Chapter Sixty-Eight


    Ambrose rode the storm, focusing and harnessing it. He drew on his core and spun out deadly portals. Fenrir opened his maw and crouched low. When the portals got close, he ate them. The dark wolf’s amber eyes glowed, and he pulled on his chains, the grinding metal giving him enough slack to allow him to bound forward.


    Fenrir, the world eater, a level 250 C-Grade legendary monster, unleashed hell from its maw. Black fire thick with hunger bathed the area in an attempt to devour Ambrose’s life.


    Using the Forge Icon, he reinforced his [Infernal Aegis] and felt his mana drain as the skill exerted considerable effort to protect him from the void fire that wanted to eat him.


    Ambrose dropped through a portal, raising Akaroth high. He slashed at the beast''s flank, poured infernal mana into the dragon axe, and, at the same time, called lightning.


    Noelle rushed the wolf as Ambrose’s axe bit deep into its body.


    Dark golden blood gushed from the wound, but Fenrir gave no reaction. The wolf lashed out to the side just as Ambrose vanished through a portal. However, as Fenrir’s claws hit the portal, Ambrose felt the power of an Icon flare, and his portal was ripped to shreds with the passage of Fenrir’s claws.


    Like a ball a large dog had gotten a hold of, Fenrir’s great paws batted Ambrose, and it felt like being smashed by an industrial-sized hammer. He flew through the air for a second, but before impact, he formed another portal into existence.


    Flying through it, he skidded on the ground.


    Noelle reached Fenrir at that exact moment.


    Her wreathed lightning was about to dig into one of the wolf’s legs, but that terrible Icon blazed, and that same black fire from before erupted around the legendary monster like a cloak of horrific dark flame.


    Amber eyes, once dead, filled with a terrible hunger, and the lightning meant to burn and shock, were instead devoured by the black.


    He didn’t piece it all together, but he knew now that Fenrir’s Icon allowed him to devour magic.


    There was a reason Ambrose hadn’t wanted to bring Noelle along. He meant it when he said she wasn’t ready for this fight. But he had resolved to give her more agency, to respect her desire to fight alongside him


    Her inexperience cost her. Seconds meant everything in a fight. You had to know when you could afford to decide your next course of action and when you needed to act immediately.


    Noelle should have created distance to gauge this new power and to avoid being hit by any possible attack or effects.


    Instead, she paused. It was just a moment, a mere blip of time, and her blue eyes looked uncertain.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    The fire rushed out from Fenrir’s body in a black, raging tide, and its sound was every dark whisper, every horrible thought that lurked in the forgotten corners of the mind.


    It said a single thing.


    Hungry.


    Noelle screamed, her body locking up as the fire washed over her.


    Ambrose was already acting, dropping through a portal as the fire reached him. He appeared by Noelle’s side, and yanking on his Icon, he made sure his shield covered him as he lifted her. He went through another portal and appeared as far back away from Fenrir as possible.


    Noelle was twitching, and small whimpers were causing shudders to run through her body.


    He tried to unmanifest her, turn her back into a cloak…only for nothing to happen.


    “What?”


    Akaroth, what is this?


    The dragon sounded sepulchral.


    I do not know, hatchling.


    Eric’s laughter was filled with condescending scorn.


    “Always failing to protect those you care about. Perhaps I should put those words on your gravestone after your corpse is buried. If Fenrir leaves anything left of you, Mr. Severen.”


    “What is happening to her, you sick bastard?”


    “Oh? Doesn’t ‘the storm’ know? Fenrir is the devourer, Mr. Severen. He was meant to eat entire worlds, all of its life, gone with one snap of his jaws. I’m sure you can fit the pieces together, Mr. Severen.”


    He stared down at Noelle’s face, Fenrir straining in his chains to get to him. It was pale and growing slightly paler by the moment.


    “He’s devouring her life…those flames.”


    “Ding ding! Winner winner, chicken dinner. Give the man a prize. One of Loki’s names was also Loki Firestarter. He granted his fury progeny a similar way with fire. Fenrir’s flames, though? They do not burn. They eat. Ah, it gives me so much pleasure to see yet another person you care about die before your eyes, Mr. Severen. It is all the sweeter knowing it will be a slow, agonizing death.”


    Desperately, he retrieved a health potion from his infernal realm, his armor making the red bottle appear instantly in his hand with a mere thought.


    He poured it into her mouth, watching her swallow.


    “Please…” He whispered, watching her skin, hoping it would work.


    “As if a healing potion would stop Fenrir’s flames. Please, Mr. Severen. This is a legendary monster. That attack is powered by an Icon whose power strains the bounds of the C-Grade limits to which those chains have drained Fenrir down to.”


    Noelle quivered, eyes full of utter pain, and reached out a shaking hand.


    “Not…fault.”


    Ambrose closed his eye, taking her hand in his.


    “How can you say that? I could have made you turn back into a cloak. It’s not like you ever really had a choice. Not really.”


    Noelle smiled then, a weak smile, but one nonetheless.


    “My…friend…stubborn”


    Then her hand slipped out of his, falling to the ground as her eyes closed. She was still alive, just too weak to remain conscious any longer.


    “How touching. Hey, you should be happy. At least you got a goodbye. Not even dear, sweet Alice got that, did she?”


    Ambrose stood up. Noelle’s still form encapsulates the whole of his vision.


    He couldn’t do anything for her. All of his skills, all of his power, were meant to do one thing and one thing only.


    Kill.


    Alice had called him a knight in tarnished armor. He had liked that vision she had of him because it meant that maybe, somewhere deep down, there was some shred of light in him.


    Vivienne called him the Knight of Avalon. The island’s great protector, its avatar of justice.


    Avalon’s people certainly thought of him that way, and it was an image he had cultivated.


    Maybe he was all of those things, or maybe he just wanted to be.


    But before all of that, Ambrose Severen had been one thing.


    A killer.


    His father had trained him, and Ambrose had honed that training for many years. He was a surgeon of violence, a brutal machine as unfeeling as a winter storm.


    He turned, facing the great wolf. With a thought, he dismissed Akaroth from his infernal realm. He couldn’t do anything for Noelle. She would be one casualty amongst the many that were on his shoulders. Just one more punishment for all of his many wrongs.


    But what he could do was be what he was.


    Ambrose Severen had once been a killer of men.


    Now, he would be a killer of monsters.