Chapter 123: Alone
Chapter 123: Alone
The first connected core waited in a wide chamber supported by pillars of fused bone and stone. The entity was a mass of multiple high-tier crawlers that had grown together over years until they shared a single oversized core. When Amon entered the chamber the mass tried to crush him under successive waves of living flesh and armored plates.He cut the core out of the center of the mass and watched the entire structure collapse inward on itself. Secondary limbs continued to twitch for several seconds after the controlling will vanished. Then they too went still and did not move again.
Amon continued deeper without resting.
The second and third cores required greater applications of force. Each one fed the ongoing refinement a little further. By the time he reached the final chamber of the complex his body had crossed another clear threshold. Speed and power that had felt exceptional an hour earlier now registered as the natural state of his existence rather than an elevated condition.
The last entity of the network was the oldest. Parts of it had fused so thoroughly with the tunnel walls that it was difficult to determine where the creature ended and the stone began. Multiple secondary cores glowed along its length like dull red stars. When it sensed Amon’s final approach it attempted to collapse the entire section of tunnel on top of him in one catastrophic structural failure.
Amon drove Azrael through the primary core before the ceiling finished its fall.
The collapse continued around him and then stopped the moment the controlling presence disappeared. Dust and broken stone settled across the ruined chamber. Black blood seeped from the ruptured cores and pooled slowly in the cracks of the floor.
Amon stood in the center of the destruction and felt the last echoes of the network fade into complete nothing.
The second dens complex was finished.
He turned and began the climb back toward the surface.
Outside the night was deep and absolute. The corrupted lands surrounding the dens no longer contained any living Night Crawlers within the full range of his senses. The silence was total.
Amon adjusted his grip on Azrael and continued walking west.
There were greater concentrations still ahead.
There were older things that had never needed to approach the walls of any human city.
The Silent Night continued to expand without limit.
The long-range arrays detected the second dens complex falling silent just after the midpoint of the night.
Elder Voss stood in the central monitoring chamber of the palace and watched the residual energy readings collapse into the same clean signature that had marked every previous site. The western edge of the detection field showed a continuous path of absence moving further into territories that the arrays could only partially reach.
He sent the updated report to the King without any delay.
The King received it in a private chamber with only the Royal Guard commander and the highest ranking formation master present. The large map on the table had been updated with every confirmed silent zone. The black marks now stretched in a clear unbroken line from the capital’s eastern wall deep into the corrupted lands that had never been fully mapped.