Here is the edited and polished version of chapter 20 Chapter 20 — Ashmaw Horde The wind off the volcanic ridge didn’t just blow; it scraped.
It carried dense, sulfurous ash that burned the back of the throat and left a bitter, metallic coating on the tongue.
Ayomide stood near the crumbling edge of the basalt shelf, his broken iron sword held loosely at his side.
A few paces to his right, Adesewa braced her feet against the heat-cracked stone.
Success hovered two steps behind them, her knuckles white around her weapon, her chest heaving in short, shallow bursts.
Below them lay the lower plaza—a massive, sunken basin of black rock and rivers of sluggish, glowing slag.
And it was crawling.
Ashmaws.
Dozens of them.
Their obsidian-scaled hides absorbed the dim light, cracked with deep crimson veins that pulsed like exposed arteries.
Some prowled around the monolithic white archway at the far end of the basin.
Others simply stood in the drifting smoke, their glowing red eyes locked upward.
“Omo…” Success’s voice cracked, barely audible over the low rumble of the earth.
She swallowed hard, her eyes darting across the sea of black scales.
“That is…
that is too many.” Ayomide didn’t answer.
He didn’t waste oxygen on obvious facts.
His gaze swept the basin, calculating movement speeds, terrain chokepoints, and muscle density.
These weren’t the low-tier scavengers they’d dragged themselves past earlier.
These beasts were broad, built like walking siege engines, their thick obsidian plates clearly meant to deflect heavy impacts.
And then there was the one in the center.
The Alpha.
It towered over the rest, its shoulders twice as broad, its head crowned with curved, soot-stained horns.
Every time its flared nostrils exhaled, sparks showered onto the rocks below.
It wasn’t pacing.
It wasn’t growling.
It just stared directly up at Ayomide, completely unbothered by the chaos around it.
Ayomide glanced sideways.
Adesewa met his eyes.
No words passed between them.
They had bled together enough in the dark to skip the speech-making.
He looked down at her bare feet.
The raw, volcanic blisters that should have rendered her lame were fading, skin knitting back together beneath the layer of soot.
He checked his own hands.
The bone-deep fatigue was still there, but the burning micro-tears in his muscles were quietly repairing themselves.
*That crimson river,* he realized, his jaw tightening slightly.
*It didn’t just drown us.
It left something behind.
A passive recovery rate.* It was slow—too slow to rely on in an active fight—but it meant they weren’t dying from attrition anymore.
“Feet holding up?” Ayomide asked, his voice low.
Adesewa shifted her weight, testing her arch against the hot stone.
She gave a single, firm nod.
“Good,” Ayomide muttered.
He turned his eyes back to the basin.
“Because we aren’t running.” The Alpha raised its head, a deep, sub-vocal rumble shaking dust from the cliffside.
The surrounding horde froze.
Then, with a sudden, deafening roar that vibrated straight through Ayomide’s ribs, the front line charged.
“They’re coming!” Success yelled, taking an instinctive step back.
“Front line,” Ayomide said sharply, his voice cutting through her panic.
“Adesewa and me take the vanguard.
Success—do not try to be a hero.
Hold the slope with your summons.
If anything slips past us, choke them on the incline.” Success bit her lip until it turned pale, then nodded.
“Don’t let them surround me.” Adesewa was already gone.
She dropped off the ledge without hesitation, her body cutting through the rising ash before she hit the ground in a tight roll.
The lead Ashmaw lunged, its massive obsidian claw sweeping horizontally to tear her in half.
Adesewa didn’t jump back.
She ducked under the arc, stepped inside the monster’s reach, and drove a bare fist directly into the soft flesh between its neck plates.
*BOOM!* The creature’s head snapped back.
Without letting it recover, she pivoted, driving her heel into its lead knee.
Bone cracked.
The beast collapsed sideways, bowling into another charging monster.
Success exhaled a shuddering breath from the ridge.
“…She really doesn’t know how to go easy.” A second Ashmaw sprinted toward Adesewa’s exposed flank.
“Move!” Success yelled, extending her hands.
Behind her, the three undead Ashmaws she had bound surged forward, their rotten, kinetic energy slamming into the intruder.
The collision sounded like two boulders dropping into a quarry.
One undead locked its jaws onto the beast’s neck while the other dragged it down by the leg.
Success channeled her Aether through the link, feeling the jagged, hot flow of the beast’s internal structure.
*Wait…
I can reach it.* She pushed her energy through the lead undead.
The creature’s throat swelled, exploding with a short burst of localized superheated air that scorched the living Ashmaw’s eyes.
It reeled back, blind and screaming.
Success stared at her trembling palms.
*I’m not just controlling their bodies…
I can trigger their original skills.* Her focus was shattered as a massive Ashmaw broke through the dust, barreling directly up the narrow slope toward her.
Its jaws were wide, molten saliva dripping onto the rocks.
Her knees locked.
Fear hit her like cold water.
“Ayomide!” A blur of dark steel cut across her field of vision.
Ayomide didn’t try to block the monster’s momentum head-on.
That was a good way to get crushed.
As the claw descended toward his chest, he raised his left hand, his thumb resting against his middle finger.
*Collect.* Snap.
There was no flash of light, no cinematic shockwave.
The downward kinetic vector driving the monster’s heavy arm simply ceased to exist, slamming backward into Ayomide’s own shoulder with a dull, sickening thud that made his teeth rattle.
The claw froze mid-air, its forward momentum vanished into thin air.
The beast stumbled, its eyes widening in sheer, dumbfounded confusion as its center of gravity collapsed.
Success’s breath caught in her throat.
“…What did you just do?” Ayomide ignored her.
He stepped inside the monster’s open guard and slapped his raw, soot-stained palm directly over its cracked chest plate.
