Somehow, despite half his rib cage being blown out and an entire arm missing, Tesir was still on his feet. Mana raged through him, clearly visible to Velik’s [Mana Sight], flooding into the missing flesh and rebuilding it. No, not rebuilding it, Velik realized.

He was seeing his own transformation, but from the outside and a hundred times faster. In the blink of an eye, Tesir the man with thick, muscled limbs and shaggy white hair was gone. The only evidence that he’d ever been injured was the golden blood and bone fragments staining the ground. And in his place stood a great cat, easily as large as Velik.

His fur was the same white as Tesir’s hair in his human form. Golden-yellow stripes rippled up and down his body, flexing with each step he took. Black nails long enough to hook a man’s spine and rip it out through his belly button popped out of his paws, and pearlescent teeth showed themselves as Tesir let out a deep, rumbling snarl.

That snarl was directed not at Velik, but at Torwin. Oh shit!

It might have been [Apex Hunter] warning him, but Velik realized Tesir was about to pounce just soon enough to leap in the way. If a divine beast hit Torwin, he’d die. The [Ranger] didn’t have the durability or regeneration Velik enjoyed. He’d just be torn into shreds. Velik couldn’t let that happen, so he leaped forward to place himself between Torwin and Tesir.

The giant cat barreled into him, all fangs and claws. Velik snapped at him, trying desperately to catch hold of something, anything, to get a handle on the divine beast, but Tesir was too strong and fast. The scuffle ended in seconds, and when they separated, Velik was torn open and bleeding. Tesir was covered in golden blood, but physically unharmed.

Despite coming out of that round the loser, Velik had accomplished his objective. Torwin was alive and in one piece. He’d raised his bow and, despite his labored breathing, had another arrow on the string. Velik could see mana building up in it, and apparently, so could Tesir.

The great cat leaped again, this time to avoid the shot, but Velik was there, in his way. He had no chance of winning like this, but he wasn’t on his own, and slamming himself into Tesir to prevent him from dodging was well within Velik’s capabilities.

He rammed into the cat, knocking him out of his leap and leaving him open to take Torwin’s arrow. It slammed home and exploded in the same fashion as the first one, but this time, the damage stopped at scorched fur and some burns. Much like Velik’s [True Form] increasing his resilience, Tesir’s cat shape made him even tougher than he’d already been.

How does this guy just keep getting stronger? Unless I can pull off a skill merger mid-combat, I am at my absolute limit and he’s having no problems keeping ahead of me. Even with Torwin jumping in, we’re still struggling just to scratch him.

He was at the end of the road. They’d thrown everything they had at Tesir and he hadn’t even flinched. Every hit, he either dodged effortlessly or took head on. Any injuries healed immediately. There was no end to the man’s stamina, and his destructive power was unrivaled. It was no wonder single divine beasts went up against whole armies and won. They were practically immortal.

He’d fought against tough odds before, though, and he always found a way to win. This time would be no different. He just needed to figure out what that way was. There were more tricks. There had to be.

Another arrow struck Tesir, mostly because he didn’t bother to dodge. It skipped off the cat’s fur, detonating in the air and doing no damage. It seemed the divine beast had figured out the limits of Torwin’s skill and how to counter it.

“Is this really it?” Tesir asked, surprising Velik when a rough, gravelly version of his voice came out of the cat’s mouth. “I’ve given you every opportunity to prove me wrong, but you’re too coddled here to properly grow. It’s obvious that you’ve lived soft lives if this is the extent of your abilities. You’re no divine beast, and you never will be.”

That statement sounded ominously final to Velik, like something Tesir was saying because he was done playing around. He’d done whatever it was he’d shown up to do, and he didn’t strike Velik as the kind of guy who’d let them walk away.

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[Apex Hunter] screamed at him to get out of the way in a sharp crystallization of instincts that had flitted by too fast for him to comprehend. Before Velik even realized what was happening, he was dodging out of the way. Tesir slammed into the ground where he’d been standing, claws out and ready to rend flesh. Velik bit down as hard as he could, determined to tear out a chunk of muscle before he let Tesir go.

The two rolled through the dirt, biting and snapping at each other, digging into flesh with claw and nail, and doing their best to pin the other to the ground. Velik hoped Torwin was already running, but knowing how stubborn the old [Ranger] was, he wasn’t surprised to find the man downing another potion and hefting his bow instead.

