Chapter : 729

Lloyd stood his ground in the small clearing, his body seemingly relaxed, but his every muscle was coiled tight as a spring. He drew the simple practice sword he carried—a prop for his doctor persona, but a functional weapon nonetheless. He closed his eyes, his senses extending, pinpointing the location of the approaching threat. It was circling them, a blur of motion in the dense undergrowth, testing their defenses, looking for an opening.

He could feel its power. This was no ordinary predator. This was a magical beast, an apex hunter of the Dahaka, and it had claimed this territory as its own. They had trespassed, and it had come to collect the toll.

Then, the jungle fell silent. The incessant buzzing and chirping stopped. A profound, unnatural quiet descended, a silence that was more terrifying than any noise. It was the silence of prey that knows a king is hunting.

A low, guttural growl rumbled through the clearing, a sound so deep it seemed to vibrate in Lloyd’s very bones.

And then, it attacked.

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The attack was not an attack; it was an eruption. A blur of crimson and white exploded from the shadows of the dense treeline, moving with a speed that seemed to tear a hole in reality itself. It was a cat—a monstrous, impossibly large cat, easily the size of a carriage horse. Its fur was a brilliant, snowy white, slashed with jagged stripes of the deepest, bloodiest crimson. Its muscles coiled and bunched under its hide like powerful pistons, and its head was a nightmare of predatory perfection, dominated by a pair of saber-like canine teeth that were as long and sharp as daggers.

This was the Crimson-Striped Sabercat, a creature of myth and a Tier-4 magical beast, a living engine of speed and ferocity.

It was on him before a normal human could have even registered the threat. The air cracked with the force of its lunge, its claws extended, each one a curved scythe of black obsidian capable of disemboweling a warhorse.

But Lloyd was no normal human. Time seemed to slow to a crawl, his mind processing the attack with the cold, hyper-efficient clarity of the Major General. He saw the trajectory of the leap, the angle of the claws, the mindless, killing fury in the beast’s glowing amber eyes.

There was no time for finesse, no time for his steel chains or Void tricks. This was a contest of pure, overwhelming force.

He acted.

Instead of retreating, he stepped into the attack, a move of suicidal insanity. As he moved, he reached deep into his soul and pulled forth the avatar of his rage, the god of fire he had forged in the System’s crucible.

‘Iffrit!’ his mind roared.

The summoning was not the cataclysmic, world-burning event it could have been. Lloyd, even in this split-second of life-or-death crisis, held back. He throttled the Transcendent power, reining in the apocalyptic aura, suppressing the overwhelming spiritual pressure. He needed a weapon, not an apocalypse that would betray his identity to the hidden watchers in the world.

A wave of contained, dry heat pulsed from him. His simple traveler’s clothes seemed to melt away, replaced in an instant by the form he had designed. He became a nine-foot-tall demon of war, his body encased in the jagged, interlocking plates of black, volcanic armor, veins of crimson light pulsing within it. The simple practice sword in his hand transformed, elongating and thickening into the colossal, twelve-foot zanbatō, its blade instantly wreathed in a controlled, almost silent, inferno of crimson flame.

To Sumaiya, cowering behind the roots of the banyan tree, the transformation was a miracle of divine terror. One moment, the quiet, gentle doctor stood facing certain death. The next, a silent, magnificent demon king stood in his place, a being of fire and shadow conjured from thin air. The sheer, breathtaking power of the spirit—even a suppressed version—was so immense it stole the air from her lungs. She had thought she had seen power before. She had been a fool. This was not power. This was a god.

The Sabercat, its trajectory locked, slammed into the newly manifested demon king. The impact was a thunderclap that shook the jungle to its foundations. The beast’s obsidian claws, which could have shredded steel plate, screeched against Iffrit’s magma armor, sending up a shower of sparks.

Lloyd, encased in the powerful form of his spirit, braced himself, his feet sinking into the soft earth from the sheer kinetic force. The greatsword, held in a two-handed defensive block, met the beast’s charge. Fire and fury collided.

