The remaining mercenaries took an involuntary step back, the echo of their last comrade's skull shattering still reverberating through the dark forest's corridors. Their arrogance had evaporated like a drop of water falling on a blazing ember, replaced by a cold, clammy shock that paralyzed their tactical thinking. Four of the "Black Claw" elite, men who had fought bloody wars and survived the worst monsters, had been killed in under twenty seconds. And even more terrifying than the speed of death was that this supposedly Rank (E) noble "boy" hadn't used a single explicit magic spell. He hadn't muttered words, hadn't drawn magic circles in the air, and no glowing aura had appeared around him; he had used his bare hands and boots to turn men armed with armor and magic swords into mangled corpses, employing a bloody street-fighting style that had absolutely nothing to do with nobility.
Fear is a rapidly spreading virus, and when Garrick, the hulking leader, realized his men were beginning to tremble and their combat formation was collapsing just from looking into Dex's cold eyes, he knew he had to intervene immediately before they became easy prey for slaughter. The thick veins in his neck bulged with rage, not just at the loss of his men, but at the insult to his pride as a Rank (B) mercenary.
"Stop playing around, you cowards!" Garrick roared with a stentorian voice that shattered the forest's silence, and he charged forward himself this time, leaving his position at the rear.
As he sprinted with earth-shaking steps, Garrick pumped every ounce of his mana into his weapon. His giant, double-bladed axe glowed with dense orange mana, mana carrying the properties of "Earth Rending." The axe itself was a masterpiece of tempered steel, its broad blade engraved with magic runes that increased its weight upon attacking, delivering a strike equivalent to a one-ton boulder falling from a mountain peak.
"Die, you deceitful bastard!" Garrick screamed, raising his axe high with both hands, the muscles in his back and arms bulging until they almost tore his leather armor, bringing it down with the intent to cleave Dex into two equal halves from the top of his head to his feet.
At that exact moment, responding to their leader's roar, two veteran mercenaries regained their composure. They launched a synchronized tactical strike, flanking Dex from the right and left. They wielded long spears tipped with armor-piercing "Black Mithril," aiming their thrusts, infused with poisonous green mana, directly at Dex's kidneys.
The tactical situation seemed impossible and completely inescapable for any normal fighter. Retreating or trying to dodge the flanking spear thrusts would mean taking the hit from the giant axe that would split him in half, and blocking the axe head-on would mean leaving his flanks wide open for the poisoned spears to penetrate and paralyze his nervous system in seconds. They had placed him in the perfect "Triangle of Death."
But Dex did none of that. He didn't retreat, he didn't dodge, and he didn't draw a weapon.
Dex stood as still as a statue carved from ancient volcanic rock. He slowly raised his head toward the descending axe, and fully opened his bare palms.
In that frozen moment in time, Dex plunged into the depths of his consciousness, connecting to the mythical "Phoenix Core" resting in his chest. He didn't ask it to unleash explosive flames to burn the forest as he had done with the Hellhounds, for that would consume his remaining energy and might harm Lumia nearby. Instead, he demanded something that required a mental control surpassing human capacity: absolute thermal containment.
Dex focused all the core's almighty energy, all that stellar plasma, and drew it through the mana circuits in his body, directing it exclusively and intensely into the layers of skin, muscle, and bone in his palms and forearms.
"Endure it..." Dex whispered to himself, addressing the cells of his human body that were groaning under the weight of this cosmic power.
In a fraction of a second, the temperature of his bare hands rose insanely, breaking the natural laws of physics. It surpassed a hundred degrees, then five hundred, then broke the barrier of one thousand two hundred degrees Celsius. No visible flames ignited around his hands, there was no flying fire; rather, the flesh of his hands, from the fingertips to mid-forearm, transitioned into a terrifying state of incandescence. His hands began to radiate a brilliant, absolute white light, as if he were wearing gloves forged from the core of a white dwarf star. The air around his hands began to distort, emitting a sharp hiss as a result of violent thermal expansion.
"Phoenix Legacy: The Molten Touch!"
With incredible speed, and a timing possessed only by one who has lived through death thousands of times, Dex moved.
He raised his white-hot left hand, and with a precise motion as if catching a butterfly, his bare fingers gripped the bottom blade of the giant axe as it hurtled toward him with lethal speed. At the exact same time, he extended his right arm in a lightning-fast horizontal sweep, opening his fingers to catch both metal heads of the spears aimed at his flank, trapping them in a single, crushing grip.
