Chapter 36: Hunger for Battle

[You have slain an Awakened Beast, Hollow Strider.] 

[... The Darkness within you takes root.] 

[The abyss within you deepens.] 

The creatures, known as the Hollow Striders, had been slain one by one. Their bodies lay twisted and mutilated. Their glowing red chitin was cracked open like fragile egg shells. The carcasses leaked black, oily ichor into the ground. The stench of melted flesh mixed with the sharp, sour tang of the corrosive fluid that had splattered the surrounding coral and stone.

The battlefield was a grotesque scene marked by the remnants of the creatures' bodies— hunched, charred corpses. Their legs twitched erratically as if the last spasms of life refused to die.

Shroudkeeper stood in the center of the clearing. His breathing was shallow and quick. A thin sheen of sweat glistened on his brow. His armor was stained with the venomous oil that had splattered onto him, though his body remained largely unharmed.

Cade wiped his brow with a gauntleted hand which was covered in black blood. He stared down at the carcasses of the beasts; his sword, the Voidfang, was dripping with dark ichor. His heart still pounded in his chest, but the adrenaline of the fight was slipping away.

It had been roughly two weeks since his transformation at the foot of the Knight's statue. Cade had made quite some progress during that time. Currently, he had been following the trio as they made their way to the Bone Ridge. He would be taking up residence atop the Flat Hill today.

However, during the process of following the three Sleepers, he had managed to find something interesting.

The Striders were the monstrous centipedes that had waged war on the Carapace Legion. They were not that capable, considering they were but mere Awakened Beasts. No, what had caught Cade's eye was the fact that these ugly monstrosities seemed to be guarding the entrance to a dark and cavernous crevice.

Cade had an idea about what was down there. He remembered Sunny mentioning something about transparent tentacles dragging a resisting Scavenger into a dark crevice. The mere fact that the mouth of the crevice was guarded by abominations of the lowest Class, hinted that the monstrosity residing in there was at least a Tyrant. Cade had no idea about its Rank though.

Cade walked to stand at the jagged lip of the crevice. He stared into the maw of darkness below. It yawned wide, an uninviting pit that seemed to exhale a cold, damp breath against his face. The faint light of his surroundings failed to penetrate the shadows within, leaving the depths shrouded in oppressive mystery.

The edge beneath his feet crumbled slightly. It sent a cascade of pebbles tumbling into the dark. Cade's eyes narrowed as he adjusted his grip on the Voidfang. A swirl of unease tightened in his chest.

"Uh... why exactly am I doing this?" he asked himself, already knowing the answer.

It was curiosity, of course; an insatiable need to understand the horrors that plagued this labyrinthine realm. But... no, that wasn't really it. There was something more— a pull, faint and insidious, compelling him toward whatever lay beneath.

Cade sighed, rubbing his forehead.

"Honestly, I'm growing too complacent," he muttered, exasperated. "I need to be humbled. And as soon as possible. Hopefully, before I kill myself."

With a slight incredulous shake of his head, he descended into the crevice. Each step into the dark felt like a deliberate choice, an embrace of the unknown that made his pulse quicken. Cade steeled himself as the cold, suffocating air swallowed him whole.

He felt confident in his ability to get away if the abomination down here turned out to be too much for him to handle. He had gotten rather used to his Darkness-form. Still, that power was not absolute.

He'd discovered several drawbacks to it. The most obvious was how utterly taxing the Darkness-form was— far more draining than a Dormant Ability had any right to be.

Still, he had learned to work around that. It wasn't as if he needed to dissolve into the Darkness in every fight. No, he reserved it for battles that truly warranted its use— against enemies worthy of such power. And while he hadn't encountered too many of those in the past couple of weeks, the ones he had faced had given him just enough experience to acclimate to its alien nature.

The second drawback, however, was more frustrating. He could not command the Darkness to move, swirl, or spread forward while being part of it. That wasn't completely true in theory, but in practice, it might as well have been.

