“You’re no fun,” the big man whined. “You never let me finish anyone.”

  “You can play later,” the tall man replied. “I’ve been wanting to test the output of my Elemental Blade ever since I ranked up the skill. Now a perfect specimen has appeared before our eyes. If there’s anything left after my attack, you can have the rest.”

  While they were busy arguing, Edge looked at the floor and froze in place. He was doing everything he could to avoid attracting their attention. Fighting back never even occurred to him.

  These guys didn’t need their skills to kill Edge. With their cycled-up cores, they could take him apart with their bare hands. They’d already proven that he couldn’t inflict more than superficial damage, even if he managed to land a blow.

  He’d lost track of the countdown while he was unconscious. But if he could stay alive for just a few more minutes and make it back to the reliquary, then maybe, just maybe, he could still turn this around.

  The tall man walked over to where Edge was lying on the floor then looked down at him like he was vermin—an insect about to be squashed. “Here’s the rule. I’m going to hit you with my skill. You can try to dodge, but it won’t work. If you survive, you win. No one has yet, but there’s always a chance.”

  With those words, the jailbird’s core ignited. Mana went streaming into his hand, which began to glow with a pale blue light that reminded Edge of the heart of a glacier. Wreathed in billowing frost, a flawless blade of ice emerged from the center of his clenched fist—a stark white grip extending past the other side.

  Within the span of a breath, the Elemental Blade was fully formed. A three-foot sword so cold it put a chill in Edge’s bones, trailing fog behind it as it froze the moisture in the air.

  He looked up at the agile prisoner, who radiated a smoldering menace that was even more terrifying than his companion’s cheerful bloodlust. He could tell the moment their eyes met that nothing he could say would stop the man from attacking with that deadly power.

  Over the last few seconds, the air around the iceblade had grown so cold it made Edge shiver from where he sat. Distracting him won’t work. Dodging won’t either. The only chance I have is to deflect or block the blade. The seal should finish breaking at any moment.

  That was all the time Edge had to reflect on his situation. Because at that point, the tall man raised his sword of ice and then brought it down in a streaking slash.

  Unable to run, unable to dodge, Edge watched as the Elemental Blade descended toward his body. The moment it touched his chest, it would freeze his heart and all the blood in his veins, killing him instantly.

  Left with no other alternative, he reached out and grabbed his bag, twisting the fabric around his wrist with the canteen in front of his flesh. He brought it up in front of the iceblade with the contents facing forward.

  With an impact that reverberated throughout his body, he caught the sword of ice in his fabric-wrapped palm. He had hoped to knock the skill to one side, but it stuck the moment it touched him.

  Weird, I expected that to hurt more. That was when Edge saw the dense layer of ice coating the bag and part of his hand. He realized in that moment that he couldn’t move his fingers; couldn’t feel a thing past the end of his wrist.

  That was when the full horror of what had happened dawned on him. Despite the insulation the bag had added, three of his fingers had frozen solid, faster than the blink of an eye. I’ll lose half my hand if…

  No sooner had that thought crossed Edge’s mind than the jailbird let out a wicked cackle and pulled his iceblade back to his side.

  With a sickening crack that Edge would remember for the rest of his life, however short it may be, the frozen side of his hand shattered like glass, leaving rime-coated ruin behind. Only ragged stumps remained where three of his fingers had been, which would start bleeding the moment the ice capping them melted.

  “You stopped one. I didn’t think you had it in you.” The tall man looked genuinely impressed, if no less inclined to murder him. “But I’m just getting warmed up. The next touch won’t be on minimum output. You’ll make a lovely statue before my friend here starts venting his frustration.”

  The jailbird raised his Elemental Blade in a two-handed grip, ready to bring it down on Edge and consummate the kill. The chill in the air intensified as the iceblade began shining with a wintery wrath, wrapped in a coruscating sheet of arctic energy.

  The big man crossed the room with a protest on his lips, ready to argue for his right to beat Edge to death instead.

  In the end, neither of those things happened.

  As the tall man’s sword came down, something too fast to track lashed out from the doorway, gone again before the blade had descended halfway to his head. Edge had no idea what was going on, but the results were obvious to everyone.

  Two bloody lines appeared across the jailbird’s forearms… half a heartbeat before they detached from his body, severed as cleanly as by a surgeon’s scalpel. The moment they did, the iceblade shattered into fading fragments of light.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Thus, instead of being frozen to the bone, a spray of hot blood engulfed Edge from head to toe. The stricken convict let loose an agonized scream, jamming his spurting stumps into the cavern’s wall to try to slow the bleeding.

  The big man looked like he couldn’t decide if he should help the tall man or finish him off, but was leaning toward the latter.

  Edge was judging the distance to the reliquary and the door, trying to decide if he had any chance of reaching either.

  Before anyone made their move, a piercing cry rang out. A warbling trill that could never have come from a human throat. Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned as one, looking at the entrance to the room as the stench of rancid meat broke over them.

  As bad as the situation already was, what Edge saw made him feel even worse. Monster.

  Boiling dread rose hot in his throat. A suffocating foreboding beyond that evoked by the men who were trying to kill him. A sweltering horror that reached a crescendo three seconds later, when the monster walked into the room.

