[Skill-Eater 2] Chapter 114: Vengeful Climax (Patreon)

Edge and Foebinder fought to keep the creature confined while One-Eye and Byron got in a few parting shots. By now, the remnants of the monster’s armor had fallen away, revealing more of its skeletal figure and patches of mummified flesh.

The Gardener screamed as it bucked and writhed, flinging Edge from one side to the other as he dug his heels into the dirt to give the black chain leverage to pull.

All his potions had faded away except the Power potion he’d quaffed last. But right now, that was exactly what he needed.

Setna would arrive in a few more seconds, and with any luck, the skill she had learned to take revenge for her fallen friends would be strong enough to end the fight. He could sense heavy weaves of mana flowing out from her core, wrapping around the woman to form a resplendent nimbus of magical might.

By now, Setna’s reactor was burning at full throttle, but that was only the beginning.

With every step she took, its output increased, until her core was blazing hotter than any of the stage-three monsters he’d faced, including the Gardener itself.

That shouldn’t be possible. She just learned Vengeance and it’s already producing power comparable to Overdrive. As Setna’s skill continued charging, Edge felt Foebinder nearing its limits. The living links struggled to hold themselves together, buying enough time for whatever was about to happen

Skill-Eater had been straddling the boundary between waking and sleeping throughout most of the fight. But in that moment, the ravenous lord awoke, roused by the intense energy pouring out from Setna’s core.

Skill-Eater was shocked when it realized what was happening. Then Edge felt something new flowing through their bond—pure, unadulterated revulsion for the Epic skill through which the woman would achieve her retribution. Through their link, he was able to get a better sense of what was going on—how far Setna was willing to go and the price she had paid to lay her enemy low.

Vengeance only worked against a single target—one its wielder held a blood grudge against. It would dramatically increase the hunter’s attributes while boosting her damage versus the singular creature that had garnered her ire.

But that wasn’t why Skill-Eater was so disgusted. In order to obtain that power, Setna wasn’t burning magicytes to create refined mana—she was consuming her core itself to fuel the sacrificial skill.

In exchange for surpassing her stage for a few fleeting moments, she would be coreless when Vengeance ran its course. Even if the damage didn’t kill her outright, she would lose her skills, the attributes from her cycles, and all the other benefits that binding a core bestowed. No wonder Skill-Eater is so upset. Vengeance is a suicide pact for an entity like the ravenous lord.

All this had passed through his head in a handful of heartbeats. In that short span of time, Senta’s core had grown so hot that the air around her wavered like a mirage. Meanwhile, the skill kept ramping up its output, boosting her attributes across the board. Soon, she was as powerful as a peak-stage-three warrior, then early stage four and beyond.

By this point, the Gardener wasn’t looking at Edge anymore. It was watching Setna’s pyrrhic apotheosis with growing terror. It surged and heaved, fighting like a caged beast to get away from the woman who was glowing so bright that it hurt to look at her.

At that moment, Foebinder cracked and began to fall apart. He was forced to release the manifestation before it shattered, but the black chain had lived up to its name. You did a great job, partner. Get some R&R while we finish the rest.

Five seconds later, the energy fueling Vengeance stabilized. It would only last until her core was consumed, but Setna was ready to make her move. As Edge darted back to recover from the grueling ordeal, the hunter charged, moving so fast that his brain could barely keep up.

The Gardener tried to get away, but before it floated two feet, Setna was there.

Twin fields of dazzling mana encased the knuckle spikes wrapped around her fingers. She drew one arm back and struck the monster while running at full speed.

Edge’s jaw dropped in astonishment when the boss of the Savage Garden rocketed back like it had been hit by a wrecking ball, flying into the dungeon’s wall so hard that it vibrated his teeth inside his jaw.

It rebounded from the thorny bamboo and made a desperate swipe with its scythe.

Setna blocked the blade on her knuckle plate like the attack was nothing at all.

Before the monster could try again, the woman began pummeling the Gardener—punching so fast that her arms became an inchoate blur of ivory, magic, and flesh. Each impact responded like a peal of thunder, rocking the boss’s body beneath her endless barrage of blows.

The monster screamed, abandoning offense as its fear burgeoned into full-on panic. But Setna had the creature cornered and wasn’t about to let it escape.

For the next thirty seconds, she pounded the skeletal fiend like a living avatar of destruction. Her punches flowed in a seamless combination of carnage—so quick that Edge could only track them by the sound.

Skill-Eater watched on all the while. Though his core was revolted by the skill she was using, he felt its admiration for the woman who was willing to give everything for the sake of her goal. When the energy radiating from the hunter’s body began to falter, she let loose a final combination attack.

First, Setna ducked down and performed a tremendous uppercut that sent the disoriented monster sailing into the air.

As it fell toward the ground, she gathered her remaining strength and hit it with a meteoric right hook.

