Finally, Ryan was face to face with the feared demon king of the frozen lands.

An enemy he knew very well, from a long time ago, that at some inevitable point they would have to settle the score.

’Except, I had already gotten used to the idea that I would not be the one to face him in direct combat,’ Ryan thought to himself, feeling the weight of the crushing reality alter his plans.

A cold drop of sweat slid slowly down the side of his face, tracing a path down to his chin and falling to the floor.

Ryan felt overwhelmed for the first time after a long time of not feeling the real danger of death before a fight. Rigal was definitely not a simple opponent, his mere presence filled the place as if he were a natural disaster about to erupt.

The immense demon king slowly rose from his seat, fully showing his true and most monstrous final combat form.

With a careless movement, Rigal left the small, glowing crystal flask containing Ophelia right on the hard stone arm of his throne, using it as a simple, decorative paperweight.

The beastman’s body bulked up instantly, his muscles tensing and hardening beneath his gray fur as if they were an impenetrable armor of solid steel.

His thick claws elongated several centimeters, gleaming like freshly sharpened, lethal blades, and his immense back widened with a monstrous, terrifying grace that blocked out the hall’s scarce light.

Amidst the enemy’s preparation, Ryan’s cold green eyes darted for a minuscule fraction of a second toward the vulnerable golden flask resting on the chair.

Rigal, noticing that fleeting and obvious eye movement from his enemy, shot him an extremely sharp smile, revealing rows of predatory fangs.

"Try to take it right now, if you dare, stupid human," Rigal challenged him with a deep voice that made the room tremble.

Ryan did not respond to his cheap provocation at all. His mind was already calculating the attack trajectories necessary to survive.

He quickly opened his dimensional inventory to pull out his entire available arsenal. A flash of light appeared in both hands.

"Fire Aura," Ryan pronounced in a low voice, immediately activating the destructive latent skill of his gloves.

Wielding the heavy Chimera sword in his right hand, and his lethal epic sword in his left hand, with the dense fire from his gloves crackling wildly and enveloping the metal blades, Ryan charged head-on against his enemy at superhuman speed.

Rigal took the brutal cross impact of the flaming blades directly with his bare claws. The lethal clash of energies erupted, and the entire immense hall shook violently from its foundations.

Both monsters of brute strength tangled in an extremely dizzying and destructive battle. They were two swift trails of power, one of dense burning fire and the other of pure physical darkness, crossing, clashing, and bouncing from wall to wall, destroying the fortress’s ancient decorations.

Meanwhile, the tiny crystal flask abandoned on the demon king’s chair shifted and trembled violently, threatening to fall to the floor due to the constant and brutal rhythm of the steel clashing against the beast’s claws.

"Ha ha ha ha."

Between each deafening and explosive clash of forces, the demon king laughed out loud. The immense furry monster genuinely seemed to be enjoying the human’s pathetic effort to survive, for in his bright yellow eyes lay the arrogant look of those who know themselves to be absolute victors from the very first second.

They broke apart abruptly after the heavy block of a double thrust that cracked the floor beneath their boots.

Rigal, without losing his huge mocking smile, sank his claws deep into the shattered floor. Instantly, dozens of immense, sharp stone spears emerged violently from the earth, chasing Ryan’s feet across the entire width of the hall.

The human reacted instantly. With his maximum agility, he dodged the deadly trap by leaping into the air and running swiftly upside down across the room’s immense vaulted ceiling, evading the deadly rock tips by mere millimeters.

Rigal, without stopping to look at the result of his magic, ripped up the massive shattered stone remains with a quick movement of his furry arms. The demon king launched them upward as a second, massive wave of heavy blunt projectiles.

Amidst a thick rain of rubble, broken pillars, and dust, the demon king jumped with a titanic force and rammed him again in mid-air. Orange sparks flew through the darkness, but due to their immense and almost matched speed, neither managed to graze the other with a truly clean or definitive blow.

