Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 664: Brutal Monster Battle

Nyx yanked Aria out of the air with a spatial pull as a mandible scythed through the space she’d occupied a half-second prior. Bastet, for once, gave respect to her opponent, stepping further back before an attack even came for her.

The fight ground on.

Luna and Kaiden opened joints. Aria deepened them. Bastet cooked the chitin. Nyx battered weakened sections with rocks. Alice pulsed healing energy whenever someone took a hit.

Calypso took everything else.

Every stray mandible swing. Every thrashing segment. Every counterattack that came too fast for the others to dodge.

She was bleeding from four different places and hadn’t stopped grinning once.

Three minutes in, the Queen was still fighting. Three of its segment joints were compromised, and its movement was slower, but its attacks hit just as hard as the first. A level seventy-nine’s stamina pool was enormous. It could fight at this intensity for an hour.

Kaiden’s team couldn’t.

Luna’s speed was flagging. Aria’s, Bastet’s, and Alice’s mana reserves were dipping into the red. Even Calypso’s grin was getting tighter as Carnage struggled to keep pace with the cumulative damage. Nyx’s mental strain was mounting.

’We need to end this.’

Kaiden’s eyes flicked upward to the dark halo hovering above his head.

<Alice.>

The halo pulsed.

<Let’s go all out.>

A pause came. The briefest hesitation from the girl who’d spent the last eighteen days suppressing everything she was for the sake of his secret.

<Big brother... are you sure?>

<I am.>

Silence stretched between them. The kind that carried immense weight.

Alice Ashborn was an S-tier combatant in her level sixties. A Conduit, yes, but also a living weapon in her own right. Reducing her to a healing and buffing satellite had been Kaiden’s decision from day one, and Alice had accepted it without complaint.

So long as she was close to her big brother, the girl was content to play a supporting role. She’d said as much, with a cute pout, and meant every word.

But she was more than that. She’d always been more than that.

The Conduit form had three abilities. Harmonic Integration, which boosted Kaiden’s base attributes by ten percent. Dominion Convergence, which converted his damage into healing for the party. And the third, the one they’d kept hidden because it was too bright, too recognizable, too much like the girl it came from.

If they were recognized together, all of it would be in peril. Him being an Ashborn was a secret he had to keep no matter what, else his own family would hunt him down.

Having a pornstar in the family was too big a disgrace for the Ashborn household, evidenced by the hostile attitude of Kaiden’s brothers and sister when they met.

Magnus was even worse.

That’s why he scolded Alice until she cried when she nearly revealed it to the public by accident.

That’s why there was no light, no beams. Nothing that could connect the Conduit hovering over Kaiden Grey’s head to Alice Ashborn, daughter of Vespera and Magnus Ashborn.

Now he was the one telling her to let go.

<It’s okay, Alice. Be yourself.>

<Kaiden...>

The girl’s voice was overcome with emotion.

This was the day she’d been waiting for.

The dark halo above his head erupted with light.

It was blinding. A flare of pure radiance that turned the basin white for a full second, and when the light settled, the halo wasn’t dark anymore. It burned gold and silver, pulsing with the unmistakable signature of a Conduit operating at full output.

[Conduit Ability Activated: Luminous Destruction]

[The Conduit may now materialize offensive light constructs through the Dominant Core’s proximity field.]

Alice’s voice rang out, bright and fierce and nothing like the quiet satellite she’d been pretending to be.

<Okay! I’ll open the way for you, big brother!>

A beam of concentrated light erupted from the halo and struck the Borer Queen’s primary joint with surgical precision.

The chitin that Luna had cracked, that Aria had deepened, that Bastet had cooked and Nyx had battered, that Kaiden had driven his blade into over and over for three brutal minutes... All of it vaporized under the beam’s focused intensity.

The joint exploded open. Ichor sprayed in a fountain of black. The Queen’s body seized, segments locking, mandibles frozen mid-snap.

The gap was wide enough.

Kaiden was already moving.

Wrath flooded his legs. He crossed the distance in two strides and drove his greatsword into the breach point-first, the full length of the blade disappearing into the creature’s body. He felt the edge punch through muscle, through organ walls, through something dense and pulsing that resisted for a half-second before the Wrath-charged tip pierced it clean through.

The heart.

The Borer Queen’s body convulsed.

A wall of ichor erupted from the wound, drenching Kaiden from chest to boots. The creature’s segments spasmed wildly, slamming into the ground, into the rocks, into anything within reach as its nervous system fired every signal it had left. Kaiden held the blade in place with both hands, riding the death throes, boots braced against the chitin as the Queen thrashed and screamed and bled.

Then it stopped.

The silence was enormous.

The Crevice Borer Queen collapsed, its body folding in on itself like a building losing its support columns. Kaiden pulled his blade free and stepped back, covered head to toe in black ichor, breathing so hard his vision swam.

[You’ve slain Crevice Borer Queen (Level 79)]

[You’ve gained 5,230,000 XP]

[You’ve gained 40 DMP]

[Level Up! Level 51 ➣ 52]

[You have 40 unspent stat points.]

The numbers hit him like a second shockwave.

Five million experience from a single kill. Forty stat points to distribute freely, double the highest he’d ever received. A full level from one monster.

The risk had been insane.

Finding a monster alone in the wild was a gamble, let alone one twenty-eight levels above them.

One bad dodge, one mistimed block, one moment where Calypso’s body couldn’t keep up with the incoming damage, and someone would have died. This deep in the range, with no healer backup, death was a real possibility.

Lady Luck had smiled on them. Kaiden knew it. The girls knew it.

But right now, none of that mattered.

The halo above his head dimmed back to its dark resting state.

<...Did I do well?>

<You did excellent.>

<Hehe! You know the only way I accept payment for my amazing services!>

<Headpats.>

<Headpats!>

Luna was the first to move.

She read the experience notification, and every ounce of exhaustion evaporated from her face. Her eyes went wide, then wider, and then the grin split her face from ear to ear in a way that made her look like a kid who’d just gotten every present on her wish list at once.

"FIVE MILLION?!"

She ignored the ichor. She ignored the blood. She launched herself at Kaiden and slammed into his arms with enough force to stagger him, arms wrapping around his neck, legs leaving the ground.

"We did it! Five million from ONE kill! Are you seeing this?!"

He was seeing it. He was also seeing black ichor transferring onto Luna’s armor and face and hair, and she didn’t care at all.

Calypso let out a whoop from her position flat on the ground, still bleeding, fist pumping the air. Aria was laughing, the bright, surprised laugh of someone who hadn’t expected the fight to go as well as it had and was processing the joy of being wrong. Nyx’s grin spoke volumes. Even Bastet’s composure cracked, smiling like she’d just won the gold medal at a competition.

They’d earned this.

Then... A shadow fell over Kaiden.

Luna’s arms went slack around his neck. She dropped to the ground and turned, hand already on her weapon. The other girls snapped into alertness, exhaustion forgotten, survival instincts overriding celebration in an instant.

A large and imposing man was looking at Kaiden. Only at Kaiden.

No. He was looking at the halo above Kaiden’s head.

The light had been visible for miles. A signal fire, a beacon that screamed ’here I am’ to anyone with eyes and the power to reach this deep.

The man’s face was carved from stone. Hard jaw. Dark eyes. Silver at the temples of hair that was otherwise black. He looked like Kaiden would look in thirty years if Kaiden spent those thirty years being furious at the world.

He looked beyond furious now.

Magnus Ashborn.

Guild Leader of New Dawn. Commander of the veteran track expedition. The most powerful awakened in the mountain range.

His father.