The Regressed Heir of Ravencrest

The Forest Troll moved with the slow, terrifying certainty of a falling mountain. Four meters of knotted muscle and iron-grey hide blotted out the pale mist drifting through the pass. Drops of thick, dark saliva dripped from its heavy jaw, sizzling faintly where they hit the blood-slick moss. Its amber eyes were small, dull, and fixed entirely on Ethan.

Behind it, the narrow throat of the pass lay silent, choked with the piled bodies of dozens of slaughtered beasts.

Across the crimson-stained stone, Rune lay slumped against the shattered cliff wall. The cub’s matted silver fur was dark with blood along his ribs, his chest rising and falling in shallow, ragged fits. His hind legs twitched, but he couldn’t find purchase against the loose gravel to stand.

Ethan’s breathing came in harsh, measured rasps.

His left arm throbbed with a dull, numb ache from where the Dire Bear had caught him earlier. Warm blood trickled down his cheek from the Hawk’s feather-blade clip, his meridians felt almost empty, only faint traces of aura still flowing through them. The endless waves at the choke point had burned through his aura reserves until only a flickering embers remained in his meridians.

He didn’t retreat.

Ethan shifted his weight onto his back foot, lowered his center of gravity, and pointed the tip of the Eternal Sovereign Blade straight at the giant’s chest.

The troll struck without a roar.

Its enormous fist swept horizontally through the air, cutting through the thick mist with a booming hum.

Ethan didn’t try to block. He drove his boots into the stone, using Northern Gale Steps to slip beneath the arc. The air displacement alone nearly threw him off balance, tearing the collar of his tunic as the giant fist passed an inch above his head.

Closing the distance in a fraction of a second, Ethan drove the black steel of his blade upward into the soft flesh beneath the troll’s armpit—a precise, lethal strike aimed directly at the joint.

SLASH!

Steel bit deep into hide and rubbery muscle. Dark, viscous blood welled from the gash, spurting over Ethan’s knuckles.

Ethan sprang backward, clearing the space before the giant’s left arm could sweep low to catch him.

The wound was around three inches deep . But before the dark blood could hit the ground, the troll’s iron-grey hide began to pulse with an eerie, dark blue light. Muscle fibers beneath the skin twitched and stretched toward one another like crawling worms. Within two heartbeats the deep gash covering its joint sealed into a thick, pale scar before fading entirely.

Its physical regeneration was instantaneous.

This bastard is atleast as strong as Vael if not more and... it’s reached the realm of Beast Lord.

No... it’s still stuck at Apex Beast.

Ethan quickly assessed it’s strength.

The troll turned slowly, its amber eyes showing neither pain nor acknowledgment of the strike. It simply stepped forward again, raising a foot to crush Ethan where he stood.

BOOM!

The ground cracked beneath the stomp. Ethan rolled to the side, stone fragments stinging his face, and came up swinging. The Eternal Sovereign Blade carved across the troll’s back calf, severing the tendon.

The giant’s leg buckled slightly—and in less than three seconds, the severed tendon reattached itself under the skin with a sickening wet crunch.

Ethan was forced to leap back again as a backhand strike shattered a protruding crystal pillar behind him, showering the pass in razor-sharp shards.

A single direct hit...

Would kill him.

He landed near the cliff base, chest heaving. His arms trembled slightly. His physical body, bound by the limits of his current cultivation and completely drained of aura, was running out of kinetic output. Every dodge took more out of his thighs; every heavy impact pushed his worn muscles closer to tearing.

Ethan’s gaze flicked sideways for a fraction of a second.

Rune was still there, his paws scraping uselessly against the stone, a low, painful whine escaping his throat as he tried to force his broken body up to join the fight.

In the corner of Ethan’s vision, translucent golden text flickered to life amidst the drifting dust and red haze of battle:

———

Bonded Companion

Name: Rune

Species: ???

Age: Five Months

Bond Status: Confirmed

Trust: 58 → 90 (+32)

Strength: 38 → 80(+42)

Agility: 47 → 100 (+53)

Vitality: 37 → 60 (+23)

Endurance: 38 → 80 (+42)

Bloodline: ??? [Stage I — 5% → 10%]

Progress to Stage ll: 0/1000 Blood Essence

Innate Trait: ??? [Locked]

[Note: Blood Essence transfer to bonded companion locked until Trust 100/100]

———

Eternal Sovereign Blade

Current Rank: Rare | Growth Potential: Unknown

Status: Soul-Bound | Blood Essence Stored: 389

———

It seems you need to wait a bit longer Rune.

His gaze settled on the stored Blood Essence.

Refine.

An immediate warm spread through his body flowing over his muscles, tendons, bones and deep into his very essence.

