Chapter 123: Procrastination Even When We Tryna Grind. The Struggle Is Real Guys, Don’t Let Those Lame Heroes Lie To You. This Shit Isn’t Easy!!!

I stood at the edge of the forest, looking at the cave, confused, unsure, reconsidering if I truly wanted Kassie to continue teaching me at this point.

Was this master-student relationship really the best way forward?

At the same time…

I knew.

I was just being a chicken.

If this was what it was going to take for me to become stronger, then it was what I needed to do. That fundamental truth hadn’t changed about me. The drive was still there, buried somewhere beneath all my complaining and deflection.

It was just…

’Can’t we just start tomorrow?’

When I read novels and saw the heroes powering up, I had always thought I related with them. It was now, standing here with my feet refusing to move, that I truly understood I didn’t. These things were easier said than done. Those bastards made it look so easy.

Get pissed on, power up, and get back at everyone.

Granted, I wasn’t so much about that life. I had just concluded that as I avenged Lira’s death, I was also going to be doing this world a great favor. Two birds, one stone. The math worked out nicely when I framed it that way.

In order to protect my loved ones, I needed to do this.

I exhaled and looked at Kassie. She was staring into the cave, her gaze fixed on something in that darkness that I couldn’t perceive. Her expression hadn’t changed, but there was an alertness in her posture that made me wonder what her senses were picking up that mine weren’t.

I readied myself internally and eventually sighed, turning to her.

“Alright. Let’s get this over with.”

Kassie turned to me with a smirk.

“Thought you’d never ask.”

She truly looked happy.

’She’s happy because she’s going to be putting me through hell.’

And I took the moment as one hell of an opportunity to prove her wrong. Who knows, I could truly impress her and win a fortitude point for myself. Stranger things had happened. Probably. Somewhere.

Kassie went first. She leaped off the edge with no warning, her graceful figure blotting out the sun as she descended. She landed on the sloped terrain with enough force that trees trembled and stone shards scattered in every direction, clattering down the incline like startled animals.

Then she continued sliding down as though she had an invisible skateboard infused to her boots. It was all effortless, elegant and utterly unfair!

As for me, I slowly stepped down, testing the waters with one foot first. With these slopes, one had to be very careful, else I would turn into a ball and start rolling down. I couldn’t afford such embarrassment. I might be willing to accept some humiliation for the occasional piggyback, but that didn’t mean I was addicted to perpetually making a fool of myself.

’And really though… when did I ever make a fool of myself?!’

All these things were perspective.

Crawling on all fours — with my hands carefully planted in front of me — I made my way downward. Kassie was waiting at the entrance of the cave, arms crossed, watching my glacial progress with an expression I chose to interpret as patient admiration. I finally reached the bottom and stood up, dusting my hands with a shy chuckle.

“Strangely took longer than I expected. But don’t worry, killing the Spirit Beast won’t.” I flashed her what I hoped was a dashing smile.

I tried. Could only hope my charm was why she just ignored me and turned around, giving me her ass to look at as she led the way into the strange darkness of the cave.

I followed with no complaint. The view was nice over here.

As we stepped deeper into the cave, the darkness thickened. It was strange — it curled around us with an almost physical weight, pressing against my skin like it wasn’t just afternoon outside. The air grew colder too, damp against my face, carrying a faint mineral smell that reminded me of wet stone and something else, something organic.

At some point, seeing became impossible, but I hadn’t undone the enhanced hearing Kassie had taught me. I used it to pay attention to her almost-silent footsteps and made sure I kept close, matching her pace, refusing to lag behind.

Every time I had to depend on Kassie, I was reminded of my own inadequacy, even though I deflected with humor. Sometimes, things were too pathetic to joke away.

This darkness was one such time.

It sucked that I couldn’t see on my own even though I had perfectly functional eyes. Maybe my self-comparison was overwhelming, but I didn’t see myself as any less pathetic because of it. The gap between what I was and what I needed to be felt especially wide in this blind, suffocating dark.

I continued pressing forward, momentarily forgetting the sounds I was supposed to be tracking. It caused me not to notice when Kassie stopped, and I just bumped into her back. My body had an immediate, inconvenient reaction to the contact — my dick almost positioned itself out of sheer convenience.

