Mag Beast Leveling

The air thrummed with power between them.

At the far end of the ruined hall, Vincent stood, blackened claws dripping red, baring wicked fangs.

General Aldric was holding steady before him, sword raised, the old flame along its edge more hot and holy than ever, cutting harsh light against the dark.

The last Guardian Lord.

Vincent laughed, a low, guttural, mocking sound.

His hunger coiled in him, Vira's voice squirming through his head.

"Tear him apart."

Aldric's face was chiseled from rock, his anger on a short leash, but Vincent could smell his hate.

It hung thick in the air, spiced with grief and resolve.

"This one won't run."

Good.

Vincent licked the final traces of blood from his fingers and took a step forward, his boots crunching on broken bones and shattered steel.

The flames surrounding them danced wildly, and against the swaying of Aldric's carve, fanned out by the tendrils of his shimmering aura.

"You know," Vincent said, flexing his claws, the raw, unnatural power coursing through his body, "if you had half a brain, you'd be running."

Aldric didn't move.

His eyes cutting, piercing, fearless were fixated on Vincent.

"I don't run," said Aldric, his voice steady.

"Not from a monster."

Vincent laughed. "Then die standing."

He vanished.

A streak of shadow and razor hunger, Vincent closed the distance of the two in a heartbeat.

He went for Aldric's throat with his claws, screaming.

 CLANG!

Aldric blocked.

Steel met flesh.

The holy fire clashed with Vincent's twisted body.

The jolt sent a shockwave through the chamber, blowing out what few windows remained, a roar of wind and embers spiraling through the debris.

Vincent felt the sting.

The first true pain in how long?

His grin widened. "Oh. This is going to be fun."

Aldric twisted his blade, driving Vincent backward.

The blast came close, scorching the air; the monster jumped, light as a cat, his feet gliding barely over the ground, only to leap again, this time low, a black line of hunger and blood.

He sliced for Aldric's gut, for his ribs, for his heart.

Every strike was met with a Guardian Lord.

Fire and steel clashed with shadow and claw.

Sparks erupted, embers flew.

Vincent moved with such speed as one could not suppose to own, positioning himself in extreme angles.

But Aldric followed.

His blade whistled through the air, slicing the darkness with brutal, godlike precision.

Vincent felt a streak of burning heat as Aldric's blade slashed his chest.

The wound singed, not closing up right away.

Vincent stopped and looked down. His own blood.

Dark, viscous, not quite human.

Aldric was panting, but his grip on his sword held firm.

Vincent smiled and ran his fingers through the wound, scooping the black poison.

He lifted his hand to his mouth, tasting his own corruption.

His pupils dilated.

His muscles tensed.

His bones creaked.

"Not bad," Vincent said, licking the final traces of blood from his fingers.

His voice now was thicker, rougher, like something ancient was trying to burst through his skin.

Aldric's posture didn't change, but Vincent caught it a flicker of something.

Not fear.

But understanding.

"Now you're not just Vincent, are you?" Aldric said.

Vincent chuckled, his whole body heaving with laughter.

"No," he admitted. "I'm so much more."

And then he let it in.

Vira's hunger.

Its merging deepened, something inside him twisting, breaking, reshaping.

At his feet, the shadows squirmed, throbbed, and bloomed.

Black tendrils burst forth from his spine and twisted in the air like living things as his back arched.

His fingers stretched out, his claws sharpening into black obsidian knives.

Malice, power the air around him thickened.

Aldric didn't hesitate.

He advanced, his blade flashing.

Vincent managed to snatch it out of the air with his bare hand.

The divine fire burned.

Vincent held firm.

His smile enlarged impossibly wide.

"You're getting slower, old man,"

He contorted, popping the sword from Aldric's grip.

Snapped it in half.

Aldric stumbled for the first time.

Vincent pounced.

His claws punched through the Guardian's armor, into his ribs, deep in his chest.

Aldric choked, blood frothing up his throat.

His hands clawed at Vincent's wrist, but no energy remained to resist.

Vincent tugged him closer, fangs glinting.

"You fought a good fight," Vincent said quietly.

"But let's be honest"

His grip tightened.

"You were never going to win.

In one vicious pull, Vincent yanked Aldric's heart loose.

The Guardian Lord gasped, crunched, and collapsed.

For a beat, all was still.

Vincent squeezed the heart in his claws, watching the last flickers of life die in Aldric's eyes.

And then he got his teeth into it.

The first bite was electric.

Direct, divine muscle surged through his veins. It was warm, searing, alive.

A flavor so saturated, so concentrated that for an instant even Vincent shivered.

"More."

A purring sound of Vira reverberated in his skull, a throbbing movement in his bones.

He devoured what remained.

The last Guardian was dead and gone.

And Vincent was another thing altogether.

