Chapter 67: Want to Carry Out Forceful Guiding!
(Will Edit this one too to perfection soon Ty ;( ) Ethan immediately threw himself to the side, barely managing to avoid the creature’s attack as something enormous swept past the spot where he had been standing only a second earlier. He stumbled several steps before catching himself, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he turned around to finally get a proper look at the thing that had nearly torn him apart.
For a moment, Ethan could only stare.
"What the hell is that...?"
It was unlike anything he had ever seen before.
The creature had a single enormous eye positioned in the center of its head, the surface of the eye glowing with an eerie green light that seemed to pierce straight through the darkness of the Rift. The upper portion of its head vaguely resembled that of a wolf, except there was not a single strand of fur covering it; instead, its entire head was made up of smooth, hardened flesh that looked almost unnaturally stretched around its skull. From the neck downward, its body was covered in thick, dark scales that shimmered whenever the strange light from the Rift touched them, while its lower body gradually narrowed into an unnaturally long tail that dragged across the ground behind it.
It had no recognizable resemblance to any creature Ethan had ever encountered.
And somehow, that made it even more terrifying.
"Don’t let it get close!" one of the Sentinels shouted.
The warning immediately snapped everyone back into action.
Drey charged first, his weapon cutting through the air with enough force to send a concentrated wave of spiritual energy toward the creature. Zane attacked almost simultaneously from the opposite side, while Adrien and Riley moved in to support him, forcing the creature to defend itself from several directions at once.
The other Sentinels followed.
For a moment, Ethan thought they might actually be able to overwhelm it.
They were wrong.
The creature moved with terrifying speed.
Its long tail swept across the ground, forcing two Sentinels to leap over it, while its massive eye flashed brightly and released a concentrated burst of spiritual energy that struck another Sentinel and sent him crashing backward.
Drey’s blade managed to slash across its scaled body.
A deep wound appeared.
But the creature barely reacted.
It twisted its body and struck Drey with its tail, forcing him to block the attack with both hands as his feet dug several inches into the ground.
"What the hell is this thing?" Runt shouted as he attacked from the side.
His weapon struck the creature’s flank.
Nothing.
The creature simply turned its enormous eye toward him.
Runt’s expression changed.
"Uh..."
The creature lunged.
Runt barely escaped.
Ethan watched with growing disbelief as attack after attack landed without producing any meaningful result. The creature was only one entity, yet the entire group was struggling to bring it down.
Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared—
It vanished.
Everyone froze.
"What?"
Ethan looked around.
The creature was gone.
There was no body.
No trace of blood.
Nothing.
"Where did it go?" Adrien demanded, immediately scanning their surroundings.
Nobody answered.
Then—
ROOOOOOOOAR!
The sound came from somewhere much farther ahead.
Ethan’s skin prickled.
That wasn’t the creature they had just been fighting.
The realization settled over him slowly.
They had been attacked by something that was apparently protecting the path, but whatever was producing that enormous roar was still somewhere deeper inside the Rift.
"We’re still hearing it," Ethan muttered.
Drey looked toward the direction of the sound.
"So we keep moving."
No one argued.
They began advancing.
The deeper they went, the stranger the Rift became.
Ethan had expected the environment inside the Rift to remain relatively consistent, but this place seemed almost alive.
The ground beneath their feet pulsed faintly with spiritual energy, and with every step they took, Ethan could feel the pressure becoming heavier.
It was even denser than the spiritual energy surrounding the Rift entrance.
There’s so much of it.
He could almost feel his mental sea reacting to the abundance of energy around them, and although he knew this wasn’t the time to think about ranking up, a small part of him couldn’t help but realize what this meant.
This place was overflowing.
Then another roar echoed through the darkness.
The surrounding vegetation suddenly reacted.
Thick, disgusting vines burst from the ground, twisting around one another as if something had awakened beneath the soil. Strange plants that had previously looked lifeless suddenly opened like mouths, releasing clouds of faintly glowing spores into the air.
"Don’t touch anything," Zane warned coldly.
Nobody needed to be told twice.
They continued forward.
Another roar came.
This time, the ground itself seemed to tremble.
More plants emerged.
Some twisted toward them.
Others crawled along the walls.
The entire environment seemed to become more active with every sound coming from deeper inside the Rift, as though the thing producing those roars wasn’t merely making noise.
It was commanding the Rift itself.
Ethan swallowed.
This place is alive.
But not in a good way.
Eventually, they reached a massive structure of twisted black roots and stone that rose from the ground like a natural wall. The enormous growth completely blocked their view of whatever lay beyond it, while faint pulses of corrupted energy seeped through the gaps between the roots.