’You fool, can’t you tell the situation here?’

I shook my head painfully at my own homeboy. I needed to do something about that guy for real. Terrible timing. Absolutely terrible.

My focus shifted to Kassie, who was standing completely still. Every line of her body had gone tense in a way I’d learned to recognize.

“We’re stopping?”

She lingered for a moment before answering.

“Something is wrong…”

She sounded unsure, but knowing Kassie, her instincts were probably dead accurate. The only issue was that she couldn’t pinpoint exactly what had triggered them.

“Is it that you can’t tell the way forward anymore? If you want, I can just summon my white flames…” I paused. “Have you changed your mind?”

I hadn’t tried because I wanted to follow her instructions to the letter.

“No.” Her response caught me off guard. I had actually thought for a moment she was going to agree.

But I wasn’t disappointed. Just curious.

“Whatever it is… it’s difficult for us to pinpoint its location… but if you use the flames, it might find us faster than we’re able to find it.” Her voice dropped lower. “That is, if it hasn’t already spotted us.”

The words sent a chill down my spine that had nothing to do with the cave’s temperature.

I opened my hand, already summoning my dagger. Sparks flew in the darkness, brief flickers of light that revealed nothing but stone walls before dying.

Immediately, Kassie snapped her head toward me and frowned.

“Summoner! Duck!!”

My brain sharpened the instant she yelled, but my body was a fraction too slow. Something black and slimy — a long tendril with a whip-like crimson end — curled around my neck before I could react. It yanked me off my feet with a force I couldn’t even struggle against, the grip tightening like a noose.

I was raised up, then slammed against the stone floor hard enough to drive the air from my lungs. Before I could even gasp, I was being dragged away into the deeper darkness, the rough ground scraping against my back.

’I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I’m going to die in the dark—’

Kassie stood there and did not pursue. Instead, her mask reformed over her head, materializing from crimson sparks. As red light flickered in the blackness, another whip-like limb shot toward her from the dark.

She did not manifest her sword. Instead, she shot her hand upward and simply caught the whip, her fingers closing around the slimy tendril like it was nothing more than a thrown rope.

Then she yanked.

The tentacle went taut, and something followed — a full weight dragged out of hiding, hurtling toward her through the darkness. Kassie twirled and smashed a devastating kick into its mass. The impact echoed through the cave like a thunderclap. The creature flew backward and crashed into the wall, stone cracking beneath it, all four of its tentacles extending outward from the force of the blow.

In that moment, I felt the grip on my neck slacken.

I didn’t waste the opening. I fought my way out of the coil, fingers clawing at the slick surface, and raised my dagger. I sliced through where I had vaguely determined the extension connected to the main body — a desperate, half-blind strike.

The blade bit deep.

The creature fully uncoiled its tentacle with a wet, pained sound, and I rolled away the instant I was free. My lungs burned as I sucked in air, my throat raw where the thing had been squeezing.

I shot to my feet and stumbled backward, legs trembling, putting as much distance between myself and the creature as I could manage.

Although it was still wreathed in darkness, I could see its outline now. And the more I focused, the clearer it became — like the oppressive blackness was receding, pulling away from something stronger than itself.

From Kassie.

Her helmet vanished with another spray of crimson sparks. The brief flare of light ignited the cave around us, illuminating the creature fully and casting its shadow across the wall in a grotesque, shifting silhouette that seemed larger than the thing itself.

The Spirit Beast was a muscular quadruped with a sleek obsidian-black hide stretched taut over a predatory frame. Four massive tentacles erupted from its back, each ending in that whip-like crimson tip I’d already become intimately familiar with. The damn things moved with unsettling independence, writhing and coiling even as the creature held still, like they had minds of their own.

A ridge of overlapping plates ran down its spine, pulsing with angry red-violet light — slow, rhythmic, like a heartbeat made visible. Like something inside it was burning.

Its head was worse. Rows of jagged teeth filled a mouth that seemed too wide for its skull, and its eyes — if you could call them eyes — were hollow pits that wept liquid darkness, thick rivulets of black streaming down its face like tears.

The creature snarled. The sound was a roar and a scream at once, reverberating off the cave walls until it seemed to come from everywhere.

Then it launched at us, all four tentacles striking as one.

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