Chapter 102: The Heavy Shadow and the Obsidian Terror
Three days had passed since the Gate of Silence closed behind them. Three days since they left the desert behind to be swallowed by the suffocating immensity of the Sea of Beasts.
Here, the concept of day and night was an illusion. The sky was permanently blocked by a canopy of leaves the size of warships and vines thick as trunks that intertwined like petrified snakes. The air wasn't breathed; it was chewed. It was a thick, wet mixture of tropical humidity, narcotic pollen, and the sweet, putrid stench of rotting meat. The forest itself felt like an immense digestive tract, patiently waiting to dissolve them.
On the third night of marching, the group established an ephemeral camp in the hollow of a titanic root protruding from the black earth. They didn't light a fire. In the Sea of Beasts, light was an invitation to death.
Kael Morningstar sat at the edge of the darkness, the Whisper of the North resting on his knees. It was his watch. Elara had woven a thin dome of Frost Mist around him, just enough to hide his thermal signature without the cold giving away his position.
Kael closed his eyes, synchronizing the beats of his Sword Heart with the vibrations of the ground.
Suddenly, the temperature at his feet dropped abruptly below freezing. It wasn't Elara's frost. It was an existential cold—the kind of cold born when life is eradicated. Kael didn't move, but slowly opened his eyes.
He looked at his own shadow, faintly cast by the bioluminescence of nearby poisonous mushrooms. His shadow felt... heavy. It was no longer a simple two-dimensional reflection of light; it was dense, dark as tar, and emitted a dull hum that only his swordsman's instinct could detect. A very faint smell of ozone, ash, and rusted blood floated in the air for a microsecond and then disappeared.
Kael offered an almost imperceptible smile.
Golden Oasis had fallen. Malak had finished the purge, executing the alchemists and emissaries who dared to conspire against the comatose Dragon, and had returned—crossing hundreds of kilometers in the blink of an eye through the shadow plane—to anchor himself once again to the expedition's rearguard.
The Sovereign of the Scythe was back at his post as invisible guardian angel. The clan was safe from the rats, and now, the wolves could focus on their own hunt.
At "dawn"—which in the Sea of Beasts only meant absolute darkness transitioning to a grayish gloom—the group resumed their march.
Advancing through this territory wasn't walking; it was trench warfare against the flora.
Bren (Sequence 19) was at the tip of the spear. The giant wasn't trying to be stealthy. He carried his basilisk-scale tower shield raised in front of him, acting as a human battering ram. His body was imbued with the density of the Iron Mountain.
With every step, Bren snapped vines as thick as human thighs that tried to strangle them. He trampled pale bone-roots protruding from the ground like trapper's spears. When a patch of Qi-Devouring Lilies—giant blue flowers that expelled a paralyzing acid—blocked their path, Bren didn't detour. His arm was covered in burning obsidian, and he delivered a dull blow to the earth. The magmatic heat instantly cooked the flowers' roots, withering them and turning their acidic bulbs to harmless ash before they could spit. Bren forced the jungle open with brute strength, an organic tank clearing the route so Kael and the girls could conserve their energy.
While Bren dominated the ground, the sky belonged to the sniper.
Varian (Sequence 21) moved fifty meters above them, leaping from branch to branch in the dense canopy with the agility of a ghost. His eyes glowed with an electric yellow. [Eagle Vision] filtered through the undergrowth, the camouflage of minor beasts, and airborne toxins.
Varian stopped dead on a black wood branch. His vertical pupils constricted. Three kilometers away, he detected an unnatural alteration in the flows of Qi and wind. There was a clearing, an area free of beasts, but saturated with human energy signatures.
Varian free-fell and landed soundlessly next to Kael.
—"Three kilometers north," —Varian reported in a low voice, his tone analytical and impassive—. "It's one of the forest's rare dead zones. A clearing. There's an anomaly of natural spiritual pressure that repels minor beasts—a temporary refuge. But it's occupied."
Kael raised his hand, halting Bren's march. Violeta and Eris approached immediately.
—"Numbers and levels?" —Kael asked.
—"About twenty individuals," —Varian replied, adjusting the tension on his bone bow—. "Fifteen of them hover around Stage 3 and 4 of the Origin Realm. Mercenaries or bodyguards. In the center, there is an Origin Stage 5 signature. They are interrogating or torturing what appear to be independent merchants. Their robes bear the emblem of the Iron Fang Sect."
Violeta crossed her arms, her single exposed eye analyzing the data.
—"Iron Fang. It's one of the strong beast-tamer sects of the Northern Alliance. They aren't an Empire, but they have a couple of True Saints and maybe a Great Saint Ancestor. Rich, arrogant, and territorial."
Eris snorted, black sparks dancing between her fingers. —"Rich or not, they bleed the same. We crush them and take the clearing to rest."
—"No," —Kael cut her off, his voice low and calculating—. "We didn't come to clean the jungle of idiots. But if they're from a high-ranking sect, they have information. They know where the big fish are operating. Varian, stay in the shadows of the trees and cover us. Bren, at my back. Violeta, Eris, with me. We're going in through the front door. I want answers."