Flames danced around the chamber, the air trembling with Vincent's presence. He turned, his eyes to the doors of the Citadel.

Outside, the city lay broken.

Burning. Screams still echoed far off; pockets of resistance clung to life.

His city.

His kingdom.

Vincent flexed his fingers, stretching out his new body and delighting in the power chiming underneath his flesh.

The night was young.

There were still so many yet to be bloody murdered.

And he was still so hungry, so very, very hungry.

The fires of the Citadel were burning low, casting long, writhing shadows on the ruined walls.

The air was saturated with the aroma of blood, cooked skin, and something more primal a power that slunk alive and voracious.

Vincent felt inside the wreckage of what had once been the heart of the Guardians' bastion.

The rubble crunched underfoot as he walked over Aldric's shattered corpse, his talons still dripping with the Guardian Lord's lifeblood.

The taste of it was on his tongue, in his veins.

Divine. Pure.

Corrupted now. His.

Purring, Vira coiled inside him, satisfied.

"A king must feast."

Vincent breathed slowly, stretching his new limbs and his heightened senses. The power he had taken from Aldric was being absorbed by him, changing him in ways he could feel but did not yet understand.

Something cracked inside him, moved.

Not just flesh. Something deeper.

His humanity had been fading for a while but this?

It felt like a door slamming shut behind him, sealing away whatever small part of Vincent Fuske remained.

"More," Vira whispered. "There is still more to take."

His eyes wandered to the massive doors at the end of the chamber.

The last survivors lay farther beyond them.

The last vestiges of the Citadel's defenders.

The last idiots who believed there was still something to be salvaged.

Vincent grinned, fanged and feral, as he stepped ahead.

He didn't even bother to open the doors.

He pulled them from their hinges.

The metal shrieked as it twisted, torn from where it was.

The doors crashed to the ground, splintering cracks through the marble floor.

In the distance, the last hundred or so warriors had formed ranks.

Knights, mages, injuries: the last desperate stand of a dying order.

They did not run.

They did not beg.

But Vincent could hear their heartbeats.

He took a deep breath the aroma of their fear was thick and heady.

Some of them had known him. Some had fought beside him.

And still, they trained their weapons on him.

Still thought they could win.

One woman a Guardian, with silver hair, a shattered pauldron, and defiant blue eyes stepped forward.

"Vincent."

Her voice, steady, held sorrow.

He tilted his head, amused.

"Do I know you?"

She flinched. Just barely.

"You did once," she said.

"Before you became this."

Vincent audibly sighed and rolled his shoulders.

"This?"

He extended his arms wide, his shadow elongating grotesquely across the walls before it, twisting as if it had a will of its own.

"This is power."

She tightened the grip on her sword.

"This is corruption."

Vincent laughed.

"And yet," he purred, "here you are.

Still standing before me.

But still hoping you can change anything."

The Guardian raised her blade. It shook in her grip.

Vincent smirked.

"Pathetic."

He moved.

Not forward everywhere.

A slip of dark, a breath of death, a gale of claws and teeth and shadow.

The first row of soldiers had little time to scream before they were shredded.

Blood sprayed the walls, a bloody symphony.

One knight swung an axe Vincent seized it in midair and smashed it into the man's skull.

A mage started to cast a spell Vincent tore out her throat before she could complete it.

A spearman thrust a spine out of his back by Vincent.

It turned the room into a slaughterhouse.

Screams became echoes.

Echoes became silence.

Yet Vincent persisted.

Not until they had become carcasses and pooled blood.

The last woman standing was the Guardian woman.

She had dropped her sword.

She knelt, gazing at the carnage.

There were shallow catches and broken breaths.

She didn't try to run.

Didn't beg.

Didn't even fight.

She only whispered, "Why?"

Vincent knelt down before her, lifting her chin with one clawed finger.

"Because," he said quietly, "it was always going to end like this."

A single, brutal swipe.

Her body crumpled to the floor.

The citadel was silent for the first time that night.

No more defiance.

No more resistance.

Nothing left to fight.

Vincent straightened.

That hunger in him never dimmed.

But it changed.

Shifted.

Became rooted in something deeper.

Satisfaction.

The war was over.

He had won.

He was no longer a Guardian.

No longer a man.

He was something else now.

Something more.

Vincent pivoted, dragging his foot up and over the corpses of his enemies, his brothers in arms, his bygone life.

The city was broken, its citadel walls cracked apart.

The fires still burned.

The sky still bled.

And from far away, Vincent could hear them.

The survivors.

Those who had run, scurrying through the wreckage like rats.

His city.

It would be a matter of time, but he would get to them.

Hunt them.

Make them understand.

This world was his now.

And soon everyone would find out."

Vincent emerged to the ruined streets, to his kingdom.

The night was still young.

And his reign was just getting started.