Obsidian trees rose like skeletal fingers clawing at a sickly orange sky that looked perpetually caught between sunset and dusk.
Ash moved through the undergrowth carefully, his enhanced senses on high alert.
The drums were distant now, a constant rhythmic pounding that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.
Lilith walked beside him, or rather, she drifted.
Her feet barely touched the ground, her black dress somehow pristine despite the twisted environment. She watched him with those ruby eyes, amused and predatory.
"You're tense," she observed, her voice like silk dragged over broken glass.
"The atmosphere makes it tense," Ash replied.
A roar split the air.
Ash spun toward the sound.
Through the obsidian trees, he saw it, a massive shape moving with deceptive speed.
Ten feet tall, muscles like stone wrapped in leather-tough skin.
It wore scraps of hide and bone armor, carried a club made from what looked like a massive femur wrapped in rusted chains.
An ogre.
Its eyes were small and mean, burning with simple, brutal intelligence.
When it saw Ash, its lips pulled back in a grin that showed jagged yellow teeth.
"Kill. Eat. Sleep," Lilith whispered beside him, translating the creature's thought process. "The hierarchy of ogre thinking. How charmingly primitive."
The ogre charged.
Ash's eyes turned black, green pupils burning with enhanced sight.
Through the eyes of the Dead, the ogre's structure became visible. Weak points glowed faintly.
The ogre swung its club in a wide arc.
Ash dodged, slipping inside the creature's reach.
His right fist drove into the ogre's mouth with everything he had compressed into a single point.
The impact was devastating. Teeth shattered. The ogre's jaw collapsed inward, bone fragmenting. Blood sprayed hot across the ground.
The creature stumbled back, roaring through its destroyed mouth.
But then Ash saw it, the flesh knitting back together. Teeth regrowing. The jaw reformed with rapid speed.
Ash thought his punch would be able to finish the ogre in a single hit.
The ogre's grin returned, wider now, mocking. It knew it could outlast him.
Ash adjusted his strategy.
He charged in again. The ogre swung, but Ash was already moving, ducking under the club. His fist drove into the creature's stomach, not a weak point, but a power strike designed to test limits.
The ogre's abdomen caved in. Blood erupted from its mouth, spraying across the forest floor. Internal organs ruptured.
But the creature reacted immediately.
Its massive hand swept out in a backhand slap that caught Ash across the face. Ash flew backward, crashing through undergrowth, his skull ringing like a bell.
"Fuck," he gasped, blood filling his mouth.
The ogre advanced, its stomach already healing, flesh sealed over destroyed organs. It raised its club high.
Ash saw the swing coming. Sideways arc, too fast, too close. It was already too late to dodge.
He raised his left arm to block.
The bone club connected.
The sound was horrific. Ash felt his bones shatter instantly, bones fragmenting under the impact. His forearm bent at an impossible angle, a compound fracture with bone piercing through skin.
The force threw him sideways. He hit an obsidian tree hard enough to crack the glass-like surface, then collapsed.
Pain. White-hot, all-consuming pain that made thought impossible.
"FUCK!" The scream tore from his throat, primal and desperate.
The ogre loomed over him, raising its club for a finishing blow. Aimed at his head.
Ash rolled.
The club cratered the ground where his skull had been. Obsidian fragments exploded outward.
Ash scrambled into the forest, his left arm hanging uselessly, agony radiating through every nerve. Blood poured from the wound, hot and slick, making everything slippery.
He ducked behind a massive obsidian tree, breathing hard, vision swimming.
He told himself to ignore the pain and focus on survival, but it was too overwhelming to push back.
His right hand moved, tearing strips from his shirt. He wrapped his shattered arm as tightly as he could, using his teeth to pull the makeshift bandage tight. The pressure was agony, but it slowed the bleeding and stopped his hands from hanging aimlessly.
Behind him, the ogre's footsteps crashed through the undergrowth.
It looked toward Lilith first, who stood at the edge of the clearing like a statue carved from sin itself. The creature's eyes met her ruby gaze—
And fear flooded through it.
Nothing told it. Staring into her eyes, the ogre could tell she was not prey. She was apex. She was death wearing beauty like a mask.
The ogre turned away from her, lumbering into the obsidian forest to hunt Ash instead.
Ash heard it coming. Heavy footfalls, branches snapping.
He looked up. An obsidian tree, already weakened where he'd cracked it earlier. Small and something he could carry.