Ethan’s pupils dilated until his eyes were almost completely black. A deep, searing heat surged out from his bone marrow, flooding his circulatory system with a violent, overwhelming rush of energy.

His heart hammered inside his ribcage like a heavy war drum—thump-thump, thump-thump—forcing the raw, unrefined vitality into every vessel.

Across his upper back and shoulders, muscle fibers swelled and tightened beneath his skin. The fine capillaries in his forearms burst and reformed in milliseconds under the sudden pressure, turning the skin along his arms a flushed, feverish red. The dull, throbbing ache in his left shoulder vanished, drowned out by a wave of raw physical power that surged through his tendons like tightly coiled steel cables.

His aura was still completely dry. His circulation pathways remained empty.

But none of it mattered.

The Forest Troll stepped in, raising both fists high to slam them down in a dual-overhead crush.

Ethan didn’t dodge.

His boots bit into the solid rock, cracking the surface beneath his heels purely through the raw, newly gained density of his legs.

Ethan exploded forward in a straight line, his movement so sudden and visually violent that the air split with a sharp, cracking pop. He passed directly beneath the falling shadow of the troll’s fists before the giants eyes could register the change in speed.

SLASH!

The Eternal Sovereign Blade didn’t just cut; it plowed through the hide on the inside of the troll’s left knee with heavy, kinetic force.

The giant grunted, its massive body lurching forward as the joint collapsed. Dark blue mana instantly flared around the wound, trying to pull the torn flesh back together.

Ethan didn’t retreat to breathe.

He pivoted on his heel, his back muscles flexing visibly through his blood-soaked tunic, and drove the blade back into the exact same spot before the mana could finish knitting the muscle.

SLASH!

Flesh parted again. Blood spouted in a dark, continuous stream.

The troll swung its broad hand backward in a blind, panicked swipe. Ethan ducked, the hot air of the swing whistling over his head, and drove his sword straight into the exact same knee joint for a third time.

CRACK!

This time, the steel cleaved straight through the connective cartilage.

The Forest Troll let out its first true roar—a deafening, guttural bellow of rage and agony. Its massive left leg gave out completely, sending the four-ton monster crashing down onto one knee, shattering the stone beneath it.

Ethan moved, driven by the intense, furnace-like heat still churning through his blood.

The refinement was far from over. Inside his body, the Blood Essence were actively breaking down, constantly pumping fresh vitality and physical force into his muscles second by second, the process condensed into active combat.

Every time the troll’s dark mana tried to repair an injury, Ethan was already there, driving his blade into the exact same tear, the exact same seam in the hide, over and over again.

Slash! Thrust! Slash!

He cut the right shoulder joint. Before it healed, he drove the point through the exact same gap between the collarbone and neck.

The troll’s iron hide, once impervious and endlessly regenerating, was turning into a mangled tapestry of open, overlapping wounds. Dark blood drenched the moss for yards around them, turning the ground into a slippery, crimson swamp.

The giant swung wildly, its massive arms thrashing through the air, smashing rock faces and snapping fallen trees in half. But it couldn’t touch him. Without relying on aura, Ethan’s raw physical speed, reaction time, and explosive power allowed him to dance through the dead zones of the giant’s reach, constantly carving away at its stability.

The Forest Troll was losing its balance. Its breathing became a wet, ragged wheeze.

For the first time since it stepped out of the valley mist, the apex tyrant felt something foreign settle into its primitive brain.

Panic.

Driven mad by the pain and its inability to kill the small, blue-eyed creature carving it to pieces, the troll’s amber eyes darted frantically across the narrow pass.

Regeneration had never failed it before. It looked for a way out—and caught sight of movement near the cliff wall.

Rune had managed to drag his front half onto a ledge of fallen rock. His silver fur was matted with dark gore, his chest heavily bruised, but his blue eyes were locked onto the fight, his jaws bared in a silent, stubborn snarl.

The troll didn’t think. It reacted with the instinct of a cornered beast looking to crush whatever it could reach.

Shifting its massive weight onto its functional leg, the giant turned away from Ethan entirely. It raised its remaining good arm, the fist swelling with a sudden, desperate surge of raw Primal Force, and brought it driving down directly toward Rune’s head.

The strike moved with terrifying speed—a four-ton hammer falling from the sky.

Rune pinned his ears back, his hind legs failing him as he tried to spring away from the shadow.

BOOM!!

A sound like a cannon firing inside a small cavern echoed through the pass.

A cloud of pulverized stone and red dust erupted into the air.

Rune blinked through the grit, his glowing blue eyes widening in sudden, absolute shock.

The massive, iron-grey fist hadn’t hit him.

Standing directly in front of the young wolf, his boots driven four inches deep into the solid bedrock, was Ethan.

He held the Eternal Sovereign Blade horizontally overhead with both hands, the flat of the black steel braced directly against the giant’s falling knuckles.

