Novel Full Chapter 307: Forged!
Chapter 307: Forged!
The air thickened with intent. The pale blue veins inside the Core flared like a heart under strain, and something in the atmosphere shifted from tension to execution.
The two humanoid turtle Aegishell Titans did not lumber forward as their size suggested they should. They blurred.
Not a charge. Not a step. A displacement.
Bruce’s perception snapped into razor focus. His pupils constricted until the world narrowed into clean lines and measured trajectories. Frost particles hung suspended in the air like glittering stars. He saw the hammer rise. He saw the staff pivot. He saw the compression forming around them.
Too slow. The first warhammer didn’t swing. It arrived.
The impact detonated against his abdomen with a thunderclap that folded the air inward, compressing space in a violent inward implosion before releasing it in a shockwave that rippled across the clearing. The frost beneath his boots liquefied for a fraction of a second under the pressure alone.
The hammerhead buried deep into his stomach. Not a shallow dent. Not a surface bruise.
It caved him in grotesquely, metal sinking into flesh until his torso reshaped around it. Something ruptured inside him with a hot, explosive pressure. Blood erupted from his mouth in a thick crimson spray that scattered across the ice like shattered rubies.
The world tilted violently sideways.
Pain didn’t arrive gradually.
It consumed.
Before his nerves could even fully scream—
The second Titan was already there.
Its staff came from his blindside, cutting through the air with surgical brutality. The strike landed against his ribs with a sound like a cathedral collapsing in on itself.
CRACK!
Then again.
CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK!
His ribcage imploded inward. Bone splintered like dry branches. Jagged fragments tore through muscle and punctured deep. He felt something sharp pierce a lung. His breath vanished in a wet, choking gasp as air turned to blood in his throat.
His body folded unnaturally around the staff, as if he were nothing more than soaked cloth caught on a pole.
Then he was airborne. Launched.
He flew backward in a violent arc and slammed spine-first into a frozen ridge, splintering it into powder before ricocheting off and tumbling across the ground. Each bounce ground broken bone deeper into muscle. Each roll peeled skin from flesh. Ice cracked and shattered beneath him like brittle glass.
He only stopped when he crashed through an ice pillar thick as a tree trunk, shattering it in an explosion of white shards that rained down around him.
Silence followed.
A cold, terrible silence broken only by the faint hum of the Core.
“Fuck…” he coughed.
Blood poured down his chin, pooling dark against the frost. His vision swam in and out of focus, the world pulsing in dull red waves. His stomach was concave. Actually concave. The flesh had been driven inward grotesquely where the hammer had struck. His breathing came in wet, rattling pulls. One lung was collapsing. His ribs were no longer aligned correctly. His internal organs felt wrong, shifted, displaced, floating where they shouldn’t.
Warm liquid flooded through his abdomen.
He could feel it.
His hand twitched.
Heal.
Golden light didn’t shimmer prettily.
It erupted.
It was violent, invasive, absolute. Bone fragments snapped back into place with sharp, internal pops. Torn vessels sealed in searing flashes of heat. Blood that had spilled into cavities reversed its course like obedient soldiers called back to formation. His punctured lung reinflated with a harsh, dragging breath as tissue regenerated in layered waves.
His caved stomach began to push outward again, muscle fibers knitting, fascia reconnecting, organs sliding back into rightful alignment.
But the Titans did not wait. They did not watch. They did not hesitate.
The warhammer descended again before he finished exhaling.
BOOM!
It struck his shoulder.
His clavicle shattered instantly. The impact drove him face-first into the ice, cracking it in a spiderweb pattern beneath his skull. The shockwave rippled outward in expanding rings, fracturing the frozen plain.
Before he could rise, the staff user planted its weapon across his back and slammed downward.
CRUNCH!
His spine compressed violently.
For a horrifying half second—
His lower body stopped responding.
His fingers clawed into the ice, nails scraping uselessly against frost.
Notifications flickered across his perception.
[You’ve been hit with 735,898 tons of force.]
The Core was pushing them harder.
Stronger.
Faster.
Bruce’s teeth ground together as he forced mana through channels that felt like molten glass. Heal surged again. His spine realigned with a jarring internal snap. Nerves reconnected in blazing sparks. Sensation flooded back in a wave of agony so intense it almost drove him unconscious.
The hammer came again. Ribs shattered once more.
The staff followed, driving into his thigh. His femur cracked with a deep, sickening fracture that vibrated through his entire body.
This time he screamed.
Not from fear.
From fury.
Heal roared through him again. Golden veins flared beneath his skin like living lightning. Bone reformed denser than before. Microfractures sealed. Muscle fibers regrew thicker, tighter, more resistant.
He rolled barely.
The next hammer strike cratered the ground where his skull had been. The shockwave still rattled his brain and blurred his sight.
He rose to one knee.
The staff cracked across his jaw.
His head snapped sideways. Teeth shattered. Blood and enamel sprayed across the ice in a red arc.
He hit the ground again.
They advanced without emotion.
Without sound.
Hammer.
Staff.
Hammer.
Staff.
There was no roar. No triumph. No cruelty.
Just execution.
Each strike carried mountain-leveling weight. Each blow sought to erase him completely. His body became a canvas of destruction and reconstruction. Left arm dislocated.
Heal.
Right ribs pulverized.
Heal.
Pelvis cracked.
Heal.
Internal bleeding.
Heal.
Skull fracture.
Heal.
He was being dismantled piece by piece.
And rebuilt.
Over.
And over.
And over.
The ice around him turned dark with blood. Steam rose faintly where hot crimson met frozen ground. Every impact shook the clearing. The air trembled. Shockwaves rippled outward in violent pulses.
Yet he did not die.
He could not.
Golden light pulsed from him rhythmically now.
Like a heartbeat.
Heal.
Adapt.
Heal.
Adapt.
He began to feel it.
Not just recovery.
Resistance.
The next hammer strike still sent him skidding across the ice.
But it did not cave his stomach inward.
The staff slammed into his back.
And his spine held.
Barely.
Another notification flared.
[You’ve healed and adapted to 735,898 tons of force.]