Dilim heard the sound before he saw it — the heavy, whistling rush of something tearing through the mist.
Then, like a broken doll, Midi's legless body sailed past him, flung nearly half a mile through the air, tumbling end over end.
It was the result of Ragta's kick, powered by prana — a protective shield enveloped Midi for a few seconds. A move Ragta had learned for these kinds of situations.
Dilim didn't hesitate. He sprinted toward Midi, moving faster than his battered body should have allowed.
But when he reached him — when he saw Midi sprawled across the cracked ground, bloodied but breathing.
Dilim suddenly faltered — his gaze dropped to the torn-open chest cavity.
There, nestled near the still-beating heart, was it a small, palm-sized sack glowing faintly through the exposed muscle.
A giant's prana core.
The temptation Dilim him like an alluring seductress..
If he took it, and consumed it — there was a slim, almost impossible chance he could inherit more than just strength. He might be able to wield fire alongside his ice.
A hybrid power so rare, it bordered on legend. The odds were less than a percent. Maybe far less.
But when power called, even the proud stumbled.
Dilim stared, torn between loyalty and the gnawing hunger rising in his chest.
Midi wasn't blind to it. He saw the gleam of greed flash in Dilim's eyes — the same glint he had seen during their countless years of rivalry.
He had always known this moment might come. So he did what he had to.
Midi pretended to be unconscious.
Even when Dilim approached and kicked his battered side, testing if he was awake, Midi didn't flinch.
Not even as fresh, agonizing pain radiated through his broken body.
Dilim crouched, he reached out — toward the exposed core, still pulsing next to Midi's heart.
One wrong press would rupture it instantly, ending any hope of ascension.
Dilim's hands shook. He had never done this before — never stooped to tearing the core from another of his kind.
Giants who lost their core were crippled for life, stripped of vitality, unable to grow or even properly heal.
Unless they stumbled across some divine earthy treasure, or a panacea so rare it was practically myth, recovery was impossible.
No tribe would waste such a miracle on a runt — both Midi and Dilim knew it.
From his meter deep trench. Cain watched it all unfold — Dilim's shaking hands reaching deeper, digging through blood and viscera toward the core.
'Now.'
Cain's fingers tightened around the remote device strapped to his wrist.
As Dilim's fingertips began plucking the glowing sack.
Click — Boom!
The explosion shattered the stillness.
A shockwave of compressed force roared outward, rattling stones and ripping the mist apart.
Cain's detonator blinked once — confirmation.
The magitech explosive he had chased Midi immediately after the impact — sacrificing all of his magicules for a temporary speed boost.
[Timer - 00:00:06]
'Six seconds, huh?'
In this era, a mere hundred grams of magitech explosive could unleash the destructive force equivalent to one full kilogram of traditional ancient C4.
The blast hit with clinical, surgical violence.
Cain's eyes narrowed, analyzing through the haze.
Midi was hurled away, enduring the blast of fire.
For fire giants like him, the shock was minor — no worse than a second-degree burn.
A single night of rest would be enough for it to scab over.
But Dilim — he staggered backward while looking around, slow and confused.
What remained of him was a grotesque ruin.
His torso was torn wide open, ribcage blown apart like shattered driftwood.
Flesh hung in scorched ribbons. His organs — charred and half-liquefied, sizzled and slumped from his frame, exposed and grotesque.
Just like the hulking figures Cain had seen in the ancient medical files, a mangled giant whose body had betrayed its own structure.
Dilim's skin sloughed from muscle, blackened from the inside.
He couldn't see. He couldn't hear. He couldn't even think to scream.
The giant's body was extremely tenacious, clinging to life.
It simply toppled with a dull, lifeless thud, stirring dust as it crashed to the ground.
And in the fading echoes of the blast,
Cain clenched his fist, this was chess — the board was clearing, piece by piece.
Cain didn't waste a breath.
He didn't waste a breath, he drew his sword in a fluid motion and plunged it deep into Dilim's ruined chest cavity.
The blade slipped past shattered bone and charred muscle, sinking straight toward the faint glow he had targeted from the beginning.
Dilim, barely conscious, could only feel it — his power draining, his life slipping away.
Half of his brain had been reduced to exposed, smoldering mush, and the world around him had no color, sound or taste.
Then Cain carved the core free — like harvesting a ripened fruit.
But even as the core came loose, Cain's body tensed.
He heard it.
A sonic boom — a hollow crack that ripped through the mist like a whip—and with it, a gut-deep certainty.
Ragta.
Cain didn't need to look. He could feel the fury tearing toward him.
Was he a match for Ragta in a straight fight? He wouldn't even qualify as cannon fodder, he'd be shredded before he could even lift his sword.
Through the broken, half-flickering veil of his vision, Midi saw a blur—something flash past him.
A man-shaped shadow moving with impossible speed.
Desperate, Dilim reached inward, instincts screaming.
His fingers clutched at his own ribs, breaking one free to use as a crude weapon.
But by the time he gripped it, ready to stab — his core was gone.
Plucked clean with it, so was his last strength and conciousness.
The extraction consumed precious seconds.
Three more seconds for the spell to hold, maybe less.
Cain could feel his strengthening magic flickering at the edges of his body, like a frayed rope about to snap.
He turned — And through the parting mist, he saw it.
An eye full of primal, unrestrained fury, locking onto him with a force that could smash mountains.
Ragta had arrived.
And Cain stood there, cores in hand — caught in red bloody hands.