“Collect,” he whispered.
*Snap.* He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, reaching into that deep, invisible authority in his soul.
A brutal, agonizing friction ripped up his arm—like pulling heavy iron chains through cold water.
The creature let out a wet, strangled cough.
The glowing crimson cracks along its skin dimmed to a dull, ash-gray, and its rock-hard hide turned brittle, flaking off like old charcoal.
Ayomide felt a sudden surge of physical density flood his own forearms—his skin briefly hardening, his lungs catching a second wind as he pulled the monster’s physical durability directly into his own frame.
He didn’t smile.
He just swallowed the sharp, metallic taste of blood rising in his throat and noted the trade-off.
*It takes the property, not the life,* he thought, pulling his hand back as his forearms throbbed with strain.
*I can’t steal the whole soul in one tap, but I can strip what makes them dangerous.* He kicked the weakened beast’s support leg, sending it crashing onto its side, where Adesewa finished it with a swift, crushing blow to the skull.
She didn’t linger.
She spun, diving back into the sea of black hides.
The battle turned into an ugly, exhausting grind.
Ash storms swept across the plaza, cutting visibility down to a few meters and turning the basalt beneath their feet into a slippery trap of loose gravel.
Adesewa fought like a ghost in the fog—ducking claws, using the monsters’ own massive weight to trip them into one another, her movements precise and ruthlessly efficient.
On the slope, Success was sweating through her clothes, her hands shaking as she pulled more corpses into her network.
“Manifest!” she gasped, her voice hoarse.
A fallen Ashmaw twitched, its crimson eyes flaring with pale, necrotic light as it dragged itself up.
“Manifest!” she called again.
Four.
Six.
Eight.
Eight undead beasts formed a wall of bone and obsidian around her.
She wiped sweat from her eyes, her teeth grinding together.
“Okay…
okay, my turn.” She linked her perception to the lead undead, activating its *Molten Rush*.
Her own body lurched forward, propelled by a sudden burst of borrowed momentum that let her bury her short blade deep beneath a passing monster’s neck plate.
She pulled back instantly, panting, using her undead as living shields whenever a claw swiped back.
Down in the thick of it, Ayomide was surrounded by three beasts at once.
One lunged from the front, its maw gathering a ball of liquid fire.
“Collect,” Ayomide muttered, snapping his fingers.
The fire dissolved into harmless smoke before it could form, though a flash of residual heat scorched his knuckles black.
The beast on the left swung its heavy tail.
“Collect.” Snap.
The tail dropped like a dead log, its speed stolen mid-swing, the impact violently jarring Ayomide’s neck.
Ayomide focused on the third beast—the one that had tried to blast him.
He closed his fingers into a tight fist, reaching deep into the violent, borrowed heat he had just trapped inside his own body.
*Let’s see if the balance clears.* He thrust his hand forward, opening his palm.
A wave of pressurized, superheated air exploded from his hand, mimicking the exact breath attack he had swallowed seconds earlier.
The shockwave tore through the three Ashmaws, shattering their obsidian armor and blowing them back into the dirt—while the recoil drove Ayomide back two paces, his boots gouging deep tracks into the ash.
The air went silent for a single second.
Adesewa paused mid-stride, her soot-stained face turning toward him, her calm expression breaking with genuine shock.
Up on the ridge, Success pointed a trembling finger at him.
“My guy…
are you serious right now?
You are literally stealing their attacks!” Ayomide looked at his palm, feeling the violent burn of raw skin where the heat had discharged.
“It has a high drain cost.
Not practical for crowd control.” Success stared at him, her mouth opening and closing.
“That…
that is your response?
You just turned into a monster!” “Focus on your eight,” Ayomide said coldly, turning his back on her as his chest heaved for air.
“The big one hasn’t moved yet.” The fight dragged on, every minute taking a heavy physical toll.
Adesewa’s movements were slowing down—her dodges becoming tighter, narrower, her breath coming in ragged gasps as she blocked a heavy strike that threw her back several meters through the gravel.
She wiped blood from her lip with the back of her forearm, her eyes never leaving her target as she forced herself back up.
Ayomide’s legs felt heavy, like lead weights had been strapped to his thighs.
His brain felt like it was being scraped with hot wire from the continuous strain of forcing the extractions.
*Too many,* he thought, stepping over another writhing body.
*We can clear the small ones, but we’ll be completely spent before we touch the gate.* Through the thinning ash storm, he looked up.
The Alpha Ashmaw was still standing in front of the white archway.
It hadn’t taken a single step.
It watched its pack die with total indifference, its crimson eyes fixed entirely on Ayomide.
It was waiting for them to wear themselves out on the trash.
Ayomide wiped the soot from his forehead, his fingers tightening around the grip of his broken sword until his knuckles turned white and his forearms trembled from sheer muscle fatigue.
“Adesewa,” he said, his voice dropping into that dark, quiet register.
“Save your strength.
Don’t waste another drop of mana on these ones.” Adesewa didn’t ask why.
She dropped into a low guard, holding off two beasts with minimal movement.
Ayomide stepped past her, walking straight toward the center of the plaza.
The surviving Ashmaws growled, but as he passed, he casually snapped his fingers, draining their kinetic lead before they could leap—each snap sending a dull tremor through his collarbone.
He stopped ten paces from the Alpha.
The massive beast lowered its head, its heavy curved horns pointing straight at his chest.
A low, sub-vocal growl vibrated through the stone beneath Ayomide’s boots.
Ayomide looked at the monster’s immense frame, then down at his own small, broken blade.
*Everything has a price,* he thought, his chest rising and falling in a slow, heavy exhale.
*Let’s see how much your authority costs.* “Your turn,” Ayomide whispered.