Chapter 577 Apex Alpha

Mauve unleashed a delicate shout, and Grey's eyes flickered because that was probably the loudest sound he had ever heard come out of her. It wasn't even particularly loud by normal standards, but there was something about hearing that usually soft voice strained like that which immediately sent Grey's thoughts in a direction they had absolutely no business going.

He would have liked to hear that sound again, preferably over and over and over, but he shook his head before his lower brain could finish building the rest of the fantasy.

The blood inside The Eternal's body suddenly tore free, and Grey's amusement vanished beneath a flash of understanding.

He had initially assumed Mauve was struggling because she was trying to control the blood of a Dominion Class existence, but that wasn't the whole story at all, because despite The Eternal's vacant gaze and ruined body, his blood was still moving with purpose.

It was actively trying to restore him, forcing life back through damaged organs and broken pathways even after Xerchen had apparently killed him. It was probably related to The Eternal's abilities. Maybe he was a walking zombie or something. That would make sense with his title.

Grey's eyes narrowed before his lips curled upward.

Xerchen had beaten The Eternal badly enough that almost anyone would have called the fight finished, but it could be said that the person who truly killed him was Mauve, because the moment she ripped that blood from his body, whatever chance remained of his regenerative abilities pulling him back disappeared with it.

The torrent gathered above her into a twisting red cord, but instead of drawing it toward herself, Mauve snapped her hand forward and sent it whipping straight toward Brad.

The stream separated in midair and became a rain of thin crimson needles, each one piercing Brad's back at a different location until a perfect pattern spread across his body.

Grey had analyzed Brad's Neural Frame before, and even though he couldn't have named every point Mauve struck without taking a closer look, he understood subconsciously that every needle had landed somewhere important.

'Not bad,' he thought, because Mauve was controlling an amount of Dominion Class blood that should have been wildly beyond her comfort zone, yet her precision hadn't suffered in the slightest.

Brad's body shuddered, his hammer lowering as he froze for just long enough that The Boundless immediately tried to take advantage. The enormous Guardian charged with both palms thrust forward, only to collide with an invisible wall of pressure that exploded outward the instant he reached Brad.

BOOM.

The Boundless skidded backward several feet while Brad's veins swelled beneath his skin, and the scrawny bastard who had spent the last several minutes mourning his missing muscles threw his head back and roared.

A heartbeat thundered through the catacombs.

Mauve's hands fell as her knees buckled, and Grey barely managed to move his arm from around her shoulders quickly enough to catch her around the hips before she tipped over.

Luckily, Mauve couldn't have weighed more than a hundred and twenty or thirty pounds, which might as well have been nothing considering Grey's current strength even with half his nervous system screaming at him.

"I did it..." she whispered, looking up at him with a small, exhausted smile.

Brad's heart boomed again, and his body answered.

Muscle exploded back across his frame as though somebody had fast-forwarded years of bodybuilding in a couple seconds, his shoulders widening, his arms thickening, and his chest swelling until Grey was half convinced the bastard had come back twice as large as he had been before the hammer trial.

Violence seemed to pump through Brad's veins with every heartbeat, and Grey's lips twitched as he looked down at Mauve.

"Yes... yes you did."

Brad launched himself at The Boundless, swinging the enormous hammer with the speed Grey would have expected from a dagger rather than a Dominion Class heavy hammer.

Every collision shook the catacombs, the impacts becoming every bit as violent as the battle Xerchen was fighting against The Radiant and The Forsaken, but the difference was that The Boundless was clearly losing ground. Each exchange forced the enormous Guardian farther backward, his feet gouging trenches through the stone while Brad somehow became more comfortable with the hammer every second.

Petri watched from the side with a deepening grimace, because at this point he wasn't even sure what stepping in would accomplish. Brad had become too much for him to deal with, Xerchen was handling multiple Guardians at once, and although Grey looked half-dead while supporting an unconscious Mauve, Petri could feel that the brat's attention still covered almost the entire battlefield.

Grey hadn't forgotten the disciples standing off to the side either, and after suffering through enough bullshit interruptions for one day, he clearly wasn't interested in allowing another minor character to suddenly discover their main-character moment.

BOOM.

The Boundless disappeared into a wall.

His enormous body embedded so deeply into the stone that only the outline of a human-shaped crater remained, and Brad turned away as though the fight were already finished. He flashed Mauve a grin and raised one thumb, only to pause when he realized she had already passed out against Grey's chest.

Brad's expression immediately soured. "I'm the one fighting and saving beauties right now, so why's she sleeping on your chest?"

"Maybe because I'm more handsome than you," Grey said with a cheeky grin.

Brad scoffed and immediately started flexing, rotating through several bodybuilding poses before ending with a dramatic Zyzz pose while holding the hammer out to one side.

"As if. I'm the apex alpha."

"Sure, sure," Grey replied, looking him up and down. "How much did those injections make your balls shrink, by the way?"

Brad's expression twisted, but before he could come up with a response, the wall behind him exploded and The Boundless stumbled free.

The Guardian looked like a sack of meat someone had dropped down a mountain, blood running from his face and soaking through his robes as he raised one trembling hand, apparently still determined to say something despite everything that had happened.

"Master, stop!" Petri called.

The Boundless's face immediately twisted, and he turned as though ready to scold his son, only for another body to suddenly come flying across the catacombs.

The Radiant struck the ground, bounced once, then slid to a stop directly beside him with his body already lifeless and blood spilling beneath his head.

The Boundless stared down at the second dead Guardian, then looked toward Xerchen in the distance, who was still standing against The Forsaken despite barely having recovered from death himself.

Whatever argument had been forming on The Boundless's tongue seemed to disappear along with the last of his strength, and his raised hand slowly drooped before his knees gave out.

He collapsed directly on top of The Radiant's corpse.

Grey stared for a moment, then glanced toward Brad. "I think you broke him."