The spiritual wind around Elius cald down.
The shimring petals of energy that once swirled like miniature galaxies faded into dust, and the brilliance in his glowing eyes dimd back into their cold, grey-blue hue.
His breathing returned to normal, steady and light, like soone who had just co back from a place beyond the sky.
He stood up slowly, cracking his neck from side to side.
But sothing felt wrong.
The once-vibrant energy that saturated the area now felt hollow, drained. The air was stale. Dead. Even the soft moss below had withered to ash beneath his feet.
"...Is it ," Ron said, sniffing the air, "or did this place get... darker?"
"I can't feel anything," Klee murmured, waving her hand in the air. Her radiant aura flickered, reaching for sothing that wasn't there.
Lina floated beside Shiro, her ghost form phasing halfway into the wall. "It's not just you. The air's... empty."
Elius didn't respond at first.
A flick of thought brought up his system screen again.
Ding! Cultivation Stones in the vicinity are now insufficient.
Would you like to move to another area to seek more spiritual resources?
Elius frowned. He hadn't even seen any cultivation stones. But it made sense. If this system ga screen mirrored the sa ga screen from Earth ga, then spiritual stones weren't always visible.
They could be embedded beneath the ground, hidden inside rocks, or nestled in rabbit warrens and forgotten caves.
Whatever the case—he had drained it dry.
"All right," he said, brushing his robes. "We're moving. There's nothing left here."
"Huh?" Shiro tilted his head. "We just got settled."
"Yeah," Klee pouted. "You're not gonna cultivate again, are you? We thought you were sleeping the whole ti."
"I asked you to train," Elius said flatly, walking past them. "What were you doing?"
The four froze.
Their faces all said the sa thing.
Guilt.
They hadn't trained. Not even a little.
They'd just watched him, srized, as if he were a cot streaking across their sky.
They'd never seen anyone do sothing like that before, never felt power ripple off a person in waves so thick it made their skin crawl.
How could they train when they didn't even understand what they were witnessing?
"We uh... we were watching your form," Ron tried.
"I was observing the, um, patterns of your breath," Lina said, scratching her ghostly cheek.
"Analyzing your... chi flow?" Klee added weakly.
"I morized the position of your pinky toe," Shiro offered, deadpan.
Elius stopped.
He turned.
A long sigh escaped him. "None of you trained?"
They shook their heads.
"Hopeless," he muttered. "Absolutely hopeless. Co on."
He led them down a tight, spiraling tunnel further into the cave system.
The walls here were slick with glowing moss and quartz veins.
Occasionally, strange little butterflies of light would flit past them—dinsional insects, maybe.
As they moved, Elius occasionally glanced at the floor. He was trying to sense any spiritual energy left, but the system didn't ping. Not even a flicker.
Then—
Far across the cave, on the other side of the mountain's curved belly...
The Goblins scurried in packs.
Unlike the feral beasts they were often portrayed as in human tales, these goblins were organized.
Their cave village was lit by bone fires, lined with scavenged tal scraps and sharpened wood poles.
They skittered through the tunnels like roaches, yipping and grunting, chasing after rabbit creatures and mutated mole-rats.
Splat!
One goblin crushed a rabbit underfoot and laughed hideously.
Another tore apart a glowing mole-rat and sucked out its jelly-like core.
They were savage.
They were primal.
They were many.
But among them stood a larger goblin, hunched and robed, with bone piercings across his face and a staff made from twisted steel and flesh.
The Goblin Shaman.
His eyes, normally dull, suddenly flashed with yellow fire.
He froze.
His gnarled claws gripped the air, pulling invisible threads.
He hissed in a guttural language unknown to any human ear, and imdiately—the entire goblin den went still.
All fifty of them stopped what they were doing.
The small ones dropped their prey.
The warriors stood up straight.
Even the infants stopped chewing on rocks.
The Shaman pointed.
Then he hissed again.
And the goblins scrambled.
They didn't march—they erupted.
Bodies flew across the cavern. Goblins pushed and stepped on each other in a frenzy of activation.
So tripped and split their skulls on jagged rock.
Others leapt over the dying, roaring guttural war cries.
Their eyes were bloodshot. Their mouths foad. They foad at the thought of blood. They scread for war.
