novelraw Chapter 98: Falling Moon
Chapter 98: Falling Moon
The creature was enormous.
A heavy black exoskeleton lined its body, making it seem too heavy to swim, yet it did so with impossible speed. Damon faced many monsters before, some slower, some much faster than him, but he never fought one underwater, where most of his instincts would render him useless.
As the monster moved away from where it crashed, Damon saw a large crack along the tree bark, and through it, a small ray of light escaped from the inside.
The orb.
But before he could even hope to reach it, the monster’s six black pupils locked onto him as it charged once more.
It was terrifyingly fast for its size, its maw snapped open with a promise to swallow him whole.
’Fuck no.’ Damon cursed, unwilling to get swallowed whole for the third time in his life.
His hand snapped up a heartbeat before the creature could reach him. In the same instant, he unleashed his Black Ice ability at full strength.
Countless spikes of black ice erupted from his hand, using the ability underwater turned out even more potent than out in the air, each four meters long with a tip of a needle and the thickness of a tennis ball.
They pierced through the monster’s maw and came out through its exoskeleton, breaking it from within. For a moment, Damon couldn’t see a thing as black blood sprayed everywhere around him.
In those few moments of blindness, a loud notification rang in his head, confirming the kill.
[You have slain a Level 62 Abyssal Carapax]
[New Monster Index bonus: +7 Stamina, +11 Strength, +19 Vitality]
[You have reached Level 60. You have received 1 Stat Point.]
Damon didn’t waste time on the notifications, he quickly swam toward the small opening in the tree and began chipping larger chunks of bark, then wood, until the hole was large enough for him to enter.
Chunks of silver-purple wood floated in the water behind him as he squeezed through.
There was nothing too surprising inside, just the same wood he had seen so far, other for the massive orb in the center of it, of course.
The orb was roughly the size of a basketball, but it didn’t float, pulse, or do anything dramatic. It simply sat there, suspended in the hollow centre of the tree, radiating a soft, silver-purple light around it.
Damon lingered for a moment, watching the orb and waiting for something terrible to happen. But as he waited, no attacks came.
Not willing to waste any more time, he reached out and wrapped his hand around it.
The cold hit him first, not the cold of the water, but something deeper, like pressing his palm against stone that had never once seen sunlight, something slightly resembling the throne in his domain.
Then the light bled through his fingers, and the hollow of the tree turned blindingly white—
[???]
[Binding in progress...]
[Binding complete.]
[1 of 7 collected.]
Damon blinked.
Both the light and the orb were gone. His hand was empty, and his palm ached with a warmth that hadn’t been there a second ago.
Then a sudden pressure struck his abdomen, not painful, but something close to it.
[Passive ability unlocked: Verdict]
[You may now perceive the truth of spoken words. When a conscious being within your presence states something they believe to be false, you will sense it. The ability does not reveal what is true.]
[Grade: S]
[Active ability unlocked: Inspect]
[You may now view the status window of any conscious being within your line of sight. Activation Distance: 5m]
[Grade: S]
Damon stared at the notifications for a long moment. He reread them a couple of times, just to be sure he was seeing okay, especially with all the mind control going on.
But no matter how many times he read it, it remained true.
Out of everything he would’ve expected to happen, breaking the mental control and maybe receiving a little bit of experience points for it, receiving two abilities was not on his list.
At first, he was surprised to see that a simple truth-telling ability would be graded as an S, but the more he thought about it, the more he understood why. From now on, every encounter, every alliance or deal, he will be able to see through them. Knowing if someone’s lying in a world full of threats might just be one of his most valuable abilities.
Then there was the second ability, which allowed him to inspect others’ status windows. Although just like with the Verdict ability, it didn’t seem like much, being able to inspect the status of any of his future foes, seeing their levels and abilities might just be the decisive factor between life and death.
Suddenly, he noticed something else, something he almost forgot existed. The nagging weight on his mind, the pressure and the daze that followed were gone.
The mind control was over.
Whatever the orb had been doing was now gone.
He pushed himself back through the crack in the bark and quickly swam for the surface.
Within moments, Damon pulled himself over the edge of the plateau and scanned the space before he’d even taken a full breath of oxygen.
Nyla was standing near the base of the largest root. She was no longer in trance, staring into nothingness. She looked present, her eyes blinking as she pressed her palm against her temple, wincing at the sharp pain of her memories returning.
"Nyla," Damon said as he approached her.
Her eyes found him immediately — sharp, present, clear of the purple-silver haze. "I—" She paused, pressing her lips together. "I don’t remember most of that."
Her eyes immediately snapped toward him, and he spoke before her lips even had the chance to ask.
"It’s over. I stopped it."
A warm smile settled on her face, but then, her gaze moved beyond Damon’s eyes, and somewhere far behind him, her eyes dilated
"D-Damon..."
Her voice changed slightly, her trembling arm rose high above, and her finger pointed behind him.
Damon turned and followed the direction of her finger until he saw it.
The moon, the enormous, unmoving disk of silver-purple, had moved for the first time. But not across the sky, promising a new day. Instead, it began to fall toward them, promising that another day wouldn’t come.