Chapter 77: Black tiger form
"I need to risk it all," Stephan thought. "Even if it means losing every soul in my reserves."
Everything depended on him. Olath waiting at the edge of the desert. Yennefer. Anna Mary. If he died here, they were meat for other players. Not an option.
He clenched his teeth and closed his eyes. The souls in his reserve answered like insects under skin, itching, clawing, wanting out. He had kept them like a bank, counting every scrap. Now he shoved the bank into the furnace.
He reached inside himself and wrenched the curtains back. Eighty, ninety, a hundred, he didn’t count, he poured. The darkness pooled in his gut, heavy and hot. It was a violence, a theft, a prayer. Each soul screamed and then fell silent as Stephan fed them to the machine of his body.
[Death God System: SOULFORGE — EMERGENCY OVERDRIVE]
[Souls Consumed: 100]
[Souls Remaining: 243]
[Effect: Full-Body Soul Infusion — All stats +250% for 90s | Regeneration: Immediate Major Heal | Cost: Permanent consumption. Irreversible.]
[Warning: Extreme Corruption Risk - Potential permanent soul burnout.]
Pain came like a hammer. His veins flamed black. For a second he thought his heart would tear out. Then the pain became power. Every torn muscle, every cracked rib stitched up as molten soulfire wove bone and muscle back together. His lungs expanded and took a deep, clean breath for the first time in an hour.
The world around him sharpened.
The Ossuary sword in his hands howled as the residual five souls inside it flared bright. Then, because he had nothing left to lose, he poured the rest of the infusion through his arms and into the blade, every last drop of the hundred burning toward the ossified edge.
The blade changed. It no longer sat in his hand like metal. It lived. Black flame licked violet edges; runes he’d never seen crawled along the steel and burned like brand marks. The air around him felt thinner, as if reality itself was being chewed and reshaped.
Black soul energy detonated outwards in violent waves, tearing through the battlefield like a storm. The ground beneath Stephan fractured, lines spiderwebbing into massive craters. Dust and stone lifted as if the earth itself was rejecting the force that had just awakened.
The black energy didn’t disperse, it coiled, condensed, and began to take shape. Shadows rippled like liquid, folding into the outline of something primal, something wild. A low, guttural growl rolled across the ruined landscape. The air itself shivered under the sound.
From the storm, a colossal beast emerged. A tiger, vast and terrible, its body carved entirely from soulflame. Its stripes were rivers of shadow, its eyes smoldered with burning crimson, and every step it took cracked the earth deeper.
Stephan staggered, but the energy didn’t leave him. It wasn’t just the tiger. It was him. The beast reared back, roared, and then its body folded around his own like armor. Plates of black energy locked over his shoulders, chest, and arms, shaping themselves into something both regal and savage. His gauntlets curved into claws. A tiger’s helm formed around his head, its snarling fangs framing his face, while its glowing eyes became his own.
When the last surge of energy locked into place, Stephan was no longer just a man.
He stood as a warrior clad in the armor of a black tiger, muscles reinforced by soul plating, speed sharpened to predatory focus. Every breath felt like thunder, every flex of his fingers carried the weight of destruction.
The Ossuary sword in his grip pulsed once, its edge now licked by the same black flame as the armor.
The ground beneath him quaked as he shifted his stance.
Above, the white dragon hovered, its violet aura still raging, but for the first time, there was hesitation in Asriel’s movements. Her burning eyes narrowed, and her wings faltered ever so slightly.
Stephan lifted his head, the tiger’s growl echoing beneath his words.
"Round two."
The ground shuddered as Stephan lunged, his figure now a blur of black soulfire. The tiger armor roared with every movement, amplifying his speed until even the eye struggled to follow. The Ossuary sword gleamed, its edge longer and sharper than ever, every swing trailing arcs of black flame.
The dragon didn’t hesitate this time. Asriel roared, unleashing a torrent of violet fire. The blast thundered toward Stephan like the wrath of the heavens, but he didn’t dodge. He tore straight through it, his armor drinking the heat, the tiger’s roar splitting the inferno apart as he emerged unscathed.
"Impossible," Asriel hissed from within her massive form, wings beating storms into the dust-choked sky.
Stephan grinned savagely. "You said my power was useless against yours."
He launched upward, the tiger armor propelling him high enough to meet the dragon’s colossal head. He slashed down with all the weight of twenty souls burning in his blade. The strike cut across her jaw, not deep enough to maim but enough to make her stagger mid-air. Blood sprayed violet and steaming.
