The Stormbound Fuchsia struck the Narghul Sorcerer’s lower ribs. There was a brief pause before the staff touched the demon, as his Abyssal Shield flared up for a moment.

However, this was a young two-horned Narghul Sorcerer, and his innate nature had not been unlocked.

My staff, covered by a cloak of lightning, tore through the barrier and slammed into his ribs, and I felt his hide flex and his internal structure compress, but I did not do much damage; however, the demon staggered sideways.

It was the first strike of the engagement that had connected with the demon itself, not with the construct.

The four eyes of the demon shifted towards me without moving his head, and they had changed from burning interest to something else.

The Narghul Sorcerer’s mouth opened again, and the voice this time was lower, the frequency dropping below my chest into the hollow place itself.

"Branded cattle, I see that you still dance well to the whip of your masters, but they are all gone. Now, dance for me."

The shadow construct came at me as three independent strikes; the demon had split the construct into three coordinated limbs, each smaller and faster, and they were all driving toward the body from three angles simultaneously.

’Hmm... young but cunning. He held back his enhanced capabilities with the construct.’

The Avatar did not have the lightning reserves to evade all three, and so my body cloaked the staff in the right hand, the left forearm, and the right knee with lightning, three points, three intercepts, and met each shadow strike with a directed parry.

The staff caught the first limb high. The forearm caught the second mid-line. The knee caught the third low.

The lightning at all three points discharged on impact, causing the shadow limbs to flinch back. My body absorbed the impact through Mortal Shell’s binding and held with minimal damage; I only lost a layer of skin.

Still, the lightning was depleting, and the cloaked layer was thinning.

The Avatar had spent approximately forty percent of the loaded lightning inside my body in the first ninety seconds of the engagement, and the demon was not yet at half capacity.

The math was not in favour of the Avatar.

The Narghul Sorcerer’s left hand rose. Corruption Conjuration began to gather, resembling a black-green orb.

This was the substance that had killed me in the fourth loop through forced mutation, and at that time, I had received a small wave from afar, not the concentrated blast building above the demon’s palm.

The cast would end my body if it connected, and the Avatar made a tactical decision I would not have made.

My body charged the demon directly, getting into the Corruption’s gathering range.

I realized that the Avatar was forcing the demon to commit early and not build the entirety of the spell, and the Narghul Sorcerer’s eyes flashed with irritation and released the corruption as a wave.

In the same instant, the Flame Essence in the Sorcerer’s right hand re-formed and released as a beam, and the shadow construct’s three limbs closed in a triangular pin around my body’s trajectory.

The Avatar did not evade, and my body went through the strikes, the lightning cloaking my torso flaring to maximum intensity, as my body’s forward momentum carried me into the heart of the multi-vector cast pattern.

The Corruption struck my body’s left shoulder, the Flame Essence struck my body’s right side, causing the right side of my body, including the arm, to become covered with flames, and the construct’s three limbs caught my body’s legs, arms, and head simultaneously.

My body should have ended at that moment, but the lightning cloak had taken the brunt of the elemental damage from the flame, and Mortal Shell held the structural integrity of my body past where it had any right to hold.

Endurance absorbed the impact damage past what the standard Acolyte body would have tolerated, and my new blood absorbed the Flame Essence’s heat at a rate that prevented immediate vaporisation.

Corruption was beginning to do its work. I felt the mutation initiating in the left shoulder, as my skin was distorting, with the bone trying to twist into something it was not.

The Avatar did not have time to address it, as I had reached the demon.

My body, burning, mutating, pinned across three vectors, closed the final metre and brought the staff down on the Narghul Sorcerer’s left horn with a resounding crack that echoed for several hundred meters.

The horn broke at the base, and the Narghul Sorcerer’s left eye on that side burst, reducing his four eyes to three.

The Narghul Sorcerer screamed, although the sound was not in the audible range. It was in the frequency that arrived in the hollow place, and the frequency carried something other than mere pain. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

The frequency carried surprise.

In that moment, the demon had committed everything to the kill, and it had failed, and the Avatar took the moment.

My body twisted out of the construct’s pin as the three limbs holding flesh that was now actively unbinding under Mortal Shell’s emergency triage.

My motion left flesh behind in the shadow’s grip, but Mortal Shell kept the movements of my body at its peak condition.

I brought the staff around in a second strike. The Narghul Sorcerer raised its right forearm to block.

The staff met the forearm, and the staff exploded.

Mel’s charm, the bell rang once as it shattered, the note carried across, clear and bright, and for one half-second of impossible registration, I felt warmth, both me and the Avatar, and I was puzzled as I did not know what that warmth meant.

Then the moment passed, and the staff was gone, and my body was relatively unarmed.

The Narghul Sorcerer recovered its stance. Three eyes on me, filled with fury. The left horn’s stump was bleeding a dark fluid that smoked in the air. The right horn was intact, and the demon raised both hands.

"Now, cattle," it growled, fangs gleaming, "you have nothing."

The Avatar did not retreat. I shook my body, dissipating the last bit of flames clinging to it, but my body’s left arm was still mutating where the Corruption had struck.

The Avatar made a decision, and I was going to let the mutation complete in that arm.