NOVEL NEXT Chapter 132: The mutant
"Grrroooow." A guttural, bone-rattling growl resonated through the air, its deep vibration stitching the unraveling tension back into place like a thread through silk. The sudden resonance held a weight that made the ground feel heavier beneath their feet.
Dunstan and Lumina, along with their subordinates, who were moments away from turning their backs to leave, froze mid-step, their bodies trembling under the pressure of the roar that did not simply echo but gripped the air with dominance.
In perfect unison, as if bound by a single instinct, their gazes were dragged beneath the towering, eerie silhouette of the Primordial Metal Tree, where the sound had surged from.
From within a haze of dark, viscous smoke, rising and spreading like a malevolent spirit set free by the demon's self-destruction, a pair of crimson eyes slowly bled into view. They gleamed like dying stars behind a veil of ashen mist, cold and calculating.
A shiver, sharp and precise, crawled through every soul present.
Their eyes trembled in their sockets, as if trying to recoil from the scene yet unable to look away. Cold sweat bead by bead surfaced on their cheeks, and a chill, ghostly and deliberate, crept from their eyes down the curvature of their spines. The sight of those disembodied, ominous eyes, unfigured yet vividly terrifying, stabbed fear into the silence.
"Grrroooow." The second growl tore through the thick silence like a blade against canvas, then, in the blink of an eye, time itself had been slowed by divine hands
Reality bent.
The mutated metal celestial emerged, burst forth from the shadows like a nightmare made flesh, appearing, as though space had obediently bent to its will. It was now hovering just inches before Lumina mid-air, its right fist already mid-swing, hurtling forward with the weight of mountains behind it.
Lumina's breath caught. Her eyes expanded in pure shock, there was no time to act, only enough to realize. The strike was a breath away from crushing her skull.
When Dunstan moved, reacting on instinct honed by countless battles, manipulated gravity around his body in an instant. His immortal energy surged like a roaring tide, The air warped around him, as he leaped with velocity far beyond human like a meteor defying the heavens. With a powerful pull, he yanked Lumina backward, out of the attack's merciless range
The mutated celestial's fist continued its course, now unobstructed, driving through the air with the rage of a collapsing world. Though the fist struck nothing but air, the sheer force behind it warped the wind, pulling it inward like a vortex. A second later, it slammed into the ground with an explosive impact, like a celestial meteor.
BOOM! Dust erupted outward like a burst dam, gushing in all directions with explosive fury. The very earth recoiled beneath it.
Those caught in the radius, Lumina, Dunstan, and the nearby celestials, could only react by shielding their noses with their sleeves and narrowing their eyes into thin slits to fend off the suffocating, blinding dust storm. It rose like a living thing, choking the battlefield in a cloud of chaos.
"Kuff, kuff... kuff..." Coughing erupted at random, rising like a faltering chorus as the dust slowly thinned, revealing distorted outlines in the settling haze. "Grrroooow," the mutated metal creature growled, its voice a twisted echo of steel grinding on stone, locking its glare on its prey with the hunger of something lost to madness.
"Wait... isn't that your subordinate?" Lumina asked, her voice cracking with disbelief. "The one whose body mutated into solid metal, making him immobile? How... how is he moving now?" Her eyes scanned him, trying to grasp the impossible before her.
"I'm not entirely sure," Dunstan responded, his voice low with tension. "But one thing is clear, this has something to do with that strange pill the demon swallowed... and the detonation that followed."
Their subordinates clenched their teeth, grimacing as the mutant lumbered forward, its steps like anvils falling on cracked earth. Lumina, catching their tension, summoned her bow, her fingers pulling back the string with quiet resolve.
"What are you doing?" Dunstan asked, the question rhetorical, his tone already half-knowing.
"Obviously, shooting at it," she answered coldly.
"But will that even matter?" Beorn interjected, his gaze narrowing. "Its body's encased in metal, it might as well be a fortress."
"It may not pierce," Lumina replied, her tone unwavering, "but this mutants reaction came from demonic contamination. If I can force that energy out, even a glancing blow might restore him."
