Chapter 164: Storm-Line
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Wind howled through the broken riftscape, carrying the metallic tang of ozone and the far off stench of scorched beast hide. Kai’s silhouette moved in long, silent strides across tilted rock plates, each footstep scattering silver dust left behind by the departed beast over time. Above him, black and blue clouds spun in a violent gyre, spearing white spears of lightning into the fractured ground. Every strike shook the air with a sound like mountains colliding.
Follow the thunder; where the storms converge, iron sleeps. That was the System’s directive message to him. It was crisp, impersonal, undeniable.
Kai used predator instinct and let a small pulse of Monarch aura sweep outward in a 30-pace radius. The world returned as a shifting relief map of vibrations and aura echo: fissured basalt, buried pools of essence, broken ore veins releasing slow, glowing drips. No moving foes. No new guardians.
Still he felt eyes.
A hunter’s instinct was never wrong. There was a tiny prick of awareness at the nape of his neck—told him he wasn’t alone. He hadn’t been since leaving the basin.
Far back among the tumbled columns of obsidian, a lone figure crouched. Tall for a rabbit-kin. It was nearly Kai’s height in hybrid form. She wore scavenged bone armor over her silver black fur. One ear was torn(from the last battle) at the tip; the other twitched restlessly.
Her name, whispered among savage rabbit clans, was Azhara the Fangsister—the sole five star rank leader who’d fled the massacre when Kai’s second Ruler’s Roar erased her entire team.
She dug a narrow tunnel into the loamy earth with her claws, heart thundering in her chest, until the muffled screams above faded into silence. Buried beneath the soil, her body trembled, not from exhaustion, but from something far deeper. Fear.