Rage exploded through Ash's chest like a detonating bomb.
Jake's headless body lay in a spreading pool of blood. The man who'd taught them, protected them, made impossible situations feel manageable dead. Torn apart by a corrupted monster while Ash stood helpless, his summoning failing when it mattered most.
Ash launched himself at the Warlord with a roar of pure fury. His fist connected with the creature's mutated jaw, and the impact was devastating. The Warlord's twelve-foot frame flew backward, crashing through two trees before slamming into a third hard enough to crack the trunk.
Ash stared at his fist, consciousness cutting through rage. That punch—that was A-rank strength. Maybe higher. All the vitality he'd absorbed from every lizardman kill, every Soul Extraction, had accumulated into genuine power.
He'd gotten stronger. Strong enough to fight this thing.
The Warlord rose, purple energy flaring as it regenerated the damage. Its three-rowed jaw reformed, and it fixed Ash with those burning eyes.
Angela struggled to her feet beside him, mana depleted but refusing to stay down. Their eyes locked.
No words needed. They'd fought together their whole lives in boardrooms, in business negotiations, in the cutthroat world their parents had trained them for. This was just another battlefield.
Ash felt the mana inside him, the energy he'd taken from fallen creatures. An idea sparked, inspired by watching Sarah heal the wounded. If she could channel mana to restore life, maybe he could transfer it to empower.
He reached for that energy and pushed it toward Angela.
She gasped as foreign mana flooded her reserves. Not visible, not dramatic, but she felt it, Ash's power flowing into her, restoring what she'd spent.
The Warlord charged.
Ash met it head-on, his A-rank strength matching the creature's momentum. His fist drove into its oversized arm, stopping the charge dead. Angela blurred through accelerated time, appearing at its flank. Her time-aged dagger carved through scales that had resisted normal weapons.
They fell into brutal choreography.
Ash threw a devastating uppercut that snapped the Warlord's head back. Angela followed with a time-accelerated axe kick that cratered the ground where it landed, the Warlord barely dodging. Ash pivoted into a liver shot that cracked ribs. Angela's spinning blade strike severed tendons in its leg.
The Warlord adapted, learning their rhythm. It caught Ash's next punch with its clawed hand and raked across his chest, opening three deep gashes. Ash gritted through the pain and headbutted the creature, breaking its nose.
Angela aged its wounded leg, flesh withering, but the dark magic regenerated it within seconds.
"We can't outlast its healing!" Angela called.
"Then we hit harder!" Ash's fist found the Warlord's solar plexus with enough force to crater its chest. Purple blood sprayed.
They pressed the advantage. Ash with overwhelming physical power, Angela with time-manipulated precision. Combo after combo, Ash would create openings with devastating strikes, and Angela would exploit them with accelerated attacks that landed three times before the Warlord could react.
But the creature was learning too well.
It feinted a strike at Ash, then pivoted faster than before. Its claws found Angela's shoulder, tearing deep. She screamed, and the Warlord followed up with a kick that sent her sprawling.
Ash roared and drove his fist into the creature's spine. Bone cracked. The Warlord stumbled.
Angela rose, blood streaming from her shoulder, her eyes wild with desperation and rage. Time manipulation blazed around her hands, brighter than before, unstable.
"Chrono Necrosis!" she screamed.
Her daggers struck the Warlord's regenerating wounds, and something fundamental changed. The dark magic is trying to heal those specific injuries, aging not just the flesh, but the corruption itself. Time accelerated on the cellular level, forcing the cells through their entire lifecycle in seconds. The regeneration didn't just slow. It stopped.
The Warlord shrieked. Its left eye, struck by Angela's dagger, withered and died without healing. Its right leg, carved by her blade, stayed damaged, muscle and bone refusing to knit back together.
"It's working!" Ash charged in, targeting the wounded leg with a kick that shattered the joint completely.