She pulled the string taut, drawing back with all the force her will could muster, and let the arrow fly. It sliced through the air, trailing a stream of divine light, parting the tainted aura swirling around the mutant like a blade through dust-storms.
Cling! A sharp metallic ring shattered through the thick din as the arrow struck the mutant's chest. It bounced off harmlessly, the force absorbed, the arrow dissolving mid-air into glowing wisps of energy.
"Humm," Dunstan muttered, brows furrowed. Even though he and the others half-expected failure, the sheer resistance still unsettled them.
"Why... did... you... abandon... me... Why... tell... me..." The mutant's voice boomed, each word trembling like the strike of a war drum in a gale. Cracks appearing around his metallic body like veins.
They froze. That voice, distorted yet unmistakably human, tore into their conscience with accusing weight.
"RRROOOOR!" the creature roared, mouth wide with anguish. The sound that followed was not just noise, it was a shockwave. It ripped through the air like a tidal scream, the force so raw that the wind staggered in response.
Every celestial instinctively clutched their ears, teeth grinding against the pressure. The dust rose in crashing waves, and the ground beneath them trembled, scattering debris like shaken sand on glass.
Suddenly, the noisy echo dissolved into an eerie silence. The Celestials, immortals of renowned stature, raised trembling hands to their heads, their expressions twisting in anguish. Thin lines of blood formed like scarlet tears at the corners of some eyes, others coughed up blood violently, while the rest stood frozen, their bodies quaking as if gripped by an unseen force.
Only Dunstan, Lumina, and Beorn remained composed, showing minimal reaction, though not entirely unaffected.
Then, like a thunderbolt, the metal mutant creature surged forward, but instead of lumbering with its heavy frame, it appeared before Dunstan in the blink of an eye, as though the laws of space had bent for it. With a roar of cruel amusement, it hurled a crushing right fist toward Dunstan's face. Yet Dunstan, the embodiment of speed and reflex, swayed his head to the right in a fluid motion, dodging with grace.
The creature, unrelenting, launched its left fist next, again, Dunstan dipped his head to the left, narrowly avoiding the strike. A storm of rapid-fire punches followed, each one thunderous with the weight of metal, but Dunstan continued his dance of evasion.
Then, slicing through the thickened air like a whisper of vengeance, an arrow flew, its shaft glowing faintly with radiant energy. It struck the mutant's ear with a metallic thud.
"Grrroooow!" the beast screamed, its voice like grinding steel. Though the arrow's head failed to pierce through the metal eardrum, its energy flared, nullifying the demonic radiation that festered within. Agonizing pain bloomed from within the creature's skull.
Its head snapped toward the source of the attack, Lumina. "You all are ungrateful!" it bellowed, hatred dripping from its words. Abandoning Dunstan, it launched at her with terrifying speed, closing the distance in a blink.
Lumina, eyes clenched, braced for the inevitable, but it never came.
BAAM!
The mutant's body jerked downward mid-air, as though gravity itself had rejected his existence. The ground beneath his feet fractured like spiderwebs, sprawling out beneath his collapsing weight. Lumina's eyes cracked open, disbelief widening them as she watched the creature convulse.
The cracks along its metallic frame deepened, now clear and jagged, shedding glittering metal particles like dry bark flaking off an old tree. Then Dunstan, a blur cloaked in velocity, appeared beside the mutant's left flank. He thrust a fist, empowered by gravitational force, straight into the side of the mutant's head, BOOM! The impact thundered like a mountain collapsing.
But instead of yielding, a shockwave pulsed from the mutant's skull, flinging Dunstan away like a feather caught in a storm. Metal fragments exploded from the stress veins running through the mutant's body. Dunstan spun helplessly through the air, crashing into the ground with a heavy thud, dust erupting around him in a cloud that veiled his fallen form.
The ragged breath of the immortal hung heavy in the air, each exhale like the sigh of a battle-worn spirit. The wind whispered through the broken field, curling around the debris like a curious phantom.
Even the low, guttural growl of the mutant seemed to fall into rhythm, as if nature itself had entered a silent council. The elements, breath, wind, and beast, synchronized in eerie harmony, conspiring as though to decide how best to quell this storm of steel and will, and bring an end to the chaos that had scarred the earth.