Villain's Second Heart: Trapped in A Fantasy Novel (BL)-Chapter 126: Heaven and Earth

"Heavenly Embodiment!?" Ezra fretted as time returned to normal. The horde racing toward him began to move again, somehow even faster than before. And Oberyn, behind him, had passed out from the pain and exhaustion.

[The skill I’ve been waiting for you to receive.]

’You’ll have to do a little better than that!’ Ezra thought back to the voice of Alcor ringing in his head. ’We don’t have much time, if you haven’t noticed!’

[Think of this ability in the same way you think of the manifestation we created when we fought the Magician of Thorns.]

Ezra narrowed his eyes. ’The shadow-arm-thing I let you control?’

[Precisely. But now, you will create an entire body for me to control out of your mana. Such is the power of your Heavenly Embodiment.]

’Create you...a body?’

[Don’t think too much about it. A form befitting Alcor Star - something that contains enough power and rage to quell even a horde of this size.]

Ezra scrambled to think of something. Not that he understood the assignment too well.

’A form...for you to manifest...that can defeat monsters like these.’

They were seconds away from impact - him vs. the horde. No time to think. All he could do was generate an image of something that was the antithesis to the bumbling, yellow-eyed monsters born of pure fleshy darkness.

A creature of light.

Violet eyes that burned in defiance against the bleak yellow.

Tall, noble, stalwart. A gift from above - a Heavenly Embodiment. One befitting the name ’Alcor Star’.

Ezra closed his eyes and gripped his hand to his chest.

’I don’t know about this, Alcor, but here goes nothing...’ he thought one final time. He mustered every ounce of mana he had left into one final gambit. Rav and Oberyn gave everything they had to get this far, and now it was up to Ezra and Alcor to finish this.

"Being of Light, I summon you!" Ezra called out, unsure of what to say as he willed his vision into being with every fiber of his being. He stretched his arm out and in front of him, an entity began to form just as he imagined it.

In moments, it appeared - a divine beast with protruding horns and fluffy white fur. It turned back at him with deep, violet eyes, the same as his own. Eyes that were once Alcor’s.

And then a notification appeared before him.

[Heavenly Embodiment - Starbeast Alcor (S Rank) Successfully Summoned]

He no longer felt the presence of Alcor in his mind - instead, it radiated from the resplendent beast in front of him. The eyes of the creature looked upon him knowingly. It was Alcor, in the flesh. They looked into each other’s eyes for the very first time, despite being together every moment since Ezra woke in this world.

"So, this is you."

The beast opened its mouth, and the words flowed through the air. Deeper and more gravelly than the snakey voice of Alcor that rung in his ears, but still distinct and recognizable.

"The body looks different from when I inhabited it. You embody that form well."

"And you look...different than I imagined, too," Ezra said with a smirk. "But now’s not the time!"

"Indeed," Alcor replied, turning back to the horde. Brilliant traces of light reflected off his towering visage.

If the Encephalim were capable of fear, perhaps they would have halted their advance - but their commander, January Madera, ordered them to attack, and so they chose to attack mindlessly.

The four-legged beast Alcor inhabited rose high on two legs before crashing down, sending a shockwave of speckled light through the ground. It roasted the nearest Encephalim to bits as the blinding power overtook them in a supernova of light.

"With me, Ezra!" Alcor roared in his newfound body and voice. Ezra nodded and rushed to the beast’s side, spear in hand. As the Encephalim descended, Ezra and Alcor leapt into the fray, side by side.

It was a bloodbath. Ezra’s spear and Alcor’s claws devastated all they touched as the duo erupted into a frenetic frenzy, slicing down every one of the misshapen monsters that crossed their path. Ezra moved with frightening speed and grace that surprised even himself - the result of constant, strenuous training under the guidance of the great sage.

And Alcor, a distinguished fighter in life, had a killer instinct that reached new heights in this new form, a vengeful animal god inspired by the wrathful light of the stars themselves. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

As Alcor danced and tore through the villainous creatures, he found use for the new repertoire of skills in his arsenal as well. His body was not just a killing machine - it was possessed of great magic.

Alcor fired a beam of starry light out of his mouth, decimating no less than thirty Encephalim in a single rip of his energy. As he jumped around the battlefield, every place he landed radiated with burning light that was singularly adept at burning through Encephalim flesh.

It was exactly as Ezra imagined it - a creature to serve as the antithesis to the Encephalim. A being of pure, vengeful rage that could single-handedly destroy even five hundred of these creatures, although it didn’t need to. After all, Ezra was a machine himself, powered by his love for Oberyn on one hand, and by the diabolical Second Heart beating in his chest on the other.

And help soon arrived from the skies as well. He saw a familiar blue streak of light as Bree returned to the battlefield, a flurry of arrows raining down from the sky. One after another she dispatched the Encephalim from on high, and in a fleeting moment, another deeper dash of blue joined her. Ezra looked up and saw a second blue Ave flying through the air, this one possessed of magic. Blue spikes appeared in his shadow, dropping down from the sky and barraging the horde.

Ezra watched them fly together in a spellbinding aerial dance - a father and his daughter, both warriors in their own right, arriving just in the nick of time to help turn the tide of battle.

And before Ezra knew it, he pierced through one final Encephalim with his spear, tossed its body aside, and looked around in every direction only to find that every single one of the thousand enemies had finally been defeated.