The lull was brief, tense, and punctured by Lilith's unnervingly amused psychic voice as she helped Alice to her feet.

«To sacrifice a prized defensive asset for little old me… I am touched, Alice. Truly. I didn't know you cared so deeply.» Her crimson eyes glimmered with teasing malice.

Alice shook her off, bristling. «Don't flatter yourself! That shield was bulky and inefficient! It was… logical to use it as a disposable barrier! My Void Locker is more streamlined without it! It had nothing to do with you!» She turned her head away, but the flick of her ears betrayed a flustered annoyance.

«Yeah, right!» Ignis chimed in, having limped over, her leg wound already closing. «You like her! You're all weird and blushy!»

«I DO NOT 'BLUSH'! I AM A VOID PANTHER! MY FUR IS PERMANENTLY BLACK!» Alice shrieked, her composure fully shattered.

"ENOUGH!" Adam's roar, both physical and psychic, silenced the bickering. The Pale Revenant was stirring, its body coiling again, the icy blood flow from its wound slowing. The air, once controlled, now felt wild and unstable. "It's not finished. And it's angry. Real angry. No more domain… which means it's going to get physical."

As if on cue, the Pale Revenant struck. It was blindingly fast, a lunge that seemed to teleport across the canyon, its maw aiming not for Adam, but for the bickering, distracted group. It had learned. It was targeting the supports.

"SCATTER!" Adam yelled, intercepting with a body slam that felt like hitting a mountain made of steel cables. The impact drove the air from his lungs. Ignis sprayed fire across its face, forcing it to recoil. Lilith's silk lashed at its eyes, and Alice phased away, reappearing to rake her void-infused claws down its side.

The battle descended into a brutal, close-quarters melee. The Revenant was a master of serpentine combat in a way Adam had never encountered. It used its coils not just to constrict, but to create shocking, whiplash strikes with its tail. It would feint with its head, then slam a coil down like a pile-driver. Its scales, when hit at the right angle, would deflect attacks with a resonant clang.

«It's reading our movements!» Alice hissed, barely avoiding a crushing coil. «It anticipates every dodge!»

«It has centuries of hunting experience! We are thinking in moments, it thinks in patterns!» Lilith responded, her own attacks becoming more desperate, less precise.

«We need to break the pattern!» Ignis roared, but another tail whip sent her tumbling.

Adam fought silently, his mind working in overdrive. He blocked a constriction attempt with his own coils, feeling the immense, cold strength of the older serpent. He dodged a bite, recognizing the subtle tensing of jaw muscles a fraction of a second before it struck. And in that moment, a profound realization dawned on him.

He wasn't just fighting a monster. He was fighting himself. A purer, older, more refined version of his own serpentine nature. Every move, every feint, every moment of coiled potential… he understood it. He saw the micro-shifts in weight, the slight tilt of the head before a lunge, the way its eyes tracked not the target, but the space the target would occupy.

"I see it," Adam's voice cut through the chaos, calm and certain. He disengaged, taking a defensive position in front of his wounded, panting companions. The Pale Revenant paused, its head weaving, sensing a change.

«What? See what?» Ignis panted.

"Its pattern. Its instinct. I share it." Adam's galactic eyes were locked with the Revenant's cold, hateful orbs. "It's a serpent. The ultimate ambush predator. Its entire being is built around one perfect strike. All its power, condensed into a single, overwhelming moment of violence. The domain was a tool to create that moment. Now that it's gone… it's trying to force one. But it's frustrated. We're too many, too agile. It can't isolate one of us for the kill."

«So what's the plan?» Alice asked, her voice tight with pain but listening.

"We give it what it wants," Adam said, a dangerous plan crystallizing with absolute clarity. "We give it a single, perfect target. Me. Alone."

«That's suicide!» Ignis cried.

"No. It's the trap. Listen." Adam's telepathic instructions were swift and precise. "It will go for a kill-strike. A constriction to immobilize, followed by a venomous bite or a bone-crushing slam. When it commits to that strike, when all its muscles are tensed for that one action… it will be locked in. For a split second, it can't adapt. Lilith, you will bind its jaws from the inside. Use your silk not on the outside, but down its throat the moment it opens for the bite. Alice, you will Void Bind its primary constricting coil at the exact millisecond it tenses, not before. Ignis… you will not attack the body. You will aim your Sun Lance, your single hottest, most focused beam, directly into its ear canal. Pierce its inner ear. Destroy its equilibrium."

He looked at them, his will unwavering. "I will survive the initial strike. My Monarch's Aegis, Blooming Vitality, and my own coils can take it. But in that moment of its supreme confidence, when it thinks it has won… we shatter its world. We take its balance, its bite, and its grip. Then, we finish it."

It was a plan of terrifying, precise synchronicity, relying on Adam's deep understanding of his own kind's instincts and his team's ability to act on a split-second signal. It was also a confession of trust—trust that they would save him, and trust that he could survive long enough for them to do it.

