The beast lunged at me fiercely and I swept out my weapon with an edge of erasure on it's edge to counter. It moved at the last second causing my strike to dig into it scales under it's chin slightly but otherwise causing no damage. I immediately gave up on the idea of a quick kill at that point and stuck to cursed energy that was bubbling over inside me as the potion did it's job. I considered using cursed energy reinforcement to tank a hit to create an opportunity but dismissed it as a waste of energy.-
Clearly this beast had strong instincts or at the very least a good deal of reactivity and so was unlikely to fall for such a trick so easily. It also didn't help that other than that durability cursed reinforcement was useless to me. This application of cursed energy was all about temporarily increasing the bodies durability, strength and speed beyond human limits but as an adventurer my limits were already so far beyond normal human limits there was no comparison. As a result all I got from this use of the energy was a slightly improved defense.-
'I need a way to force a head on cla...! I'm an idiot.' I thought almost wanting to punch myself in the face once I realized how to fix this stalemate.
With a plan now in mind it was time to put it to the test. The tail of the beast came at me like an unstoppable wave but this time I stood my ground on a small ice platform and flared my cursed energy as I cocked my arm back. This was a gamble but I grinned widely as I was not afraid of taking risks to get what I wanted.-
.00001 seconds before the tail hit me I surged my cursed energy into my weapon and swung.
The impact was explosive as my cursed energy exploded in a dense burst with space itself warping and I grinned widely as my gamble paid off. The tail sweep was entirely negated and the tail even took serious damage from my own strike. That wasn't all though as that black flash had kicked my cursed energy into a state of high performance far beyond what was normal. With my energy I was filled with inspiration and moved my hands subconsciously.
My right hand held perfectly vertical in front of my face with my pinky and ring finger curled around my weapons handle and the last two fingers jutting up and my thumb curled like a hook. My left hand was pointed down under my right hand with the fingers mirroring my other hand in reverse.
"Domain expansion: Hell's forge!" I spoke as my hands took position.
Darkness surged from under my feet and under the surprised monster that didn't have time to react before the bubble of energy fully enclosed the both of us. The moment the bubble closed heat rose as hellfire surged to life in streams flowing along the floor of the domain that was a strange red brick stone. -
The walls of the domain were lined with unfinished weapons and armors while humanoid shapes cried out in agony from the flames flowing through the floors channels to a single massive jagged black anvil that had me standing behind it. I lowered my hands as I understood my domain and how it worked.
'I see, how fitting for the forgemaster of hell.' I thought amused at what I found out.
My domain worked like all domains do by being an extremity of my cursed technique and having all the same abilities but in a far larger area that they could effect at an even higher level than normal. In this case my domain allowed me to "forge" anything from a living source. That meant Amphisbaena itself at this exact moment. Because of the sure hit feature of all domains there wasn't anything the dragon could do to save itself at this moment. With a wave of my hand hellfire surged out of the channels in the floor and covered the dragon before doing something that would have sent terror down the spines of anyone who had seen it, started to remove it's scales and skin.-
My domain worked by my will to strip the still living and very much struggling dragon of it's hide, blood, flesh, organs and bones like a skilled butcher dismantling a cow or pig. These "materials were then flowed through the channels being refined the entire way until they were neatly strung up above the anvil on hooks waiting to be "forged". Black smoke exploded as the dragon died from it's stone being extracted but by then it's entire body had been minorly refined so I got the entire thing.-
By this point however I was shaking in place as my cursed energy ran dangerously low from the sheer amount of resistance the dragon put up before dying. Using my technique on a still living target always cost me much more cursed energy than normal and Amphisbaena wasn't a low leveled monster either so that made this all the more expensive. I was running on dregs at the moment and only the overflow from the potion was keeping me going as I was coming dangerously close to mind zero.-
Once the dragon was dead though I felt a wave of ease come over me as my technique wasn't being resisted anymore. I didn't attempt actually forging the vast amount of materials I got from the dragon though but started stuffing them into my bags for later. The flesh and organs in one bag with the skin and the bones, stone, fangs, crystals and scales in the other two bags. Even after the refinement my domain gave the things my bags were full to the point of almost bursting. I let my domain drop and flopped into the water panting heavily.-
Even exhausted as I was I couldn't help but grin widely as I had not only gotten a massive amount of smoke from the kill but i also had the gut feeling that I qualified for a level up. It was a hard fight after that initial sneak attack to be sure but I won and even created the first iteration of my domain expansion in the process. Oh yes I still had quite the amount of tweaking to do on my domain as I knew immediately it was not perfect.