The "Traveler's Rest" was an immense circular clearing covered in limestone and white moss. Indeed, a subtle pressure, emanating from ancient subterranean ruins, kept the monsters at bay.
In the center of the clearing, the camp was set up. The bodyguards of the Iron Fang Sect, dressed in armor made from fangs and mutated beast leather, clustered around a bonfire. On an improvised throne of wood and monster skulls sat Young Master Draken.
Draken was the living cliché of sectarian nobility. Wild blond hair, sharp golden eyes, and silk robes worth more than the lives of all the mercenaries present. He toyed with a curved Earth-grade dagger while glaring contemptuously at five independent merchants lying bound in the mud, their faces bruised from the beating they had just received.
—"This clearing is my Sect's jurisdiction as long as I am in it," —Draken was saying, kicking one of the merchants—. "Do you think you can take shelter here for free? Leave your storage rings and get out into the forest to be eaten by wolves."
The sound of heavy footsteps crushing the gravel broke the Young Master's amusement.
From the southern thicket, the Morningstar group emerged.
Their obsidian armors, scratched and stained with dried blood and black mud after three days in the green hell, contrasted violently with the imperial neatness. Their faces were partly hidden by hoods, but the killing intent they exuded was so thick that the bonfire's flames seemed to shrink.
Fifteen Iron Fang mercenaries drew their weapons instantly, closing ranks around their Young Master.
Draken stood up, his Origin Realm Stage 5 aura bursting with arrogance. He evaluated the outsiders. He didn't recognize their emblems (because the Morningstars wore none visibly). He saw Kael in the front, Bren holding a massive shield, and Violeta and Eris on the sides.
—"Well. It seems the rats from the south are on the loose today," —Draken sneered, his confidence inflated by his numbers—. "If you're looking for shelter, the price just went up."
Kael didn't stop. He walked with a slow, methodical rhythm, halting twenty meters from the guards.
—"We seek answers. Not shelter," —Kael said, his voice raspy, devoid of any human emotion.
Draken let out a laugh. His golden eyes drifted toward Violeta and Eris, roaming over their figures with a lecherous, disgusting desire.
—"Answers, the peasant says. I'll give you an answer. Leave your weapons, your spatial rings, and the two women. Maybe I'll let the men leave with their limbs intact to tell how Young Master Draken showed you mercy."
Silence fell over the clearing.
Kael didn't even look at Draken. He turned his head slightly to his left.
—"Eris."
The order was a single word.
One of Draken's bodyguards, an Origin Stage 4 expert imbued with the spirit of a panther, thought he saw an opening. He lunged forward at blinding speed, aiming his scimitar at Eris's neck to take her hostage and please his master.
Eris didn't draw her weapon. She didn't adopt a defensive stance.
She raised her left hand.
The mercenary entered her range. Eris's hand clamped directly onto the bodyguard's face, her fingers gripping the man's skull in mid-air.
—[Touch of Ash].
A flare of absolute black, dark as the void of the cosmos and with a vibrant white core, erupted from Eris's palm.
There was no heat. There were no dancing flames. Only pure entropic decomposition.
The black fire devoured the Stage 4 mercenary's protective aura in a millisecond. The flesh on the man's face didn't burn; it rotted instantly. His skin, muscles, eyeballs, and the cranial bone itself turned a dry, brittle gray.
The man didn't even have time to scream. His vocal cords turned to dust.
Eris tightened her grip, and the mercenary's entire skull crumbled in her hands like a ball of burnt newspaper. The headless body fell to the ground with a thud, a cloud of gray ash rising from what was once an Origin Realm expert.
Eris shook the gray dust from her fingers, a lopsided, bored, and terrifying smile crossing her face as the black fire died out.
The fourteen remaining mercenaries stumbled backward, the color draining from their faces. They had never seen fire magic that acted like death itself. The smell of ozone and rapid putrefaction flooded the clearing.
Draken took a step back, terror replacing arrogance. His survival instinct screamed that he had just insulted gods of death.
—"Kill them!" —Draken shrieked, his voice cracking into a falsetto—. "Attack all at once!"
The mercenaries hesitated, but fear of their sect pushed them forward.
Kael Morningstar let out a sigh.
He didn't draw the Whisper of the North. He didn't use his hands. He simply took a step forward and let his Sword Heart stop restraining his aura.
He unleashed his [Sword Intent: Sovereign's Slash], but he didn't channel it into steel. He projected it directly onto the atmosphere of the clearing.
It was as if an invisible guillotine the size of a mountain had fallen on the necks of everyone present. The conceptual pressure of a genius at peak Stage 8 crushed reality itself.
The fourteen Stage 3 and 4 mercenaries were smashed to the ground instantly. The limestone crunched beneath their bodies. Many passed out from the pressure on their brains; others vomited blood, their internal organs bruised by the sheer weight of Kael's killing intent.
