Chapter 59: The Chamber Beyond The Darkness

Elias’s sudden counterattack was so quick and violent that it left a trail of black blood and red lumina in the air, resembling a bloody half moon. The light from the burning red Lumina surrounded him, and for a moment, Elias resembled a demon, with his long red hair waving behind him alongside his bladed arm, perfectly painted the image of a being of carnage.

No patch of his skin was free from damage, and by all rights, he should be dead many times over, but the hunt was not over, and the hunter could not rest until his prey was finally beheaded and consumed.

The creatures were pulled back by whatever dwelled in the darkness, without their tongues, and with Elias’s Agility, they were fish on the chopping block, but was this not what he wanted?

His right leg was too damaged to respond properly, but his left leg still had enough functional muscles that pushed his body into the air, and he landed on one of the shrieking creatures that was being pulled by its umbilical cord.

His blades pierced into the head of the creature, but it did not sever the mass inside its brain. Elias was only looking for an anchor to hold him fast to the creature’s body as he was given a ride to whatever was hiding in the darkness.

This action seemed almost instinctive, and Elias knew that with the regenerative capabilities of monsters, it was possible to heal from almost any non-lethal wounds after months or years of rest. Whatever was in charge of these creatures clearly wanted to protect its brood for as long as possible.

Perhaps it was due to panic that Elias’s actions were not quickly observed, but he was drawn deep into the darkness, and as he flew through the darkness on his shrieking ride, his perception could see hundreds of these creatures below, and their eyesless faces were pointed at his previous location, unknown to them that he had just slipped inside their ranks.

He took a quick look at his current condition on the Status screen, and it was bad.

Vitality: 189 / 2385

Stamina: 25 / 613

He was dying, again, but he wasn’t running because he was not helpless. The hunt was not finished; in fact, it was just getting started.

The creature that he pierced with his bladed arms was slowly growing weaker as its cries faded. With his blades inside the body of the creature, drawing away its Lumina in prodigious amounts, it was a wonder that it had lasted this long.

However, this brought about a new set of problems. The cord pulling back the creature was beginning to slip free from its stomach as its body began to rapidly shrivel. With its death, Elias’s body began pulling the Lumina from its body with so much force that the creature was disintegrating in mere moments.

Reacting faster than he could even think, Elias leaped forward, and he grabbed the cord with his right hand, claws sinking in. The cord jerked, hard, and Elias let it pull him.

Without the body of the creature to ride upon, his feet dragged across stone, and blood trailed behind him in long streaks. The damned umbilical cord was longer than he thought, and his body was dragged into the darkness that swallowed him whole.

The dragging accelerated as the cord began to twist and shudder under his right hand. The abilities of his swarm were still being exerted on the cord, but the Lumina he was collecting, although many times denser than what he had been receiving from the creatures he had been slaughtering, came in a slow trickle.

It was as he had suspected, the ability of his Ascendant Swarm to draw the Lumina of his prey must depend on their stage and perhaps their willpower.

The cord must have been feeling uncomfortable as he was pulled faster into the darkness, and because he could not find any way to make his journey easier, the passing stones scraped his back wider, and his ribs were grinding against the ground.

Pain roared through his mind, but he bit down on his tongue to stay conscious, and as warm blood filled his mouth, washing away the taste of death, a part of him noted that his teeth had not returned. It seemed that his body was struggling to live, and so could not be bothered to maintain what it did not deem important.

The cord yanked him through a narrow crack in the wall, causing his shoulders to scrape rock, and the last few patches of skin left to tear away. He grunted, yet Elias still kept his grip.

Darkness began to close in around his consciousness, and Elias wondered if this was the right time for him to give up and return. His plan was being carried out, but his body may be too weak to support it.

Then light, yellow, and sickly poured over him as he was pulled into a vast chamber, and Elias released the cord, knowing he had arrived at his destination.

Elias hit the ground hard, rolled once, and stopped on his back.

From the moment he killed the first monster and watched the umbilical cord being dragged away into the darkness, Elias already knew how this hunt could be completed.

Despite his elevated Attributes, Elias was still a Level 1 Wisp, and this creature was undoubtedly at the Mist Phantom level; it could probably be stronger, but new instincts born from merging the Pillar of Sorrow informed him that these creatures scaled with his stage.

Since he was a Wisp, the highest level they could be was Mist Phantom, and perhaps he was lucky that he was not quickly ascending through the stages, or he would not be able to achieve half of what he gained since he entered this Fragment.

Elias understood why the Commander only wanted him to Seed his Lumina as the Priority because while hunting on the Fragment was a good way to accumulate power, for the average person with standard Lumina Pools, they would find themselves quickly reaching the next stage, and the path of growth for a Siphon was not linear but exponential.

There was a slim chance for a Wisp to kill a Fury Forge, but this becomes much harder for a Fury Forge to kill a Mist Phantom, and this possibility becomes nearly impossible for a Mist Phantom to kill an Amber Exile. If Elias reached the Fury Forge Stage, then the enemy here would be at Amber Exile.

All of these calculations had been factored into his hunt, and he was also aware that creatures who were of the Summoner Type usually had weaker bodies since their greatest strength did not lie in their bodies but in the armies they controlled, and he knew that reaching the source would be the right way to battle.

He could give his all and kill maybe two dozen of these monsters, but there were hundreds more behind them, and he would be ground to death.

All of these thoughts passed briefly through his head as he lay down like he was dead, feeling his body slowly patch itself back from nothing, and his Stamina finally began to tick back up. He wished he could lie down here for a few hours, but his period of grace was running out, and it was likely that if he had not been detected, he soon would be.

He slowly turned his head to the side, and he saw the thing sitting in the center of this chamber, massive… fat… corrupted.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep