A Bug In Fate

The Duskfang Wyrm towered before Alden, its serpentine body thick as a war chariot and covered in overlapping scales that shimmered deep violet under the dying sunlight. Six limbs ended in curved talons long enough to gut a horse in a single swipe, while its head split into two stacked jaws, each lined with rows of blackened fangs dripping a faint, smoking venom.

Four eyes, arranged along its skull, glowed a sickly yellow, tracking Alden’s every movement with an intelligence far sharper than any ordinary beast should possess.

Its genetic ability was Venomous Regeneration. Any wound it took would close within seconds, unless the damage was severe enough to overwhelm that healing outright. Worse, its venom worked the opposite way on whatever it bit, seeping into wounds and suppressing the target’s own recovery in turn.

It wasn’t built to overpower its prey through sheer strength. It was built to outlast them, wearing enemies down until they simply couldn’t keep up anymore.

Alden looked at the monster with a calm expression. Even though it was his first time fighting a Metamorphosis realm monster, he wasn’t nervous in the slightest. Instead, a glint of excitement flickered through his eyes.

"Let’s see what you’ve got... hehe." The moment he spoke, seven ice projectiles formed in the air around him. He had activated his White Room technique, and the arena within 400 meters now answered to him, giving him more than enough room to be creative.

The monster didn’t wait around. Two of its limbs, whether they counted as arms or legs was hard to say, swept toward Alden with brutal speed, the air itself seeming to shriek as it cut through the space between them. Ice spikes shot forward to meet the strike.

The attacks collided with a sound like cracking stone, four spikes meeting two limbs head-on, the force of it kicking up a gust strong enough to scatter loose debris across the ground. For a moment, it looked almost even. But it wasn’t. Instead of shattering or bleeding, the Duskfang Wyrm simply sliced clean through the spikes without slowing down.

Alden had expected as much. The four spikes were never meant to break through, they were there to draw the Wyrm’s attention and buy just enough time for what came next.

"Not like I expected anything less," Alden said, smiling as the remaining three spikes slipped past the clash at an angle and shot straight toward its four glowing eyes.

The Wyrm noticed a fraction too late. It jerked its massive head aside with surprising speed, but not fast enough to escape entirely.

A trail of blood appeared where the spike had grazed its skin, but just as Alden had expected, it began regenerating almost instantly. Within moments, the wound was gone, as if it had never been there at all.

The Wyrm let out a sound somewhere between a screech and a roar, guttural enough that it seemed to vibrate through the ground itself. Dark, smoking blood, more black than red, gushed briefly from the wound before the flesh knit itself back together, sealing shut even as the creature reared back and thrashed its head violently.

Alden watched with mild interest. Venomous Regeneration, just as he’d expected from something at this realm.

"Haha, let’s test your limits," he chuckled, and disappeared from his spot as two limbs came at him like a cutter.

What followed was chaos. Alden moved from spot to spot, craters forming behind him wherever the monster’s attacks landed. He conjured ice projectiles of different shapes on the fly, spears, arrows, spikes, each one sharp and deadly enough to cut down a peak Rupture realm monster in an instant.

The Wyrm was massive but far from agile, and all it could do to defend itself was rely on its six limbs. Even that wasn’t enough. Alden’s control over his mana was terrifying, and he kept switching strategies, forcing the creature to cover one blind spot only to be struck from another.

Five minutes passed like that. It might not sound like long, but the fact that they had already exchanged over three hundred strikes in that time said enough on its own.

Wounds kept appearing across the Duskfang Wyrm’s body, and just as before, they healed, but the healing had noticeably slowed compared to earlier.

The lower-ranked monsters caught near their fight were crushed by the aftermath, some frozen solid in ice, others torn apart by a stray, razor-sharp limb that came too close. It didn’t take long before the monsters nearby began giving the area a wide berth, having watched enough of their kind die simply for existing too close to the fight.

Maybe monsters had some intelligence after all.

Alden looked at the Duskfang Wyrm with a calm expression before he muttered something.

"Glacier Series: Snowfall."

It seemed he was done playing around. Snowflakes began drifting down once more, and the Wyrm, already slowed from being cut down repeatedly, had several wounds that hadn’t fully closed.

The snowflakes seeped straight into those open wounds, and its movements grew sluggish as its blood turned cold from the inside out.

"Well, that was fun," Alden said. A massive blade of ice formed in the air above him and shot forward, aimed straight at the Wyrm’s neck.

The monster reacted on instinct, curling its massive body and raising all six limbs in a desperate wall of defense. But just as the blade closed the distance, it shifted, curving sharply and vanishing from the Wyrm’s line of sight, only to reappear behind it a heartbeat later, driving straight into the back of its neck.

With its vision blocked by its own limbs, the Wyrm never saw it coming. It only felt the pain, a sudden, searing line of cold fire tearing through flesh and bone, and by the time it understood its mistake, it was already too late.

The massive body collapsed, hitting the ground with enough force to send a cloud of dust rolling outward. For a moment, nothing else in the area dared to move.

The Duskfang Wyrm was dead.

Alden stood before the monster’s dead body, a glint of satisfaction flickering through his eyes as a smile formed on his lips.

"Good battle, for a first time, I guess."

He looked around, searching for another poor soul.

Somewhere in the distance, another Metamorphosis realm monster felt a shiver run down its back.

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