The dragon’s tail whipped at him like a battering ram, but the tiger armor reacted, claws digging into stone as Stephan grabbed the tail mid-swing. His boots skidded trenches into the ground, his muscles screamed, but with a roar of defiance, he twisted and flung the dragon off balance. The sight was monstrous, a man tossing a beast that dwarfed him a hundredfold.
Asriel crashed into the ground, earth splitting from the impact. The shockwave nearly threw Stephan off his feet, but he was already moving, already upon her, his sword raised high.
The dragon slashed upward with her talons. Sparks and flame burst as claw met blade, each clash thunderous, shaking the ruins around them. Stephan slipped under a swipe, driving his knee, armored like a predator’s skull, into her chest. The dragon roared in pain, a sound that rattled the skies.
"You’re not invincible anymore," Stephan snarled, swinging his sword in a brutal arc. This time, he aimed not at her body but at her wing.
The black flame carved cleanly. For the first time, Asriel screamed in genuine agony. The blade ripped through bone and sinew, severing the left wing in a geyser of violet blood. The appendage crashed onto the ruined battlefield with a sickening thud, twitching once before going still.
Asriel staggered, her massive form collapsing partially to the ground, one wing dragging uselessly in the dirt while the other tried to steady her bulk.
Stephan stood in front of her, chest heaving, tiger armor snarling in rhythm with his own breath. Blood dripped from his blade, sizzling into the dust. His eyes, glowing like the beast he now embodied, locked onto hers.
He had finally drawn blood. Asriel staggered, violet blood dripping from the ragged stump where her wing had once been. Her titanic frame trembled with fury, her breath coming in harsh, rumbling growls. Her glowing eyes burned with a madness that chilled even the air around them.
"You dare..." her voice thundered, layered with both her dragon form and the woman’s echo beneath it. "You dare defile me!"
Stephan didn’t flinch. The tiger armor snarled with him, its spectral jaws snapping in rhythm with his own grin. His blade still hummed with the souls he’d forged into it, each one resonating like a war drum in his veins.
"You are weak, simple," Stephan said, pointing his sword at her. "I finish what I start."
The dragon’s body convulsed as her aura raged violently outward, shaking the ground and tearing apart what little remained of the ruined chamber. Her jaws opened wide, violet light swirling inside like a sun being born. The glow grew brighter, hotter, the air warping under its intensity. Rocks cracked. The earth burned where drops of her saliva fell.
Stephan narrowed his eyes. "She’s about to unleash everything she has left."
The black tiger energy around him pulsed, pressing him to act before that inferno consumed him. His fingers tightened around the hilt. He had been saving this gamble, an evolution of his Whiplash, one he had never tested. Now was the time.
He planted his stance, lowering his body until the ground beneath cracked from the weight of his focus. Dark flame surged down his sword, then whipped outward in a coil like a living serpent of black fire. Unlike before, this Whiplash didn’t merely arc, it spiraled, faster, tighter, vibrating with compressed destruction. It howled like a beast uncaged.
Asriel’s glow reached its peak. The light in her maw transformed into a burning sphere, a violet star that made shadows flee. With a roar that split the heavens, she unleashed it, a torrent of annihilation blasting forward, wide enough to erase the land itself.
Stephan roared back, swinging his blade.
"WHIPLASH: BLACK TIGER STRIKE!"
The coiling flame-serpent launched from his sword, spiraling forward like a predator pouncing on prey. It met Asriel’s violet inferno head-on.
The world screamed.
The collision wasn’t just light and fire, it was two wills crashing. The black tiger tore into the violet blaze, snapping jaws of flame clamping down as if trying to devour the blast itself. The violet fire surged back with overwhelming force, shoving against the black serpent, threatening to consume it whole.
The ground shattered, exploding into shards as shockwaves ripped outward. Dust and debris were hurled into the air. The sky above split with cracks of violet and black light that arced like lightning, painting the battlefield in chaos.
Stephan’s boots dug trenches into the earth as he held his blade, veins bulging, sweat and blood running down his face. "I... won’t... lose!"
Asriel’s voice boomed from behind the inferno, savage and desperate. "You are NOTHING before me!"
The two forces pressed, neither giving ground, a clash of annihilation locked in stalemate.
The battlefield trembled, as if waiting to see which god would fall first.