’This damn wolf... he is just playing with me, but I am fighting with the maximum of my capabilities,’ Ryan thought, landing heavily on the cracked floor and feeling immense wear and tear on his arm joints.

Knowing that he could not drag out this endurance combat against a beast of that caliber, Ryan brought his swords together, channeling all his concentration into a definitive attack to cut through his defense.

"Blazing Blade!" Ryan yelled.

Ryan launched his most destructive and brilliant offensive skill against Rigal. An immense, ultra-concentrated fire slash shot out from his blades, burning and incinerating the hall’s scarce oxygen in its lethal path.

But the enormous demon king, in an act of pure, crushing pride, simply stopped his advance and opened his arms wide to take the burning barrage with total, unwavering confidence.

Following the deafening impact, an immense, blinding cloud of fire covered the area, melting the nearby floor.

It took Ryan two long, lethal seconds to process what his eyes were seeing as the smoke cleared. The devastating magical attack caused absolutely no damage to the beast’s skin.

For that brief moment of surprise, frustration, and shock, Ryan left his center of gravity exposed.

The swift demon king disappeared from his sight and instantly appeared right under his open guard. With a deafening bestial roar, Rigal unleashed a brutal, fast, and unstoppable series of close punches and slashes.

The heavy, blunt impacts shattered Ryan’s guard, and the sharp enemy claws tore through his clothes, completely stripping away the protective light of the mana stored in his new outfit’s five magical gems.

The precious stones shattered to pieces, saving his life by pure miracle, while the last blow’s overwhelming force sent him flying to violently crash against one of the hall’s thick, ancient stone columns.

The thick pillar cracked and collapsed against the human’s back, and Ryan fell heavily to his knees against the floor, losing his grip and dropping his two weapons.

"Damn it." Ryan spat a thick pool of dark blood onto the white floor. He felt with immense clarity several broken ribs piercing his insides and his organs vibrating with agonizing pain.

"Recovery," he pronounced with a very hoarse and weak voice, activating his system’s healing as he wiped the fresh blood from his lips with the back of his damaged glove.

With his body and bones instantly renewed by the support class’s convenient magic, he quickly stood up and retrieved his fallen swords.

"Mana Fortress," Ryan pronounced, gritting his teeth and activating the barrier of pure mana around himself. He tensed completely, adjusting his stance and entirely ready to charge against Rigal once again, flatly refusing to die in that disgusting place.

But Rigal, finally bored with the hero’s little repetitive game, gathered all his immense destructive strength into his thick legs.

The monster closed the distance and broke the human’s offensive in a single blink. With a brutal, invisible downward swat, Rigal shattered the resistant Mana Fortress barrier as if it were simple glass, and smashed Ryan on his back, driving him through the hard floor with titanic force, opening a massive crater beneath his body.

Floor after floor.

The air left Ryan’s lungs, leaving him immobilized and crushed by the immense, suffocating weight of the demon king’s hand on his chest, breaking the floor around him.

The demon king jumped through the hole, down to the first floor where Ryan had landed on his back.

Rigal bared his long fangs in an immense, definitive victorious smile. The monster slowly leaned over his prey to deal the lethal, final coup de grâce, with the dark, sharp edge of his claws falling mercilessly toward the trapped human’s unprotected eye.

"Debt collapse." Ryan invoked his hidden skill with his last conscious breath.

An invisible burst of conceptual power struck the immense hall. The strange skill caused a sudden stun in his mind and the demon king’s massive body.

It was only an instant, but the surprise of suddenly receiving an attack like that left the demon king motionless for a moment.

A moment that Ryan took advantage of to get out of his attack range.

"Recovery," he pronounced, healing his wounds again. And before stopping to think of a plan to cover the disadvantage in his capabilities.

Ryan’s system window silently opened before his eyes.

[Debt collection applied x98]

[Debt bonus: +4900 Points]

[Luck Bonus +4900 Points]

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