The entire plaza was no longer recognizable.
Deep craters, dozens of meters in diameter, scarred the ground everywhere. The largest of them plunged several meters down, with groundwater already seeping up from the bottom.
The surrounding buildings had completely collapsed, their rubble piled high into small hills.
The castle of House Leo was nothing but a heap of unrecognizable ruins; the perimeter walls, stables, warehouses, and servants' quarters had all been reduced to piles of debris.
The shockwaves and explosions had ripped up the flagstone pavement, exposing the scorched earth beneath.
Yet, Snake kept closing in.
Dozens of cracks now lined his scales. Several patches of scales had been shattered by the Seed Bombs, revealing the grayish-white flesh underneath. Dark green blood seeped from the wounds, tracing thin trails across his armor-like hide.
Two scales on his left knee had been shattered by a Giant Wood Spike, and the edge of a scale on his right shoulder had been shaved off by the Thousand Leaf Daggers.
But for his eight-meter-tall body, these injuries did not even qualify as minor wounds.
Snake lunged forward once more.
His trident was no longer delivering simple sweeps and cleaves, but a relentless barrage of thrusts.
Each thrust was faster and heavier than the last.
The dark green energy at the trident's tips was highly compressed, leaving behind lingering dark green motes of light in the air with every strike.
The motes linked into a solid line, sealing off all of Ethan's paths of retreat.
The vine walls Ethan conjured were like paper before the weapon's tips.
They shattered and exploded layer by layer. Wood chips and splinters danced in the air, only to be ground into powder by the shockwave of the next strike before they could even hit the ground.
The defensive layers over the chest of the Thorn Blood Armor were shaved away piece by piece. The exposed wood fibers curled outward, only to be instantly vaporized by the energy.
When the twenty-third strike thrust forward, Ethan blocked it with the World Eater.
The moment the staff collided with the trident's tips, a crack louder than any before echoed from the bones of his arms.
The Thorn Blood Armor exploded, tearing from his wrists to his shoulders, and then from his shoulders to his back.
He was thrown back twenty meters, his feet plowing two deep furrows into the ground.
Before he could even steady his stance, the twenty-fourth strike arrived.
This thrust was faster than all the previous twenty-three, coming from an even more vicious angle.
Ethan had absolutely no time to set up defenses; he could only hold the World Eater horizontally across his chest.
The trident's tips slammed into the staff. The emerald-green light and dark green energy clashed once more, unleashing a violent shockwave.
Ethan's arms finally gave out. The World Eater was knocked from his grip, spinning through the air before burying itself in a distant pile of rubble.
Having lost his final barrier, Ethan felt a sudden, icy chill in his chest.
The three prongs of the trident pierced the left side of his chest, tearing through the remnants of the Thorn Blood Armor, his skin, and his ribs, skewering him from front to back.
Dark green energy erupted within the wound, corroding its way inward along his bloodstream and meridians.
Ethan looked down at the trident in his chest, then raised his head to look at Snake.
Snake grinned, exposing three rows of sharp fangs in a mouth that split all the way to his ears. His vertical pupils burned with a maniacal, triumphant glee.
Ethan was smiling too.
His lips curled upward as he looked at Snake's hideous face, and he let out a laugh.
In the next instant, the Thorn Blood Armor abruptly detonated.
The blood-red wood fibers exploded into countless spikes. Each spike was laced with dark green wood poison, shooting outward at point-blank range toward every inch of Snake's body.
Simultaneously, dozens of vines sprouted from Ethan's chest wound, wrapping around the shaft of the trident and creeping upward toward Snake's hands.
The dark green energy clinging to the trident began to fluctuate violently.
Though the vines were constantly disintegrated by the corroding energy, they grew just as quickly, wrapping around the weapon layer by layer to lock it firmly in place.
As the vines coiled around the hand gripping the shaft, a flicker of surprise crossed Snake's vertical pupils.
He tried to pull the trident back, only to find that the vines wrapping the shaft had already taken deep root in the crevices of his scaled palm.
Ethan hung suspended from the trident, his body swaying slightly with the vibration of the shaft.
Mana surged frantically within his body, and the vines sprouting from his wound tightened their grip.
Snake looked down at the spreading vines, the madness in his vertical pupils fading to make way for a cold, murderous intent.
Dark green energy erupted from beneath his scales, surging down the shaft and directly into Ethan's wound.
The vines disintegrated in large swathes.
The dark green energy flooded the wound, spreading along his bloodstream to invade his entire body.
Ethan felt as though molten metal had been poured into his veins. Every blood vessel burned, and every inch of muscle spasmed.
He grit his teeth and grabbed the shaft with both hands, trying to pull himself off the trident's prongs.
The moment his body shifted a mere half-inch, the dark green energy on the prongs contracted sharply, locking him in place.
Like tentacles, the dark green energy extended from the tips, burrowing into his flesh, meridians, and bones, pinning him completely to the weapon.
The more he struggled, the tighter those energy tentacles squeezed, drilling deeper into him.
Ethan opened his mouth to speak, but a metallic taste welled up in his throat.
The dark green energy had already corroded its way to his throat, and fine, dark green patterns began to crawl across the edges of his lips.
He gripped the shaft with both hands, the veins on his arms bulging as he made one last attempt to wrench the prongs from his chest.
The dark green energy tentacles tightened once more.
His arms were so suppressed by the energy that he could not move them, and his fingers slipped from the shaft one by one.
His arms went limp, swaying slightly at his sides.
His legs lost all strength as well, his knees buckling as he hung limply from the trident.
Snake raised the trident high.
Ethan's body rose with the shaft, his feet leaving the ground as he was suspended in midair.
Dark green blood seeped from the wounds in his chest and back, trickling down the shaft and dripping onto the rubble below, sizzling like tiny sparks.
“Hahaha!”
Snake threw his head back and laughed.
His vertical pupils reflected Ethan hanging from his trident, his hideous face flushed with the madness of triumph.
“Go on, wizard, struggle some more!”
He shook the trident, causing Ethan's body to sway. Ethan's hands swung limply, his fingertips twitching occasionally.
Ethan kept his head lowered, his chin resting against his chest.
The dark green patterns on his face multiplied, spreading from his lips to his cheekbones, and then crawling toward his eye sockets.
His breathing had grown incredibly faint, the rise and fall of his chest shallower by the second.
Snake leaned in close, his vertical pupils locked onto Ethan's pattern-covered face, grinning to show off his mouthful of sharp teeth.
“Come with me, wizard. Let us go see my master.”
Snake roughly ripped Ethan off the trident and gripped him tightly in his hand.
Boom!
Snake exerted force through his legs and shot straight up into the sky.
His eight-meter-tall body tore through the air the moment he leaped, the resulting sonic boom causing loose stones on the ruins to shower downward.
Clouds swirled in the sky as Snake's figure broke through the cloud deck and vanished into the horizon.
Clutched in his grip, Ethan's body bent backward under the buffeting of the high-speed winds. His arms flapped in the gale, and the blood from his chest was whipped by the wind into thin, dark green threads trailing behind him.
The ruins below grew smaller and smaller. The plaza, the castle, and the main city rapidly shrank in his fading field of vision.
Snake carried Ethan like a prized trophy, flying toward the north.
Rate on N.U.
