The golemite moved without hesitation.
It's free hand reached behind its massive frame, clawed hands plunging deep into Midi's back.
Flesh gave way with a sickening tear, the giant's skin splitting open as the golemite's fingers dug straight for the spine.
With a grinding wrench of force, it seized the vertebrae, locking its grip around the core of Midi's body like a grotesque handle.
In its right hand, the golemite held a sword — battered but still burning with elemental fury.
In its left, it held Midi.
The broken giant wasn't a weapon — he was a shield.
A meat shield, still twitching, still bleeding, slung forward to absorb the blows that would come next.
The golemite's steps shifted — mechanical, purposeful.
It charged, each stomp cracked the ground beneath it, a juggernaut of stone, metal, and mutilated flesh barreling straight toward Ragta, leaving no room for hesitation, no mercy in its advance.
Cain didn't waste a second.
Perched behind the battlefield chaos, he layered his next move — small, simple spells, nothing extravagant.
A vapor mist to cloud vision. Noise beams to scatter sound and disorient senses. They weren't designed to do damage.
They were built to hinder.
Cain calculated as he activated the spells. His reserves were painfully low — the lift alone had drained half his energy.
Only a single potion remained on his bag, and less than three minutes of magicules left for instantaneous casting.
If the timer ran out, he would be forced to cast magic one spell at a time — with a delay of three to five seconds between each.
He needed to tilt the fight now, unleashing the spells, it targeted the immediate line of sight of giant, churning fog and hollow.
Cain also casted dissonant echoes that warped Ragta's spatial awareness, making him create excess movements.
He didn't aim for power.
He went for cheap disruption — just enough to rob the giant of his superior reaction speed.
And the golemite understood immediately.
Without hesitation, it followed Cain's lead, releasing a thick, unnatural vapor from vents forming along its new body — just like last time.
The mist rolled out in waves, surrounding both itself and Ragta, cloaking everything in a shifting shroud.
The difference was stark.
From the beginning, the golemite never relied on sight.
It had learned to sense mass, listen to vibrations, and track energy flow — but now, its perception had sharpened beyond anything before.
The mist wrapped around Ragta's body, sticky and heavy, muffling every sound, blurring every shape.
His instincts screamed at him to strike — but caution fought back harder.
Sometimes he would swing — scythe flashing halfway through a brutal arc. Only to jerk it back at the last second, narrowly missing Midi's limp body.
He couldn't afford to kill his own blood.
The golemite knew it too — taught through a video played at a hundred times speed.
Its battle finesse grew sharper by the second.
It baited, it feinted — half-swings, low lunges, sudden side-steps.
Little traps, small deceptions stitched into each move.
What had started as crude mimicry was now shaping into real battlefield instinct.
And Ragta felt it tightening around him like a noose.
Then he heard it. A voice — ragged, barely a whisper through the mist.
"Hiwa as nagit..."
(Slash me in half...)
For a moment, Ragta thought it was hallucination, the fog playing tricks on his mind.
But then it came again, clearer, rawer.
"Hiwa as nagit... Gaws atik pigilyan!"
"Slash me in half... Stop holding back!"
It was Midi — broken, pinned like a living shield, yet still conscious enough to understand the burden he had become.
His voice was full of shame, not fear.
He was asking Ragta to sever him — to free him from being a liability.
He wouldn't die, not fully. Giants were resilient beyond belief.
Losing their lower body wouldn't end his life.
With enough will, a giant could drag themselves across battlefields without legs — without pride.
Ragta's hands tightened around the grips of his scythes.
He and Midi went back and forth in hurried, half-broken sentences — arguments woven between dodged strikes and shifting mist.
"Di ediwup! Gaws na tigazulu!"
(That wouldn't do! Don't be stubborn!)
"Dible itahalak asek favigat!"
(Better half a warrior than dead weight!)
The mist grew thicker. The pressure mounted.
When the crystal pauldron on Ragta's shoulder finally cracked and shattered, exposing his bare skin underneath, Ragta realized there was no more time for debate.
He made his decision — a compromise, the best between the worst outcomes.
Ragta reared back his head and let out a thunderous roar — deep, commanding, cutting through the mist like a battle horn.
It wasn't a cry of challenge — it was a signal.
Far across the field, Dilim, who had retreated a good distance away heard it.
Without hesitation, he answered with a roar of his own, a deep bass note that vibrated the broken stones at his feet.
It wasn't just acknowledgment — it was a question.
"Where and what do you need?"
Even battered, even half-defeated, the bond of giants endured — now, with both cousins moving again, the battlefield would shift once more.
The moment Ragta heard Dilim's answering roar, he didn't hesitate.
He surged forward, prana flooding his body, accelerating him with a sudden explosion of force.
Dust and mist spiraled in his wake as he moved — hurricane-fast, a living storm tearing through the battlefield.
In the blink of an eye, he closed the distance to Midi and the golemite.
With surgical precision, Ragta struck.
Two swift, clean slashes — so fast they barely left trails in the mist.
Both scythes found their marks, slicing between the golemite's gripping hands and Midi's exposed spine.
The cuts were flawless.
Only leaving behind a thick, compact slab of tissue—like a brutal ribeye cleaved from a carcass.
Bone splinters framed the edges, a portion of Midi's ribcage still clinging together with sinew and battered organs packed dense within.
Midi barely felt the pain, no shock — yet he remained conscious, his upper body intact, his mind still aware.
Before gravity could reclaim him, Ragta twisted his hips and followed through with a brutal roundhouse kick, slamming the flat of his foot into Midi's newly freed torso.
Midi's body launched through the air, flying westward in a ragged arc toward the direction of Dilim's voice.
The mist swallowed him, but the roar of displaced air confirmed he was clear of the immediate battlefield.
Cain, went down the golems shoulder — not idle while watching the exchange unfold.
He simply smirked — this was the game he had anticipated.
'Another body with a purpose.'