Chapter : 730

For a single, breathtaking moment, they were locked in a stalemate, a tableau of monstrous power. The nine-foot demon of fire and the crimson-striped ghost of the jungle, locked in a struggle of absolute, primal force.

The Sabercat roared its frustration, a sound that ripped through the clearing, and pushed with all its might. Lloyd felt the strain, the immense power of the magical beast threatening to overwhelm his suppressed form. He gritted his teeth, the muscles in Iffrit’s spiritual body groaning under the pressure.

This was not going to be an easy fight. He had deliberately handicapped himself to maintain his cover, and now he was paying the price. He was facing a Tier-4 monster with only Ascended-level power.

With a furious snarl of his own, he pushed back, pouring more of his will into the Iffrit form. He shoved the massive beast away, the creature landing gracefully on its feet ten yards away, its amber eyes burning with a newfound, intelligent hatred. It had expected a simple kill. It had found a challenge.

The Sabercat crouched low, its powerful hind legs coiling. It let out another roar, and the battle for the Dahaka Jungle truly began. The quiet doctor was gone, and in his place, a demon stood ready to answer the challenge of the wild.

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The battle devolved into a brutal, chaotic dance of fire and fury. The Crimson-Striped Sabercat was a force of nature, its speed a thing of terrifying beauty. It didn't run; it flowed. One moment it was at the edge of the clearing, a blur of white and red, and the next it was on him, its claws a whirlwind of black, razor-sharp death.

Lloyd, encased in the powerful but deliberately nerfed form of Iffrit, found himself on the back foot. He was a sledgehammer trying to hit a phantom. Each swing of his colossal, flame-wreathed zanbatō was a devastating display of power, cleaving through the thick undergrowth and gouging deep, smoking furrows in the earth. But the Sabercat was never there. It would flicker out of the way at the last possible second, its movements less like a physical animal and more like a glitch in reality.

It was testing him, learning his attack patterns, his reach, his speed. The intelligence in its amber eyes was chilling. This was no mindless beast; it was a veteran hunter, a master of its domain.

From her hiding place behind the banyan roots, Sumaiya watched the battle with a mixture of terror and awe that left her breathless. The world had tilted on its axis. The quiet, gentle man she had met, the man she had half-pitied and half-suspected, was a warrior of mythical proportions. The being he commanded, this silent, magnificent demon of fire, was fighting a monster from a nightmare, and the very air around them crackled with the raw, untamed power of their struggle.

The Sabercat, having seemingly gauged Iffrit's strength, changed its tactics. It seemed to realize that a direct confrontation with the armored demon was a battle of attrition it might not win. Its gaze, for a fraction of a second, flickered past the towering form of Iffrit. It locked onto the small, trembling figure huddled behind the roots.

It had identified the weak link.

With a roar that was less a challenge and more a triumphant declaration, the beast ignored Iffrit completely. It launched itself not at the demon, but at Sumaiya. It was a blur of motion, a crimson-and-white missile aimed directly at her heart.

Sumaiya’s mind went blank with terror. There was no time to run, no time to scream. Death was coming for her, swift and absolute.

But the deathblow never landed.

Lloyd’s reaction was not a thought; it was a primal, protective instinct that bypassed all strategy. He saw the beast’s intent in the fraction of a second it took to launch its attack. His mission, his cover, the boy in Rizvan—all of it vanished, replaced by a single, overriding directive: protect her.

He didn't have time to swing his sword or counter-attack. He simply moved. The nine-foot-tall form of Iffrit, which had seemed so massive and ponderous, crossed the fifteen feet between them in a single, earth-shattering step. It was not a graceful movement; it was a physical displacement of reality, a living mountain throwing itself into the path of an avalanche.

He slammed into Sumaiya’s hiding place a microsecond before the Sabercat did. He didn't just block the attack; he completely enveloped her, his colossal, armored back taking the full, devastating force of the beast’s pounce.