Potions…

The only piece of gear Velik could use in his wolf form right now was the Traveler’s Bracelet that held his own potion supply. That included a potion of haste, something he hadn’t needed to win a fight in a long time. He just needed to find an opening to retrieve it. Hopefully, Torwin would be able to help with that.

The pair of massive divine beasts split apart, Tesir having finally managed to roll and get all four limbs pointed at Velik’s belly. His only options were to let go or be eviscerated, so Velik flexed neck muscles and shook, hoping to tear something free as he retreated. For his troubles, he got a mouthful of golden blood, skin, and fur.

An arrow struck the side of Tesir’s face, just below his eye. It exploded immediately, bursting apart into a cloud of what would have looked like snow to a casual observer. Each and every single flake was razor sharp, however, and all of it was tied together with strands of mana to rotate around a frozen core, blending everything within a few feet into a slurry of blood, meat, and bone.

Or at least it tried to. The flakes scraped across Tesir’s face, removing hair and a layer of skin, but it couldn’t outpace his regeneration speed. New skin grew back as fast as it was flayed off, and Tesir himself recovered from the concussive force of the initial shot in less than a second.

That was all the time Velik needed. He pulled his haste potion out of his spatial storage, then took the vial in his mouth and bit down. System glass was night-indestructible, hard as steel. Velik chewed it anyway, fracturing the glass and letting the potion flood his mouth. It drained down the back of his throat as he tilted his head back, then he spit the fractured glass out.

Immediately, the whole world slowed down. Velik could see Torwin’s lips moving, almost like he was praying as he lined up his next shot. Tesir was flinching away from the cloud of shredding snow, seemingly moving at normal speed even through the haste potion’s effects. The mere fact that he wasn’t practically teleporting anymore showed Velik that the potion was working.

It would only last for a few seconds, however, before the effect wore off. His physical was high enough to hopefully withstand the kickback from the potion without any issues, but he hadn’t used one in a long time. It didn’t matter. If this wasn’t enough to defeat Tesir, they were dead either way.

Velik rushed forward, fangs leading. He slammed into Tesir, forcing him back into the cloud, and latched onto his back leg with his jaws. He shook his head, flinging Tesir back and forth through the razor shards.

Whatever source of power he had couldn’t be inexhaustible. If Velik could do enough damage, eventually Tesir would stop healing from it. Whether he could manage that in the next thirty seconds was debatable, but that was likely to be the only time Velik got to dominate the fight.

A corona of crackling blue lightning burst into existence around Tesir, shocking the hell out of Velik and forcing him to let go. The cat landed on four paws, just outside the shredding cloud, and batted at Velik with claws that were still almost too fast to keep up with even under the effects of the haste potion.

Something warned him just in time, and Velik shook off the lightning attack quickly enough to dodge getting his nose clawed off. That didn’t stop more bolts of lightning from jumping off those claws to shock him, but he figured he’d avoided the worst of the damage.

[Apex Hunter has advanced to max rank.]

[Merge it with other skills to continue advancing this skill.]

[True Form has advanced to rank 5.]

Velik barely noted the message other than to helplessly wonder if it even mattered. It was the first time he’d ever maxed a skill without merging it, but in the face of Tesir’s overwhelming power, it was too little, too late. Even with [True Form] going up and the haste potion speeding him up, he was only barely faster than Tesir, who was just now finally dipping into his bag of tricks.

Faster would just have to be enough. He barreled into the giant cat and did his level best to tear Tesir to pieces. Blood and fur flew from both of them, a trade Velik knew with sinking certainty that he was on the losing end of. His own reserves couldn’t possibly match a true divine beast’s. But he did have one more advantage.

He wasn’t here alone.

An arrow slammed into Tesir, but didn’t detonate. What felt like a subjective eternity later, a second, then third arrow joined it. Clean white lightning danced between the shafts, growing stronger with each one that landed. The cluster grew bigger, and something warned Velik to let go around arrow nine.

He released his hold on Tesir’s neck and scrambled away. The divine beast was torn for just a moment between chasing him or going after Torwin, and in that second, the tenth arrow hit. Then everything turned to blinding white light and pain.