The wind howled against the cliff face, whipping at Felicity's braid as she stood over Ash's still body. His chest rose and fell in shallow rhythm, Spirit-Man drifting far beyond. She never let her eyes leave the sky.
The warning cry came first—sharp, metallic. Then shadows broke from the clouds. A flock of Avian Genome Beasts, wings gleaming with metallic feathers and eyes burning with feral qi, dove toward them like falling blades.
Felicity stepped forward, crimson rapier whispering free from its sheath. Frost coiled along the blade's edge, the weapon almost sighing as if thirsty.
"Not today," she hissed.
The first beast hit her like a storm—talons wide, beak snapping. Felicity's thrusts blurred.
Felicity shouted "Hemoglaze Edge!"
The blade traced across its wing. Instead of spraying blood, the wound froze instantly, a thin glaze of frost crawling over the torn membrane. The beast faltered mid-flight, wings stiff. It crashed onto the rocks below, shrieking, before the wound suddenly split open—blood and ice exploding outward!
Two more came from opposite sides, talons flashing. Felicity pivoted, rapier already stained with crimson.
Thinking quickly as blood phages were known to do, she quickly accessed another skill from the blade's memory, "Sanguine Refraction!"
A mirror of blood glass tore away from her body like a phantom twin. One beast's strike slashed through the reflection, only to have its own force turned back. The mirrored Felicity counter-thrusted, a perfect perry, puncturing a hole through its chest. The creature dissolved into bloody mist.
The second came too close—its claw raking her shoulder. Felicity didn't flinch. Her riposte sank deep into its ribcage. Frost bloomed like flowers inside its body.
She quickly commanded another skill "Crimson Bloom!"
The beast flapped in rage, trying to retreat skyward, but the moment it strained its wings the frost-thorns inside ruptured, shredding its meridians. It shrieked, spiraling down like a burning comet.
More shrieks echoed from above—the flock wheeling to strike again. Felicity stood on the cliff edge, breathing steady, rapier dripping blood and frost.
"Come then," she whispered, her silver eyes hard as glacier glass. "I'll paint the sky with your veins before I let you near him."
The Whispering Thorn hummed, frost mist curling from its tip. The next wave of beasts descended.
The next wave of Avian Genome Beasts screamed down—only to twist midair in panic. Their formation shattered, wings beating frantically as they scattered into the clouds.
Felicity froze, rapier raised.
Why would predators break and flee…?
The answer hit the ground with a seismic thud. The cliff face shuddered, pebbles bouncing as cracks spiderwebbed beneath her boots.
A shadow swallowed the fading sunlight.
The creature that landed beside them was no avian. It rose like a moving mountain of flesh and stone—muscle plated with bone ridges, horns curving outward like twin battering rams. Each exhale blasted dust across the rocks, and its eyes burned molten amber, locked not on Felicity—but on the unconscious Ash at her back.
A Bull-Horned Behemoth. A Genome Beast of the canyon depths. Its mere presence reeked of ancient qi-pressure, enough to make the air feel thick and metallic.
Felicity's grip tightened on the Whispering Thorn.
She set one heel back, interposing herself between the beast and Ash's body. Her braid whipped in the rising wind, and frost mist hissed from her rapier's tip.
"Avian scavengers were nothing," she murmured, eyes narrowing into a cold gleam. "But you…"
The Behemoth pawed at the stone, gouging trenches in the cliffside with its hooves.
"…you'll make a worthy bloom."
The Whispering Thorn pulsed in her hand, the crimson frost along its edge whispering like a hungry thornbush.
The canyon held its breath.
Then the Behemoth charged.
The Behemoth's charge tore the cliff apart. Dust and stone exploded in its wake as those massive horns came down like a collapsing fortress.
Felicity didn't retreat. She surged forward to meet it.
The Whispering Thorn sang.
One thrust, precise—Hemoglaze Edge—and the frost traced its way up the beast's shoulder, locking one arm of muscle into a sheath of ice. The Behemoth bellowed, the sound shaking the canyon, but its own blood slowed and froze within the wound.