Angela blurred through the fight, her new technique striking vital points. Each hit aged the corruption, creating permanent damage. The Warlord's seemingly infinite regeneration was failing.
But the technique was draining her. Sweat poured down Angela's face, her movements slowing.
The Warlord sensed the weakness. It tanked Ash's next punch, ignoring the damage, and brought both arms down on Angela like a hammer.
She hit the ground hard and didn't get up.
"Angela!" Ash started toward her.
The Warlord's massive fist caught him across the jaw, and the world exploded into pain and light. Ash flew backward, crashing through debris, his vision swimming.
He tried to rise, but his body wouldn't respond. Blood filled his mouth.
The Warlord advanced on him, purple energy pulsing victoriously. It had won. They'd wounded it, stopped some of its regeneration, but it was still standing, and they weren't.
Ash felt it then, the same desperate clarity from the estate. The moment when death was certain unless something changed.
But this time, he wasn't panicking. This time, he understood.
The mark on his palm burned hot as a brand. Ash raised his hand toward the Warlord and spoke with absolute confidence.
"I summon you."
Reality tore open.
Red light blazed, but different from Moros's cold inevitability. This was heat, passion, chaos given form. The summoning circle that appeared wasn't burned into the ground; it floated in the air, rotating, beautiful and terrible.
She stepped through.
The Demon Queen Lilith emerged like sin made manifest. Red hair cascaded past her shoulders in waves that seemed to move with their own will. Her figure was perfect curves wrapped in a black dress that looked painted on her skin, revealing just enough to promise everything. Eyes like burning rubies fixed on Ash with interest that made his breath catch.
She was beautiful in a way that hurt to look at, beauty that promised pleasure and pain in equal measure, beauty that made mortals forget themselves and fall willingly into damnation.
And the power radiating from her made the Warlord's corruption feel like a candle beside a star.
Lilith crossed the distance to Ash in three graceful steps, her heels somehow making no sound on the blood-soaked ground. She reached down, her fingers cool against his skin as she lifted his chin, tilting his face to study him.
"My, my," her voice was velvet and smoke, amusement dancing in her eyes. "Such a pretty summoner. So desperate, so broken, so deliciously tragic." She leaned closer, her lips inches from his. "I do enjoy a mortal who knows how to beg."
The Warlord, seeing an opportunity, lunged at her back with its clawed hand raised.
The temperature dropped.
Mana exploded outward from Lilith in a wave that made everyone still conscious in the gate drop to their knees. It wasn't just pressure it was presence. Authority. The weight of a being so far beyond them that comparison was meaningless.
Every hunter felt it. Helen was barely conscious at the perimeter. Marcus, trying to protect the wounded. Even Angela, unconscious, her body trembling from the proximity to such overwhelming power.
Lilith didn't turn around. She simply tilted her head slightly, ruby eyes never leaving Ash's face, and spoke with casual disdain.
"A mere subject dares to touch me?"
She glanced at the Warlord over her shoulder, and her smile was cruel.
"You don't need your legs."
The Warlord's legs exploded into gore, purple blood and shattered bone spraying across the clearing. The creature collapsed, screaming.
"Or your eyes."
The Warlord's burning purple eyes burst like overripe fruit.
"Lungs."
Its chest cavity detonated from within, ribs fragmenting outward.
"Arms."
Both limbs tore themselves apart, muscle and bone shredding.
"And certainly not your head."
The Warlord's skull exploded in a spray of brain matter and dark magic that dissipated like smoke.
What remained of the Corrupted Lizard Warlord collapsed into a spreading pool of purple blood, well and truly dead.
Lilith turned her attention back to Ash, her smile shifting to something more playful. She traced one finger along his jaw, her touch leaving trails of heat.
"You called for chaos, little summoner, and chaos answered." Her eyes gleamed with wicked delight. "Oh, this will be fun."
Then she dissolved into red light, returning through the summoning circle, leaving Ash gasping on blood-soaked ground.