Lorne stepped forward, letting the lava beast's gaping, fang-filled maw bite down hard on his right arm.
The beast's mountain-sized head plunged, its dark red fangs tracing a scorching arc through the air as it swallowed his entire right arm in searing lava.
"Lorne!"
Kuina's pupils contracted sharply. She lunged half a step forward, her right hand already on Wado Ichimonji's hilt.
Looking at his lava-wrapped right arm, she felt her heart skip a beat and could not help shouting, "Are you insane? Why didn't you dodge?"
To her, this was outright suicide. No matter how strong Lorne's body was, it could not withstand these hellish flames passed down for hundreds upon thousands of years.
Beside her, Olsen was so terrified that he collapsed straight to the ground, both hands clawing desperately at the rock beneath him, tears and snot mingling in his fear.
"It's over! Lord Lorne's arm is going to melt!"
The old scholar shut his eyes in despair, not daring to watch what came next.
"This is a guardian beast of the Mouth of the Underworld! Its teeth carry the flames of hell. A mortal would turn to ash at a single touch!"
Olsen's voice shook uncontrollably.
Yet the expected gruesome sight of flesh torn from bone never came. Only a piercing metallic scraping rang through the air.
The beast's sharp fangs were wedged tightly between Lorne's muscles and bones. No matter how fiercely it swung its head, it could not bite through that right arm.
A humanlike bewilderment flashed through the beast's fireball eyes.
It did not understand why the bones of this seemingly tiny human were harder than any metal it had ever bitten through.
Lorne's skin sizzled under the magma's heat, but there was no pain on his face. Instead, he grinned and burst