Draken, being at Stage 5, tried to resist. He invoked his beast sect Qi, his muscles bulging. But it was useless. Kael's Sovereign's Will wasn't brute force; it was an authoritarian law.
Draken's knees buckled with a wet snap. He fell to his knees on the ground. The pressure on his chest was so astronomical he felt his lungs were going to burst. He spat a massive mouthful of dark blood, his golden eyes filled with absolute panic as he watched Kael's armored boots approach.
Kael stopped in front of the Young Master. He raised his heavy boot and planted it directly on Draken's throat, pinning him against the blood-and-ash-stained ground.
—"You chose the wrong prey, boy," —Kael whispered, his low, raspy voice echoing straight into Draken's soul—. "We are the masters of this path. And you are in the way."
—"Wh... who... are you?" —Draken managed to choke out, tears of pain and humiliation mixing with the blood on his face.
—"The ones asking the questions." —Kael applied a fraction more weight to his boot, making Draken's windpipe creak in warning—. "Speak. Where is the Star Dragon Root?"
Draken, realizing he was a millimeter away from having his neck crushed, vomited all the information without hesitation.
—"In the Inner Zone! The Valley of Thunder!" —Draken sobbed, desperate to breathe—. "But you can't get in! The Heavenly Sword Sect and the Alchemy Pavilion have cordoned off the valley! They have Stage 7 and 8 experts... dozens of them! They are hunting the Guardian Beast of the root! They will kill you on sight if you get close!"
Violeta and Kael exchanged a quick glance.
The Heavenly Sword Sect and the Alchemy Pavilion. Two giants of the Northern Alliance. They were facing a top-tier military coalition.
Kael removed his boot from Draken's throat and bent down, cutting the ropes of the five captive merchants with a small dagger from his belt.
—"Get out," —he ordered the merchants, who fled in terror into the jungle without looking back.
Draken coughed violently, scrambling backward.
—"My sect will hear about this!" —he growled weakly, the venom of wounded pride overriding his common sense.
Kael looked at him with pure pity. Drawing his sword to kill a worm that was already broken was an insult to the blade.
—"Then tell them to come. We still have room to bury idiots."
Without another word, Kael, Eris, Violeta, and Bren turned and plunged back into the thicket of the Sea of Beasts, disappearing into the mist Elara raised again, as if they had never been there. Varian, from the heights, covered their retreat until they were kilometers away.
In the blood-and-ash-bathed clearing, it took Young Master Draken ten minutes to be able to stand up. Around him, his bodyguards lay unconscious, groaning, or dead.
The humiliation burned his insides more than the physical blows. He had been forced to kneel like a stray dog.
Trembling with rage and pain, he rummaged through his stained robes and pulled out a red jade talisman—a direct emergency communicator with the Iron Fang Sect Headquarters. He infused his chaotic Qi into the gem.
The red light blinked. A deep, raspy, cruel voice—the voice of the General commanding his father's mercenary forces—answered.
"Young Master? You were supposed to keep a low profile in the peripheral zone."
—"Send me the Elite mercenaries!" —Draken screamed at the talisman, spitting bloody saliva—. "I want the Iron Claw Squad and a Semi-Saint immediately!"
"What happened?" the General demanded, his tone turning cold.
—"Some desert demons! Bastards dressed in obsidian armor massacred my guard! They have no mercy! They use black fire magic that rots flesh, and the leader almost crushed me just with his damn sword pressure. They are on their way to the Valley of Thunder to steal the Alliance's Root!"
Draken squeezed the talisman until his knuckles turned white.
—"I want their heads impaled before nightfall! Bring me those damn obsidian demons!"
Several kilometers away, hidden in the hollow of a millennial tree, the Morningstar group evaluated the extracted intelligence.
Kael drew a rudimentary map in the mud with a stick.
—"The Valley of Thunder. It's besieged. Heavenly Sword and the Alchemy Pavilion will have blocked all logical passes with arrays and Stage 7 and 8 guards. A frontal assault against dozens of experts is suicide. We are not an invading army."
Violeta nodded, her tactical mind processing the options.
—"What's the plan then? Dimensional infiltration?"
—"No. We'll use the vultures as a shield," —Kael smiled, a predatory grimace—. "The great sects believe they can kill the Guardian Beast without suffering casualties. They are arrogant. We're going to let them. Let them fight. Let the beast tear through their defenses and cost them liters of blood."
Elara sharpened her mist daggers, understanding the angle.
—"And when the beast is dead and the sects are exhausted, singing victory..."
—"We will step out of the shadows," —Eris finished, her fist smoking—. "We decapitate them from behind, steal the Root, and disappear before their corpses hit the ground."
Kael nodded, his gaze fixed on the mud map.
—"Exactly. Let the Alliance do the dirty work. We are just the jackals who will reap the benefits. Let's move. The Patriarch is running out of time."
The obsidian demons merged back into the darkness of the jungle, walking straight into the eye of the hurricane.