The Ashen Chimera closed the fifty-pace distance in zero point eight seconds.
Twenty-four tons of glowing-bronze and black glass slammed into the air above Lin Tao’s head. Its twin fore-claws dropped like high-pressure excavators designed to reduce mortal bones to gray paste. The downdraft from its leap was so violent it tore at Lin Tao’s woolen tunic. It filled his nostrils with the searing stench of boiled stone oil and scorched potion-made graphite.
“Left, three paces!” Lin Tao barked.
He didn’t dodge backward. He pivoted hard on his right heel, sliding laterally across the low-friction black glass floor. Beside him, Tie Shan moved with instant, explosive agility, his four-hundred-pound frame shifting three paces to the west along an exact parallel vector.
BOOM!
The chimera’s claws struck the mirror-polished floor where they had stood half a second earlier. A blast wave of crushed stone dust and orange sparks blasted outward, gouging two-foot craters into the black glass foundation.
The beast’s clockwork spine arched, its internal exhaust ports hissing wildly as its high-pressure accumulators vented high-pressure steam.
TRANSITION: PHASE 01 -> PHASE 03 ANIMATION CALL: ROTATIONAL_TAIL_SWEEP ANGULAR Speed: 840 DEG/SEC PHYSICS THREAD LATENCY: a split second