Technically, he could control it while dissolved within— but the price was steep. The sheer exhaustion, the toll it exacted, was far beyond what his body could endure. At least, for now. Driving the Darkness while being a part of it made him feel like his body was being torn to shreds.

He had attempted it once before, a reckless experiment mid-battle, and it had nearly left him incapacitated. That single mistake had been enough. Since then, he'd avoided pushing his limits in that particular direction.

He guessed that maybe such power was simply not meant to be held by a mere Beast. That had pushed him to challenge more and more abominations and try to form his Monster Core as soon as possible. He was getting closer and closer.

Of course, the power had its advantages as well. As long as he remained separate from the Darkness, commanding it was effortless— a simple extension of his will. And once he dissolved into it, he could emerge anywhere the Darkness had already spread.

That alone made the drawbacks worth enduring.

So, if he needed to get away from the inhabitant of the crevice, all he would need to do is send some Darkness out through the mouth of the crevice and he would be able to reform from it outside the dark cavern.

So, he wasn't in any real danger... or so he told himself.

The passage ahead widened, opening into a vast cavern. Stalactites jutted from the ceiling like daggered fangs, mirrored by the sharp rise of stalagmites beneath his feet. The faint, rhythmic sound of dripping water echoed through the emptiness. Each drop seemed to vanish into unseen puddles below.

The cavern swallowed Cade whole. Shadows stretched endlessly, while the vastness bled into unseen corners. His eyes darted around, scanning the abyss. The only illumination came from a faint, ghostly bioluminescence clinging to the stalactites above. It birthed eerie reflections along the jagged stone. The air pressed against him, thick and heavy. Its silence was so absolute that it roared in his ears.

But despite the eerie atmosphere, he pressed forward.

Cade walked in silence. His grip tightened around the hilt of the Voidfang. He had expected resistance— lesser Nightmare Creatures lurking in the shadows, guarding the path to whatever Tyrant or Terror had claimed this eerie cavern as its lair.

But he was proven wrong. No monstrosities lunged at him from the shadows, no grasping vines coiled around his ankles. The air was still, undisturbed, the silence broken only by the faint, rhythmic dripping of water. It was as if the cavern were abandoned.

"Looks like the big guy here doesn't do roommates..." Cade murmured, looking around and taking in his surroundings.

He knew that something was here. Something immense. Something terrifying. And he knew that he had just trespassed into its domain.

Still, he pressed on, each step slow, and deliberate. Then, after a few moments, he spotted a narrow opening in the left-hand wall. He hesitated for a fleeting moment, but eventually, crouched low and slipped inside— only to emerge into a vast chamber.

The ceiling loomed high above, lined with countless jagged fangs, which were complemented by clusters of pointed stones rising from the damp stone floor. Puddles of murky water littered the ground. Their still and level surfaces betrayed no movement.

The chamber had multiple entrances, leading into unseen depths. It should have been darker than the cavern he had just left behind. After all, he had just moved deeper underground and the bioluminescence of the previous cavern was absent here. So, this chamber should've been swallowed in pitch-black obscurity.

But it wasn't.

A faint, blue, unnatural glow pulsed through the chamber. Cade's breath hitched and his grip tightened on the Voidfang as his eyes locked onto the source.

Because then, he saw it.

The creature loomed before Cade like a nightmare given form. Its grotesque and grey figure was impossibly tall and unnervingly thin. The frame, though vaguely humanoid, seemed stretched beyond reason. It had elongated limbs that ended in razor-sharp claws glinting like obsidian.

Every movement it made was measured yet disjointed at the same time. It was as though the thing wasn't entirely comfortable within its own monstrous skin. Its emaciated torso, barely more than a hollow cage of bone and sinew, pulsed faintly with an unnatural rhythm. Spines jutted out from its back in uneven rows, crooked like discolored coral formations.

The translucent, grey, glistening skin covering its body seemed alive. It shifted with faint, unnatural hues of black and sickly green. Cade's eyes narrowed as he caught the faint bioluminescent sheen that pulsed erratically across its form. It was as though the creature itself were charged with some aberrant energy.

