Chapter 64: Zenith
The swamp was quiet for exactly forty seconds after Zenith vanished.
Then, the screaming started.
The high-pitched, wet shriek of an Iron-Scale Viper being physically torn apart echoed through the dense canopy, followed immediately by the heavy thud of something massive hitting the mud.
A holographic window flickered into Hide’s vision.
[First Phantom ’Zenith’ has eliminated a Calamity Beast (Iron-Scale Viper)]
Experience points gained: 75
Hide blinked.
He had earned 150 experience points when he killed the vipers himself just moments ago. Zenith’s kill had yielded exactly half.
A slow, predatory grin spread across Hide’s face.
’Shared experience.’
He didn’t just have a summon that could fight for him. He had an autonomous entity that generated continuous growth for him without him having to lift a finger. It was passive income for his evolution. If he built an entire army of these things, he could theoretically level up in his sleep.
Another shriek tore through the swamp, further away this time.
[First Phantom ’Zenith’ has eliminated a Calamity Beast (Iron-Scale Viper)]
Experience points gained: 75
Hide summoned Night Singer from his inventory. The B-Rank short sword felt perfectly balanced in his grip. He stepped forward into the murky green twilight of the swamp, following the trail of destruction Zenith was carving through the zone.
He wasn’t going to just stand around and wait. The tournament was in two months. Every point of experience mattered.
He moved quickly but silently, his boots sinking slightly into the mossy earth. The dense, corrupted mana of the Two-Star gate no longer felt oppressive; thanks to his Dark Abyssal Core, it felt like walking through a cool breeze.
The underbrush rattled to his left.
An Iron-Scale Viper lunged from the shadows of a rotting tree trunk, jaws unhinged.
Hide didn’t bother using his Abyssal Scale Carapace this time. He sidestepped the strike, letting the massive snake fly past him, and swung Night Singer in a clean, horizontal arc.
The blade sheared through the iron-hard scales of the beast’s neck like they were made of wet paper. The viper’s head hit the ground a full second before its body did.
[Calamity Beast (Iron-Scale Viper) - Eliminated]
Experience points gained: 150
Hide flicked the dark blood off his blade and kept moving.
For the next twenty minutes, the swamp became a slaughterhouse.
Hide moved through the outer rim of the zone, hunting the Vipers and another crab like species of the beast that tried to ambush him from the canopy and the ground itself.
His movements were precise and economical. He was adapting to the new weapon, learning the exact amount of force required to sever bone without getting his blade stuck.
Meanwhile, his system interface was practically flooded.
[First Phantom ’Zenith’ has eliminated...]
[First Phantom ’Zenith’ has eliminated...]
[First Phantom ’Zenith’ has eliminated...]
Zenith was not hunting, he was eradicating the beasts like they were nothing. Well it was expected of him, being made up from the core of a Lesser Calamity Lord.
The towering phantom moved through the central marshlands with terrifying speed. Every time Hide caught a glimpse of his soldier through the trees, it was already moving to the next target.
Zenith didn’t use finesse. It used overwhelming, brutal efficiency. The pitch-black Beginner’s Sword sheared through vipers in single, devastating arcs of dark mana. When multiple beasts attacked at once, Zenith simply used Phantom Step, blurring into the shadows before reappearing behind them to tear their spines out with its bare hands.
The shared experience was stacking up rapidly.
He pushed deeper into the swamp, the trees growing thicker and the mud deeper. The air grew noticeably heavier here.
The hissing of the vipers had completely stopped, the crabs no longer jumped out of the damp earth.
Hide stepped through a dense thicket of hanging vines and found himself at the edge of a massive, circular clearing. The ground here wasn’t mud—it was solid, grey stone, slick with algae, forming a natural arena in the center of the swamp.
In the center of the arena was the Gatekeeper.
Hide crouched behind the thick root of a massive tree, observing the beast.
It was enormous, easily the size of a military transport vehicle. Its body resembled a lion, corded with thick, unnatural muscle and covered in a hide of coarse, dark grey fur.
But its head was avian, sporting a massive, hooked eagle’s beak that looked capable of snapping a steel girder in half. It had possessed two large, leathery wings, but one of them had already been brutally severed at the joint, dark blood pooling rapidly onto the stone floor.
Standing ten yards away from the wounded beast was Zenith.
The phantom’s obsidian plating was completely unmarked. The pitch-black Beginner’s Sword rested easily in its right hand, dripping with the Gatekeeper’s blood.
The Gatekeeper let out an ear-piercing, metallic screech, the sound vibrating in Hide’s chest. It lunged.
Despite its massive size and severed wing, the beast was terrifyingly fast. It crossed the ten yards in a fraction of a second, its massive front claws swiping down in an arc meant to crush Zenith into the stone.
Zenith didn’t raise its sword to block and instead used Phantom step, but that too was not too effective as there was not much shadows and darkness. There was a tree, but it was snapped in half by the gatekeeper.
The Gatekeeper’s claws slammed into the stone, shattering the rock and sending a shockwave through the clearing. But Zenith wasn’t there.
A split second later, the dark mana materialized in the darkness below the beast’s neck.
Zenith raised the pitch-black sword with both hands. The blade flared with a violent, compressed aura of pure violet energy, which was Hide guessed the second skill.
Zenith brought the blade down.
The dark mana sheared through the air with a high-pitched whine. It hit the thick, muscular neck of the Gatekeeper and didn’t even slow down. The compressed energy tore through hide, muscle, and bone in a single, devastating motion.
The massive avian head detached from the body, spinning through the air before hitting the stone floor with a heavy, sickening crunch. The colossal, headless body of the Gatekeeper stood for a fraction of a second before collapsing forward, flooding the arena with dark blood.
Silence crashed over the clearing.
Zenith landed lightly on the stone. It walked over to the severed head, reached down with its free hand, and picked it up by the coarse fur.
The phantom turned, its featureless, glowing visor locking directly onto Hide’s position behind the roots.
It walked over, dropping the massive, bloody beak at Hide’s feet, and sank to one knee in absolute silence.
A barrage of system windows exploded into Hide’s vision.
[First Phantom ’Zenith’ has eliminated the Gatekeeper (Griffin)]
Experience points gained: 700
[Phantom Soldier ’Zenith’ has Leveled Up!]
Level 1 → 2
[Phantom Soldier ’Zenith’ has Leveled Up!]
Level 2 → 3
Hide looked down at the severed head, then up at the kneeling, towering shadow of his first soldier.
The B-Rank sword in his hand suddenly felt very light...
’Two months,’ Hide thought, the fierce grin returning to his face. ’Two months is going to be more than enough.’
Then he called back Zenith, and as expected the towering figure broke into dark mana and was stored inside Hide’s own body, to be called at any moment.
Having cleared the gate, the exit opened in front of him and stepped out of it.