Sofia gritted her teeth, the curse wave was coming faster than she could escape. She needed to act quickly if she didn't want to be consumed by the attack. She propelled herself toward a crack in the cavern ceiling that the monster’s previous crash there had created. The Avian tried to stop her, but Sofia was too fast and managed to fold her wings and fit inside the crack. Even then, she had to keep going up as some of the cursed mana found its way in as the wave continued past.

The Avian demon attacked the ceiling, creating deep cuts in the stone with its wings that Sofia dodged by making her way along the fissure. As soon as the opportunity presented itself she used her tail as a spring to propel herself down on the Avian resulting in a head-to-head collision. Both fighters reeled back from the shock briefly before starting to brawl again.

The battle kept going, Sofia swerving around the massive body of the Avian Demon, using every limb to hit and kick the monster with quick but powerful hits. The Demon had given up dodging, trying to land a big hit instead.

Sofia felt a huge amount of mana gathering around the creature’s beak, but it was too late, the mana wave hit Sofia, slowly turning her to stone. Unable to dodge anymore, she could only watch as the oversized abomination bird pinned her down. It kept her in its claws as it folded its wings and fell into the lava lake below, slamming her into the ground at its very bottom, killing her before she could even die of the curse.

The burning demon tried to fly out of the magma lake, the top half of its body was already out when it got pulled down by the leg and submerged again. The molten stone’s heat was enough to inflict damage even on the two demons, but Sofia’s smaller and more streamlined body was more agile. A battle inside the lake was at her advantage. She couldn’t see anything and had to rely on her mana senses, the big bird was impossible to miss.

The two demons brawled inside of the lake as the magma geysers created by their blows transformed the cavern into a make-believe underground volcano.

Sofia was getting very worried, her health kept going down under the magma but the struggle of the bird demon wasn’t weakening in the slightest. The time limit of her transformation was getting closer and she only had one rune left.

Health : 112 110 / 179 280

Stamina : 141 208 / 179 280

Mana : 0 / 179 280

At least the Avian Demon never used its curse skill while inside the magma.

Eventually, the Demon managed to get out and fly back up, instantly using its magic again. Sofia had been trying to follow but she plunged back into the magma to avoid the attack, emerging after it washed over and starting to throw punches again. She was focused on attacking the same wing every time she could, gradually building up the damage.

The Avian Demon was a lot more cautious now, they both danced in the air, exchanging and dodging many blows. The Avian tried its best to fly up while Sofia was struggling to keep the fight going near the lake’s surface. She was punishing the Avian with vicious tail hits every time it stopped using its wings to defend itself and tried to fly up instead.

Every so often the bird would use its curse magic and every time Sofia dodged by plunging into the magma lake. But despite the extreme speed of these events it was getting harder to do as the Demon managed to fly slightly higher each time.

Sofia kept taking hits from the Demon’s unrelenting assault. Down to less than ten thousand health, she went in for a last big hit, suffering a fatal blow in the process.

A few seconds later, she woke up at the bottom of the lake again.

I have thirty seconds left.

With both legs and her tail planted at the bottom of the lake, she gave her full strength to jump up. Flying like a cannonball at the Avian demon that had been flying up again, she saw the results of her last hit. The Demon’s left wing was almost broken, it was so damaged Sofia could see the black bone under the flesh.

The monster felt Sofia coming and turned to face her before the impact. Sofia faked a frontal punch, which the monster tried to block with its right wing. Only for Sofia to take a sharp aerial turn at the last second, latching onto the huge monster’s left wing. She dug her way through the flesh and grabbed the black bone that was thicker than her waist.

[Bone dominus]

The bone’s matter rearranged itself to take a new shape. It withdrew from the wing, leaving behind a floppy boneless appendage, and instead burst out in sharp spikes impaling the monster’s torso and head. This was as far as this bone would go, if she changed it any further it would crumble.

The Avian Demon screamed like never before, failing to cast its curse.

