Ellen's voice, strangled and furious, cut through the panic. "Don't… stand there! Attack! That's an or—Urk!"

Adam had heard enough. He tightened his coils just enough to cut off her air and her commands, applying a crushing pressure that made her armor creak in protest. He was careful—terribly, precisely careful—not to kill her. A dead hostage was useless. A living, suffering one was a perfect deterrent.

Seeing their commander silenced, one of the mages in the back began chanting, hands weaving a spell of binding light. Adam's Hunter's Tri-Sense screamed of impending entanglement. If that hit him, it was over.

He couldn't afford to be hit. With a pained jerk, he shifted his massive bulk, using Ellen as a shield to block the mage's line of sight, disrupting the spell.

The momentary distraction gave him a crucial opening. His mind flew to his status panel. 4 unused Skill Points. A lifeline in the middle of a hurricane. He scrolled through the available skills, ignoring offensive and defensive options he couldn't power. Then he saw it, tucked under a subset of rare life-stealing abilities:

[ Skill: Crimson Siphon (Active) - Cost: 3 Skill Points ]

Drain the vital essence (blood, life-force) of a captured target to rapidly restore a portion of your own Health, Stamina, and Mana. Potency and speed of absorption scale with proximity, target's vitality, and skill level. Warning: Can be fatal to the target if overused.

It was perfect. It was exactly what he needed.

Without a second thought, Adam invested the points. Knowledge flooded him—the instinct to locate major life-force vessels, to pierce and draw without killing immediately.

[ Skill Learned: Crimson Siphon ]

As the mage repositioned and the knights began to flank, Adam struck. He bent his head and sank his fangs—not his venomous ones, but specialized, needle-sharp fangs that now thrummed with the new skill—into the gap between Ellen's helmet and armored gorget, at the side of her neck.

A collective roar of horror went up from the soldiers. "IT'S EATING HER!"

"SHE'S DOWN! SAVE THE CAPTAIN, NOW!"

Ellen's body went rigid, then began to convulse in his grip, a muffled scream of terror and agony trapped in her constricted chest.

Adam felt it immediately. A warm, potent river of vitality—rich with the enhanced energy of a high-level human warrior flowed into him. It was not just blood. It was life itself, converted by the skill into pure, restorative energy. The dark void of his mana core began to spark, a trickle becoming a stream. The fire in his wounds dampened slightly, the debilitating weakness receding just enough.

[ Crimson Siphon (Lvl 1) activated. ]

[ Health +5%. Mana +15%. Stamina +10%. ]

[ Target (Ellen) status: Critical (Life-force drained). ]

A knight, driven by panic and rage, broke formation and charged with a spear. Adam, his senses sharpening with the influx of stolen energy, didn't bother to dodge. He turned his head and fired a single, point-blank Ember Shard Shot. The superheated obsidian shard hit the knight square in the chest, punching through his armor and throwing him back with a sickening crunch.

The brief moment of violence was all Adam needed. With a powerful surge of his wings—now fueled by stolen stamina—he launched into the air, his Constrict never loosening around his now-limp human shield. As he ascended, he poured his newly stolen mana into Deep Camouflage once more. His form and Ellen's shimmered and blended into the canyon's palette, becoming a faint, ghostly smear in the air.

From below, the remaining soldiers stared, helpless and enraged, as their lieutenant was literally dragged into thin air by a monster that was supposed to be on death's door.

"IT'S GONE! IT TOOK THE CAPTAIN!"

The soldiers left behind dissolved into chaotic recrimination. "You let it get behind us!"

"Why wasn't the perimeter secured?!"

"If the Lieutenant dies, the Guild Master will have our heads!"

"Enough!" barked a grizzled sergeant, his face pale but stern. "Blaming each other won't bring her back. Our mission is now a rescue. Focus! Track that thing! Move STUPID!"

The rebuke snapped them back into a semblance of order. With renewed, desperate urgency, they activated detection scrolls and tracking spells, their earlier confidence replaced by a cold, fearful determination.

High above, Adam flew, the stolen energy from Ellen a fading ember in his system. The Crimson Siphon had stabilized him, but the cost was evident.

The woman in his coils was deathly pale, her breathing shallow. She was his ticket through, a fragile, living key. 'Hold on, just a little longer,' he thought, not to her, but to the two pulsing sources of energy he could now feel ahead. 'Please be okay. Please be safe.'

As he rounded the final bend, his worst fear materialized. There, in the cleared area before the hidden alcove, was the other group. Derek, a mountain of a man with a glowing great axe, Tia with her sword drawn, and the mage Westin, his staff raised as he prepared a complex, unraveling spell aimed directly at Lilith's silk cocoon. They were mere moments from interrupting the evolution.

Rage, white-hot and purer than any he'd felt, ignited in Adam's core. He didn't think. He acted.

Releasing his Deep Camouflage, Adam dropped from the sky like a vengeful comet. He didn't land gently. He slammed into the ground between the humans and the alcove with earth-shaking force, sending cracks racing through the bone-white stone. The impact kicked up a cloud of dust and debris.

As the dust settled, he revealed himself in full, terrible glory. His Starlight Veil activated at maximum intensity—the crystalline growths along his spine blazing with a light that was both beautiful and painfully blinding. Simultaneously, tendrils of his Venom of the Void, enhanced by the Pale Revenant's fragments, seeped from his maw and wounds, creating a visible, shimmering miasma of neuro-toxic and necrotic energy that hissed where it touched the ground.

His single remaining horn gleamed, and his eyes burned with apocalyptic fury. The combined aura of Abyssal Majesty and his murderous intent pressed down on the humans like a physical weight, a wave of terror and psychic pressure meant to break wills.

Derek's crimson eyes widened, first in surprise at the sudden appearance, then in cold shock as they landed on the limp, armored form constricted against the serpent's chest. "Ellen…" he breathed, his grip tightening on his axe until the metal groaned. "I didn't think you'd be the one to fall."

Beside him, Westin staggered back a step, the complex spell on his staff fizzling out. The mage's youthful face was contorted not just with fear, but with a deep, instinctual horror at the volatile, corrupting aura of the Void Venom and the blinding Starlight.

His analytical composure shattered. "Derek! Less talking!" he hissed, his voice trembling. "Stop its skills! That light is disrupting my focus, and that venomous aura… it's degrading our magical defenses! Shut it down!"

Adam coiled tighter, lifting Ellen's unconscious body like a gruesome standard. He stared down Derek, a low, continuous growl rumbling from his chest that vibrated through the stone.

The message was clear: Take one step toward my family, and yours dies first.

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