Chapter : 733

The Sabercat took the bait. It stopped its cautious circling and took a bold step forward, a low, triumphant rumble vibrating in its chest. It saw a wounded, tiring opponent, a final, glorious struggle before the kill.

Lloyd, however, was no longer looking at the beast as a warrior. He was looking at it as a doctor. The battlefield was no longer a clearing in a jungle; it was an operating theater. And the enemy was no longer a monster; it was a patient with a fatal, undiagnosed condition.

His mind shifted gears. He disengaged the part of his will that was focused on raw power output and reallocated it to his most subtle and potent weapon.

‘[All-Seeing Eye]: Activate. Diagnostic Scan. Low-intensity, focused burst.’

He didn’t close his eyes. The activation was now so seamless, so integrated into his being, that it was as natural as blinking. For a fraction of a second, the vibrant, emerald world of the jungle was overlaid with a shimmering, translucent grid of pure data. The Sabercat’s physical form dissolved, replaced by a complex, beautiful, and terrifying biological schematic.

He saw it all. The powerful, coiled muscles, glowing with a soft amber light of stored kinetic energy. The dense, magically-reinforced bone structure, thicker and more resilient than any normal creature’s. He saw the twin hearts beating in perfect, powerful sync, pumping super-oxygenated blood through a network of arteries. He saw the complex web of its nervous system, a river of silver light, and the potent, swirling vortex of its Spirit Core, a miniature sun of pure, primal rage located deep within its chest.

This was no mere animal. It was a masterpiece of magical evolution.

He dodged another lightning-fast swipe, the claws passing inches from his face. The movement was not just a dodge; it was a repositioning, an angle adjustment for his next scan. As the beast recovered, he fired another burst of his diagnostic vision.

This time, he wasn't looking at the big picture. He was searching for the flaw. Every system, no matter how perfect, had a weak point. Every fortress had a crack in its walls. He was looking for the single, critical error in its design.

He analyzed the flow of its movements, no longer as a fighter, but as a kinesiologist. He studied the contraction and relaxation of its muscles, the precise angle of its joints during a leap, the way it distributed its weight when it landed. He saw the pattern. The beast favored its left side, its attacks from that angle being fractionally faster and more powerful. This suggested a subtle, almost imperceptible weakness or past injury on its right.

He pressed the attack again, a clumsy, telegraphed swing of his sword designed to force the beast to dodge to its right. The cat complied, and as it moved, Lloyd fired a third, microscopic scan, focusing entirely on the right side of its neck and shoulder.

And there it was.

It was a beautiful, elegant, and fatal design flaw. The creature’s spiritual armor, the invisible field of energy that protected it, was not uniform. Over most of its body, it was a thick, seamless shield. But for a fraction of a second, at the very apex of a full-powered lunge, as the muscles in its neck and shoulder tensed to their absolute limit, a tiny, almost infinitesimal gap in that armor opened up. It was a hole no bigger than a silver coin, located directly over a nexus point where a major artery and a critical nerve cluster passed over a section of its vertebrae that was, for some evolutionary reason, marginally thinner than the rest.

It was the perfect kill-spot. An un-armored, biologically critical target that was exposed for less than a tenth of a second during its most aggressive attack.

Hitting it would be impossible. It required a level of precision that no normal warrior could ever hope to achieve. But Lloyd was not a normal warrior. He was a surgeon with a twelve-foot, flaming scalpel.

A slow, cold, predatory smile spread across his face, hidden beneath the demonic helmet of his Iffrit form. The diagnosis was complete. The prognosis was terminal.

He had found the beast’s cancer. Now, it was time to cut it out. He let out a loud, theatrical grunt of pain, stumbling backward as if his wounded shoulder was finally giving out. He leaned heavily on his greatsword, a perfect picture of a defeated warrior preparing to meet his end.

