Rise Of The Monster Slayer

Chapter 9: Pursuit of Power

The roar came again.

It rolled through the forest like a wave. Not a sound that belonged to any living throat. Something older. A hurricane shrieking through stone.

The sky darkened. The purple clouds churned toward the mountains. The air in the clearing went thin.

The Alpha's ears snapped flat against its skull. The beast flinched.

Aren watched the apex predator of the deep woods tuck its tail between its legs.

It did not look up at him again. It did not growl. It scrambled over the shattered trunk and sprinted into the underbrush. It fled toward the outer edges of the forest, away from the deep woods.

Silence dropped back over the clearing.

Aren stayed on the branch for a full minute. His breath came hard. He lowered his daggers. He stared at the muddy trenches the Alpha had left behind.

He was alive.

The Alpha was prey. Something bigger hunted here. A beast that required platoons of elite hunters was itself running from something worse.

If an Alpha ran for its life, what chance did a human with bone knives have?

He needed the tenth core. Tonight. Before whatever made that sound swept through this part of the forest.

He dropped from the branch. His boots hit the mud without a sound. He pushed the fear out of his mind and sprinted into the dark woods, away from the fleeing Alpha.

He activated shadow vision. The forest shifted into grayscale.

He scanned the ground as he moved. Most of the wildlife had gone to ground. They had buried themselves in mud or retreated into caves. The forest was a graveyard.

Hours passed.

Then he caught a scent.

He stopped. He dropped low. He moved through a patch of glowing ferns and followed the trail.

Fifty yards ahead, half-buried in the rotting roots of a dead tree, was a Scavenger Crawler. The armored centipede dug its legs into the earth. It tried to bury itself. It wanted to escape the same pressure that had sent the Alpha running.

Aren did not hesitate. He needed the core.

He gripped his daggers. He triggered shadow burst.

The Crawler's senses caught him anyway. Its head whipped around. Its mandibles snapped open. A stream of glowing green acid shot toward him.

Aren had expected the counter. He vaulted off a moss-covered rock. He launched into the air. The acid passed beneath him.

The stream hit the mud where he had stood. Stone and earth melted into a bubbling pool.

In the air, he flipped his grip on the daggers. Gravity pulled him down. He landed on the back of the Crawler's neck.

Before it could thrash, he drove both blades into the soft joints behind its skull. The chitin parted. The blades sank through tissue.

The Crawler shrieked. Its legs kicked. Several of them slammed into Aren's chest and threw him off its back.

He hit the mud. He rolled backward to absorb the impact. The fatal damage was done. The Crawler twitched. Green blood pooled around its armor. Its legs curled inward. It went still.

Aren did not wait to breathe. He did not check his bruises.

He scrambled to the carcass. He ignored the heat. He thrust his arm into the green blood. His fingers closed around the stone at the center of its chest. He wrenched it free.

He stood. His chest rose and fell. The tenth core rested in his palm. It was warm. Green magic pulsed from it. It lit his face in the dark.

He retreated from the carcass. He crawled into the hollow roots of the dead tree the Crawler had been hiding in. He needed cover. He needed a place away from the open sky.

He sat cross-legged in the cramped hollow. He stared at the stone in his bloody palm.

[Beast Core Detected.]

[Evolution Milestone Reached.]

The chime in his skull was louder than any notification before. The purple screen did not flicker. It expanded across his vision.

[10/10 Cores Secured.]

[Warning: Phase 2 Metamorphosis will induce extreme biological trauma and cellular reconstruction.]

[Initiate Phase 2 Metamorphosis?]

Aren stared at the prompt. He thought of the shape that had blotted out the sky. The roar that made an Alpha run.

He closed his fist around the core.

"Initiate."