Lifeblood Chaos [LitRPG Apocalypse]

Ray's world whirled as severe pain possessed him. The agony that overtook him at the impact form the demon's blow made him lose track of everything. He was pretty sure he was screaming as his lungs out, or what remained of them after the demon's hit. Even though he couldn't hear a thing with his eardrums ripped to bloody shreds, his whole body was vibrating with the screams.

He couldn't tell where he fell. If Ray landed in the lava, he wasn't sure the pain of that fiery crash-landing would have left a mark with the current agony overtaking his chest. Fuck, he couldn't even move his head to look down and see how horrible the injury was.

Maybe it was a blessing he was losing the last of his consciousness. The blackness at the edge of his tear-blurred vision was drawing over everything in sight. He couldn't tell if he was even breathing anymore, if he could feel his heart still thumping in his shattered chest.

Maybe his heart had been squashed too.

Senses faded. The extreme heat that turned to cold disappeared. All the vibrations making his body tremble vanished. The world turned dark.

Ray gasped. Dimly, he registered the fact that he could hear again. As evidenced by the fact that the loud scream was so close that his eardrums felt like rupturing once again.

"Fuck, wingman," a familiar voice said, cutting through his agonized shriek. "Stop screaming and struggling. We're trying to heal you."

Awareness and control returned quickly, even as the pain receded fraction by fraction. Ray breathed harshly, began looking around as he noted Gritty and Marcus next to him. A golden glow blanketed them all, the light centred on Marcus.

"Wha—" Ray's voice croaked and broke on its own. He had trouble getting more words out.

"Just relax for a sec, okay?" Gritty said. Once he stopped moving, she looked over her teammates to somewhere ahead of them. "I'm glad we got in time. You'd be dead if we'd been a minute late. That thing's insane. Even Sameer's whole team and Lent together can't even scratch it."

Ray did his best to ground his whirling mind. He was pretty sure he had blacked out from the effects of the demon's devastating attack on him. Gritty was right. They had arrived just in time to help him.

Otherwise, he never would have regained consciousness.

At least Marcus seemed a little more collected than before. His face had a more concentrated look. Maybe he had regained most of his faculties when they were fighting their own demons. Ray was just glad his friends were fine.

Gritty continued narrating what was going on, though she was doing a terrible job of it. Still, Ray pieced together that despite the demon exhibiting more powerful abilities and attacking relentlessly and ferociously, no one had given up yet. Also, none of them had room to care about their differences. They had to focus on only fighting their enemy. The real enemy. Not each other.

If they didn't work together, the Demon of Humanity was going to do them what it had done to Ray.

"I'm glad I could serve as a warning," Ray said as his first coherent sentence.

"You're good, right?" Gritty asked. She turned to Marcus. "He'll be fine, right Marcus?"

Marcus grunted. "Nobody's going to be fine against that thing."

"You know what I mean."

Marcus just shrugged noncommittally. Ray kept his mouth shut and did his best to get up. It still hurt, but he was just grateful he could hear again.

"Thanks, Marcus," he said after gathering his breath. "I'm glad I can hear again."

Gritty looked a little aghast. Ray was pretty sure this was the first time he had seen her this worried. "You couldn't hear?"

"Yeah… that thing blew out my eardrums. Guessing you guys happened to pick a safe spot far enough away by chance, otherwise, you'd be in the same situation." Ray turned to Marcus. "Also, I'm glad you're feeling more like yourself."

Marcus gave him a weird look. "What do you mean? I was always myself…?"

Gritty was giving Ray a slightly panicked look and hastily motioning a resounding no behind Marcus's back. Okay…

"Uh, never mind," Ray said. "We need to figure out how to deal with that thing."

All three of them were a little mesmerized by the battle before them. Despite now facing four different competitors, the Demon of Humanity showed no signs of slowing down at all.

Lent roared out like a landslide. He had raised thick walls of rock from the earth to contain the lava flow and redirect it in a harmless direction, making it waterfall out on one side. This gave the others some more room to fight against the monster.

Sameer was keeping the rest of his teammates alive with his portals again. They'd all probably be dead anyway with the sea of blood-lava that the demon had created, but Lent's assistance was making sure they didn't suffer as much. But the wound on the monster's leg remained open, still spraying smoking, burning blood wherever it went.

