Mag Beast Leveling

Vira's cries pierced the chamber like a knife through flesh.

The black tendrils twisting around her twisted and yanked her limbs apart, bones popping from their sockets as her body broke in unnatural agony.

Her skin split, her blood darkening as something else sought to bloom within her.

Vincent felt everything.

The pain.

The fear.

The helplessness.

And then something snapped.

From inside him, the rage burst forth, violent and absolute.

His body shaking, vision blurring at the corners, while his veins burned with sheer power.

No hesitation. No thought. Just blood.

Vincent sprang toward Xandros, his feet barely grazing the ground before his fist smacked against the bastard's jaw.

Bone shattered.

The force of the blow sent Xandros flying, tumbling through a line of grotesque statues.

Black ichor spattered the walls, his twisted laughter echoing through the chamber as his body cracked and reassembled.

"YES!" Xandros howled, his voice shaking with sick pleasure.

"This is it, Vincent! "This is who you were supposed to be!

But Vincent wasn't listening.

The dark within him roared, and this time, he gave it full rein.

His skin split as jagged tendrils of power lashed out, warping the air, shredding through the creatures still spilling from the shadows.

One lunged at him he caught it in midair, its rotting, gaping mouth an inch from his throat, before tearing its head from its body, spraying the chamber in thick, pulpy gore.

A different beast ripped at his back.

Vincent spun, his fingers scrambling into its ribcage.

He tightened his fist and pulled out its heart, black and shriveled, still twitching.

He didn't stop.

The creatures kept coming. He kept killing.

One after another.

A skull ground under his heel.

A gut spilled open, entrails oozing onto the cold stone.

A throat ripped open, a gurgling death rattle bubbling between spasming lips.

And he wanted more.

Something fat and savage stirred within him, tearing at his ribs, craving more flesh, more blood. Everything around him faded into bloodstain and shadow, his body a never-ending baleful weapon of slaughter and devastation.

Vira.

Vira was still screaming, somewhere.

Through the blood-drenched futility, he glimpsed her in fraying vines of wriggling darkness as her flesh curled in torment, as Xandros looked on with pleasure.

Vincent's rage surged, hotter than hellfire.

Xandros smiled at him, ichor smeared across his lips.

"You can save her, Vincent. But you only break completely."

Something in him the last remnant of his humanity fought back.

No.

He wouldn't succumb to this.

Not yet.

He bellowed and sprang at Xandros once more.

This time, he didn't target the jaw.

He went for the throat.

Vincent's fingers tightened around Xandros's neck, pinning the bastard to the wall. Stone splintered, black veins fracturing outward.

Xandros simply laughed, though Vincent was crushing flesh and breaking cartilage, the grip only tightening.

"You're still holding back," Xandros rasped, his voice laced with wicked glee.

Vincent hit his head against the wall again harder.

"Let. Her. Go."

Even as Vincent's hands crumbled Xandros's bones, he grinned.

"You're going to have to kill me, Vincent. Can you? Can you complete what you began?"

Vincent tightened his grip. The dark part of him howled for blood.

Kill him.

Tear him apart.

End it.

But after doing this… would he come back?

Would he even care?

Vira whimpered. Her fingers moved, eyes flickering between life and death.

All Xandros needed was Vincent's hesitation.

The bastard grinned then he was in motion.

A dagger of pure shadow appeared in Xandros's empty hand and he plunged it directly into Vincent's side.

Pain erupted through him.

The blade burned like all the fires of hell intertwined, sinking deep between his ribs, twisting, severing muscle, and tearing straight through flesh. Vincent choked, blood bubbling in his throat.

Gasping, Xandros shoved him back, wrenched the blade free, and left a huge wound in its place.

Vincent staggered.

He made another effort to move, but his legs were giving out, his vision blurring.

"You see?" Xandros whispered.

He leaned closer, wiping a bloody hand across Vincent's cheek, almost tenderly. "You still hesitate. You're not ready yet."

Vincent tried to move. Fingers twitched, clawing for Xandros's throat once more.

But his body wouldn't obey.

Xandros appeared out of sorts, as if disappointed.

"A pity. I had so many hopes for you."

Then, he turned back to Vira.

"No" Vincent croaked, but it was too late.

Xandros held up his hand and drove it into Vira's chest.

Vira's scream was pure agony.

Vincent watched powerless, bleeding, broken as Xandros tore something from her body.

A core of light.

A heart not of flesh, but of something older.

Something powerful.

Vira gasped and shuddered.

Her eyes locked on Vincent's for one excruciating moment a moment full of pain."

Then she collapsed.

Xandros smirked, cradling the glowing mass in his palm.

"Well then," he mused. Well, let's find out what happens when I ruin her altogether."

Vincent screamed.

The world cracked.

And this time, when the darkness swelled within him.

He didn't fight it.

Vincent's body convulsed.

He broke inside, feeling his mind collapse down into a dark whirl of matter more intense than anger unrefined, raw obliteration.

