Chapter 375: The Nabakayak (1)
Chapter 375: The Nabakayak (1)
Kyle looked upward. The interior of the ancient tree’s massive canopy was fracturing, the violent shaking creating a cascading failure of limbs, but the destruction was also tearing massive holes through the thick, interwoven roof of red leaves."Hold on," Kyle muttered, his voice cold.
Crouching low to load the kinetic tension in his calves, he unleashed the full extent of his agility stats. He took a massive leap, launching himself straight into the air like a cannonball. He shot several meters upward, defying gravity for a brilliant second before slamming his boots down onto a descending, massive branch that was swinging wildly through the air.
He didn’t stop to admire the view or check his balance. Utilizing his existing momentum, he pushed off the collapsing wood, sprinting up the steeply inclined surface and taking another high-velocity leap toward the next tier of branches. His plan was simple and pragmatic: since the interior of the ancient structure was collapsing, the structural failure was bound to create a clear opening to escape somewhere at the very top of this massive tree.
As he cleared the third tier of limbs, a narrow gap of dark sky filtered through the rising dust and falling debris just fifty meters above them.
"Just as I thought," a sly, confident grin crept onto Kyle’s lips as he sprinted hard toward the makeshift exit. Freedom and open space were right within his grasp.
’I wouldn’t do that if I were you, student,’ the deer’s voice spoke smoothly inside his head, its tone carrying a warning that Kyle found incredibly annoying.
Kyle completely ignored the warning, writing it off as another one of the creature’s cynical, sarcastic ventures meant to throw him off balance or make him hesitate. He had the speed, he had the perfect trajectory, and he wasn’t going to turn back for a ghost story when an apex predator was climbing up from the roots.
Reaching the tip of the highest stable branch closest to the small exit, Kyle activated his core ability to ensure he cleared the gap in one go. ’Shadow Walk!’
He pulled the surrounding darkness into focus, wrapping extra shadows around his feet to give himself an immense, explosive kinetic boost. He launched himself off the splitting wood, rocketing through the final gap toward the open sky of Kraken.
But just as he thought freedom was near, the air in front of the exit instantly crystallized into pure, suffocating malice.
A massive, terrifying entity materialized directly in his flight path, blocking the exit entirely. It wasn’t a solid beast, but a sprawling, swirling vortex of dark energy centered around a colossal, burning red circle. And staring directly down at him from the center of that crimson void were two horizontal, slit-like pupils—monstrous, black snake eyes that locked onto his soul, freezing the very blood in his veins and completely halting his momentum in mid-air.