A chill crawled across the back of Clyde’s neck.
His instincts scread.
Without hesitation he activated his [Flight] skill. Lightning still surging around his feet as he launched upward, cloaked in a trail of shadow and sparks. In a heartbeat he rose high above the basin, the crystal terrain shrinking beneath him.
He turned in mid-air and looked down. And then he saw it.
The cracked ground below the violet core was splitting open.
A jagged fissure spread outward in a web of fractures and from within the deepest rift, sothing moved slowly and subtly but massive.
Then an eye opened.
It blinked once, vertical and slit-pupiled, like a serpent’s but the size of it dwarfed the Myrraline formation.
Its shimred with shifting colors and a dull oily glow leaked from around its edges. Another kind of magic power bled from the crack like smoke.
Clyde narrowed his eyes.
He didn’t know what it was. It had no shape he recognized, no form, or presence he could pin down.
But it was clearly watching him. And it radiated danger.
The creature was not strong enough to kill him. But enough to drain him and waste his ti and strength.
Right now, he had what he ca for so he wasn’t going to waste a drop of power on sothing he didn’t need to fight.
"Not today, buddy,," He muttered.
With that, Clyde turned in the air and shot away from the crater, leaving a jagged trail of lightning behind him as he vanished across the poisoned horizon.
Down below, the eye continued to watch.
It didn’t blink again. It simply stared at the fading trail of his power with a slow, eerie curiosity. Then, with a low rumble, it slid back into the depths, and the crack began to seal, as though it had never been there.
But the magic energy around it had deepened and the thing below was no longer asleep.
High above the basin, Clyde’s coat fluttered in the rush of air and crackling energy as he soared through the sky.
With a flick of his wrist, he summoned the obsidian disc once more.
Magic energy flared to life, responding to his touch, and the translucent map reappeared hovering before him mid-flight.
The display shifted again. The basin shrank to the edge of the projection as new coordinates ford in a flicker of holohraphic images.
The next target pulsed into view.
Clyde’s eyes narrowed as he watched it unfold. It was a valley that nestled between jagged ridgelines of glassy stone. But unlike the previous location this place was drenched in smoke.
The smoke was thick clouds of violet, red, and black that swirling together like a corrupted aurora choked by ash.
Even through the projection the aura of that place made his skin crawl.
"Great," he muttered.
He dismissed the disc, sliding it back into his Inventory, and altered course. Lightning surged around his limbs as he rocketed toward the valley.
As he neared it the light around him dimd.
The clouds here swirling. The smoke rose in unnatural shapes, coiling like tendrils that reached toward the sky, only to fall back down.
It wasn’t just visual. The mont Clyde passed through the outer edge, he felt it.
The air thickened. Pressure clamped down around him.
"Yeah," Clyde muttered, grimacing. "Definitely a danger zone."
Beneath him, the ground was hidden. He can only see vague shapes and jagged silhouettes through the haze. But sowhere below, sothing glowed.
Faint, rhythmic pulses. Not unlike the Myrraline Shards but darker.
He hovered in place for a mont, suspended above the corrupted storm.
Then, with a sigh, he gripped the hilt of his sword tighter.
"Let’s make this quick."
And with that, he began his descent.
The mist — or smoke, or clouds, Clyde honestly couldn’t tell anymore—swirled around him like a living thing.
It moved in slow currents as if reacting to his descent. Each motion he made seed to disturb the mist, causing the red, violet, and black haze to ripple and coil in ways that made no sense.
It wasn’t just visual. It felts like sothing was watching him. Not from one place but from everywhere.
Clyde frowned but pushed the sensation aside. This whole valley was wrong, saturated in a kind of ambient corruption that gnawed at the edge of his awareness. But he wasn’t here to solve mysteries for now.
Right now, he was here to retrieve the next material. Then he will get out. But he was thinking of co back later with ti to dig into whatever this cursed zone really was.
After about thirty seconds of descent Clyde’s boots finally touched the ground.
It was soft and damp. Covered in sothing that crackled under his weight like brittle threads or dried roots. The mist clung low around his knees, hiding the earth in an eerie veil.
He reached into his coat and retrieved the obsidian disc.
With a pulse of magic, the runes flared again. A new projection rose from the center. It wasa a rotating image of the target. Sothing called the Waking Roots.
The image showed a strange, plant-like growth with long tendrils coiled outward from a knotted central stalk like veins wrapped in bark.
The surface of the roots shimred as if coated in dew but the glow wasn’t from moisture. It pulsed almost hypnotically with a dim green and violet hue.
Tiny fronds curled along its tendrils, each of them shaped like narrow teeth or thorns, and around the base of the plant fine threads grew outward and sank into the ground like anchors.
The roots looked almost alive in the projection. Maybe that’s why it was called the Waking Roots.
The disc displayed a note beside the image:
"Waking Roots – Target material. Must be harvested intact. DO NOT burn with fire or magic. Handle with insulated magic field to prevent trigger response."
Clyde narrowed his eyes. "What? She never told this shit."
He dismissed the disc and slid it away, scanning the corrupted terrain around him. The haze made it hard to see more than a few ters ahead but now that he knew what to look for.
Then he saw it.
A soft pulsing glow plant that half-buried in the dark mist, low to the ground and nestled against the base of a fractured glass-like tree.
Clyde’s grip tightened on his sword and then he started walking. He expected sothing to erge and attack him by now.
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