Author: Tricia best

2026-01-02 01:39:29

Chapter 76: The Last Green Dot

‘What the fuck are they doing…?’

Kael stood on the ridge of a shattered settlement, the air thick with the scent of iron and rot. Through the filter of his mana-sense, the world below glowed in spectral colors: red for threats, green for the living. Only one green dot remained amid a sea of red.

But the red ones were wrong. They moved like people, twitched like people, tore at flesh like beasts. Humanoid monsters, wrapped in blood and shadow, gnawed on what used to be civilians. The screams had long since ended, leaving only the wet chorus of teeth grinding through meat.

Even at full speed, Kael hadn’t made it in time. The settlement had fallen before his boots touched dirt. Civilians everywhere, no real defenders, no proper mana shields—just a feeding ground for nightmares.

The creatures pulsed with mana so thick it warped the air. High-level, easily in the one-eighties, maybe

Continue to read this book for free

Scan the code to download the app

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

81
Chapter 81: Coffin Beneath the DirtKael moved through the uneven hills with the careful irritation of a man who knew exactly where the problem was and deeply resented that it existed at all, his awareness stretched across the terrain as clusters of hostile red marks burned patiently on his mental map, all of them gathered together like idiots waiting to be scolded, and he made absolutely certain that no curious soul or well meaning hero was tailing him because this was personal, messy, and very much a one man inconvenience that he intended to finish without witnesses.The land itself seemed wrong the closer he drew, the ground rising and falling in shallow waves as if the earth had once tried to escape and failed, and when the first shapes revealed themselves, crawling out of shadow and rot, Kael felt that familiar, tired click of recognition settle into place because these things were not shadows, not truly, but imitations stitched together from death and bad dec
80
Chapter 80: SimilarKael lay beside the crackling fire, his body trembling under the lingering ache of exhaustion. The System had forced him to “train” for four relentless hours, and he now looked like someone who’d wrestled with death and barely crawled back. His hair clung damply to his forehead, and his breaths came shallow, smoky in the cold air.To make matters worse, he could feel the weight of two gazes fixed on him. The longer it went on, the more uncomfortable it became.Bored and sore, Kael finally turned his attention toward Astraea. Talking seemed better than sinking further into the silence. He didn’t know much about this world, about its customs or its strange truths, but she fascinated him—too quiet, too composed, too otherworldly.He wanted to ask her something simple, something that wouldn’t sound foolish. Yet before he could, she moved first.Astraea approached the firelight and sat beside him. Her silver eyes shimm
79
Chapter 79: Cold ---Kael sat in front of the fire, staring into it as if the flames could explain why the silver-haired woman across from him wouldn’t stop staring at him like a particularly interesting ghost.‘She’s still staring at me,’ he thought, trying not to meet her eyes again.The cave was quiet except for the occasional crackle of burning wood. Night had fully claimed the forest outside, leaving only the trembling halo of the campfire. Orin seemed calmer now, the madness in his eyes cooled into something that almost resembled rest.But Astraea... she was something else entirely. A presence that shouldn’t exist. A fragment of his past wearing human shape.Kael could feel the connection between them — not imagined, not metaphorical, but stitched through the soul like a needle through scar tissue. The memory she awakened in him was too vivid to dismiss, yet too incomplete to understand.When he finally looked back, sh
78
Chapter 78: The Odd Woman[Kael’s POV]“How does it taste?”Kael didn’t even have the luxury of answering before his body decided to violently betray him. He bent forward and vomited everything onto the stone floor of the cave, the sound echoing wetly in the cold air. That made it the fourth monster he’d ruined today. Four steaming piles of culinary failure, each more inedible than the last.They looked edible enough—beast-like, muscular things that probably considered him a snack in another life—but once he cooked them, every bite tasted like rotten mana condensed into despair.Orin had already fallen asleep deeper in the cave, curled against the wall like an overgrown cat. The cave itself was safe, wrapped in a natural mana flow that repelled beasts. Kael should’ve been at peace. Should’ve been, if not for the yellow dot blinking on his Halo’s minimap, a few dozen meters away.The dot hadn’t moved. It just watched.“Wh
Chapter 77: Safe
Chapter 77: Safe---Kael had been walking for what felt like forever, the weight of the small, unconscious child slung across his shoulder pressing into his bones like a punishment he didn’t remember earning. Two hours. Maybe more. His map promised a stretch of grassy serenity up ahead, but right now it all felt like the same dry, corpse-colored earth, sighing under the heat of a sun that refused to die.The kid hadn’t stirred once, not even a grunt of awareness—just the occasional twitch or mumble, like he was wrestling ghosts in his dreams.Kael exhaled. “Should I just leave this kid here? My shoulder’s starting to ache.”He said it with his usual sarcasm, the kind that made it hard to tell whether he meant it or not. But the boy must have heard the words somewhere deep inside that sleeping shell, because he jerked awake so violently he almost crashed face-first into the dirt.Kael caught him mid-fall by the foot. “You c
76
Chapter 76: The Last Green Dot ‘What the fuck are they doing…?’ Kael stood on the ridge of a shattered settlement, the air thick with the scent of iron and rot. Through the filter of his mana-sense, the world below glowed in spectral colors: red for threats, green for the living. Only one green dot remained amid a sea of red. But the red ones were wrong. They moved like people, twitched like people, tore at flesh like beasts. Humanoid monsters, wrapped in blood and shadow, gnawed on what used to be civilians. The screams had long since ended, leaving only the wet chorus of teeth grinding through meat. Even at full speed, Kael hadn’t made it in time. The settlement had fallen before his boots touched dirt. Civilians everywhere, no real defenders, no proper mana shields—just a feeding ground for nightmares. The creatures pulsed with mana so thick it warped the air. High-level, easily in the one-eighties, maybe

You may also like

WHIT

CHEAT IN STONE AGE

The Chronicles of a Mage God

A Dream Harem Life Built With Superior Firepower

AGED

Arcane Alchemy:The forbidden Rites

The Voice

The Mystery Of The Ancient Gate

Latest Chapter

81

80

79

78

Chapter 77: Safe

76