Victor's cold, research-obsessed gaze pinned Alan like a specimen under a microscope. The suction from his mechanical palm was a surgical scalpel, attempting to dissect and analyze Alan's unique Harmonizing Anima. Fenrir's pained growls, Lena's stifled gasp as she retreated, the stench of acid and decay—all pressed down on Alan like lead weights. The icy grip of despair threatened to swallow him whole.
Then, chaos erupted!
One of the acid-sprayer tendrils, half-dead from Fenrir's earlier struggle, flung loose by his thrashing, tumbled through the air like a dying serpent—and slammed directly into Alan! Its slime-covered, armored body wrapped around him with crushing force! Cold, corrosive suckers latched onto his arm and side like greedy leeches!
"Ungh!" Alan was caught completely off guard, dragged to the floor! The nauseating slickness of the tendril and the burning sting of its acid slime assaulted him simultaneously! Worse, he felt it—the energy conduits pulsing like veins within the tendril surged with a ravenous pull far stronger than before! It wasn't targeting ambient energy anymore; it was targeting him! It sought to drain him dry!
The suppressor cuff, strained beyond measure by Victor's sustained drain and the tendril's sudden assault, emitted a tortured, metallic shriek! Its cracks widened instantly, its heat scorching Alan's wrist! Victor's power held him fast, a leech he couldn't dislodge, while the tendril's suction was the final straw.
Agony and suffocation overwhelmed him! Alan felt his Anima gushing out, torn apart by the two voracious forces! His vision darkened; Victor's cold scrutiny blurred; Fenrir's roars seemed distant…
"Alan!" Lena's cry held unprecedented panic! She'd just evaded the Impaler's renewed lunge when she saw Alan ensnared, his life force plummeting! She tried to charge, but Victor's drifting barrier of emerald decay blocked her path, swallowing her attacks! Fenrir was helpless, his vitality still being siphoned, his roars weakening!
The chill of death wrapped around him.
Just as consciousness teetered on the edge of the abyss, his grandfather's voice seemed to whisper through the pain and chaos, clear and calm: "…Child… Qi (Anima) is like water… Resisting is less than guiding… Follow its flow… Channel its course…"
Grandfather's teaching! The essence of breath control! Not confrontation! Not brute force! Yielding! Guiding! …Harmony!
The thought struck Alan's reeling mind like lightning in the dark!
His eyes snapped open! No longer filled with pain and despair, but with a desperate, blazing clarity! He stopped trying to hold onto his Anima, ceased his futile struggle against the twin horrors! Instead, he gathered every shred of his will and spirit and did the unthinkable—he stopped resisting the tendril's suction. Instead, he actively, unreservedly, channeled the remnants of his unique Harmonizing Anima into the very tendril that held him!
This wasn't an attack! Not a clash of energies! It was… integration! Alignment!
Hummm—!
A stream of gentle, resilient, yet profoundly ordered energy flowed against the suction, pouring through the tendril's suckers and merging into its internal energy circulation system—a system designed for brutal efficiency, currently churning like a chaotic, destructive mudslide!
Victor's coldly focused face registered stark astonishment! He felt the precise energy siphon from his mechanical arm suddenly lose its target! Alan's Anima field ceased to be a resisting "wall"; it became a "void," an "ocean" into which his pull vanished without a ripple! More shockingly, the Anima readings inside the tendril wrapped around Alan underwent a bizarre, violent shift!
The tendril's internal system was Victor's design: brutally efficient. It compressed absorbed Life Anima, electrical energy, ambient wisps—anything—through alchemical runes and bio-conduits, forcibly mixing it into a single, destructive stream of "Withering" force for the Catalyzer. The process was inherently violent, filled with energy collisions and waste heat, like an overloaded, poorly tuned engine primed to explode.
Now, Alan's actively channeled Harmonizing Anima acted like a strange "seed" planted in this raging mudslide. It didn't clash; it didn't destroy. It permeated, diffused, with gentle, unyielding persistence.
It began to align energy particles clashing under brutal compression!
It began to smooth the turbulent eddies churned by the high-speed flow!
It began to guide the raging "Withering" force, attempting to coax it into more stable, orderly pathways!
It was like forcing a precision pressure regulator and flow director into an over-pressurized boiler about to burst!
Beneath the tendril's dark green, slimy carapace, light erupted—blinding, unstable, and violently multicolored! The sickly green of Life Anima, the bright blue of electricity, the bloody crimson of Withering force… Colors Victor had forcibly blended now violently clashed, separated, seeking their original states under Alan's imposed "Harmony"! The tendril's energy conduits screamed—a piercing, metallic shriek of intolerable stress!
"No… Impossible!" Victor breathed, his voice losing its absolute control for the first time, replaced by research-interrupted fury and disbelief! "Energy structure… undergoing forced… deconstruction?! This 'ordering'… exceeds design parameters!"