Vira lay motionless.

Her chest tore open, hollow where Xandros had pulled her essence out. Weakly, her fingers twitched; her lips moved, a voiceless paean.

And Xandros just stood there, smirking, while clutching the pulsing mass of light in his blood-slicked palm. Mocking him.

Something in Vincent broke.

It wasn't darkness creeping in this time; it was a tidal wave of it, crashing through every nerve, every muscle, leaving nothing in its wake but hatred and hunger.

His skin ripped open, black tendrils bursting from his spine like squirming roots.

Muscles bulged, bones cracked, and the jaw elongated as teeth sharpened into wicked fangs.

And when he raised his eyes his eyes weren't human anymore.

They were Black.

Black as death.

Xandros took a step back.

He appeared uncertain for the first time.

Vincent roared.

The noise wasn't human it was low and guttural, demonic a promise of slaughter.

Then he moved.

Not walked. Not run.

He vanished and vanished before Xandros and reappeared a heartbeat later.

Before the bastard had the chance to bolt, Vincent's clawed hand spear-stabbed through Xandros's gut.

Xandros choked on a gasp, his pupils dilating.

Thick, black blood, smoking, poured from the wound.

Vincent yanked his hand out, ripping away organs.

Xandros staggered, his body twitching, his intestines slapping wetly against the floor beneath him.

Vincent didn't stop.

His claws tore across Xandros's face, flaying flesh, stripping him to the bone.

Another strike.

Another.

Another.

Until it was nothing but raw, pulped meat.

But still, Xandros laughed.

Even as his face hung in ruins. Even while his body fought to sew itself back together.

"You think I will stop or this will stop me? Blood was bubbling from Xandros's ruined throat.

"You are still acting under the rules of men."

Vincent seized him by the skull.

His fingers dug into the bone.

Then he took his head right off.

Spinal cord snapping. Vertebrae splitting.

A sickening squelch of blood and tissue.

Vincent loomed above the decapitated corpse, Xandros's head held in his taloned hand.

The devil's eyes still roamed, still glared at him, still leered.

"Not enough," the disembodied head breathed.

Then the body jerked and the shadows coalesced.

The head grew back.

The severed skull in Vincent's hand congealed into black ichor, oozing up his arm, attempting to devour him.

Xandros walked forward, whole, his wounds already mending.

"Come now, Vincent," Xandros chided, "did you really think I was that easy to kill?"

Vincent snarled.

Then came the feeling something behind him, moving.

Vira.

She wasn't moving.

Her body lifeless, pale.

Xandros in his hand was still her essence, flickering dimly in the pulsing orb.

Vincent's body shook.

His claws twitched. His breath was jagged and uneven.

The rage hadn't died, just lurked under his skin, demanding more blood.

But Xandros was right.

This wasn't enough.

Taking him apart was worthless if the bastard simply sewed himself back together.

Vincent needed to do something even worse.

Something irreversible.

He had to consume him.

His eyes shone with infernal light.

Xandros smirked. "What now, Vincent? Going to try again?"

Vincent grinned back.

But it wasn't a smile.

It was a predator showing its teeth.

Then he struck.

Quicker than we had imagined quicker than light Vincent's hand plunged into the chest and tore the heart from Xandros's beat.

But this time he didn't cast it away.

He sank his teeth into it.

Xandros's eyes grew big with shock for the first time there was actual fear.

Vincent tore into the meat, biting and swallowing.

His lips were smeared with black, corrupted blood.

The taste was pure power.

And Xandros screamed.

Not a howl of rage. Not defiance.

A phony, anguished, soul-deep wail.

Because Vincent was killing more than just him.

He was devouring him.

Erasing him.

Xandros scratched and clawed at Vincent's arm, his shadows flailing, but they were succumbing already.

Vincent chewed deeper and faster, ripping into the heart like a hungry beast.

Xandros's corpse started to disintegrate.

The bastard staggered, limbs fading to black mist, voice going rough.

"No," he choked. "You don't know what you're doing! "

Vincent's jaws snapped closed over the final morsel.

Xandros vanished.

What was left was only a whisper of shadow.

Silence fell.

The castle walls trembled.

Vincent stumbled back, catching his breath, his body humming with power.

Xandros's essence burned in his veins.

It was in him a squirming, throbbing malignance, fighting for a foothold.

But he didn't care.

Because Vira still wasn't getting out.

He fell beside her, cradling her limp body in his arms.

Her face was so pale. Her chest barely rose.

"Vira," he croaked, his voice hoarse.

No response.

He shook her. "Vira!"

Still nothing.

His fingers trembled. "No… no, no, no—"

She wasn't breathing.

The light—the essence that Xandros had stolen—whimpered, pulsing weakly beside them in the pool of black blood.

Vincent reached for it.

But the instant his fingers met it—

It shattered.

A frigid, ultimate silence rippled through the chamber.

Vira's body went perfectly still.

And Vincent the monster, the murderer, the demon-eater

Screamed.