Apocalypse: Every Woman I Invest In Makes Me Stronger

The Blackscale Drake recoiled violently, its massive frame staggering sideways as thick black blood gushed from the jagged tear along its neck.

It threw back its horned head and unleashed a roar of pure, unbridled agony. The acoustic shockwave was so immense that the glass shards remaining in the surrounding office windows rattled in their frames, several cracked concrete headers tumbling to the street.

For the first time since the ambush began, Ethan had landed a genuine, damaging strike.

Above the boulevard, the invisible gravitational dome sealing the district flickered. A hairline fracture spidered across the dimensional barrier, letting in a fleeting gust of outside wind.

Yet it was far from broken.

Before Ethan could press the offensive, the Blackscale Drake’s golden pupils dilated with manic fury. Its colossal front leg whipped outward in a retaliatory swipe, razor-sharp claws whistling through the air like five iron scythes.

Ethan didn’t hesitate. He dropped flat against the broken asphalt, kicking hard against the curb to roll beneath the chassis of the abandoned car. As his torso cleared the undercarriage, his eyes caught the gleam of his fallen combat sword lying in the gravel three feet away. Focusing his spatial perception on the weapon, he whisked it directly into his Survival Space for safekeeping.

A fraction of a second later, the monster’s claw slammed into the vehicle.

SCREEECH!

The screech of tortured metal was deafening. The two-ton sedan folded like an empty tin can under the brute kinetic force, its steel frame crumpling inward as the chassis was ripped in half. Shattered safety glass and jagged shrapnel rained down in every direction.

Ethan scrambled frantically on his hands and knees to clear the collapsing wreckage.

He was a fraction of a second too slow.

The tips of three enormous claws raked across his exposed back as he lunged forward. The reinforced fabric of his shirt tore away like paper, and sharp, agonizing lines of fire carved deep through his skin, muscle, and flesh from his left shoulder down to his lower ribs.

Ethan bit down violently on his lip, swallowing a scream of pure pain as he dragged his battered body behind the smoking engine block of the demolished car.

Warm, heavy rivulets of blood trickled down his spine, soaking the waistband of his jeans and dripping through the gravel onto the pavement below.

The Blackscale Drake circled the burning wreckage, its heavy footfalls shaking the road.

Crouched in the shadow of the bent axle, Ethan forced himself to take shallow, measured breaths, his mind rapidly calculating his status. His right wrist was fractured and bleeding heavily, exposing cracked bone. His chest bore necrotic acid burns from the corrosive breath, and his back was carved with three deep lacerations.

Checking his spiritual reserves, he found he had thirty-seven uses of Spatial Cut remaining, but only eight charges of Space Fissure left in his daily pool.

Across the clearing, a sickening sight met his eyes.

The deep, severed wound along the right side of the Blackscale Drake’s neck was already knitting together. Thick, fibrous muscular strands were visibly pulling toward each other beneath the scales, and the torrent of black blood was slowing to a sluggish trickle. Its hyper-accelerated cellular regeneration was active.

The beast’s slit pupils remained locked on his hiding spot, burning with an even denser murderous intent.

At this rate, its endurance and regeneration will grind me to dust before I can land a mortal blow, Ethan thought, his jaw clenched tight.

He needed a single, decisive attack to decapitate it or pierce its brain. But an apex predator with its guard fully raised would never offer a static target.

Suddenly, the Blackscale Drake sank low against the asphalt.

Its thick, muscular hind legs coiled beneath its armored bulk like massive hydraulic pistons.

Ethan’s eyes widened in alarm.

BOOM!

The beast launched its entire multi-ton mass straight into the air. The sheer upward force gouged two craters into the boulevard, its colossal silhouette blotting out the pale morning sun as it descended toward the wreckage of the car like a falling mountain.

Ethan threw his body forward in a desperate dive.

CRASH!

The Blackscale Drake crushed the remains of the vehicle into a flattened pancake of scrap metal, the impact sending chunks of asphalt flying twenty feet into the air.

Ethan rolled onto his side, popped up onto one knee, and thrust his uninjured left hand forward without waiting for the dust to settle.

”Space Fissure!”

Two pitch-black rifts tore through the churning debris, aimed straight at the still-healing, vulnerable flesh of the creature’s neck.

Yet despite its gargantuan weight, the drake possessed terrifying aerial agility. It twisted its torso mid-descent, shifting its mass just enough to let both spatial rifts slice through empty air.

Ethan’s dark eyes sharpened with cold calculation.

It’s relying on its landing momentum. Its evasion follows a fixed arc.

He didn’t aim at the beast’s current position. Instead, he calculated the exact coordinates where its armored bulk would touch the pavement after its roll.

”Space Fissure!”

Two more black tears erupted from the void in rapid succession, hurtling toward the exact empty patch of air directly above its predicted landing trajectory.

This was his cleanest window for a fatal decapitation.

The Blackscale Drake’s claws hit the ground.

At the final, impossible microsecond, the monster perceived the lethal dimensional distortion. Driven by feral survival instinct, its entire upper torso jerked violently to the left with bone-creaking speed.

RIIIP!

The two spatial rifts missed the throat by inches, instead shearing across its right shoulder. Bronze scales shattered like ceramic tiles, and two deep, bloody trenches were ripped open along its muscular shoulder joint.