Tssssssssssss!
There was no deafening clash of metal, nor the sound of breaking bones. Instead, there was a terrifying, extremely loud hissing sound, like the sound of tossing a giant ember into an ocean of ice. The axe, brimming with Rank (B) mana, and the spears, thrust with killing force, stopped abruptly in mid-air, as if they had struck an invisible wall of absolute density.
"What...? How...?" Garrick stammered, his voice cracking, his bloodshot eyes widening in disbelief. He felt the entire force of his blow absorbed, not by a magic shield, but by a boy gripping the steel of his terrifying weapon... with his bare hand!
But the sheer shock that paralyzed the minds of the three mercenaries morphed into pure, absolute terror in the very next moment.
The tempered steel in Garrick's axe, and the black mithril in the spears, weapons that cost vast fortunes to purchase and forge, began to react to the stellar heat radiating from Dex's hands. Initially, the weapons lost their cold gleam. Within two seconds, the metal surrounding Dex's grip began to glow cherry red, then transitioned to bright orange, and then... to a blinding, incandescent white.
The magic runes engraved on Garrick's axe began to flash wildly, trying to resist this thermal intrusion, then exploded one after another with sharp cracking sounds, destroying the weapon's magic circuit forever. And due to the concentrated heat Dex continuously pumped, which exceeded the melting point of the Empire's toughest metals, the steel and mithril lost their solid crystalline structure, and the metal began to soften, then melt, and then literally "flow" like boiling water between Dex's blinding white fingers.
"H-hot! Drop the weapons!" the two spearmen screamed in hysterical panic as they tried to let go of the wooden shafts of their spears.
But it was too late. The supernatural heat didn't just melt the blades; it traveled through the treated wood and conductive metal at a speed approaching the speed of light. Before the mercenaries' fingers could open, the heat had reached their hands gripping the other ends. Their leather gloves began to smoke, then instantly caught fire, allowing the lethal heat to reach their flesh.
Dex did not let go of the molten weapons. On the contrary, he looked into their eyes with absolute coldness and gripped the melting metal even tighter.
This added pressure caused the remaining structure of the weapons to collapse entirely. The spearheads and a large portion of the axe blade melted away, and massive droplets of molten steel and mithril, glowing with a heat exceeding a thousand degrees, splattered into the air like a hellish fountain effect. These flaming droplets splashed directly onto the faces, arms, and chests of the three attackers who were far too close.
"Aaaaaarrrrgghhhh! My eyes! My flesh!"
Hysterical, terrifying, and inhuman screams erupted from the throats of the three men. Screams that tore through the stillness of the Falus forest and sent nocturnal birds fleeing in terror. They felt the heavy, liquid metal rain down upon them, searing through their remaining leather armor as if it were paper, adhering to their skin, and instantly burning through flesh, fat, and nerves right down to the bone, releasing a sickening, horrific stench of roasting human flesh that choked the breath.
Garrick dropped the remnants of his axe handle, which had begun to burn, stumbling backward while swatting at his face and chest, burned by the steel droplets, with his own burning hands, writhing in an agony he had never experienced in the harshest of the Empire's prisons.
Dex gave him no chance to process it. He raised his right leg and delivered a brutal, direct kick to the hulking leader's chest, shattering his breastplate and propelling him with a force that sent him flying meters backward to land hard on his back, making him cough up blood.
Dex stood in his place amidst the burning circle. Thick black smoke and the stench of charred flesh rose around him like a demonic mist. His hands, whose white glow was gradually fading back to their ash-covered human hue, were still dripping with liquid steel and mithril that was slowly solidifying at his fingertips, releasing solid silver droplets onto the glassy ground like metallic tears.
Dex looked down with profound disdain at the defeated, disfigured Garrick, who was writhing on the muddy ground, desperately and tearfully trying to peel off the remnants of his armor, which had become lethally hot due to the liquid metal clinging to it.
Dex took a single step closer and whispered in a terrifying voice, one so calm it contradicted the hell he had just unleashed, a voice carrying the wisdom of dark prison years: "It is better to be a silent victim, than a blind hunter. The weapon you boasted of is now your fiery cell. And the more you struggle to survive... the more you burn."