The Profane Mechanism Fortress (Boss Fight)

The gears roared as if the tower itself awakened to bear witness.

Chains rattled, the cages overhead groaned, and from the throne of veins and steel, Arkan Thélemor rose.

His lab coat, torn and soaked with blood, clung to his pallid body like the shroud of a failed priest. Black veins crawled up his neck beneath crooked spectacles. His lips pulled back, revealing crimson-stained fangs that dripped with chemical saliva.

“Subjects,” he hissed, spreading his arms like a conductor before a choir. “Finally, my research may advance!”

Ayato’s grip tightened on his weapon, the corners of his mouth curving in bitter defiance.

“You talk too much for a doctor. Let’s skip the consultation, shall we?”

Thélemor chuckled, twisting the screw in his temple until his skull clicked.

“You are not a subject, Lone-Demon. You are the asymmetry itself. The unbalanced equation. A paradox walking on stolen flesh. When I dissect you, science will rise above gods and destiny alike.”

He snapped his fingers.

Bisturís spun from the walls like serrated coins, whistling through the air.

Madelis dove behind a bench with a delighted laugh. “Now this is more like it!”

Isolde's rapier flashed, deflecting a sword before cleaving one of Vera's magic books in two.

Sylphidia groaned, clutching her head. “Ugh, even his décor is trying to kill me…”

Then came massive syringes hurled like spears, shattering against the iron floor and spilling rivers of hissing acid. Steam rose, burning their lungs.

“Move!” Ayato barked, shoving Vera aside as a chain lashed down between them. Sparks spat from the hook as Thélemor dragged it back with a manic grin.

Isolde deflects them with her rapier, although one grazes her arm.

He was still speaking, as if each strike were a footnote in his grand thesis.

“Observe how flesh yields to method. How life is no more sacred than a mechanism!”

Ayato snarled. “You sound more like a butcher than a genius.”

Ayato lunges forward, blocking a scalpel with his weapon and responding with a quick slash that slices off part of the bloody robe.

But then, Thélemor turned toward the cages. One hand plunged a syringe into a prisoner’s arm, draining him dry in seconds. The other hand injected the fluid into his own veins. His body shuddered with ecstasy as black lines flared under his skin, closing wounds instantly.

Dakim’s voice thundered. “Heretic! You drink blood like a beast and dare to mock the divine?”

Thélemor’s glasses cracked as he laughed, fangs glistening.

"Beast? No, paladin. Evolution."

Dakim roars a prayer, lunging to break the chain with a blow of his hammer, freeing the dying prisoner.

This angers Thélemor: "You deny me my continuity? Then you shall drown in entropy!"

Madelis takes advantage of the chaos to throw an explosive flask, burning part of the robe and scorching the tyrant's side.

Thélemor laughs, pulling out the syringe and reloading another. “Even alchemy bows to science, girl.”

The battle raged, but the strikes against his body began to mount. Costuras snapped open along his arms, glowing red like molten iron. His smile faltered, then widened into something inhuman.

“…So be it. If refinement fails… let raw power reign.”

He seized every remaining syringe, stabbing them into his flesh all at once. Tubes ruptured, spilling rivers of blood across the floor. 

The throne behind him exploded in sparks, the laboratory trembling under the strain.

A roar tore from his throat, layered with countless voices—the screams of the souls imprisoned in his body.

Vera conjures a makeshift energy shield to cover the still-staggering Sylphidia.

His lab coat ripped apart, falling in bloody tatters. Muscles swelled grotesquely, plates of iron bulging through skin like armor. Cables writhed from his ribs, lashing as if alive. His jaw split too wide, exposing rows of implanted steel fangs.

One arm twisted, bloating until it became a maul of meat and iron, heavy enough to crack the floor with a single test swing.

His breath wheezed like a broken furnace, each exhale a plume of steam.

Sylphidia stumbled back, pale. “Oh, gods… he’s—he’s not even human anymore!”

Vera clutched her book with trembling hands. “He never was.”

Thélemor slammed the ground, sending a shockwave that hurled them off their feet. The walls cracked, cages collapsing in showers of chains.

No words now, no philosophy. Only the guttural roar of a beast driven by hatred and hunger. Yet even amid his frenzy, his eyes locked onto Ayato.

“You are the flaw!” the monster bellowed, his voice tearing with static. “The mistake that must be erased!”

Ayato spat blood, dragging himself up with a grin that mirrored the monster’s rage.

“Then come try, doctor. Let’s see if your machine can break what’s already broken.”

The tower shuddered, black candles snuffed by the force of his next swing.

The battle had only just begun.

"Judgment day has come for you, scum!" Dakim shouts, using the Ashen Lash to attack and immobilize the Unholy Artificer while alternating between using his sword and spear.

However, the Infernal Tyrant delivers a powerful blow with his flesh-and-iron mace and weakens Dakim in a single blow, shattering the ground and creating a crater in the process.

Thummm!

Vera is the first to fall to her knees, trembling as she hears the voices of the damned.

Ayato resists the roar with a bitter laugh: "You think I don't live with voices screaming in my head anymore?"

Bwooom!

Kraash!

Swish!

Isolde, still badly wounded, responds with a direct slash to the seams of the monstrous arm, unleashing a jet of red energy that wounds the tyrant more than expected.

The tower vibrates with each impact, the glass of the tubes shatters, and the freed prisoners groan in an agonized chorus.

Thélemor bleeds from both flesh and steel, his movements increasingly erratic, between the lucidity of the scientist and the rage of the monster.

The monster was barely hanging on. His breathing sounded like rusty bellows, his mace-arm hung halfway, shattered by Ayato's slashes. 

Yet he still struck with devastating force, driven by pure rage and denial.

“You… are not perfection! You are the ruin of symmetry itself! A paradox! A mistake of science and god alike!”

“And yet… I’m still standing.”

With a desperate movement, he concentrates everything in a slash toward the tyrant’s stitched chest.

The blade rips the last seams, and a crimson glow erupts from them: the trapped souls escape in an explosion of screams and ethereal flames, exposing their core.

Ayato uses one of the few bullets from his revolver, which he bought from Madelis, to deliver the final blow, destroying Arkan’s core.

Thélemor staggers back, his body beginning to crumble into flesh, iron, and energy.

Uwaaaagh!

The tower trembles with its fall, and the echo of the freed souls shakes the walls until they crack.

The air thickens. Thélemor's corpse disintegrates in a black and crimson vortex seeking a receptacle.

"Back!" Isolde shouted, pulling Vera against the wall.

The others instinctively retreat.

His scream echoes like the roar of a beast:

He falls to his knees, the sword stuck in the ground as his only support. Reddish and blue sparks run through his skin: the electromagnetism of the "Tyrant's soul" grafted into his flesh.

Ayato gasps, staring at his hands glowing with red and blue currents. A vast, brutal, uncontrollable power.

"...What the hell are you now, Ayato?"

"The usual. A mistake that doesn't know how to die."

Sylphidia bursts into nervous laughter, though her face is still pale.

Madelis raised a hand to her face, between laughter and exasperation.

"And to think we'd trust our lives to this lightning-charged idiot..."

The atmosphere, tense with victory, shatters into a mixture of relief and bewilderment.

The laboratory was splintering, the gears were losing their synchronization, and the tower was vibrating with the imminent collapse.

"We survived... right?"

"We survived him. But not the tower, if we're still here."

"There's no time. We must escape now!"

He whispered to himself, in a nearly broken whisper:

No one answered.

The tower creaked, and fate demanded movement.

The true weight had only just begun.