhon's fist repeatedly punched into the ground as Udaeus spikes rose out of the ground, unfortunately impaling some adventurers that were attacking it on foot.

Typhon crouched as it charged up, silver electricity pouring out of its pores as it drew upon the power it had stolen from Lyze before detonating it and sending a burning shockwave out of its body of silver fire that blew off the adventurers and roasted the the area of effect. These adventurers who got hit suffered significant soul damage as they felt the worse pain they could ever feel in their lives.

And unfortunately...there were those who were extinguished as their lives were drained out of them and their bodies fell limp and dead. The first deaths in this whole expedition, which settled a cold chill over the spines of all adventurers present as cold reality hit them. They were stuck inside, trapped with this beast as it shrugged off everything they threw at it while it was now starting to kill them all.

All had come to this...it was a battle for survival.

...

Lyze meanwhile floated in a pool of molten Adamantite and Orichalcum, unconscious from the pain as the Flame kept him alive. But he'd been drained so much of his Origin energy that very soon, even that wouldn't keep him alive and he would become embalmed in a cooling pool of red hot liquid metal.

At that moment, Chaos managed to break through to her host momentarily and seized the chance to regenerate his arms and wake him up. But his flesh was so saturated with Origin energy that the Primordial force mingled with the efforts of Chaos as both worked in tandem to restore Lyze's arms. And within the pool of metal, flesh was wrought from the elbows as the arms began to regenerate but with a twist.

The molten metal also began to be funnelled into the regeneration, and the molten pool began to fuse with the flesh as the volume of the pool began to disappear, twisting and warping with living flesh and blood as Lyze's arms began to magically absorb the molten pool of metal. And taking the shape of his arms, magical and legendary class metals begun to weld themselves onto his body and his soul through the actions of the Flame and of Chaos. When the process was done, there was no more metal in the geode, all of it having fused with Lyze's regrown arms.

He gasped as he awoke and sat up straight, staring down at his regrown limbs that had new features this time. From open slits in his arms came pouring out liquid alloy...which he could sense as a part of his own body, like extra limbs or something. It moved according to his imagination and how he imaged them. He envisioned them to take the form of swords, which they did. Same with an axe, or a spear, or a pair of daggers. Whichever form he wanted them to take, they did so, and he could sense extensions of his soul running through this liquid metal as the Flame filled his new metallic appendages.

Then he had an idea, and he projected another image into his mind...and just like that, the liquid metals began to take form.

Of long chains woven around his arms...with cruel blades at the end.

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