novelraw Chapter 179: Untitled
Chapter 179: Untitled
"Krrerre."
The sound came from the far end of the field.
Low. Guttural. Not a roar. More like something forcing its way up from deep inside a body that hadn’t fully woken yet.
Then the wave hit.
It rolled out from the abomination in all directions, invisible and immediate. A pulse of disorienting energy that had no physical form but landed like a fist against the inside of every skull in the cave.
Heads went light instantly.
The edges of vision blurred. The ground tilted without moving. Several of the group stumbled mid-step, losing half a second of control before catching themselves.
Blacking out was right there. One more push and it would have taken them.
Teeth ground together.
Bodies locked up, forced themselves to stay upright, kept moving through the blur.
Nobody stopped.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
"Go!!"
Evil Spirit Lucas dropped from above.
He appeared overhead like he had stepped through the air itself, and in the same instant his form changed. An apparition consumed him, wrapping around his body as his shape shifted and expanded. Whatever was underneath became something else entirely.
Beside him, Poison Lilly’s hands were already moving.
A magic seal was taking shape in the open air in front of her, forming piece by piece from her aspect. The shape was precise and deliberate, each layer of the circle locking into the next with the quiet certainty of something she had done a thousand times.
The ability was straightforward in principle.
One of these seals needed to embed itself on the target. Once it did, the poison would work its way through regardless of shell, hide, or resistance.
The problem was time.
The seal didn’t kill fast. It worked slowly, eating inward, and until it finished the target was still moving. Still dangerous. Still capable of taking everything they had built and dismantling it in a single strike.
Hammerhead watched the seal finish forming.
Then it dropped.
—boom
A descending pressure hit the abomination directly, and in the same fraction of a second the beast reacted.
Its claw came up fast.
Faster than something that size had any right to move.
It caught Hammerhead full force as the two collided.
—boom
The explosion rang through the entire cave system, bouncing off the low ceiling and the wet walls and coming back distorted. The force of it pushed a visible ripple through the damp soil around the impact point.
Hammerhead’s helmet held.
Not a crack. Not even a shift.
The Black Crab’s shell was a different story.
A fracture split through the section that had taken the strike. Not catastrophic. Not yet. But real. A visible break in something that was supposed to be unbreakable at this rank.
"ROAR!!!"
The sound came out of it like a detonation. Raw and furious, the cry punched upward toward the ceiling and shook loose a scatter of debris from the rock above.
The abomination rose.
All of it. Every leg finding the ground at once, body lifting from the soil it had been resting in, shell rising until the full mass of it was upright and moving. Its eyes had found Hammerhead and stayed there. Rage sitting in them like something lit from the inside.
Hammerhead pulled back.
Controlled. Deliberate.
Giving it exactly what it wanted. A target moving away.
"It’s on the move!!"
Evil Spirit Lucas’s voice cracked through the cave like a signal. Loud enough to carry. Pointed toward the distance where the other team was positioned.
The plan was in motion.
They turned and ran.
The abomination followed.
—boom
—boom
—boom
Each of its steps sent a shockwave through the ground. Massive and rhythmic and getting faster. The cave system carried every impact and amplified it, the sound bouncing back from every direction until the whole underground space felt like it was vibrating.
Then they were out of range.
The booms faded gradually, swallowed by distance and tunnel walls.
And then nothing.
The beast was gone.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
The remaining group pulled back from the Black Shell Crabs, who had gone completely unhinged the moment the abomination started moving. Shells clicking against each other. Claws scraping rock. The whole colony in a frenzy with no clear direction.
"Where’s Soul King?"
The Jackal looked around the regrouped faces.
"He took a detour," Eric said. Easy. Relaxed. A smile sitting on his face that wasn’t quite a smile. "Should be back soon."
Nobody pushed it.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Somewhere else in the cave system, a figure moved fast through the dark.
Wrapped in a strange, dense energy that pressed close to his body like a second skin. A mask covered his face. His movement was clean and deliberate, angled specifically to approach from behind.
Approaching the abomination from behind.
Guilliman summoned the spear to his side without breaking pace, fingers wrapping around the grip as it materialized. The moment it was in his hand, something inside him shifted.
Absolute focus.
Not calm. Not stillness. Something more precise than that. The kind of state where everything unnecessary dropped away and only the target existed.
He had been waiting for this.
The snap of his fingers was quiet.
Below him the soul beast appeared, wings spreading wide in a single powerful motion, luxurious feathers catching the thin air of the tunnel as it opened into space around them. The moment it materialized fully, the energy around Guilliman spiked.
His momentum surged.
The cave rushed past him.
He was already moving fast. Now he was moving like something fired from a distance, closing the gap between himself and the abomination at a pace that left the tunnel walls as a blur on both sides.
The abomination was still focused forward.
Still locked onto the retreating figures of Lucas and the others. Still following the pull of its own rage.
It didn’t hear him coming.
It didn’t feel him yet.
Guilliman’s grip on the spear tightened as he approached from the dark behind it, the energy from the serpent soul beginning to pour down through his arm and into the weapon, building in the shaft until the spear itself was shaking slightly with what it was holding.
His eyes stayed fixed on the center of its shell.
The exact point.
The smile that had been sitting on his face since the briefing was still there.
Quiet. Unnoticeable.
But still there.