Then—
Grrrrrrrr...
The sound came from behind the structure.
Everyone stopped.
That was it.
Whatever had been roaring since they entered the Rift was directly behind there.
Drey tightened his grip around his weapon.
"Everyone stay alert."
They slowly approached from opposite sides, Drey moving along one side of the enormous root formation while Runt moved toward the other.
The others remained behind, ready to intervene if anything emerged.
Ethan’s heart began beating faster.
Something was there.
He could feel it.
They had barely taken another step when the creature on the other side suddenly seemed to sense them.
The entire Rift fell silent.
Then came another growl.
Low.
Deep.
Almost intelligent.
Something moved behind the roots.
Runt immediately raised his weapon.
"It’s coming!"
The roots suddenly bent outward.
Something stepped through.
Ethan’s entire body froze.
It wasn’t another monster.
At least, not in the way he understood monsters.
The thing that emerged looked almost human at first glance, but that resemblance disappeared the longer Ethan looked at it.
Its body was tall and unnaturally thin, with a surface that looked as though it had been carved from translucent crystal. Veins of glowing spiritual energy ran beneath its body like streams of light, while pieces of what looked like blackened armor had grown directly into its flesh.
There was no recognizable face.
Instead, where its face should have been was a smooth, pale surface with a single vertical opening running from its forehead down to its chin.
The opening slowly split apart.
Inside was not a mouth.
It was a swirling mass of black and silver spiritual energy.
Ethan’s blood ran cold.
This...
His legs nearly gave out.
For all his constant reassurances that he wasn’t afraid, that he had already survived an apocalypse and therefore nothing in this world could possibly scare him anymore, the sight before him destroyed that confidence in an instant.
His entire body instinctively screamed at him to run.
"This!"
Ethan’s voice trembled.
"This was what we were supposed to be facing?"
Runt’s face drained of color.
"Fuck..."
Drey’s expression became extremely serious.
"Don’t panic. We can still—"
The creature moved.
"Now!"
Drey and Runt attacked simultaneously.
Their weapons struck the creature from opposite directions, cutting deep into its body.
For the first time, blood spilled.
The creature staggered.
Ethan’s eyes widened.
They had hurt it.
But before he could feel relieved, the wounds began closing.
Not gradually.
Not slowly.
They disappeared almost instantly.
The torn flesh reconstructed itself in the blink of an eye, leaving the creature completely unharmed.
Runt stared.
"You’ve got to be fucking kidding me."
Drey immediately attacked again.
The same thing happened.
Every wound they inflicted healed almost as soon as it appeared.
The creature wasn’t simply strong.
It was practically impossible to wear down.
Runt’s Guide, who had been supporting him from behind, suddenly shouted, "Wait! Look at its energy!"
Runt immediately glanced toward the creature.
"What about it?"
"It isn’t healing naturally. It’s absorbing spiritual energy every time it gets injured!"
The Guide pointed toward the air surrounding the creature.
"It’s pulling the energy around it into its body and using it to repair itself!"
Runt frowned.
"That doesn’t make sense. Monsters can’t manipulate spiritual energy like that."
"They can absorb Miasma, but they can’t properly use purified spiritual energy!"
Drey’s eyes narrowed.
"Unless there is enough excess spiritual energy mixed with the Miasma."
The Guide hesitated before slowly nodding.
"Exactly. Under normal circumstances, Miasma is corrupted energy that monsters instinctively absorb, while purified spiritual energy is harmful to them. They shouldn’t be able to process both at the same time, but if the Rift contains an abnormal concentration of both energies, there is a possibility that the creature could be absorbing the excess spiritual energy and using it to stabilize the corrupted energy inside its body."
Runt looked toward the creature.
"So you’re saying it’s using the spiritual energy around it to heal?"
"That’s what it appears to be."
The others nodded, seemingly accepting the explanation.
But Ethan remained silent.
His mind was racing.
No.
He had seen something like this before.
Drey.
The failed Guiding session.
The Rift’s spiritual energy.
The way Drey’s body had been absorbing both the corrupted and purified energy before filtering the purified portion toward Ethan.
That was exactly what had happened.
Everyone thought it was impossible because they had never encountered it before.
But Ethan had.
And if Drey’s body could somehow process both types of energy, then there was no reason to assume this creature couldn’t do something similar.
His eyes shifted toward the creature.
It’s absorbing the energy.
It’s using the Rift itself as its source.
And then an idea struck him.
A crazy idea.
But possibly their only chance.
Ethan suddenly turned toward Drey.
"Drey."
Drey glanced at him.
"I need to Guide you now!"