One goblin tried to sharpen its knife too quickly and severed its own finger—but even then, it roared and kept running, blood splashing on its own chest.
Their weapons were crude—jagged iron, rusted axes, broken spears made from beast bones—but they were many, and they were rabid.
They charged through the tunnels with animalistic rage, their eyes gleaming with madness.
"GRAAAAAAAH!!!"
Their leader—the tallest among them, marked with bone armor and red paint—scread from the front.
He raised his stone sword high and pointed forward, down the tunnel, his tribe following him in a thunderous stampede.
And then—
Swoock.
The sound was clean.
Sharp.
Like silk being sliced in one motion.
The goblin chief's head slid clean off his shoulders making a mont of stunned silence among them.
His body stood there, twitching, still not registering the death.
The head hit the floor with a soft thump.
Then—
"Skkreeee—!" A goblin shrieked.
Swoock. Swoock. Swoock!
One by one, heads began flying. Bodies dropped. Blood sprayed against the stone walls in arching gouts.
The goblins didn't even know where the attack ca from.
Their screams echoed. So fled. So tried to fight back.
But the blades were faster.
Invisible.
Precise.
A goblin lunged and was sliced in half midair.
Another raised a shield—and found his feet removed from his legs.
Swoock.
Swoock.
Swoock.
It was a massacre.
Within thirty seconds, the cave floor was slick with blood and twitching green corpses. The echoes of their war cry had been swallowed by the wet squelch of their own entrails.
And standing in the middle of it all, calm and untouched, was a figure in a black robe.
His face was veiled in shadow.
His sleeves flowed unnaturally, as though obeying laws not of gravity, but of will.
On his right, three swords hovered—floating in circles, humming faintly.
His eyes weren't visible.
But on his side, glowing faintly in the dark...
[System Notification: Place not suitable for Cultivation]
Cause: Lack of Spiritual Resources.
The faceless man stood there for a mont longer, surveying the bloodbath.
Then he turned.
And vanished into the deeper dark.
...
"Are you three done practicing your new superpowers?" Elius said, voice cool and without question.
The tunnel ahead was long and twisted, lit by glowing green fungus clinging to the walls like bioluminescent parasites.
Dust floated in the air, and sowhere far ahead, the echo of dripping water resounded in an eerie rhythm.
The four behind him perked up at his words, glancing at one another in shared understanding.
Ron, still in partial Velociraptor form—his legs scaled, his irises slit, claws on his hands sharp and twitching—let out a snort. "Hell yeah."
Klee giggled, skipping along with a faint, glowing aura wrapping around her small fra, a golden bell on her waist jingling faintly. "This feels like one of those training montages in the old hero shows."
Lina floated just above the ground, phasing in and out of ghost form like a flickering candle. "You an the ones where the team always gets stronger before they et the boss?"
Shiro, silent as usual, walked with his head lowered, his hands in the long sleeves of his dark ninja uniform.
"Look at him," Ron said, nudging Shiro with an elbow. "All quiet and broody. What happened, man? Shadow Shiro was way more dangerous than this version."
Lina chid in, smirking. "Yeah. Your shadow clone was cooler. It actually looked like it could kill us."
Even Klee giggled, eyes squinting. "Hee hee, I liked your clone. It had that mysterious evil glare. You... you look like you're sulking."
Shiro didn't answer for a long ti.
His footsteps slowed. His mouth pressed into a thin line. And then—
"I..." he murmured, voice barely above a whisper. "I feel... useless now."
The words floated in the air like a poison cloud.
He continued walking, but his hands clenched into fists inside his sleeves.
"I trained so hard before coming here," he said slowly. "I was fast. Silent. Dangerous. I could make clones, vanish in a blink, walk on walls. But now..."
He lifted his hand and looked at it.
"I can barely keep up. My shadow's better than . You all have new powers now. Upgrades. Even Ron's a dinosaur now. Lina can phase through walls. Klee's healing could heal heavier wounds. And ?"
He stopped.
His shoulders sagged.
"I'm the sa as I was. I haven't changed. If anything, I feel like I've been left behind."
The air around them grew quiet.
Even the sound of water dripping in the distance felt softer.
Elius, who had been walking ahead, stopped.
He turned slightly, just enough to glance back.
Then he smirked.
"Useless?" he said. "You're the most useful one here."
Reviews
All reviews (0)