Furio listened to the monster.

An intelligent monster.

Not a familiar, then, for they had no free wills, especially if they were constructed from the ground up.

At the same time, the presence of this creature, this thing seemed so improbable. It seemed at face value to be like a daemon, and yet, it was a monster.

Daemons were not monsters; they did not have presences like this. They were of the Common races, or they used to be, before their kind rebelled.

No matter how daemons looked or how reviled they were, they were not monsters.

Furio heard a heavy body part dirt and leaves as it slithered towards him.

The creature's six eyes gazed at him with palpable disdain this time, though not an emotion so strong it would interfere with its decision making.

It was more the kind of disdain anyone would have for a cockroach, something far, far beneath them.

Disgusting enough to evoke a reaction, not an emotion.

This…this was a monster, there was no doubt about it. It stared down at Furio with an intent common across monster kind: hunger.

No doubt, it had taken countless Common lives already.

From the very beginning, monsters had always been against the Common races and the gods. A dichotomy marked across two entire millennia, ever since the Convergence, maybe more time than that.

There was no overlap between them.

No monster would ever ally with a daemon. No daemon would ever consort with a monster.

But did that matter in the end?

What mattered was that right now, right here, this monster had hurt Emi, and Furio was not going to stop until it was dead, no matter what it cost.

"You can think. You can speak," said Furio. He smiled to himself as he charged up magical energy around him, coalescing it around one of the blades sheathed at his back.

A broad, rectangular-shaped blade. "Good.

Then you'll understand me when I say I'm going to make you pay for the lives you've stolen."

"Stolen?" The monster observed Furio and clicked the mandibles poised on the sides of its smooth helmet of carapace. "I have granted your kind and their meager existences greater purpose, regardless of the resistance they levy against me.

But you will not understand. None of your unevolved kind will. Only in consumption shall you truly grasp what you lack."

As the monster began to move, Furio activated Yeolgu, one of his five coreforged blades.

The rectangular blade, a dadao as it was called in the realm of Xin where it was forged with the core of a Shaker-fish, unleashed its signature ability of calling upon the fish's own power of shaking the very earth itself.

Tremors began to echo from the blade, and the rectangular clay sheath containing it shattered, revealing the a thick, heavyset brown blade lined with plate-like scales.

The scales all shook rapidly, generating countless powerful shockwaves.

Furio gritted his teeth and closed his eyes.

Yeolgu needed a channeling point to unleash its destructive area of effect shockwaves. He usually struck it into the ground to shatter the earth or swung the bat-like sword into monsters, blowing them apart from the inside out.

But Furio was completely immobilized right now.

That left him with only one point of contact to channel Yeolgu: himself.

Using his own body as a conduit, he let the powerful shockwaves pass through him, traveling into his feet where they blew apart the earth in great, seismic booms.

Countless cracks wreathed his metalweave clothing.

The emblem on his shoulder emblazoned with four stars tore apart, the shining gold of the stars shattered into faint particles the Darkwoods swallowed up in an instant.

The rest of the sheaths tied to Furio's back shattered as well, unleashing all of his weapons at once.

This was a genuine, localized earthquake, and the range extended far past Furio himself.

Cracks lined the ground around him as dirt rose up in huge geysers. When the shockwaves roamed past the webbing covering Furio, the mass amounts of silk shook for a second before splitting apart all at once.

The monster halted its charge, escaping blowback from the shockwaves and slithering backwards, eyeing Furio.

Furio coughed up blood as he struggled to keep himself standing.

Around his wrench floated the three weapons that were on his back: Stella the monster-killing flail, Yeolgu the earth-shaking blade, and Edepu the sickle sword of the winds.

He could still fight.

With Flow as an origin, years of training, and an abundance of natural talent, he had managed to do what was seemingly impossible: flow the shockwaves of damage through his body, passing it perfectly through him and into the ground.

This was {Dispersal}, an advanced technique that only five-star adventurers and above began to learn, but Furio managed an imperfect version through sheer desperation and natural talent.

Still, imperfect was imperfect.

Furio felt pain burning through his entire body, sheathing every inch of him in red hot heat that told him he was breaking down.

There were micro-tears across almost all his muscles. Some small fractures in various bones. Internal bleeding.

Furio's vision blurred as he felt blood pour from his nose. Thank the gods he did not suffer from a concussion.

At the edge of his hazy vision, he felt the immense presence of the monster disappear.

Reacting on pure survival instinct, he tapped his wrench.

He had shot Fulmi into the forest to distract the monster, and now it came back to the wrench still screaming, covered in a sphere of destructive electricity.

The monster immediately sensed the approach of the weapon and leaped into the air with a push of its tail, purple lining its form as it pushed itself back with telekinetic force, dodging over Fulmi and landing with acrobatic grace on the forest floor.

Fulmi slotted back into Furio's wrench, and the dagger stopped its activation, the lightning fading as its segments closed and twisted on itself. It would take some time before it could be activated again.

He de-slotted Fulmi, and the dagger started to float around the wrench in an orbit, joining its brethren.

Furio slotted in Stella, jamming the wrench into the head of the flail; a star-shaped construct with its four pointed, fang-like ends wrapped around an orb of gleaming light. The light of a firefly.

"You inflict great damage upon your innards in order for a mere chance to move," said the monster as it clicked its mandibles, slithering around Furio and analyzing him.

Furio was ready to react at any given moment's notice to react against the monster if it attacked, and the monster knew this.

It simply took this small amount of time sizing him up to say what it wished. "Perhaps in some small measure, my initial assessment of your worth was miscalculated. There is yet chance for you to prove your worth.

In this small purchase of freedom bought at the cost of your body, what will you choose? To fight? Or to flee?"

"Run? What a sick joke." Furio spat out blood and righted himself, getting his breathing under control and flowing his mana around him through {Accel}.

Using {Accel} and constantly pumping mana through his body would drain his reserves, but if he did not use {Accel} right now to keep his damaged moving with the help of mana flow, he would stop moving entirely.

At least with {Accel}, even if he had limited time, he could still use it to fight.

He steadied his wrench, Stella's star head now hanging from its end with a golden chain of solidified light. Three other weapons orbited the wrench, ready to be shot out at a moment's notice.

Flambe was still out in the woods, pinning the daemon girl down. He would keep it there for now.

And beyond his weapons, his will still stood strong and sharp. He shouted as blood spattered from each of his enunciations.

"I…I am Furio Nil, four-star adventurer, and though I myself have no family name to speak of, I swear by all the families you threaten that I will slay you!"