His right fist drove into the base with everything he had left.
The tree groaned. Cracked. Then fell.
He used his right hand, despite the pain he was feeling, and threw it straight at the Ogre.
The massive trunk crashed through the canopy, accelerating as it plummeted toward—
The ogre looked to its right and saw it coming.
But it couldn't react in time
The tree slammed into the creature's chest, knocking it backward. The ogre roared, shoving the trunk aside with brute strength, but it was disoriented now, off-balance.
Ash was already moving.
Another tree. He gripped it with his one good hand, wrenched it from the ground with his strength, and hurled it like a javelin.
The ogre raised its club.
"Ground Slam!"
The creature's club drove into the earth. A shockwave exploded outward, shattering the thrown tree mid-flight, sending splinters in every direction.
Time seemed to slow.
The ogre looked up through the debris cloud, its regenerating eyes searching—
And found Ash already airborne.
The creature felt it; It was the prey as it looked at Ash's black and glowing green eyes. He saw it—the spinal fracture he'd identified earlier, weakened further by the tree impact.
Ash used all his strength in his right hand to give the ogre a mean right hook.
BOOM.
The punch connected with the back of the ogre's skull, driving downward with devastating force. The impact traveled through bone, through vertebrae, straight to the spinal fracture.
The spine snapped.
The ogre's head separated from its body in a spray of blood and bone.
Both pieces hit the ground with heavy thuds.
Ash collapsed beside them, his vision going white with pain. His left arm was destroyed, breathing heavily, weak, and tired. Blood pooled beneath him.
He felt it; he was going to die here. Bled out in a twisted forest, fighting a regenerating monster.
But he felt good with a smile, and he looked to his right.
Then he saw the blue orb rise from the ogre's corpse, floating above the headless body.
Soul Extraction.
His right hand shot out, touching the orb.
The effect felt different from before.
And his left arm *moved*.
Ash gasped as sensation returned. He watched, unable to look away, as his shattered forearm began to regenerate.
Bone fragments pulled together, drawn by some supernatural force.
The radius and ulna reformed, knitting seamlessly.
Muscle tissue grew over the bone in flowing waves, red and glistening. Tendons connected, blood vessels reconnected, nerves sparked back to life.
Then skin. New, unblemished skin spreads across the wound like water flowing over stone.
Within seconds, his arm was whole. Perfect. As if the injury had never happened.
The pain vanished. Completely. Replaced by a rush of vitality that made him feel stronger than before the fight, he didn't feel tired; it was like he was at his best performance.
[SOUL EXTRACTION ACTIVE]
[VITALITY ABSORBED: +52]
[STRENGTH +3, ENDURANCE +3]
Ash lay on the forest floor, staring at his restored arm in disbelief. He flexed his fingers. No pain. No weakness. Just... healed.
"Fascinating," Ash said with a smile on his face.
He looked up.
Seeing Lilith looking at him straight into his eyes, Ash paused. He was always astonished by her beauty.
Lilith manifested in human form directly above him, kneeling gracefully on the blood-soaked ground, fixing her hair.
Her black dress pooled around her like spilled ink. Ruby eyes studied him with predatory interest.
She reached down, her fingers cool against his skin as she traced the new flesh on his forearm.
The touch was intimate, possessive, lingering on the unmarked skin where bone had pierced through moments ago.
"Desperation is the best teacher," she whispered, her face inches from his.
Close enough that he could feel her breath, see the flecks of crimson in her eyes.
"You were willing to use a shattered arm to kill. That's the kind of resolve that interests me."
Her finger traced up his forearm, across his bicep, lingering. "Tell me, little summoner, did it feel good? The healing? The power flooding back?"
Ash was still looking at her, eyes observing her body, his breathing still heavy. He was silent.
Lilith's smile widened, delighted. "Oh, you're going to be so much fun to break."
She leaned closer, her lips nearly touching his ear. "A lot more ogres to go. Think you can handle it?"
Then she stood in one fluid motion, her dress somehow still pristine despite kneeling in blood and dirt.
Ash pushed himself to his feet, testing his restored arm. Full mobility. No lingering weakness. He clenched his fist, feeling the accumulated strength from the absorbed vitality.
He looked at the headless ogre, then toward the distant sound of drums.
"Let's find out," he said.
Lilith's laughter echoed through the obsidian forest, beautiful and terrible.
The real training had begun.