It swung its horn down to crush her but Felicity's rapier was already crimson-stained.
"Sanguine Refraction!"
The horn smashed through her body—no, through her mirrored twin. A phantom of red glass cracked and shattered, while the true Felicity appeared at its flank, blade sliding deep. Frost spread inside the Behemoth's ribs.
She twisted.
"Crimson Bloom!"
Frost-thorns erupted inside its chest cavity, jagged and merciless, piercing its meridians from within. The Behemoth staggered, every muscle locking as the ice-and-blood bloom tore through it.
Still it roared, lifting a hoof the size of a horse cart to stomp her flat.
Felicity didn't flinch, with her free hand, she wove blood from her own veins into a jagged crimson spear, necrotic light pulsing through its shaft.
She hurled it skyward. The spear punched through the Behemoth's skull, right between its eyes!
A shockwave of frost and blood tore through the canyon, shattering stone.
The monster toppled. The cliff quaked under its fall.
Silence. Only her breathing, harsh and cold.
Felicity pressed her rapier into the beast's chest and wrenched free its Genome Core, a pulsing purple crystal thrumming with seismic earth qi.
The core melted into her bloodstream the instant she touched it. She gasped, staggering under its weight as the alien power flooded her marrow. It wasn't just frost. It wasn't just blood. It was stone. Dense. Patient. Immovable.
Her veins lit like molten ore. Armor thickened over her body, no longer only frostglass but jagged plates of bloodstone veined in ice. The ground itself reacted—shattering beneath her boots, then stabilizing, as though the earth bent to bear her weight.
The canyon winds died. Dust hung frozen midair, caught in her new gravity. Even the distant Avian Beasts shrieked and wheeled farther away, unwilling to draw near.
Where once she was thorns and glass—cutting, cruel—now she was fortress and wall.
She reached into Ash's storage and drew the Omni Power Unit, letting her new qi signature bleed into the conduit. The script bloomed across its surface, glowing with bloody frost-light. She read aloud, her voice low, reverent:
"Type: Bloodfrost-Earth Hybrid Armor Set gained.
Class Evolution Path: Blood Tank.
Passive – Titanic Hemostasis: blood thickens with earth qi. Wounds clot instantly, turning to crystalline frost-scabs. Even lethal gashes 'stone over,' reducing damage and allowing prolonged combat."
Her visor lit with a crimson gleam. "Perfect," she purred. "Now I can guard him… forever."
But then more script unfolded, and her eyes widened.
"New Skill – Crimson Bulwark: manifests a temporary shield-wall of bloodglass and stone. Strikes that land feed the wall."
She laughed softly—relieved, almost giddy. But the last line froze her smile.
"Ultimate – Behemoth Bloodrage: By bleeding directly into the armor, the Carapace awakens. User's form doubles in size, bloodstone plating thickens, and the Frostvein Rapier evolves into a siege pike. Warning: prolonged use may destabilize user's body."
Her gauntlet twitched. The armor shuddered around her like a living thing, eager, hungry, already testing her control. She pressed a hand against her chest until the tremor stilled.
The bloodfrost mist swirled tight around her frame, condensing into a radiant exosuit. Bone-white plates locked over her body, spiked pauldrons curling like frozen thorns, a helm sealing across her face with a visor of bloodglass. The Behemoth's own horn qi shaped itself into ridged gauntlets and greaves, each step she took grinding stone into powder.
The Whispering Thorn lengthened, its edge now too heavy and brutal for a simple duel—it had become a half-lance, a siege weapon wrapped in frost and crimson.
The cliff trembled beneath her, but instead of crumbling, it held firm—rooted by her very presence. Ash lay behind her, bathed in the crimson glow of her aura, untouched. Protected.
For a moment, she didn't look like a protector at all. She looked like a Sovereign born of blood and stone—an executioner crowned in frost.
Her breath misted behind her visor. Her voice cut into the silence, sharp as breaking ice:
"The scavengers scatter. The Behemoth fell.
Who else dares?"