The Corpse Eater launched itself at Northern, leading with its right clawed hand in a vicious swipe.
Northern’s eyes narrowed as he studied the monster’s form and movement.
Then, in one fluid motion, he mirrored the Eater’s attack with his own right hand extended into a powerful folded fist instead of claws.
Their makeshift claws met with a clash, the force of the impacts causing tremors.
The Eater recoiled, surprise flashing in its burning red eyes. It paused for a moment, its stance wary and evaluating.
Northern grinned savagely, not breaking form.
“You’ll have to be better than that.”
Although his said that, crimson blood was slipping through his fingers. In the end, the fact that he didn’t have a claw really bit back at him.
With a roar of anger, the Eater reared back and attempted to bring both clawed hands down onto Northern’s head.
But he was already moving, twisting his body with unnatural dexterity to avoid the blow, his movements perfectly synchronizing with the Eater’s.
As the monster’s hands slammed into the floor, cracking it, Northern brought his own hands up in a copied strike aimed at its exposed flanks.
His fist fell upon the Eater’s body, instead of raking blood with a slash, it was like a powerful sledgehammer had fallen on its form.
The Eater howled in pain and fury, rearing back.
Northern flowed back into a ready stance, his grin widening as more azure sparks danced in his eyes… madly.
Ellis watched in awe and horror, ‘This is splendid, he is matching the monster’s every move. And that things is undoubtedly a Abysmal danger level.’
His hands were tapping his jaw. For one, he had no idea how Northern could pull this off.
There was no other explanation, even though he didn’t want to think about.
That seemed to be the answer in this case. ‘…that must be his talent… but what then explains dark terror…’
But then he really needed to consider things unconventional.
‘…or does he have two talents?’ Ellis immediately shook his head and gave a silent absurd laughter. ‘That would mean he has two soul cores, that is practically impossible’
It has never happened, never have been recorded and Ellis didn’t think it will ever happen.
Whatever would cause a human to have more than one soul core, one might as well refer to them as monsters.
Because only monsters have more than one soul core.
The fight was going on nonetheless…Northern increasingly taking on the feral, bestial mannerisms of the monster itself.
It was as if he didn’t just mimic the Eater’s moves, but embodied its very essence.
His movements were fluid yet untamed as they traded blows.
He mirrored the monster’s attacks with eerie synchronicity, folded fists and low kicks meeting raking claws and snapping jaws.
Blow for brutal blow, they danced their violent exchange across the torn floor, azure sparks flickering to life with each bone-jarring impact between man and monster.
Ellis could scarcely comprehend the scene unfolding before him.
Northern wasn’t just matching the Abysmal danger Corpse Eater’s strikes – it was like he was predicting them, his eyes were frightenly glued to the monster with this strange light and he was moving with such preternatural grace that it defied rational explanation.
How could a mere human, talent or no, perceive and respond with such promptness to an opponent of that caliber?
It transcended the boundaries of skill and reflex.
It was as if Northern had conceptually become the Corpse Eater itself.
The realization sent a chill down Ellis’s spine even as he gaped in awe at the breathtaking spectacle.
Northern flowed through each defensive weave and retaliatory strike like coursing water, never resisting the Eater’s brute force but guiding it along harmless trajectories.
His assault was no less merciless.
At times, he would go rigid as scorpion’s tail, pale corded muscle and tendon quivering taut as a high tension wire poised to unleash devastation.
In the next blink, he’d explode into a whirling cyclone of elbows and knees, battering the Eater’s armored flanks with thunderous impacts that sprayed gore in widening arcs.
The beast met each onslaught with feral intensity, undeterred even as crude welts blossomed across its mottled hide.
Its claws slashed in blinding flurries, only to be turned aside by Northern’s defensive weaves or bone-breaking counters.
They were locked in a seemingly eternal stalemate, one that saw both combatants give as brutally as they received.
Northern was utterly without fear, closing to grappling range again and again in stark defiance of the Eater’s terrifying might.
At one point, the creature seized him by the throat, those hideous jaws gaping wide to devour him whole.
Most would have instantly accepted their fate in the face of such annihilation.
Not Northern.
With horrific calm, he slammed his thumbs into the Eater’s maw, pulping the orbs in a viscous spray.
It released him with a keening wail, staggering back as its ruined eyes wept geysers of steaming ichor.
Northern didn’t let up.
He stormed in while it reeled, unleashing a convulsion of crippling strikes from elbows, knees, and booted heels.
Bones audibly snapped and grated with each thunderous impact that cratered the Eater’s once-formidable musculature.
The barrage culminated with a leaping knee that demolished its lower jaw, shattering the bone into splinters embedded in the shredded ruin of its throat.
It collapsed in a gurgling heap, thrashing weakly as its lifeblood poured out in pulsing jets.
Northern pinned one of its remaining limbs underfoot with disturbing tranquility, reaching down to grip the ragged remnants of its face in an iron grip.
Ellis cringed, half-expecting the man to simply crush its skull against the floor.
Certainly, none would have faulted him for such merciful savagery after the beast’s vile attempt to consume him.
Yet Northern did something far more disturbing.
Cradling its shattered head gently, he leaned in until they were almost nose to…ragged nasal cavity.
His lips parted in a psychotic grin, baring teeth slick with its blood and spittle.
“I can taste your despair,” he growled, voice guttural and hauntingly feral. “It’s absolutely…exquisite.”
The Eater shuddered, a pathetic whine rattling from the ruin of its throat.
Northern’s laugh was a hair-raising cackle of pure, gleeful malice.
“So much hunger…” He inhaled deeply through flared nostrils, savoring the reek of charred flesh and voided bowels. “I can smell it all over you. The ravenous, gnawing emptiness that fuels your existence.”
Dropping all pretense of mercy, he wrenched the Eater’s head sideways with an obscene crunch of vertebrae.
It shuddered once, weakly, and fell horribly still.
Northern rose fluidly, ripper claws scoring deep furrows across his back and shoulders from the Eater’s death throes.
Black ichor matted his hair and ran in thick rivulets down his chest, but he paid it no mind.
His gaze was distant, alight with something far beyond mere battle-mania.
Raising his hand, Northern smeared the congealing filth across his lips, tongue darting out to taste the foul corruption.
His eyes rolled back in his skull and his breath escaped in a throaty moan of pure, debauched ecstasy.
Ellis looked on in abject revulsion, all thoughts of talents and souls driven from his mind. Whatever Northern had become in that moment, it was far beyond human – or sane.
Ellis had witnessed true, unadulterated madness.
And in the back of his shattered psyche, a tiny voice asked if there were any differences between Northern and the Eater he’d just so savagely broken.