The beam detonated against the ground.
Earth ruptured.
Stone vaporized.
A violent explosion tore through the clearing, carving a massive trench through rock and soil as shockwaves ripped outward in every direction. The force flattened trees, shattered boulders, and sent spiraling pillars of dust into the sky.
For a brief moment—
Draven vanished within the blast.
The creature threw back its head and roared in triumph, its massive frame illuminated by the fading glare of its own attack. Molten fissures across its armored hide pulsed brighter, as if savoring victory.
Then—
Something shifted.
A faint distortion in the air.
A ripple.
The dust began to settle.
And there he was.
Draven stood calmly beside the creature's towering form, untouched. Not a single tear marred his clothing. Not a scratch marked his skin. The ground beneath his boots remained unbroken, as though the explosion had deliberately curved around him.
He was simply watching.
The creature's roar deepened, shaking the trees and sending loose debris tumbling from fractured stone.
Draven didn't even look impressed.
"Shut the hell up," he said flatly. "I'm trying to find something."
His eyes began to glow.
Crimson.
Even through the layered concealment of his disguise, the light bled faintly outward, staining the air around him in a subtle red haze.
But he wasn't looking at the creature.
Not really.
He was looking through it.
Into it.
Into the flow of mana beneath its armored hide.
The currents.
The circulation.
The unstable surges still struggling to synchronize with this world's laws.
He watched how the energy moved—how it pooled in dense reservoirs before dispersing through branching channels. He noted where it thickened, where it thinned, where the rhythm faltered by a fraction of a second too long.
And then—
Draven saw it.
A flaw.
A distortion in the cadence of its internal circulation.
A delay between absorption and redistribution.
A fracture in its core alignment that caused its power to overcompensate with every surge.
His lips curved slightly.
"So you do have one."
The creature snarled, finally sensing his proximity. Its molten eyes snapped downward, locking onto him standing directly before it.
It roared and swung.
A devastating blow.
Its massive arm tore through the air with enough force to split mountains. The strike connected with the earth—
Boom.
The ground exploded outward in a violent shockwave, stone and dirt blasting skyward in a deafening eruption.
But—
Its hand did not continue forward.
It stopped.
Mid-motion.
Trembling.
Dust drifted slowly downward.
Through the settling debris, a silhouette emerged.
Draven.
Standing firm.
One arm raised casually.
His hand gripping the creature's enormous fist.
He had stopped it.
With one arm.
The creature pushed. Muscles flexed like coiled steel cables. Veins of crimson light flared brighter across its body as it poured power into the strike.
But the fist did not move.
Draven's expression remained unchanged.
"…You're weaker than I expected."
His voice was calm.
Disappointed.
"Far too weak."
With a sharp, dismissive motion, he knocked the creature's hand aside.
The force twisted the massive limb off balance, sending the creature staggering half a step—an impossible displacement for something of its size.
It growled violently, rage drowning whatever fragments of reason it possessed. Both colossal hands rose and slammed downward in fury.
The impact annihilated the surrounding terrain.
Stone shattered into powder.
Trees splintered into airborne shards.
The ground caved in under crushing force, forming a crater where Draven had stood.
But before the creature could even register the follow-through—
Draven was already gone.
A blur.
A distortion in space.
He reappeared beside its head mid-motion and drove his knee upward.
The impact cracked like thunder splitting the heavens.
His knee slammed into the side of the creature's massive skull, compressing armored hide inward before releasing in a concussive shockwave. The sound reverberated through the clearing like a detonation from within.
The creature's head snapped violently to the side.
The air itself buckled from the force.
A visible ripple traveled through its enormous body as balance faltered.
Draven landed lightly a short distance away, boots grinding against fractured stone as he straightened.
His crimson eyes never left it.
He hadn't struck recklessly.
He had placed the blow.
Exactly where the unstable convergence point pulsed beneath the surface.
The impact rippled through the creature's skull like a seismic fracture. One glowing fissure cracked wider along its armored hide, splintering with sharp, luminous lines. A shockwave rolled outward, flattening what remained of nearby trees.
For a split second—
The world went quiet.
Then the creature staggered.
Not from pain.
From disruption.
Draven felt it clearly—the distortion in its internal flow. The knee had not merely delivered force; it had destabilized a critical junction within its mana network.
The creature roared again, but this time the sound wavered.
Its mana flared violently, surging outward in chaotic bursts. The crimson fissures across its body brightened erratically, flickering instead of flowing in smooth circulation.