The difference-maker was Eliza. She was trying to use her time orbs to catch the demo off-guard. Just as with Sameer's portals, random blobs of time were popping into existence all over the battlefield.

But the demon was too fast. It moved too quickly, evading every single blow directed in its direction.

None of Karkatrix's chains reached it. None of the time orbs or the various powers Sameer unleashed from his portals struck true. Ray could see what they were trying to accomplish by overwhelming the Demon of Humanity with relentless attacks. The demon was too quick, too evasive, even managing to counterattack with its thrown rocks and sonic blasts.

"Can't she just lure that thing to come at her?" Gritty said, glaring at Eliza. "Then pop up one of her time-bombs and take it out."

Ray shook his head. Gritty hadn't seen just how fast the demon could really get if it wanted. "She'd die as soon as that thing gets within a few feet of her. It can go even faster than it's doing right now. That's why Sameer's been making sure it doesn't get close to any of his teammates."

Gritty muttered a curse.

They actually managed to lure the Demon of Humanity into a trap of sorts. All thanks to the help Lent provided.

The big, boulderlike alien raised his arms high and let loose another grinding roar. For an instant, the mountain shook violently. Then a pillar of earth the size of a small skyscraper towered up with the speed of a runaway train, shooting straight for the sky like they wanted to launch the demon into the air or something.

Of course, the monster had a superhuman ability to cling to the rock. Not only that, it shattered the entire the pillar with a single blow. One hit, and the entire, huge tower of rocks broke apart into hundreds of chunks that flew off in different directions thanks to how momentum was interacting from the different forces.

"What are they doing?" Gritty asked as all three of them fell back.

Ray wished he knew. Though, he was starting to get an idea when he saw Sameer created a massive portal. Well, it wasn't an oversized rift so much as a bunch of them strung together to form a gigantic tear in space itself.

A tear he slammed forward.

"Anybody else knew he could move portals like that?" Gritty asked.

Ray could only shake his head.

It was pretty ingenious. The demon might have broken the entire pillar, but the shattering had still followed a certain pattern. One side of the tower of rock sent up by Lent was breaking faster than the others. A side that the demon had picked to rush back down and continue its assault.

The side that Sameer had picked to send his enormous portal and catch the demon.

Ray wasn't sure it was going to work. The last time they had tried a similar strategy, the demon had simply escaped back out. It was why Ray had warned Gritty about the incredible speed from their enemy she hadn't even seen yet.

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Plus the portal was even bigger this time. Sure, a wider area meant it had a greater chance of catching the demon. But it would also make closing the portal harder too.

But knowing Sameer, there had to be some trick up his sleeve…

The demon fell for it again. Its own momentum carried it through the huge portal. And like before, Ray actually caught the demon reversing out of the portal.

Sameer started collapsing the portal and moving it as well. He was folding it around itself, constricting the space the demon could move, doing so almost as fast as his enemy could move. Even more importantly, he had companions who were incredibly quick on the uptake. Who were in position to take advantage of the demon's forced trajectory.

Karkatrix's chains had shot through the shattered pieces of the towering pillar of rock that Lent had flung into the air. They wrapped through the rocks and formed a wall of earth that the demon wouldn't be able to pass through easily.

And then there was Eliza. The lynchpin of the manoeuvre. Ray actually grinned at how well they had executed the whole thing. They hadn't even talked among themselves and now they were working like a well-oiled team who had practiced this exact move.

Hemmed in by the portal folding and collapsing around it, by the shattered remains of the giant rock pillar walling it in, the demon was forced to shoot straight at Eliza.

Who was herself practically coated in her time-warping orbs.

With a yell that Ray could satisfyingly hear, she rushed at the demon. The Demon of Humanity had no room to manoeuvre around her. Even with superior speed and reactions, if there was literally no space to evade around and counter, then it was done for.

That realization was why Ray was grinning. It had to work. There was no way the demon could—

The interaction between the different powers at play was weird. Ray was lucky he could actually see them interacting in the briefest moment where they impacted each other.

Lava-blood had continued spraying from the demon's leg wound all this time. Instants before collision, the monster angled its foot so that the burning blood sprayed all over Eliza. None of it hit her, of course. The time blanketing her just made the lava-blood disappear from existence.