Its head was a grotesque skull-like visage, asymmetric and otherworldly, with hollow sockets where eyes should have been. Yet from those voids came the faint, pale-blue glow that illuminated the chamber. It was a light so unnatural that it seemed to pierce through Cade's very being, searching for something deeper than flesh. Maybe his soul?

Well, too bad I don't got one... Cade thought, grounding himself.

The abomination's jaws were wide and filled with dagger-like teeth. They clicked and twitched, oozing with a black, viscous, translucent fluid that dripped incessantly. The sound, coupled with the soft squelch of liquid pooling beneath it, sent a ripple of unease through Cade's chest. But his grip on the Voidfang didn't falter.

Trailing the monstrosity's form were faint tentacles which shimmered in and out of visibility. They were semi-translucent and endlessly writhing.

So, those are what Sunny saw... Cade mused, his eyes narrowing at the ethereal appendages. No wonder he didn't want to go anywhere near that crevice.

Cade couldn't tell where the tentacles began or ended, but their movements were purposeful. It was almost as if they were alive and sentient, separate from the creature yet bound to it. They left faint trails of ghostly vapor in their wake, and Cade couldn't shake the feeling that they could extend far beyond what his eyes could see.

This was the abomination that Cade had sought out.

I can still flee if I wish, he thought.

His lip curled, and he smirked despite himself. 'If I wish, huh...'

Well, he did not wish to flee.

His grip on the blade tightened. His breath quickened, but not out of fear. No— there was something else. His heart pounded in his chest; not in terror, but in exhilaration.

The thrill of facing a worthy opponent surged through him like lightning. He should not have felt so excited. But he had been holding back his powers for so long, always cleaning up after the trio. Today, he just wanted to let it out. And by a twist of fate, he had found just the right foe to face him at his best.

And as he called upon the Darkness, the black fog rolled out of his being in thick waves. The mist plunged the chamber into blackness. There, in that moment, he felt it again: the hunger for battle surged through his entire being.

The creature's hollow eyes were burning with the faint, blue light. It tracked him through the Darkness. The abomination moved suddenly, with a speed that belied its massive size. It closed the distance between them in a heartbeat.

At least that's what it looked like. Technically, there wasn't really much distance between them in the first place, considering the monstrosity's abnormal size. But its elongated forelimbs moved with a speed that seemed unreal for something of its size.

Cade barely had time to dissolve into the Darkness before an obsidian claw, large enough to split giant boulders, raked through the space where he had been standing. The creature moved forward, seemingly unbothered by the torrents of black mist that Cade had just breathed out.

Cade materialized behind the creature and dropped in the midst of the spines that jutted out from its back. He put both his hands on the hilt of the Voidfang and slashed his blade downward with all his strength. The sound of metal meeting unyielding bone reverberated through the chamber.

The impact sent shocks up Cade's arms. The blade cut the skin, barely, but it failed to do anything to the bone below it. The abomination made a swift turn and Cade was thrown off its back. A hulking swing of its arm forced Cade to retreat into the fog and reappear some distance away.

"So, just the blade isn't enough, eh?" Cade muttered, gritting his teeth against the might of his Flaw. "Well, it's not like I expected anything less..."

His mind was somewhat steady despite the chaos both inside and around him. He could feel the rage simmering beneath his calm. It was like a beast scratching at the edges of his control. He had learned to keep his rage at bay somewhat, during the past two weeks. But today, he didn't need to hold it back, at least not completely.

Good. This is good. Let's let it out for once...

He exhaled, and the Darkness around him thickened. He commanded it to flow toward the Voidfang. The Darkness swirled around his blade like a living thing. It pulsed, shivering in time with his own heartbeat... until it coated the Voidfang in a dense, writhing layer of blackness.

Cade smiled darkly, his bloodlust apparent. With the Darkness-clad blade held in his hand, he lunged forward to meet the hulking abomination.