Draven tilted his head slightly.
"There."
The creature swung again—faster this time, driven by rage. Its clawed hand tore through the air in a horizontal arc meant to bisect everything in its path.
Draven stepped forward.
Not back.
He slipped inside the arc of the swing, body turning with minimal motion. The claws passed behind him, shredding stone and carving trenches through the landscape in a violent spray.
His hand rose.
Two fingers extended.
He pressed them lightly against the creature's abdomen—precisely where unstable mana converged before redistribution.
The creature froze.
For a single breath.
Draven released a thread.
Not an explosion.
Not a blast.
A needle.
A compressed strand of folded demonic mana, refined and sharpened through countless internal compressions, honed to surgical precision.
It slipped into the creature's internal channel.
And twisted.
The effect was immediate.
The fissures across the creature's body flared blindingly bright—
Then sputtered.
Its roar collapsed into a guttural choke as its own energy backflowed violently through fractured pathways. Power meant to circulate outward surged inward instead, colliding against unstable nodes.
The ground cracked beneath its feet as it dropped to one knee, claws digging trenches into solid stone.
It wasn't wounded by brute force.
It was unraveling from within.
The creature tried to stand.
Muscles flexed, forcing raw power outward in waves that bent the air and crushed the earth around it.
But its mana no longer flowed cleanly.
It was leaking.
Bleeding outward from the disruption point in luminous streams.
Draven stepped back slowly, observing.
"Your structure is incomplete," he said calmly. "You forced synchronization before stabilization."
The creature snarled and swung blindly. Its claws carved through empty air as Draven sidestepped each strike with minimal motion.
Not speed.
Efficiency.
He was mapping it in real time.
Every surge.
Every delay.
Every instability widening under pressure.
The creature inhaled sharply, gathering energy again—more desperate now. Crimson light condensed across its chest, forming a volatile sphere that crackled with annihilating pressure. The surrounding air distorted from the density of compressed power.
Draven's eyes narrowed faintly.
It was overcompensating.
He drew his bow once more.
This time—
No full arrow formed.
Instead, he condensed something smaller.
Denser.
A core.
The folded demonic mana within him responded instantly, flowing with disciplined obedience. Threads wove together, compacting inward until the air around the bowstring vibrated with contained devastation.
He pulled the string back slowly.
Deliberately.
The creature roared and unleashed its condensed sphere in a violent discharge.
Draven released at the same instant.
The two attacks collided midair.
There was no explosion.
Only compression.
The air imploded inward around the collision point as Draven's condensed core pierced through the unstable sphere, shredding its cohesion at a structural level.
The creature's attack unraveled.
Backfired.
Energy surged backward along its own emission channels, slamming into fractured pathways that could no longer contain the recoil.
The fissures across its body ruptured wider, spilling raw mana outward like arteries torn open.
The creature screamed.
This time—
In unmistakable pain.
Draven lowered his bow slightly.
"…You shouldn't have crossed while half-formed."
The creature tried to rise again.
Its massive body trembled, struggling to maintain cohesion as the laws of this world pressed harder against its incomplete integration. Reality itself resisted its presence.
Draven stepped forward.
Calm.
Measured.
He lifted his hand—not to strike.
To take.
The folded structure within him expanded subtly, threads of crimson weaving outward, nearly invisible as they reached toward the leaking fissures.
They latched on.
The moment contact was made—
The flow reversed.
The creature's leaking mana began to drain.
Not explosively.
Not violently.
But inevitably.
Its roars shifted from rage to something closer to desperation. Its massive frame resisted, muscles flexing, claws gouging deep trenches into the earth in futile defiance.
But the more it struggled—
The wider the instability spread.
The more it leaked.
And Draven absorbed.
His crimson glow intensified.
Not wild.
Controlled.
Refined.
The creature swung once more in a final, desperate attempt to crush him.
Draven didn't dodge.
He stepped into it.
Caught the descending wrist with one hand—
And the ground beneath them cratered from the force. Stone shattered outward in a violent ring. Wind exploded across the clearing.
But the arm did not descend further.
Draven's grip tightened.
The crimson threads flared brighter, tightening their hold.
The creature's roar broke into a strained, distorted howl as its energy siphoned away in accelerating streams.
Draven looked up at it, expression cold and absolute.
"You're nothing more to me," he said quietly.
"Than fuel."
And the draining accelerated.