But it did blind her. Ray was once again struck by the sheer intelligence the monster possessed. Demon of Humanity indeed.

Ray's view of what happened next was blocked for a second as the rocks that Karkatrix had stuck together with his chains swerved in and drew closer. But then, things cleared enough. Ray froze. Somehow, the demon had deformed its body enough to dodge Eliza, who had gone on to hit the portal folding in around them.

It was that interaction between Eliza's obliterating time and Sameer's portal that fascinated Ray. The second her time touched the rift, it expanded a little before bursting into tiny fragments like a popped balloon. Tatters of colourful energy streamed around them both.

He lost view of what was going on again. But Ray had seen enough. That the demon could deform its body to evade even in situations like that was crazy.

No surprise that it was able to land a counter on Eliza. As the rocks closed in, she went flying down with a scream.

"Fuck!" Gritty cursed as she started forward.

Even Ray's body jolted. But they were both significantly slower than Marcus, who had shot forward almost as fast as Eliza was plummeting out of the air.

Ray halted himself, grabbing Gritty's arm to prevent her from going farther. She looked back at him, part annoyed, part questioning.

He shook his head. "Too dangerous, stay back."

Ray would have grabbed and stopped Marcus too, but he had moved on way too quickly.

His words were proven true the very next moment. He looked up. The Demon of Humanity had already crushed the rocks that Karkatrix had strung up with his chains. But with the shackles shattered, the demon screamed and generated another powerful gust, sending the hundreds of rocks all straight towards the ground like a meteor shower.

Problem was, it had sent the rocks in every direction. Ray and Gritty were far enough that they had little trouble protecting themselves.

Sameer could only quickly create a portal for himself to escape through. He had time. But he was far too busy taking care of himself to cast portals for his companions, who were a little too distant.

Marcus barely got time to use his golden barrier. Ray didn't get to see how effective it was. His heart spasmed in worry as the rocks crashed down, sending up clouds of dirt and dust that covered up everything in sight. The scream, which sounded distinctly like Karkatrix's voice, definitely did nothing to allay his fears.

"Too dangerous, sure," Gritty said through gritted teeth. "But we still need to kill it, don't we?"

Ray had really hoped that last combination move from the others would have done the trick. He was running out of ideas.

If fighting the Third Floor Lord had been bad, fighting this thing felt like an order of magnitude worse. At least with the Floor Lord, he had stood against a being capable of reason. This was an unpredictable monster bent purely on their deaths.

"One good hit," Ray said, steeling his resolve. He took a deep breath. "Just one good strike, and I think I can take it."

Ray realized what was happening. He was actually a little afraid. With how close he had come to dying from just one blow, his body was instinctively shying away from the prospect of fighting the Demon of Humanity again.

It was… a new feeling. He didn't actually recall if he had ever truly feared for his life in the Tower of Forging yet. No matter what sort of foe he had faced, no matter how much stronger the Floor Lords and the various monsters he had killed had been, he had always been confident in his powers and his ability to eke out a victory one way or another.

In every encounter, he had always been able to rely on his brain being able to find some way to overcome his enemies. Some way to combine his powers, some way to take advantage of his opponents' weaknesses, some way to even the odds and secure victory.

Right now, his mind was blanking entirely. And it was this lack of a plan, this inability to figure out something that would work that scared him in a way he hadn't ever truly considered in the Tower before.

But he could recognize the fear. And he knew that if he wanted to win this tournament, if he wanted to come out as the victor and have the power to fight back against the Sylvans, he couldn't back down. He had to be able to overcome all odds, no matter how hopeless they appeared.

There was just a fine line between trying and never giving up, and needlessly rushing to his death.

"You got a plan?" Gritty asked. Where she had been eager to fight before, it was pretty clear she had realized fighting this monster wasn't going to be like anything they had faced so far.

"I've got plans about what I want to try." Ray took out an Aeon Mana crystal and crushed it, replenishing his stores. "And if all of them fail, I still plan to come out on top. I'm not dying here, Gritty. And I'm not letting any of my teammates die either."

"Uh…" Gritty was looking at how the dust cloud was blanketing the area where Marcus and Eliza were.

"We'll just hope they're not bloody mush," Ray said. "Let's go!"