Her mana-bolstered knuckle-spike caught the Gardener in its gem, using the wall behind it to focus the pressure from her attack into that single point.

A crack like a cannon shot rang out as the boss’s gemstone cracked, followed by an even sharper retort as Senta’s core shattered and the energy encasing her body flickered and died.

Byron rushed in to pull the woman to safety as she collapsed like a marionette with severed strings.

In that moment, Edge thought the battle was over. That despite countless close calls, the crew had won in the end, thanks to Setna’s sacrifice.

But matters weren’t fated to be resolved so simply.

A heartbeat later, Skill-Eater sent a terror tsunami coursing through their bond, informing him that he was in terrible danger. The effort forced his core back below the threshold of consciousness as he desperately sought out the cause of its alarm.

The reason for the ravenous lord’s warning became clear as day a bare second later.

As it happened, the boss’s gem was an implant bound to its reactor, regulating its elemental mana to let it shift between seasons. Destroying the device had begun a chain reaction, causing the monster’s remaining energy to go haywire. The Gardener clutched its shattered jewel, frantically trying to interrupt the growing feedback loop.

At that moment, the ghostly figure reappeared, forcing the monster to deal with her instead of saving itself. Edge finally understood what was happening, if not the reason why. Whatever the relationship between them, the woman wanted the monster to die and was fighting to accelerate their mutual demise instead of trying to stop it.

In a strange parallel to Vengeance, parts of Gardener’s core began breaking away—consumed by its reactor to create concentrated mana that escaped through the cracked gem, filling the air with elemental energy. Only instead of a single seasonal element, it was releasing an unstable blend of all four aspects at once.

Before he had time to decide what to do, a pulsating ball of volatile magic began forming above the monster’s head. Every instinct Edge had was screaming that he was in mortal danger—like watching a slow-motion detonation of an atomic bomb from ground zero.

He knew with complete and utter certainty that when the blended magic hit critical mass, everyone in the chamber was going to die, transforming the dungeon into a smoking crater.

Water, fire, wind, and ice came together to form an unstable fusion that was growing fiercer by the heartbeat. Judging by what Skill-Eater had told him, Edge had less than a minute to figure something out before it was too late.

The problem was, he was out of mana and had blown through every trick he had to survive this long. By this point, everyone had retreated to the far corner of the chamber, huddling behind a pile of rubble that was laughably insufficient to shield them from the impending blast.

Edge had one idea that might work, although it might just as easily kill them all. But under the circumstances, a probable death was preferable to a certain one.

He had already pulled out his spellslinger and taken aim, praying that his final round would kill the monster and lessen the impact when its core exploded.

Shaking and sweating, he raised the revolver’s sights, in what might well be the last act of his life.

His hesitation vanished when Skill-Eater spoke to him, clawing its way through the veil of dreams through sheer effort of will before being pulled back into those murky depths by the weight of endless chains.

“Do it! That round is rank-seven Purge Mana!”

Trusting his partner, Edge pulled the trigger—his hope for salvation riding alongside the crystalized skill.

Mere heartbeats before the raging torrent of volatile mana hit critical mass, the spellshot soared across the chamber. When it struck the Gardener, the round detonated and delivered its payload.

To his astonishment, the final round in the revolver’s cylinder wasn’t mana-based at all, but the most powerful Disruption skill that Edge had ever seen. He’d witnessed Disruption pulses and surges before, along with attacks that coated a blade.

Comparing them to rank-seven Purge Mana was like holding a candle up to the sun.

If he had to put it into words, he’d call the Gardener’s self-destruction the mana equivalent of a nuclear bomb. But his spellshot was a Disruption supernova.

Pure antimagic erupted from the point of impact, crossing the boss’s chamber in the blink of an eye.

The tsunami of mana the Gardener was emitting winked out of existence, along with every other skill in the room. Purge erased every spell it touched like they had never existed, and that was only the start.

The skill wiped out every mote of mana residing in their cores, draining their reservoirs dry. Even the magicytes filling the air were obliterated, along with every particle of corrupted energy in the enclosure.

Everyone staggered as their bodies were Purged of every speck of magic, but that wasn’t the most remarkable part.

Before Edge’s disbelieving eyes, something unthinkable occurred. The monstrous features of the Gardener faded away, leaving a horned woman in its place—the same spirit who had been trapped within the creature’s body.

She looked around with wide eyes, then grinned from ear to ear. In that moment, Edge didn’t seem to be looking at a monster at all, but an alien from another world. The Gardener’s expression radiated serenity, then her body began falling apart.

He had no idea what was happening, but he wasn’t about to lose his chance to steal the boss’s skills, regardless of the details. Fortunately, Skill-Eater’s ultimate ability was an innate property of his core and didn’t require mana to function.

Edge sprinted across the chamber until he was in range, then raised his arms and focused his will—ready to find out what was on the menu. Extraction.