The Sabercat’s amber eyes glowed with triumphant, murderous glee. It let out a final, deafening roar, a proclamation of its victory. It coiled its powerful haunches, preparing for the final, glorious, killing blow.

Chapter : 734

Lloyd watched it, his mind a silent, frozen sea of calm. The gambit was set. The trap was baited with his own apparent weakness. And the doctor was ready to make his incision.

The air in the clearing became thick with a palpable, triumphant bloodlust. The Crimson-Striped Sabercat, convinced of its imminent victory, savored the moment. It paced back and forth, its massive paws silent on the damp earth, its tail lashing like a whip. It was a predator playing with its food, drawing out the final seconds of the hunt.

Lloyd remained in his pose of defeat, leaning on his greatsword, his armored form slumped. He forced his breathing to remain ragged, projecting an aura of utter exhaustion. He could feel Sumaiya’s horrified gaze on him from behind the banyan roots, her fear for him a tangible thing. He used that fear, feeding it into his performance. He had to be utterly convincing. The success of his gambit depended on the beast committing to a single, overconfident, all-or-nothing attack.

He allowed a flicker of his own spiritual energy to vent from the wounds in Iffrit’s armor, a visual cue of a failing spirit. It was a desperate, messy-looking display, like a leaky engine sputtering its last fumes.

That was the final trigger. The Sabercat saw the vented energy as a sign of imminent collapse. Its patience broke. With a roar that was a peal of thunder and a promise of death, it launched itself across the clearing.

This was not one of its lightning-fast, probing attacks. This was the final lunge, the full, unrestrained force of a close transcendental magical beast throwing every ounce of its power into a single, decisive strike. It became a missile of muscle and claw, a crimson-and-white blur that devoured the distance between them in a heartbeat.

For Lloyd, time fractured. The world slowed to a syrupy crawl. The Major General’s combat-honed mind, augmented by the processing power of the System and the divine senses of a Transcended spirit, entered a state of hyper-awareness.

He saw the beast in the air, a magnificent, terrible sculpture of predatory grace. He saw the individual muscles in its legs contracting, the subtle shift of its weight as it adjusted its trajectory mid-flight. He saw its claws, fully extended, ready to tear him limb from limb.

And he saw the target.

As the Sabercat reached the apex of its leap, its neck fully extended, he saw it with his [All-Seeing Eye]. The flaw. The tiny, shimmering gap in its spiritual armor, no bigger than his thumb, appeared for a fraction of a second, a single point of vulnerability in a fortress of magical power. It was located just to the right of its spine, exactly where his scan had predicted.

The opening was there. The patient was on the operating table.

Now.

The slumped, defeated demon vanished. In its place was a figure of absolute, focused power. Lloyd’s will surged into the Iffrit form, pouring every last, desperate ounce of his remaining energy into a single, perfect action.

He did not swing the colossal zanbatō. A swing was too slow, too crude, too inefficient. He needed precision, not power. He needed a surgeon’s touch.

He pivoted on his back foot, the movement economical and explosive. He brought the greatsword up not in an arc, but in a straight, rising thrust. It was a fencer’s lunge, executed with a weapon the size of a battering ram. The tip of the blade, glowing with the contained, white-hot heat of Iffrit’s core, was aimed not at the beast’s massive chest or head, but at that single, impossibly small point of weakness.

The distance closed. The tip of the blade met the target.

There was no deafening clang of impact, no shower of sparks. There was only a soft, wet, almost silent thump.

The blade slid through the gap in the spiritual armor as if it wasn't there. It pierced the thin layer of bone with a faint, cracking sound, and then sank deep into the nerve cluster and the major artery beneath.

The effect was instantaneous and absolute.

The Sabercat’s triumphant roar was cut off mid-sound, replaced by a soft, surprised grunt. The furious, killing light in its amber eyes vanished, replaced by a look of profound, utter confusion. Its massive body, still airborne, went completely limp. The complex machinery of its life had been shut down with a single, perfectly placed switch.