Chapter 286: Among the Gods

The beast stood nearly the height of Grathak, but thinner, built of overlapping plates of dark bark-like hide and exposed ridges of pale, luminous bone.

Antlers of blackened, twisted wood crowned a head that held too many eyes, some set forward like a predator’s, others scattered along the skull in irregular clusters that glowed a faint, sickly green.

Between the plates of hide, veins of the same green light pulsed in slow, deliberate rhythm. Its limbs ended in long, multi-jointed fingers that looked equally suited to tearing or to writing signs in the air.

When it exhaled, the breath carried the smell of wet earth after lightning and something older that had no name in any mortal language.

The system window exploded across Kane’s vision in harsh red.

[Critical Entity Detected]

[Classification: Lesser Manifestation – Forest Guardian Fragment]

[Threat Level: Extreme]

[Divine-adjacent weight confirmed]

[Warning: Standard physical damage severely reduced]

[Warning: Controlled Berserker Output efficiency unknown against this target]

[Recommendation: Survival priority. Observation required before full commitment.]

Kane dismissed the wall of text with a thought and raised Mjoldr.

The manifestation turned its many eyes toward him.

Swoosh.

It didn’t roar and simply advanced, one long, silent stride that closed more distance than should have been possible, and swung a multi-jointed arm in a horizontal arc.

Kane barely got the axe up in time.

Shit.

Bang!

The impact rang through the haft like a struck temple bell and drove him back three full steps, boots scraping stone.

Pain lanced through the still-healing ribs.

He slid aside from the follow-up strike, felt the wind of the claws pass close enough to tug his shirt, and answered with a lateral cut aimed at the glowing veins between the bark plates.

Mjoldr connected. Bark-hide split. Green light flared. But the wound closed almost as fast as it opened, the luminous veins simply rerouting around the damage like water flowing past a stone.

Kane’s eyes narrowed.

"Of course."

The manifestation pressed forward without pause, both arms working in a fluid, unnatural rhythm that forced Kane to give ground in a wide circle.

He throttled Controlled Berserker Output upward in careful increments: forty percent, fifty, fifty-five, feeling the system struggle to adapt its efficiency against the divine-adjacent resistance.

Every successful parry still sent shock up his arms. Every glancing blow from those multi-jointed hands left bruises that bloomed too fast and too dark.

On the eastern rail, Kessa’s hands gripped the stone hard enough to crack a fingernail.

Griselda’s wings had opened a fraction, ready, though she knew she could not enter the floor.

Near the high seat, Marisa stood motionless, eyes tracking every exchange, the political mask thinned by something that looked almost like fear.

Kane took a long, shallow cut across the outer thigh when he misjudged a feint.

Blood ran.

He answered by stepping inside the next swing and driving Mjoldr’s spike into one of the clustered eyes on the manifestation’s skull.

Shriek.

The eye burst in a spray of green light and black fluid. The manifestation’s first real sound, a layered, resonant shriek that made half the terraces flinch, echoed across the arena.

The wound didn’t close as quickly as the others.

Kane reset his grip, blood dripping down his leg, Controlled Rage humming at a dangerous edge, and watched the many remaining eyes reorient on him with cold, ancient attention.

The manifestation stopped probing.

All of its many eyes locked on Kane at once, the green light inside the bark-hide veins brightening to a painful intensity.

The air temperature plummeted.

Frost formed in jagged lines across the dark stone around its feet. When it moved again, there was no wasted motion, only a sudden, terrifying acceleration that closed the remaining distance in a single bound.

Kane met it with Controlled Berserker Output already climbing past seventy percent.

The first exchange was pure violence.

A multi-jointed hand scythed toward his head. He dropped under it and dragged Mjoldr upward in a two-handed rising cut that sheared through bark-hide and severed two of the glowing fingers in a spray of black fluid and green sparks.

The manifestation didn’t recoil.

It simply rotated the damaged limb and brought the remaining fingers around in a reverse rake that opened three deep, parallel lines across Kane’s chest from shoulder to lower ribs. Blood poured. The system screamed warnings in harsh red.

[Tissue integrity critical – Anterior torso]

[Controlled Berserker Output: 74%]

[Adaptation threshold approaching]

Kane answered by stepping inside the next swing and slamming the spiked pommel of Mjoldr directly into the cluster of eyes on the left side of the skull.

Two more eyes burst.

The layered shriek that followed made several warriors on the lower terraces drop to one knee.

Kane didn’t give it room to recover.

He throttled the Rage higher, eighty percent, the highest he had ever sustained under Controlled output, and launched a relentless series of chopping blows aimed at the same glowing vein junctions he had noticed earlier.

Bark-hide splintered.

Green light flared and sputtered.

Black fluid ran freely down the manifestation’s torso.

Yet every wound still tried to close, the divine-adjacent flesh knitting with stubborn, unnatural speed.

Kane’s own body was paying a steeper price.

A backhand he only partially blocked sent him skidding across the frost-covered stone; the impact reopened the thigh wound from the Second Measure and added a fresh, deep cut along his left hip.

He rolled, came up on pure stubbornness, and spat blood onto the ice.

"Come on then," he snarled.

"You’ve looked. Now decide."

The manifestation tilted its antlered head. The remaining eyes narrowed.

For a moment the green light along its veins pulsed in a new, more complex pace, almost as if it were speaking to something farther away and older.

Then it raised both arms and brought them down together.

Kane had no room to avoid it completely.

He crossed Mjoldr above his head and took the full force of the double strike on the axe’s haft.

The impact drove him to one knee.

Stone cracked under his boots.

Pain exploded through both arms and the already damaged ribs.

Something in his left forearm gave with a sharp, sickening pop.

The system flooded his vision with overlapping trauma alerts.

He roared, partly pain, partly the Rage finally slipping closer to its upper edge, and shoved upward with everything he had left.

The manifestation’s arms were forced back just far enough for Kane to drop, spin, and drive Mjoldr in a full horizontal arc at the junction where the luminous spine met the pelvis-like structure beneath the bark plates.

Slash...

The axe head bit deeper than any previous cut. Green light erupted in a blinding sheet. The manifestation’s entire body seized.

A single, resonant tone rolled across the arena, felt more in the bones than heard.

The manifestation staggered as the wound Kane had opened did not close.

Black fluid poured freely. The green veins around the injury flickered and went dark in a widening pattern.