Chapter 84: The Distress Call
The bear charged at them.
Its legs moved in weird, sudden twitches. Its bones snapped audibly as its joints bent in directions joints were never meant to bend. The broken jaw swung loose, slapping against its chest with each lurching step.
"Emric!" Holden shouted.
Emric planted his feet and raised his shield. "I’ve got the front!"
The bear’s massive paw swung down in a wild arc.
Crash!
Emric blocked the hit. The kinetic-absorption runes blazed blue. But this wasn’t a normal impact. The pressure was inconsistent, as if the force was being driven by an outside power rather than the bear’s actual muscles.
The shield held.
But Emric didn’t.
He flew backward across the floor, skidding across rubble until he crashed into a boulder. His shield arm hung numb at his side.
"It’s too strong!" he gasped.
"Lyra, freeze it!" Holden called.
Lyra thrust both hands forward. Frost energy exploded across the space between her and the bear. Ice raced up its legs, crawled across its torso, wrapped around its skull.
For one second, it worked.
Then the purple veins flared.
The ice didn’t melt. It shattered. Dark energy pulsed outward from the bear’s body like a shockwave, destroying Lyra’s frost before it could take hold.
"That’s impossible," she breathed.
The bear’s dead eyes locked onto her. It lunged.
"Holden, do something!" Renna screamed.
She drew her bow and fired. The storm-arrow flew straight at the bear’s head.
The corpse twisted at an impossible angle. The arrow missed by a foot.
"I can’t hit it! It’s moving too weird!"
Click. Click. Click.
That strange sound filled the canyon. It wasn’t coming from the bear’s throat. It was coming from somewhere else.
Bzzt!
"STOP HITTING THE BEAR!" Maeve’s voice exploded through the radio. "AIM FOR THE BASE OF THE NECK! RIGHT WHERE THE SKULL MEETS THE SPINE!"
"What?" Renna yelled.
"I’m looking it up right now! Everything about it shows it’s not a zombie. It’s being moved by something else! The real monster is an Abyssal Spine-Tick! They attach to the back of the neck and control the nervous system! The parasite is tiny, but its armor is incredibly dense! You need to pierce the gap between its shell segments!"
Holden’s eyes narrowed.
At the base of the bear’s neck, barely visible through the matted fur and purple veins, was a bulge. It was small, but twitching with a strange energy.
The Spine-Tick.
"It’s too small for an arrow!" Renna said, already drawing another one. "I can’t hit a target that size while it’s moving!"
"Then step aside."
Holden drew his Star-Forged Sword.
The bear lunged at Lyra again.
Holden activated Gale-Step.
Whoosh!
To Emric and Renna, it happened in a blur. One moment Holden was beside them. The next he was past the bear, stumbling slightly with his sword held out. It looked like a desperate lunge. A lucky, wild thrust that somehow found its mark.
To Lyra, it was something else entirely.
She saw him accelerate to a speed that shouldn’t exist for a Rank 1 fighter. The Shadow-Weave boots made his footsteps silent as he closed the distance. His body leaned at an angle that let him slip past the bear’s flailing arm without touching it. He managed to guide his sword through a microscopic gap in the tick’s armor.
The precision was godlike.
The blade pierced the parasite’s core.
The Spine-Tick screeched.
The bear’s body convulsed violently, then collapsed. The purple veins across its fur went dark. The clicking stopped.
[Ding!]
[Abyssal Spine-Tick Defeated!]
[Base Reward: 1,500 KP]
[Rare Boss Bonus: +500 KP]
[Abyssal Corruption Bonus: +500 KP]
[2x KP Booster Applied!]
[Total: +5,000 KP]
[Current Balance: 53,190 KP]
Something small and dark dropped from the bear’s neck. It rolled across the floor and stopped against a rock.
An Abyssal Crystal.
It was the size of a walnut, pitch black, but somehow it shimmered with an inner light that hurt to look at directly.
"Don’t touch that," Maeve warned through the radio. "Abyssal Crystals are extremely valuable for high-tier weapon forging, but they’re also extremely unstable. Do not attempt to absorb it."
Holden pulled out a spare containment pouch and used a stick to carefully flick the crystal inside.
"Got it."
Emric pushed himself up, holding his shield arm carefully. "That was... statistically impossible," he muttered. "You only had a split second to find the target, and you were moving at a speed that someone at your rank simply shouldn’t be able to reach."
"Lucky shot," Holden said with a shrug.
Renna lowered her bow, staring at the dead bear. "That was the luckiest shot I’ve ever seen. Like, insanely lucky."
Lyra said nothing. She just looked at Holden with a knowing smile.
"Is everyone okay?" Holden asked, sheathing his blade.
"My arm will require forty-eight hours to recover full function," Emric reported. "The shield absorbed most of the impact, but the residual force caused minor muscle strain."
"I’m fine," Renna said.
"Same," Lyra agreed.
Holden exhaled. "Good. Let’s pack up the cores from the canyon trap and head back to..."
Bzzt!
The radio crackled violently. The academy emergency channel overrode their frequency, blasting through the speaker with distorted, screaming audio.
"...HELP! PLEASE! ANYONE! WE’RE TRAPPED! THEY’RE EVERYWHERE!"
The voice was young. Panicked. Familiar.
"That’s Henry," Renna said, her face paling. "The guy from House Vance. The one who tried to steal our rhino."
"...CAN’T HOLD THEM OFF MUCH LONGER! THE SLUDGE IS EVERYWHERE! WE NEED..."
Static. Then silence.
Holden stared at the radio.
"Henry’s squad is in trouble," Emric said. "Given the Abyssal corruption we’ve already encountered, their situation is likely critical."
"The instructors are too far away to reach them in time," Lyra added. "The eastern sector is at least four miles from the nearest patrol route."
Renna looked at Holden. "What do we do?"
Holden looked at the dead bear. At the Abyssal Crystal in his pouch. At the distant screaming that had cut off so abruptly.
He pulled out his blade and rested it on his shoulder.
"We go help them."