  The hulking brute was eight feet tall, broad enough at the shoulders that it had to twist to fit through the door. Even after entering the room, it had to hunch over, or it would have been even taller.

  The monster walked on two legs like a man, but there the resemblance to anything human, anything natural for that matter, ended and the stuff of nightmares began. Its powerful body was covered in long black feathers and palm-wide pinions that were oily and matted. Its legs were built like a bird’s but far too tall—lemon-yellow skin ending in broad talons.

  Its arms were almost as long as its legs, muscular appendages leading to hands equipped with razor-sharp claws. Wicked weapons that were big enough Edge could have used one for a sword. The fifth claw was reversed and thicker than the rest, giving the set the appearance of a giant set of shears.

  The monster had jet black eyes the size of Edge’s fists, with no whites or iris he could see. A serrated yellow beak jutted out from the middle of its head like the blade of a scythe, stained with countless splatters of blood in a crimson collage.

  He’d been smelling the creature drawing closer for some time now, without knowing what it was. Up close, the stench of rotting flesh was overpowering. It would have made him retch until his stomach was empty if he wasn’t so scared that he barely noticed.

  It was difficult to look directly at the monster while it was moving. Its form seemed to blur around the borders, splitting the difference between shadow and solid matter like the creature was only halfway in this world. It left a trail of living darkness in its wake like a mantle of smoke, making it even harder to track its position.

  Most frightening of all, it exuded an overwhelming bloodlust. A seething malice toward anything free from the taint that had corrupted every fiber of its being. It made Edge want to curl into a ball. To crawl into a hole and hide. Unfortunately, the first option wouldn’t do him any good, and the second wasn’t available.

  All predators would kill to eat. Far too many would kill for pleasure. But he’d never met anything until that moment that wanted to claim his life due to sheer, raging hate.

  Edge had never seen a monster in person before. But it was clear at a glance this one was far more powerful than anything that would have wandered into the region before the disaster. That’s at least mid-stage two. It must have crossed over from one of the swapped bits of land.

  He knew with complete and utter certainty that the creature could kill him effortlessly. That it would do so the moment it noticed him.

  Shutting out the pain of his wounds, he averted his gaze and remained as still as a statue. He barely dared to breathe, lest it draw the fiend’s attention to him. I was wrong. The jailbirds are bad. But this is much, much worse.

  At that moment, the creature’s eyes seemed to light up. Not actually glowing, but intensifying, as if its stare had become deeply penetrating. It panned its gaze across the room, stopping to consider each of its prey in turn.

  Edge had the sense that the monster could see right through him. That it was scanning his attributes and skills, learning everything about him within a handful of heartbeats. Whatever it saw inside him, it clearly wasn’t impressed.

  The nightmarish thing took one look at the critically wounded prisoner, then dismissed him with contempt. It seemed satisfied that the most dangerous man in the room was now completely helpless. He can’t use his Elemental Blade without his hands. It must have been what the monster was planning all along.

  He realized in that instant that while the jailbirds were stalking him, the monster had been hunting them in turn. That it had been waiting patiently until the convicts were distracted by torturing Edge before making its move. That this outcome had been fated to arrive from the moment he’d stepped into the ruins.

  The monster’s gaze landed on the big man last. When it flexed his claws and began walking toward him, the uninjured prisoner went darting for the exit, terror written clear in every crook of his features.

  As inexperienced as he was, Edge knew it was a bad move. There’s no way it’s letting us leave. You just stepped into its kill zone. Sure enough, fast as thought, the shadowy horror surged back to block the entrance, lashing out with its scissor-claws.

  Snip. Snip.

  The midnight blades caught the fleeing jailbird square in the midriff. They closed around his armored top and flexed, shearing through plastic and flesh in turn before cutting through his spine and severing his torso at the waist.

  The big man screamed, convulsing on the floor in unimaginable pain. For a second, Edge couldn’t understand why he was still alive. But then he noticed the shorn section of the man’s torso kept trying and failing to seal, although the bleeding soon stopped.

  His Regeneration skill can’t keep up with a wound of that scale. But it won’t let him die either. Not while there are still magicytes burning in his core.

  The monster examined the bisected convict with interest, then looked over at the prisoner who was dying in the corner, before stopping to consider Edge once more. He was bruised and battered. Helpless and lying in a pool of his own blood.

  The fiend must have decided the fight was over. Because instead of finishing any of them off, it picked up the severed arms and legs and left the room.

  Or it started to…

  The creature must have been worried Edge would get away after all, because it blurred into shadows and then vanished from view. The next thing he knew, it was standing right beside him, claws extended and poised to strike.

  He tried to get up while getting ready to run, but it was already too late.

  Even if he had, it wouldn’t have made a difference.

  Snip. Snip.

  For a moment, Edge didn’t realize what had happened. Until the wet agony erupting from his stomach caused him to look down… to where ragged gashes now marred the flesh of his abdomen, through which his guts began to spill.

  The monster issued a self-satisfied squawk, added Edge’s fingers to its collection of parts, and then sauntered out of the room.

  The whole thing only took thirty seconds.