"Bang—"
Following a loud bang, the door was blasted to pieces, and a biting cold wind poured into the room.
Erlisa rushed into the room, wielding her great scimitar.
At this moment, the dense blood patterns in the room had become very thin, hanging sparsely on the walls.
Bai Shi was currently locked in a fierce battle to the death with Mohg.
Bai Shi's body below the neck was engulfed in bloodflame. He held the Banished Knight's Sword with both hands, continuously hacking gashes deep enough to reveal bone on Mohg's body.
As for the other greatsword, it was clutched tightly in one of Bai Shi's severed arms, stuck diagonally in the ground.
The floor of the room was scattered with many limbs, from small fingers and toes to entire arms and legs—all of them parts from Bai Shi's body.
Mohg, on the other hand, was in a very strange state. A blood-red aura emanated from his body, which had swelled by a size, and the hard horns on him had pierced through his clothes.
Earlier, after discovering that ranged attacks were ineffective at wearing down Bai Shi, Mohg had simply gathered most of the remaining blood in the room into his body.Then, his aura exploded like a Saiyan going Super Saiyan, his entire body radiating a crimson, blood-colored flame.
Mohg had even abandoned his sacred spear, tearing at Bai Shi's body directly with his claws.
The room was too small, making it difficult to maintain sufficient attack distance with the sacred spear. He couldn't even spread his wings.
If he continued using the sacred spear, Bai Shi could easily press forward through his attacks and get in close, subjecting him to a fierce barrage of slashes.
As expected of Godfrey's son?
After abandoning all pretense and choosing to shred Bai Shi with his claws, Mohg's attacks became exceptionally vicious and swift.
He even managed to tear Bai Shi's body apart at one point, scattering his powerful regenerative ability and allowing the bloodflame on Bai Shi's body to burn back up to his head several times.
However, Mohg's own condition was not much better.
His royal robes were hacked to shreds, hanging on him like tattered rags. Compared to the attire of a Lord of Blood, it more closely resembled Morgott's signature beggar's garb.
Most of the hard horns on Mohg's body had been severed, and it was covered in all sorts of wounds.
Mohg had already given up on using cursed blood to repair these trivial wounds, only using it to slightly mend the most severe injuries.
The two continuously inflicted wounds on each other. Skill and technique no longer mattered; this was no longer a battle, but a slaughter.
Both Mohg and Bai Shi had been driven into a frenzy.
They were like two beasts who had locked onto each other's vital points, a fight that would only end when one of them was dead.
But as it happened, both were beings difficult to kill, so they fell into a strange stalemate.
For Mohg, Bai Shi, with his infinite life, was like an immortal being; no matter how he was attacked, he would instantly regenerate.
Meanwhile, in his powered-up state, Mohg's defensive strength had greatly increased. Coupled with the obstruction of his hard horns, Bai Shi found it difficult to inflict a truly fatal wound.
Bai Shi had 46 seconds of infinite life remaining, and Mohg's supply of cursed blood was nearly depleted.
The battle was nearing its end. Who would live and who would die depended on who first lost their life-preserving ability.
But Erlisa's intrusion broke the stalemate and decided the outcome of this slaughter.
Erlisa paid no mind to why this other figure was in the room, nor why Bai Shi regenerated instantly after being dismembered.
She only knew that she had to immediately gain control of the blood filling the room, as it was clearly an environment that favored the enemy.
Without a moment's hesitation after bursting into the room, Erlisa plunged her scimitar into the blood on the floor, summoning an even colder wind.
Mohg was distracted, trying to control the blood to interrupt Erlisa, but Bai Shi immediately seized the opportunity, thrusting his greatsword upward toward Mohg's chin.
If this strike landed, Mohg's head would be pierced straight through. Such an injury would instantly kill even a clone.
Mohg had no choice but to lean back to evade, and in the end, the sword only left a hideous gash on his face.
Not to be outdone, Mohg took the opportunity to tear off Bai Shi's left arm with one of his claws. But Erlisa, uninterrupted, had already summoned ice and snow.
This room was much smaller than the evergaol, and Erlisa was not in the weakened state she had been in back then.
The temperature in the room plummeted, and the flow of blood slowed. The blood spikes that had just shot toward Erlisa froze in mid-air.
The blood-red aura on Mohg's body and the blizzard constantly canceled each other out, consuming what little blood he had left.
Mohg wanted to kill Erlisa immediately, thaw the frozen blood, reabsorb all of it, and power himself up once more.
But he was pinned down by Bai Shi, completely unable to move.
Mohg gritted his teeth. If he hadn't consumed so much blood, that Zamor woman would never have been able to freeze the blood in the room so easily.
Before the blood could freeze, she would have been impaled by blood spikes and shredded by blood blades.
Unfortunately, there were no "ifs." The moment he failed to interrupt Erlisa's spell, his defeat was sealed.
The balance was broken. Under the dual assault of Bai Shi and Erlisa, Mohg's body began to disintegrate.
"Tarnished! I'll remember you! The Mohgwyn Dynasty will remember you!"
"I underestimated you this time, but next time, I shall return like a clap of thunder!"
With Mohg's roar, the cursed blood that formed this clone ignited into bloodflame, erasing all traces of its existence.
Only a stream of pure Runes was left behind, slowly flowing into Bai Shi's body.
Bai Shi let out a sigh of relief. He had been just one step away from Mohg forcing him to use his Fengling Yueying again.
It was just a shame that Mohg still hadn't broken the record set by the Grafted Scion.
There were still five seconds of infinite life left, enough for his body to extinguish the bloodflame.
Without Mohg's magic to sustain it, the bloodflame was quite ordinary. It wasn't like Amaterasu from the Naruto set next door.
It disappeared completely from Bai Shi's body in just a second or two.
Bai Shi looked at his body. It was completely unharmed, but he felt a strange sense of unfamiliarity.
After all, his limbs had been torn off and regrown; nearly every part of him had been replaced.
Erlisa thoughtfully draped her cloak over Bai Shi, relieving his embarrassment of being stark naked.
—
In the faraway Mohgwyn Dynasty deep underground, Mohg perceived the experiences transmitted by his clone, his expression one of disbelief.
He, the magnificent Lord of Blood, had made a rare personal move, only to fail!
And that Tarnished, to possess such an outlandish ability, to be able to recover his body so rapidly.
Mohg's face darkened.
This time, his face had been revealed, which displeased him greatly.
However, even if he was exposed, so what?
He, Mohg, was one of the most powerful demigods. Why would he fear the mere exposure of his identity?
What did it matter if he came out right now and raised the banner of rebellion against the Erdtree?
Mohg was merely waiting for Miquella to be nurtured by cursed blood into a god of the Mohgwyn Dynasty before he made his move to supplant the Golden Order.
It didn't mean he could only remain hidden.
With the current strength of the Mohgwyn Dynasty, it was entirely possible to conquer the Royal Capital. After all, he knew a secret way to reach the capital's sewers.
It was only because Miquella had not yet awakened. Even if he captured the capital, he couldn't truly become king, which was why Mohg hadn't made his move.
Right now, Malenia and Radahn were both gravely wounded from their battle, the Queen of the Full Moon was imprisoned due to the academy's betrayal, Ranni was nowhere to be found, and Rykard's volcano had long been crushed by the capital's forces.
As for Godrick, what was he even worth?
On the path to rebelling against the Golden Order, the only one Mohg had to be wary of was his brother, Morgott, the "Grace-Given King."
From Mohg's perspective, directly rebelling against the Golden Order truly wouldn't be difficult. After all, he didn't know about Godfrey, Radagon, and the Elden Beast, nor did he know that the Erdtree had thorns.