CHAPTER 198: DRAIN

But I couldn’t let him finish whatever this was. If he reached full strength, there’d be nothing left to stop him—not me, not the clan, not this entire mountain.

I moved.

In a blur, I dashed forward, void energy surging around me as I slashed again and again, sending multiple rift blades screaming through the air. Each one howled as it tore across the battlefield, ripping the terrain open in jagged scars.

They struck true—clean, precise hits straight through his body.

But Jael didn’t even flinch.

His death aura swallowed the attacks whole, each rift slash passing through his form as if cutting smoke. And the energy that didn’t vanish simply continued its path, cleaving into the mountainside behind him.

KRRAAACK!

The mountain split with a deep, groaning rumble, chunks of rock breaking free and tumbling down the slope. A jagged trench stretched across the ground where the slashes had struck, glowing faintly with the aftershock of void energy.

And yet Jael stood untouched in the center of it all, unmoving, his silhouette wreathed in an ever-thickening storm of black energy.

My breath hitched.

Every attack I threw at him was landing—and none of them mattered.

The fact that he could tank that—a full-powered rift barrage—told me just how far gone this had become.

His power was climbing beyond anything I’d seen from a goblin before, twisting into something unnatural, something closer to a calamity than a creature.

The ground itself was dying under his feet, and every second I hesitated, that ink spread wider, swallowing more of the mountain in its endless crawl.

I clenched my jaw. I couldn’t afford to drag this out any longer.

Without another thought, I warped.

In the blink of an eye, I appeared beside him, my hand clamping down hard on his shoulder.

The moment I made contact, it felt like touching liquid fire and ice at once—his skin wasn’t skin anymore, just pure death energy condensed into something vaguely solid.

Before he could react, I activated [Warp] again.

The world folded around us in a violent ripple, and suddenly we were hundreds of meters above the battlefield, suspended in open air, the wind screaming past. I’d planned to drive him into the ground from here, end it in one crushing strike.

But the second I released him, something was wrong.

A cold, sick feeling tore through my body—like the life was being siphoned straight out of me.

My muscles weakened, my grip faltered, and an overwhelming dizziness hit me all at once. The air felt heavier, my limbs sluggish, and every breath burned like I was inhaling poison.

I cursed and instinctively warped again, reappearing a short distance away, still airborne, a groan escaping before I could stop it.

What... what the hell just happened?

It felt like something fundamental inside me had been ripped away—like a piece of my core had been drained dry. My limbs were heavier, my pulse weaker, and my mana flow... fractured, unstable, almost like it was leaking out of me.

Frowning, I pulled up my stat window, needing confirmation.

[Stats]

Strength: 87(-5) → 82

Stamina: 109(-5) → 104

Agility: 90(-5) → 85

Intelligence: 72(-5) → 67

Perception: 77(-5) → 72

(Available Points: 6)

"What the hell..." I muttered under my breath, eyes narrowing.

The numbers stared back at me, taunting. Each one had a minus sign glowing faintly beside it—a mark of loss.

I blinked, hoping it was some kind of visual glitch, but no. The drain was real.

I’d lost five points across every attribute.

Just from touching him.

That short contact—barely two seconds—had cost me a measurable portion of my power. Not mana, not stamina... stats.

The foundation of my strength itself had been devoured.

[Fractured Existence] hadn’t saved me this time. The moment I’d grabbed him, the skill had deactivated.

By design, it couldn’t protect me while I was making physical contact, and in that brief instant of vulnerability, Jael had drained me. Not just mana or stamina, but a portion of my very being—my stats, my foundation.

I clenched my jaw hard, grinding my teeth.

Getting stronger had never been easy.

Every point in those stats had been earned through blood, battle, and the kind of training that left scars.

Each number represented hours of grinding, of near-death fights, of clawing my way past limits—and now, in a few seconds, that bastard had taken a chunk of it like it was nothing.

My gaze lifted toward him—or rather, toward the writhing, black mass that Jael had become.

He was still falling from the sky where I’d warped us moments ago, his form wreathed in a storm of deathly ink that pulsed with unnatural rhythm. The substance was alive—rippling, feeding, spreading even as it fell.

It clicked then.

The ink. The same pitch-black corruption that devoured trees, drained beasts, and spread death wherever it touched—that was what had stripped my stats. It wasn’t just a weapon. It was a parasitic force, one that consumed life force itself.

I looked down, scanning the mountainside below.

The black ink had stopped spreading—for now.

The corrupted tide had frozen mid-crawl, its tendrils twitching faintly as if waiting for a signal. That was good. It meant his concentration had broken when I dragged him into the sky.

But as I watched Jael’s twisted form plummet through the air, a grim realization sank in. The moment he hit the ground, the infection would likely start again. Every living thing below would be swallowed before they even had time to scream.

I couldn’t let that happen.

If the corruption spread again, not even [Warp] would cover the distance fast enough to save the encampment. The only option left was to keep him in the air—to end this before he ever touched the earth again.

My throat felt dry as the wind tore past. I tightened my grip on the blade, feeling the faint hum of void energy resonate through my arm. This had to be done midair, one-on-one against something that could strip my life away with a touch.

I swallowed hard, the sound barely audible over the rush of wind.

"Great," I muttered under my breath, forcing a shaky breath out as Jael’s dark figure twisted against the clouds below. "Battling an airborne death leech that eats my soul if I wasn’t careful."

I exhaled once more, steadying myself.

No pressure.