While they'd had the short chat, the demon had gone after Sameer. He was still a lot closer to the battlefield than either of them. And it looked like he was sticking close on purpose, weaving around the destroyed crater, likely trying to find his own teammates.

Ray had to give it to the guy. Traitorous bastard though he was, he wasn't one to abandon people he actually considered on his side.

"We should find Marcus first," Gritty said. "Make sure he's alive, and then—"

Ray had been waiting for her to finish. He had been about to agree with her plan. But then, a bright red spear zoomed in over the mountainside and shot straight at the Demon of Humanity. It evaded it easily, hardly paying attention to the attack.

He halted his charge like a record scratch. That was…

Seconds later, Pierce rose up the side of the mountain too. He was riding his actual spear like it was some kind of weird hoverboard.

"Didn't you say he was fighting the Floor Lord?" Gritty asked. She had come to a stop too, staring at how he was flying on his spear straight into the battlefield, getting closer to all of them.

"I thought he was…"

The Demon of Humanity continued shrieking through the air as it tried to catch Sameer, ignoring the newcomer for now. Ray would have paid attention to what was going on, but Pierce was heading towards them.

"Fighting that thing straight up isn't going to work," he said as he got closer. "But if you can keep it busy, I know how we can stop it."

"What happened to the Floor Lord?" Ray asked.

Pierce winced. "He's not dead yet. I pushed him back, but I suspect he might come after me. Although, if we start fighting this demon, I don't know if he'll want to interfere…"

"What's your plan?" Gritty asked. "You said you had some idea, right?"

Pierce nodded. "Fighting and beating that thing is impossible. I—"

"The Objective said that this was one demon we could destroy by fighting," Ray said.

"Alright, maybe it did. How much luck have you had trying that?" When Ray didn't answer immediately, Pierce continued. "All throughout this dungeon, every single demon has had some sort of trick to them. An alternative means of beating them, besides fighting. Sure, some of them we did have to kill, but there was still a puzzle we had to solve or something like that."

"You figured out this thing's puzzle?" Gritty asked.

Pierce grinned. "No. I'm just going to brute force it."

"What—"

"The demon is a boss for the dungeon. How much is it capable of fighting when the dungeon itself isn't capable of supporting it anymore?"

Gritty still looked a little confused, but Ray got what Pierce meant. He had known the guy a little too long already.

"You know where the Tower Node is?" Ray paused. "Well, I guess you can find out since you have that Tower Node of yours that reveal other Tower Nodes… But no, we can't have the same situation we had with the last dungeon. That was insane. And we didn't get the treasure until we actually defeated the monster in the end."

"Yeah well, finding the treasure and winning the tournament is your priority," Pierce said. "It isn't mine. But I'll do you a favour anyway. Once I've destroyed the dungeon's Tower Node, I'm sure the demon will stop too."

"It didn't last time!"

Pierce wasn't listening. "Just keep it busy. I'll find the Tower Node one way or another. That will stop the demon. I'm sure of it."

He shot off on his spear. Ray called out to him, but he didn't pause, didn't even look back.

"What an asshole…" Gritty muttered. "Why even bother coming here if he was just going to bail on us anyway?"

Ray's skin was itching with annoyance. First Sameer selling him out to the Sylvans, now Pierce hounding after the Tower Node like it was all that mattered in the world. These people… Ray couldn't rely on them. Couldn't trust them. Gritty was right. Why had he even bothered…

Thunder crackled in the air. Ruddy lightning flashed to being, bolting up the mountainside. The Lord of the Third Floor appeared. He spared them all, even the demon battling Sameer high up, only a second's glance.

Then he scowled and rushed in the direction Pierce had gone.

Ray and Gritty had both frozen when the Floor Lord had appeared. He hadn't even begun to comprehend what he could have done to fight both the Floor Lord and the Demon of Humanity at the same time. But then, as a bulb went off in his head, he grinned. Why even bother…

Ray laughed.

Gritty turned to him with a weird look. "What's wrong with you?"

"I've got it!" He gripped her shoulder and gave her a shake. "I've got it. You're right, Gritty. Why even bother fighting this thing. We can just make it fight who we want it to instead."

She still looked tremendously confused, but that was alright. Ray clarified by casting Resurrect Recollect and calling up his Imitator construct. In a second, it had grown and taken the form Ray wanted.

The form of the Lord of the Third Floor.