It was a severe wound, but it had failed to sever the jugular or the spinal cord.

”ROOOAAAR!”

The Blackscale Drake went completely berserk.

Enraged by the persistent pain, a shimmering, light-blue halo suddenly erupted from the scales around its neck and chest, expanding outward in a rapid, concussive pulse that swept across the entire intersection.

Ethan felt the atmospheric shift before his brain could process the danger.

The air around him turned dense and viscous, like liquid concrete instantly hardening into solid stone. The dimensional fabric seized violently, clamping down on his physical form with crushing gravitational force.

Ethan tried to flex his fingers.

Nothing.

He attempted to twist his neck, to pivot his boots, to duck behind the rubble.

His entire body was locked in place, frozen as rigid as an iron statue. A cold, suffocating chill cascaded down his spine.

Space Imprisonment!

During their previous encounter at the museum, the Blackscale Drake had deployed this exact ability to immobilize the mutant Tyrannosaurus Rex, using the window of paralysis to secure its escape. Ethan had never anticipated the monster possessed enough cognitive malice to expend such a massive amount of its own life energy to freeze a human.

Using Space Imprisonment visibly drained the beast; its shimmering scales dulled slightly, and its breathing grew labored. Yet the monster didn’t care about the cost.

It stood twenty feet away, its jaws slowly unhinging once more.

Deep within its dark throat, an immense, swirling vortex of black, corrosive energy began to gather, glowing with the dark light of pure dissolution.

Ethan’s heart slammed against his ribs like a trapped bird.

He was completely immobilized, bleeding from multiple wounds, and pinned out in the open. The corrosive breath was gathering at point-blank range, and within two seconds, it would wash over his body and dissolve him down to the bone.

He had no way to dodge.

Gritting his teeth against the crushing pressure on his consciousness, Ethan reached into his spiritual link with the Survival Space, focusing on Daisy’s coordinates.

With a desperate burst of will, he pulled her out of the dimension.

”Daisy! Spiritual Control!”

A tear in space opened, and Daisy materialized on the asphalt beside him. The sudden transition, the sight of the colossal armored dragon, and the horrifying sight of Ethan covered in blood and pinned against the air made her breath hitch in sheer shock.

Yet she didn’t waste a single heartbeat asking questions.

Her eyes blazed with intense crimson light. Dozens of glowing red strands of psychic power erupted from her temples, weaving through the morning air like luminous silk threads before surging directly toward the Blackscale Drake’s massive, horned skull.

The psychic tendrils struck the outer edge of the beast’s mental sea.

SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!

The red strands snapped one after another with the brittle sound of breaking glass.

Daisy’s face drained of all color, blood trickling from the corner of her nostril as the violent mental backlash struck her.

”I can’t breach it!” Daisy cried out in sheer panic, clutching her head. ”Its mental barrier is like solid lead! I can’t seize control!”

Across the street, the black vortex inside the drake’s jaws reached critical mass, aimed directly at Ethan’s immobilized chest.

Ethan’s dark eyes turned icy cold.

”Time Stop!”

The world instantly died.

The morning light froze. The drifting dust particles hung suspended in midair like specks of glass. The Blackscale Drake froze mid-snarl, its massive jaws locked wide, the swirling ball of black acid suspended between its fangs as motionless as black obsidian.

Even with time completely arrested, the overwhelming physical grip of Space Imprisonment still crushed Ethan’s body, preventing him from leaping away. Yet within the frozen domain, his vocal cords were granted a single, strained sliver of movement.

”Daisy! Focus!” Ethan forced the words through his locked jaw, his voice hoarse and strained. ”It burned massive energy casting Space Imprisonment! Don’t attack its core mind~find the structural gaps in its mental defense and force it to drop the seal!”

Daisy stared at him, her eyes wide with desperate focus as she registered his command.

One second expired.

Snap!

The flow of time resumed with a violent rush of sound and wind.

Daisy clamped her jaw shut, pushing her peak A-Rank spiritual pool to its absolute, agonizing limits.

The crimson threads of psychic energy reformed instantly, no longer attempting to brute-force the drake’s main consciousness. Instead, the threads split into dozens of needle-thin filaments, weaving directly into the minute cracks and fluctuations left in the monster’s mental barrier by the heavy expenditure of Space Imprisonment.

The filaments pierced through the gaps.

The Blackscale Drake’s massive head twitched violently.

Its slit golden pupils flickered, a sudden expression of dazed confusion breaking through its feral rage.

Daisy seized that microscopic fracture with all the will in her soul.

Release the spatial seal! she screamed mentally into the beast’s nervous system.

The drake fought back with terrifying savage instinct. Its pupils darkened, its throat releasing a muffled, choking growl as its gargantuan body shuddered against the mental invasion.

Veins bulged along Daisy’s pale neck. Sweat poured down her temples, her hands shaking violently as her psychic threads strained to the point of snapping.

For one breathless, agonizing second, neither the human psychic nor the apex monster gave an inch.

Then, the beast’s concentration fractured.

Its enormous body lurched sideways. The light-blue halo encasing its frame flickered wildly and dissolved into thin air.

The crushing gravitational lock holding Ethan’s limbs snapped.

The pressure vanished.

”Now!” Ethan roared, his body bursting back into motion.