He was barely holding together.
His skull was fractured down the middle, jagged cracks running through the bone. One arm and a leg were gone entirely, severed clean away, while his ribs jutted out in splintered fragments, half his torso missing as if it had been chewed apart. He had lost nearly half his body, and yet—somehow—he still clung to existence.
The undead husk lay sprawled across the ruined earth, snarling through broken teeth. It wasn’t life that kept him moving anymore, it was pure, cursed tenacity.
The pendant flared again, desperate. Crimson light bled across his chest, pulsing in rapid succession as if trying to force his body to mend.
The wounds didn’t close. The flesh didn’t knit. The rift’s energy had done something the pendant couldn’t undo.
Undead Amon twitched, his tendons pulling taut as he tried to rise, but his form remained ruined, his regeneration stalled completely.
I froze for a moment, then looked down at Gravefang in my grip.
The word slipped out, quiet but heavy.
My blade shimmered faintly, the foreign energy still clinging to its edge, and I realized what I had just unleashed. That strike hadn’t been ordinary—it had carried something beyond my usual strength, something that unraveled the very essence of what it touched.
A slow grin tugged at my lips, part awe, part grim satisfaction.
SSS-ranked skills really were in a class of their own.
I had used my class skill, [Rift Annihilation], and the frightening part was that I had barely poured any power into it. Even so, the destruction it caused was beyond anything I’d seen from myself before.
I couldn’t lay a hand on the pendant directly, but that didn’t matter. With [Rift Annihilation], I could unravel it completely.
I warped back down to the ground, Gravefang steady in my grip, and drew in a long breath as I prepared another swing. Mana coiled around the blade, the air itself trembling as the energy gathered, tearing faint seams in space around me.
The abomination seemed to recognize the danger. Even without a proper mind, some primal instinct must have screamed at it. With a guttural roar, it drew every drop of blood it could muster, pulling it tight around its ruined form until it was wrapped in a pulsating cocoon of crimson.
But it didn’t matter.
The rift-scarred edge carved through the air, and the slash tore through the cocoon as though it were made of paper. The energy didn’t stop—it carried straight into Amon, unmaking everything it touched.
The explosion cracked the battlefield, distortion bursting outward in a shockwave that rattled the trees. Amon’s body detonated into fragments, blood-mist scattering as parts of him were simply consumed by the rift’s energy.
When the haze cleared, there wasn’t much left.
His body was in pieces, entire sections gone as though they had never existed. Only the skull remained intact, rolling across the broken earth, along with a few scraps of flesh clinging stubbornly to the soil.
And hanging from the mess of bone and sinew, still pulsing with a hateful light—
I stepped closer, Gravefang still humming faintly with the residue of [Rift Annihilation].
The crimson jewel that had flared so defiantly through every strike now lay cracked, its glow snuffed out completely. The light it once pulsed with was gone, nothing more than fractured glass clinging to a shattered chain.
My eyes shifted to the skull beside it. Amon’s remains.
The bone lay half-buried in dirt, cracks running deep through its surface. And yet, somehow, the sockets still burned with faint crimson light, his gaze fixed on me even without flesh to hold it. For a moment, it flared in stubborn defiance, as though the shaman refused to let go even in death.
Then, slowly... it dimmed. ᴛhis chapter is ᴜpdated by novelꞁire.net
Until nothing remained.
The last thread of his cursed existence unraveled in silence.
A familiar chime echoed in my ears, notifications scrolling before my vision:
[You have defeated an Elite Boss: Amon]
[You have leveled up]
[You have received +1 to all base stats]
[You have received +3 free stat points to distribute]
[You have received 200 skill advancement points]
[You have received 500 coins]
[You have received skill: Cursed Regeneration]
[Cursed Regeneration] – PassiveGrants the ability to heal minor wounds rapidly. However, repeated use temporarily weakens your maximum stamina.
I almost gasped aloud.
I’d wanted something for so long. No more burning through potions for every scratch, no more scrambling to keep supplies stocked just to patch myself up after every fight. This meant freedom, a way to save coins for things that actually mattered.
Speaking of coins, the notification reminded me—I had just received 500. That put me in a decent spot. When I’d killed Ezekiel, one of Drugar’s chosen, I’d gotten 1000 coins, and it was that very sum that had let me buy the potion I forced down Narg’s throat and handed over to Flogga. That purchase had probably kept him alive long enough for me to make it back.
Now, with this addition, I could start investing in something more useful.
The real prize, though, was the skill advancement points. Two hundred from Amon, added to the three hundred I’d already been holding on to—five hundred in total. Enough to rank up one of my Rank C skills.
And I had plenty of those.
I reread the reward notification carefully, and then I noticed something.
The system hadn’t labeled Amon as a Chosen. Instead, it had called him an Elite Boss.
That told me everything I needed to know. He must have truly lost his title.
The corruption, the desperation, the pendant—it had stripped him of what little honor remained, reducing him to nothing more than a monster for me to cull.
And if that was the case, then Ezekiel had lost his as well.
The corner of my mouth twitched upward, though there was no joy in it—only cold satisfaction.
But the thought came with a sharper edge.
This fight had proven something I couldn’t ignore.