Both Demons were tumbling down toward the lake, Sofia climbed the bone spike that pierced through the Demon’s head. Powering through the attacks of the monster’s remaining wing, she reached the tiny head with its black beak. Sliding her clawed fingers along the spike, she thrust her arm under the skin of the Avian Demon’s head.

She found the skull.

Under her control, the monster’s skull lost its function as a body part created to protect the brain to be a tool to pierce it with a thousand sharp osseous spikes.

Like a puppet whose strings had been cut, the Avian demon’s struggles stopped.

Just in time.

Health : 28 146 / 179 280

Stamina : 2566 / 179 280

Mana : 0 / 179 280

Sofia’s transformation was coming to an end. She didn’t want her life to end in a magma lake. With no time left to even get her hand out of the giant demon’s head, she gave one last powerful beat of her wings, sending them crashing against a side of the cavern. They hit the stone wall and tumbled down until the Avian Demon’s huge body ended in a position that stopped their fall, a few meters away from the magma.

Sofia finally managed to free her hand from the demon’s head as her own body finished to retrieve its humanity.

She jumped off from the monster’s carcass and let herself lay on the incurved stone ground of the spherical cavern.

Health : 941 / 5995

Stamina : 28 / 1995

Mana : 0 / 89000

She was injured but the transformation back had helped stabilize her body, she wasn’t bleeding and her health and stamina were actually going back up sometimes when she breathed in, at a snail’s pace, one point at a time.

I’m glad this thing actually went down without its brain.

If it didn’t I would be dead for real…

Sofia glanced at her many system notifications. There were many things in there, like the warning that she wouldn’t be able to regain any mana for half an hour and that she had gained a ten-level debt. The system informed her she would only have to pay it after reaching level 200 to not interfere with the trial.

A lot had happened in so little time.

Why did this whole thing even happen?

First of all, I should have never entered the cathedral.

Second, I absolutely shouldn’t have gone down…

I also failed to notice the hidden ritual circle… But why did the Apostle explode like that?

Thinking back on all of her information on demons, she picked up one thing that had somehow eluded her until now. It was back when she was inside the Pyramid of Domination in the desert. She and Alith had activated a ritual that transformed into a small stone dwarf. She replayed the message of the Dwarven statuette in her mind, repeating the words of the dwarf.

“I made sure the ritual chamber would screw up their hideous faces. That’s right, I know what they’re going to do. Not on my watch. The Demon King can go die in a hole for all I care!”

“...”

“I’m not really able to go against them now, there is nothing I can do after they mutate.”

Mutate.

Become much stronger, hideous, and too dumb to escape a tower’s basement or a pyramid kind of mutate?

The bird was strong but it wasn’t very smart. It never understood I was focusing all my attacks on the same wing and still kept using it to block half the time. It also plunged into the magma lake to finish me when I was already dying from the curse and hurt itself in the process.

Also I can’t for a second believe that the shackled demon woman crying her heart out when I showed the slightest intent of leaving would have suddenly turned silent and murderous like that without some kind of mental fuckery happening.

Almost makes me regret deleting [Pristine essence]. Almost.

But also I would have lost if not for the effect of [Bone dominus]. It’s very fortunate that it works without mana.

Anyway, I need to learn more about this mutation thing after I leave… I never saw an exit while I was fighting, leaving might be hard.

I need to find where the entrance used to be and have the graveyard crew phase me through the newly deposited layer of stone…

I lost all my possessions. And Pareth is dead again. Great day. At least I guess my clothes will reappear when I get mana so I won’t have to walk out naked…

And this whole fight was for nothing.

Well, not quite nothing, at least [Sanctity]’s level shot up.

‘[Sanctity] reached level 78’

…

‘[Sanctity] reached level 100’

I don’t even get any experience for the k-

The kill?

Sofia gulped. She was lit up by the eerie red glow of the self-combusting corpse of the bird Demon a few meters below.

There hadn’t been any kill notification in her log.

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