The Gamer’s POV

Meanwhile…

Barely a few seconds after Dion had been vanished to the Gladiator's Arena with his brother, Celeste's corpse, which had been burning, contorted and reshaped into the figure of the large, imposing demon, after which the flames finally died down.

The moment the demon was steady on her feet, she swept her gaze around the chaotic battlefield, trying to get her bearings.

She could see that everyone was engaged in a bloody, chaotic clash with the hollow dominants, except for Dion, whom she could not see.

Unlike usual, whenever she was in her demon form, she saw the world around her in red. Everything was usually tinted red except the things that were dear to her. The things that were dear to her maintained their original colors, and so, the only things not tinted in red right now were the members of her party.

But that was not all…

Another effect was that anything or anyone she saw in red automatically made her angry. And since her sickness grew worse whenever she was in her demon form, the voices in her head grew louder until all she could hear was them yelling: "Kill, kill, kill!"

This made her want to destroy everything in red.

…Her gaze then landed on Yami, who stood a fair distance away watching the scene, with the massive, grotesque figure of the Soul Eater looming behind him.

Once she locked her gaze onto him, she began to feel her anger soar even more as the red tint over him seemed to pulse and intensify.

When it felt like her rage was about to explode, she let out a loud, guttural roar, and the unique ability of her attribute suddenly activated.

With Yami now being the main source of her rage, she lunged at him in a frenzied blur.

However, right before she could reach him, a monster that looked like a massive wolf standing on its hind legs smashed into her, sending her tumbling and crashing into a nearby tree.

This monster covered in matted gray fur that had suddenly appeared was Michael Tobias, the boy Yami had pretended was his fellow party member.

Apparently, his bonded ability gave him the power to transform into this beastly werewolf during the night. The cost he had to pay was enduring intense pain beforehand to trigger the transformation, which was why Yami had injured him shortly after spotting the party.

The moment Celeste had finished her transformation into the horrifying demon, he too was done with his transformation and had locked his target onto her.

…Shaking off the impact, Celeste looked up to see the three-meter-tall beast in front of her. Before she could rise, the drooling werewolf clamped its massive hand over her face, yanked it back, then smashed her head into the ground. Celeste grabbed his thick, hairy forearms, trying to free herself as it lifted her up and smashed again, and again.

Then it pinned her down, and bit out a chunk of her shoulder, pulling the flesh away and spraying dark blood across the grass.

Celeste let out a sharp roar of pain. Despite having the ability to heal herself almost instantly from every form of physical damage, she still felt the excruciating pain.

A small flicker of flames licked at the wound, and the torn flesh on her shoulder began to knit back together. In that moment, she felt a wave of power course through her which signaled that one minute had passed.

Using her legs, she delivered a powerful kick into the beast's stomach. It staggered backwards, and in an explosive motion, Celeste pushed herself off the ground, then tackled the werewolf and pinned him to the floor before delivering a barrage of blows into its snout and chest.

But then the wolf let out a bone-chilling howl that shook the very ground beneath them. Its muscles seemed to swell even further under its fur, and with a sudden burst of raw strength, it bucked upward to throw her off.

Celeste was tossed into the air like a ragdoll, but she managed to twist her body and land on her feet, digging her claws into the dirt to stabilize herself. The werewolf didn't give her a second to breathe; he lunged forward on all fours, his massive frame closing the distance in a single leap.

Celeste dodged the crushing weight of his landing and followed up with a quick swipe of her own claws.

The beast, who had already quickly recovered from its lunge, dodged the slash aimed at its throat, and in the same motion, lunged again with its jaws open wide, snapping at her neck.

Celeste balled her fist and gave the attacking creature a heavy uppercut, shutting its jaw with a sickening crack and sending the wolf's head snapping backward.

The impact sent the wolf tumbling backward into the dirt, but then it immediately got up on all fours again and let out a low, guttural growl. Its muscles seemed to swell even further under its fur. All of a sudden, it was as if the form of the creature was larger than it had been in the beginning.

As this happened, the red tint around it in Celeste's vision pulsed with a dark intensity, and her rage grew even more uncontrollable. She gave in to the instinct to kill and lunged at the creature, who also lunged at her, and a fierce brawl erupted between the two beasts. While the wolf tried to slash Celeste with its long, razor-sharp claws, Celeste would dodge and counter with a flurry of strikes.

The wolf was faster than Celeste, and so in only a matter of seconds, Celeste was covered with bleeding gashes, but compared to her, the wolf had only a few shallow tears in its hide.

Due to being overcome by rage, Celeste was too blinded by the heat of the battle to notice something important. If she was thinking clearly, she would have noticed that the creature she was fighting was getting stronger and faster the more it was injured and bled. But she was too lost in the red haze of her own bloodlust to realize this.

To her, nothing else mattered right now except tearing this beast into pieces, and so she continued on with her relentless assault, trading blow for blow without any regard for her own safety.

At first, it wasn't as if she was completely outmatched because within only a matter of minutes, she was already over level 20.

She began to slowly catch up to the speed and reflexes of the wolf. She also began to dodge more and more of his slashes, forcing the beast to work harder just to graze her. And then the exchange grew more brutal as she began to land heavy, bone-breaking strikes of her own.

But as the minutes blurred into a haze of violence, the wolf didn't weaken; instead, it grew over four meters tall, its massive shadow looming over the clearing as its body warped and expanded with every drop of blood it spilled.

At this point, Lilith began to scream, calling Celeste's name:

'Hey! Celeste! You need to listen to me, I think something's not right! Hey, Celeste!'~~

But her voice was drowned out by the numerous voices in Celeste's head yelling: "Kill! Kill! Burn!"

And so Celeste's rage grew even more unrestrained, sealing her off from everything else until the only thing she could perceive was the target in front of her.

When Lilith saw that it was pointless to try to reach Celeste, she quickly began to chant on her own, summoning the demon queen's chains.

As the fight between the two beasts shifted from a balanced struggle to a one-sided beating, nine whips of flames began to slowly manifest in the air.

The wolf lunged at Celeste with its newfound, terrifying speed. Celeste leapt back to dodge the initial snap of his jaws, but was too late and the large claws of the wolf caught her mid-air. The force of the blow was immense, sending her bouncing and rolling on the floor for several meters.

When she finally stopped sliding and managed to scramble to her feet, the wolf had already lunged again. It pinned her down with its massive weight, tearing half of her body open with a single, savage swipe of its claws.

Blood and intestines spluttered out onto the churned-up earth, and for a moment, Celeste's body went still, almost as if she had finally died.

The wolf reared back its head in a victory stance and howled into the night air, but right as the sound left its throat, the first whip of flames that had already manifested flew through the air into its eye and its head.

Its howl was cut off immediately and the creature reeled back, but just then, another whip of flames violently snaked its way through its neck, silencing its shriek and replacing it with the frantic, muffled sounds of a creature choking on its own agony.

The beast collapsed onto its haunches with its massive paws clawing at its face as the fire began to eat through the thick bone of its skull.

Before it could even attempt to recover, the other seven whips descended from the sky like falling stars, impaling the creature from all sides and pinning its massive, twitching frame to the scorched ground.