Chapter 324: Illusion (4)
After plunging into the lava, what opened before him wasn’t molten hell, but a vast tunnel. Leandro walked forward, simply following where his feet carried him. The cave’s coolness was almost pleasant when compared to the choking crater above, thick with sulfur fumes and ash.
Plop. Plop.
Cold droplets fell at measured intervals, each echoing several times in the dark. Even that faint sound went undisturbed by his steps. Not a trace of noise marked his presence, as he suppressed even his breathing. A perfect silence.
The Empire’s Fourth Swordmaster passed beneath a ceiling hung with stalactites. Red-eyed bats glared at him, but he ignored them. They were not worth his blade. No luminous ore lit the stone, yet the deeper he went, the brighter it grew. Threads of unseen wind brushed past, slipping in and out.
There was something ahead, crouching on the ground.
Leandro approached, still cloaked in silence. The thing rose. At last, he looked at it properly. Despite having slain countless monsters, this one he’d never seen before.
It hunched upright on two legs, its arms so long that they reached its knees. Both hands gripped swords. Its torn jaws split left and right, two mouths on either side of a flat skull. No nose. It had feathers, and a wide tail lashed behind it. Its whole form glistened red, as though it had been bathed in blood.
Crack.
It twisted its short neck. He had seen Chimeras cobbled together in magicians’ labs, but this was different. There was neither stilted awkwardness nor grafted ugliness. It was seamless, disturbingly natural, and strong. It had sensed him. Three eyes sunken deep in its skull fixed on him. Leandro’s brow furrowed.