The tendril wrapped around Alan convulsed like a fish dropped into boiling oil! Its suckers tore free from his skin! The entire limb thrashed wildly in the air, slamming against anything nearby! The light beneath its carapace flared erratically, brightness skyrocketing! The internal shriek became a deafening screech, like countless wires stretched to breaking point!
"Alan! Get clear!" Lena screamed, her instincts screaming of the cataclysmic energy building within the tendril!
Alan used the last of his strength the moment the suckers released, throwing himself sideways in a desperate roll!
KABOOOM—!!!!
An ear-shattering detonation ripped through the lab!
The alchemical tendril, like a balloon stuffed with volatile chaos gas, could not withstand the consequence of its energies being forcibly "aligned." It exploded with apocalyptic fury!
Dark green slime, shattered chitin shrapnel, and the unleashed destructive shockwave of violently deconstructed energy erupted outwards like a localized storm! The blast wave slammed into nearby vats. Reinforced glass, already stressed, instantly crazed with spiderweb cracks! Nutrient fluid geysered from the fractures! Precision instruments were hurled aside, crashing down in showers of sparks!
Alan, closest to the blast despite his desperate roll, was caught by the concussive wave and hurled backward. He slammed into a distant control console, agony exploding through him, vision blacking out at the edges. But Victor's terrible suction… finally ceased!
Victor, standing nearer his office door, bore the brunt of the blast's core. His stained lab coat was shredded instantly! The barrier of emerald decay energy surrounding him buckled violently under the savage impact, warping, flickering like a guttering candle!
Thump!
Victor staggered bodily, his face blanching white! A choked gasp escaped him, a trickle of dark blood appearing at the corner of his mouth! Maintaining the barrier and sustaining the drain on Fenrir shattered simultaneously! His cold mechanical arm spasmed erratically for the first time, its rune lights flickering wildly!
"GAH!" Fenrir, released from the soul-crushing drain the instant Victor's focus broke, sucked in a ragged, life-giving breath! Though weakened, burned, and drained, the suffocating pull was gone! Berserker fury flared anew in his eyes! Seizing the moment as the other tendril restraining him slackened under the blast's shockwave, he roared, alloy claws blazing with final fury, and ripped it apart!
"Victor!" Lena seized the sliver of opportunity! Victor's barrier, shattered by the blast and his own injury, was gone! She didn't even pause to retrieve her weapon. Channeling every ounce of her Anima into her limbs, she became a blur of vengeance! Twin fists, powered by focused, explosive force, hammered forward like piledrivers, aimed directly at the now unprotected Victor!
CRACK!
The sound of breaking glass! Lena's full-force strike connected with Victor's torso!
Victor's eyes flashed with genuine shock and fury! He hadn't anticipated his own creation rebelling so catastrophically! Even less had he expected the "Neutralizer" he'd dismissed to cause such havoc! As Lena's blow landed, his damaged mechanical arm snapped up with viper speed, palm open, a deadly pulse of pure "Withering" annihilation coalescing, aimed point-blank at the charging Warden!
But Lena's momentum, her desperate lunge, was unstoppable! Or perhaps, she anticipated it. Before Victor's palm could fully unleash its blast, her body twisted. A leg, powered by the same explosive Anima, snapped up like a steel whip, whistling through the air, aimed not at Victor's body, but at the critically damaged elbow joint of his raised mechanical arm!
WHAM!
A sickening crunch of stressed metal and fracturing crystal!
Victor's body jerked! The blast from his palm veered wildly off course, obliterating a hovering drone into sizzling scrap! Simultaneously, the elbow joint of his prized mechanical arm buckled visibly! Tiny crystal shards sprayed out! Victor grunted in pain and frustration—the blow had damaged his key instrument!
The lab was a scene of utter devastation. Shattered vats leaked nutrient fluid and unidentifiable organic sludge. Equipment smoked, spitting sparks. Tendril carcasses littered the floor. The Impaler struggled against fading spatial bindings. Fenrir knelt, breathing raggedly, free but battered. Alan slumped against a console, battered and barely conscious, but alive for now.
Victor stood in his office doorway, lab coat in tatters, blood on his lip, his mechanical arm's elbow joint visibly deformed, its lights flickering erratically. His cold gaze swept the carnage before locking onto the barely conscious Alan. The scholarly fervor was gone, replaced by a deep, icy, murderous intent.
"Variable… Uncontrolled variable… Must be purged!" His voice was a venomous hiss, filled with finality. He ignored Lena and Fenrir. The damaged mechanical arm rose once more, runes flaring anew on its palm. This time, the energy gathering wasn't for siphoning. It was pure, unadulterated "Withering" annihilation, aimed squarely at the defenseless Alan!