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!

An excruciating, sickening series of snaps echoed from inside Ethan’s chest.

The sheer, staggering kinetic weight of the Apex Beast’s desperate strike had forced the heavy guard of the blade back into Ethan’s torso. Three ribs fractured with sickening cracks, the broken ends grinding against one another beneath the crushing weight.

The force of the blow was so immense that blood erupted from Ethan’s nose and mouth instantly, splattering across the front of his tunic and painting his jaw crimson. His knees buckled slightly, the joints popping under the pressure, but his back remained locked.

He had taken the full, lethal weight intended to crush Rune.

The giant’s fist remained suspended few inches above Rune’s nose, held back by a body that should have been flattened into paste.

Rune stared up at the blood dripping from Ethan’s chin onto the stone. The wolf’s ears twitched. A strange, shivering tremor ran through the cub’s spine as his blue eyes locked onto the back of Ethan’s neck.

A soft, broken whine escaped Rune’s throat.

His shattered body refused to obey him, yet he dragged himself forward all the same. Inch by inch, he closed the small distance until his shoulder rested weakly against Ethan’s blood-soaked back.

It wasn’t enough to lessen the crushing weight above them.

But he refused to let Ethan face it alone.

In that single, blood-soaked second, a blinding, golden light erupted across Ethan’s vision, drowning out the red haze of pain.

———

Bonded Companion

Name: Rune

Trust: 90 → 100 (+10)

[Blood Essence Transfer: UNLOCKED]

———

Ethan didn’t look at the screen.

Pain—violent, sharp, and sickening—threatened to turn his world completely black. Blood pooled thick and heavy in his throat, threatening to choke him.

He tightly bit his lower lip, driving his own teeth into his flesh until he tasted freash metallic taste, using the sharp physical bite to force his mind back into focus.

Inside his chest, the active refinement of the three hundred and eighty-nine Blood Essence units raged on like an unquenchable fire. As his broken ribs throbbed, the surging vitality flooded the damaged tissue, holding his chest together through pure, forced physical pressure.

Ethan slowly exhaled a cloud of bloody steam.

"Get... up..." he growled, his voice a low, gravelly rasp choked with crimson.

His boots ground against the broken bedrock.

Slowly, Ethan began to push upward.

The Forest Troll’s amber eyes dilated in genuine, paralyzing horror. The bloody, broken human before it—a creature with no visible aura and shattered ribs—was forcing its massive, Primal-infused arm upward through sheer, unyielding physical muscle.

Inch by inch.

Ethan straightened his back. His neck veins stood out like thick cords, his shoulders bulging as he shoved the giant’s fist aside with a brutal, explosive heave.

The troll lost its balance, stumbling backward onto its ruined knee.

Ethan didn’t give it another second.

He stepped inside the giant’s wide-open guard, his boots leaving bloody prints on the moss. He gripped the hilt of the Eternal Sovereign Blade with both hands, channeling every last drop of the active blood refinement churning through his body into his upper arms and back.

He didn’t use a technique. He didn’t use aura.

He swung with pure, unadulterated physical force.

THWACK!!

The black steel struck the front of the troll’s thick neck. Driven by the full momentum of the blade sheared straight through hide, through dense muscle, and through the heavy cervical spine.

A spray of dark, hot blood hit the cliff face like a wave.

The Forest Troll’s massive head tilted backward before detaching completely, tumbling across the blood-slick stone of the pass.

For a heartbeat, the massive, four-meter body stood upright, its neck spouting dark crimson into the cold air.

Then, it collapsed.

BOOOOOM!

The four-ton carcass slammed onto the stone with a thunderous crash that shook the entire gorge, kicking up a cloud of dust, moss, and blood.

Silence descended over the forest.

The wind died down. The birds were gone. The valley was dead quiet.

The Forest Troll didn’t move.

Dark blood spread slowly beneath the colossal corpse, flowing through the cracks in the stone and between the piled bodies of the beasts that had died protecting their ruler.

The crushing pressure that had blanketed the Crystal Valley since its arrival faded little by little, until nothing remained except the cold mountain wind.

Ethan stood over the fallen giant, the Eternal Sovereign Blade held loosely in his right hand, its tip resting against the stone. His chest heaved in long, ragged cycles, every breath sending a sharp sting through his broken ribs.

Blood dripped from his jaw, popping softly as it hit the moss beneath his boots.

He didn’t collapse. His stance remained unbroken.

Slowly, Ethan turned his head, his cold, crimson-flecked eyes settling on Rune.

Rune was still staring at him, his blue eyes trembling as though trying to make sense of everything that had just happened.

For a brief moment, the corners of Ethan’s lips lifted into a small, genuine smile.

"It’s over, Rune."