The Pale Revenant hissed, a long, low sound of impatience and growing fury. It was done waiting.

The plan hung in the air, a fragile thing woven from trust and Adam's cold calculus. His companions radiated a cocktail of fear, doubt, but beneath it, a steely resolve. They trusted his instinct, this strange kinship he claimed with the ancient horror before them.

«Do it,» Alice finally pulsed, her voice tight. «But if you die, I will find a way to drag your soul back from the void just to kill you again myself.»

«A sentiment I second,» Lilith added, her silk already subtly repositioning.

«Just say when, Boss!» Ignis growled, flames gathering in her throat, her wounded leg trembling but holding.

Adam didn't respond. He simply advanced, his movements slow, deliberate, challenging. He lowered his head, flared his damaged wings, and let out a deep roar that echoed through the dead canyon.

'Come and get me.'

The Pale Revenant's response was instantaneous. It saw the opening, the lone challenger, the perfect prey. Centuries of instinct overrode any lingering caution. It coiled and struck, not with a bite, but with the very move Adam had predicted. Its massive body shot forward, not to crush, but to entangle. Icy, powerful loops whipped around Adam's torso and forebody with terrifying speed, squeezing with the pressure of tectonic plates.

The plan was in motion.

Adam gasped as the breath was driven from him. Scale ground against scale with a sound like grinding glaciers. Monarch's Aegis flared, reflecting searing heat, but the Revenant ignored it, its cold-blooded focus absolute. This was the kill-strike. Its head reared back, jaws unhinging, revealing fangs that dripped with a clear, viscous liquid that smoked where it hit the stone—Necrotic Venom.

NOW!

As the deadly maw plunged down towards Adam's pinned neck, Lilith struck. A single, needle-fine strand of Sovereign Silk, guided by impossible precision, shot not at the outside of the jaw, but into the gaping maw, down its throat. It anchored deep and then expanded, a barbed knot of void-touched silk lodging in its gullet. The Revenant's bite faltered, a choking, guttural sound replacing the hiss.

Simultaneously, Alice focused. She didn't bind the entire coil; she waited for the exact moment of maximum tension, when the Revenant's muscles were a solid cable of killing intent.

"Void Bind: Singularity!" Chains of darkness materialized not around the coil, but within the space between two of its tightest loops around Adam's chest, creating a sudden, immovable point of resistance. The coil, trying to tighten further, met its own locked muscle. A sickening pop of strained sinew echoed.

Ignis, ignoring the chaos, had been charging her attack. Her entire being glowed like a miniature sun. She saw her opening—the Revenant's head, thrashing in choked agony, its ear canal exposed as it tried to shake the internal obstruction.

"SUPERNOVA LANCE!" she screamed, releasing not a beam, but a concentrated spear of solar essence, white-hot and silent. It pierced the air and found its mark, plunging into the Revenant's ear.

The effect was catastrophic. The serpent's world—a world of vibration, of precise spatial awareness—exploded into static and searing pain. Its equilibrium vanished. Its head whipped sideways uncontrollably. The constricting coils, their master signal haywire, spasmed and loosened for a critical second.

It was the opening Adam needed. Gasping, ribs cracked, he poured every ounce of his remaining strength and fury into one skill.

"MONARCH'S PIERCE!"

He didn't aim for the body. He aimed for the base of the Revenant's skull, right where the spinal cord met the brain. With the serpent disoriented, its defenses down, his horns struck true.

CRUNCH-THUD.

The sound was final. The Pale Revenant's convulsions reached a fever pitch, then began to slow. A last, rattling hisse escaped its silk-choked throat. Its body thrashed in its death throes, slamming against the canyon walls with such force that the bone-white stone cracked and the ground shook violently. A minor earthquake rippled through the dungeon strata. Finally, with one last, twitching spasm, it fell still.

It lay there, immense and terrifying even in death. Its eyes, once filled with ancient malice, were open and glassy. Its mouth hung agape, Lilith's silk still visible within, its forked tongue limp on the pale stone. The ruler of the Bone-White Canyons was no more.

Then, the flood of notifications, brighter and more numerous than any before, cascaded over Adam's vision.

[ The Pale Revenant (Ghostscale Monarch Serpent) Defeated! ]

[ +1200 EXP | +2500 EP ]

[ Ding! Level Up! ]

[ You are now Level 60! ]

[ Ding! Level Up! ]

[ You are now Level 61! ]

[ Ding! Level Up! ]

[ You are now Level 62! ]

[ Ding! Level Up! ]

[ You are now Level 63! ]

[ Next Level: 187 / 480 ]

[ Evolution Points: 2848 -> 5348 ]

[ Evolution Requirement Met: 5348/5000 EP ]

[ Crown of the Hollow Glutton - Souls Captured: 37 -> 38 ]

[ Special Condition Met: Defeated a Legendary-tier progenitor of your species lineage.]

[ Special Evolution Path Unlocked: Progenitor's Legacy Available. ]

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