Chapter 163: Not a Rock
Kai descended into the bowl; his boots crunched softly against the dead ground.
And the others followed right behind.
As they ventured deeper into the clearing, weaving past one dead tree after another, the more the unease coiled in their stomachs. Bryan pressed a hand to his gut, and his face paled; feeling like vomiting. "I don’t like this." He swallowed hard and glanced at Bree. "Bree, haven’t you been here before?"
"I have, but I didn’t really pay attention," Bree shrugged. "And I never saw an area like this."
Bree is a part of Auric Cabal until recently.
She had been in the Dead Range before, but her experience was narrow.
Earlier, she’d mentioned that the Awakened Monsters she’d faced were mostly Shadowlings—beyond that, she knew little. As one of the group’s few supporting Supernals, she’d been kept mostly at the center of the formation.
Her view of the terrain was limited by the bodies shielding her.
"We found nothing for quite a bit—It’d be a waste to ignore this." Kai glanced at Bryan. "Let’s carefully check and then get out."
Up close, the rock was larger than it had seemed from above. Kai thought it was around seven feet, his height, but it almost reached nine feet. Its surface was a mosaic of interlocking plates, each one carrying the faint grain of a true bone.
On top of the rock, two long branches protruded to the side and then up.
And the energy that pulsed from within was light and as steady as a heartbeat.
Kai reached out and laid his palm against it, feeling the surface.
It was smooth and undeniably osseous; he even tried knocking it with his knuckles—and the thudding sound it produced was identical to the sound of bone hitting bone. "Don’t knock on it, you stupid shit," Bryan whispered from behind. "We don’t know what it was."
"Then what do you suggest?" Kai raised a brow. "That we stare at it?"
As the two were arguing, Dorian tilted his head a little, inspecting the bone rock closely.
Slowly, a frown formed on his head.
Crack—!
Out of nowhere, the crack echoed against the silence.
Kai looked over his shoulder and saw the bone rock had cracked. He recoiled, leaping back as the fissure raced across the bone rock’s surface. And the energy within it surged—no longer a pulse but a flood; a pressure that pushed against the air and made the dead trees crack.
Another crack resounded.
And then another.
Before their eyes, the bone plates shifted; separating along seams that had been invisible a few seconds before. And it slowly came into a shape. Ribs. Behind—a spine uncurled vertebrae by vertebrae. Bony legs stretched and found the ground with the thud of hooves.
Above, from where the two protruding branches emerged, was a skull.
It lifted last, which made the four of them understand that the protruding branches were not branches at all; they were antlers. And this bone rock had never been a rock, but a monster in slumber.
Kai staggered back as the monster rose, towering over him.
A skeleton deer with glowing green eyes and with a rough exhale—its antlers shimmered with the same sickly color. He saw a white gem deep inside its chest, and his face instantly turned pale as a sheet of paper.
"It’s a Star Beast!!"
ROAR—!
The roar detonated across the clearing. It produced a soundwave that was akin to a hammer of compressed air that flattened dead trees in the area in a rippling circle—and hurled Kai and the others backward like swatted insects.
None of them could endure this savage force as they were sent spinning in the air.
All of them came here to hunt some Awakened Monsters.
Instead, bad luck had gifted them a stray Star Beast that they thought was a bone-rock.
It wasn’t their first time fighting a Star Beast for Kai and Bree. Instinctively—the two activated their Halos, which Dorian and Bryan copied. Grey aura bled from Kai’s shoulders. Flame-red wreathed Dorian. Pale pink shimmered around Bree. And white around Bryan.
As soon as their Halos were activated, the corruption was blocked.
And it hissed against their auras, unable to touch them. At least for now.
But the skeletal deer didn’t stop there; its antlers crackled with a sickly green energy, charging with the speed of a snapped nerve, and then detonated. A pulse of green light exploded like an aurora, outward—washing over the clearing in an expanding wave that seared everything it touched.
Kai felt the heat of it and gritted his teeth.
He watched his skin bubble and blister almost the instant the energy touched him.
Just then, an energy membrane that was translucent and elastic wrapped around him. It was able to shield him from the heat. He looked to the side and realized that it was Bree. She was protecting herself and him.
As for Dorian and Bryan, they weren’t as lucky to have Bree’s protection.
Dorian snarled through the burn, while Bryan caught the worst of it; the green washed over his torso and forced him to draw a choked gasp. His skin was thicker than the others, but it wasn’t enough to endure the green wave.
"Protect them, too!" Kai said, worried about those two.
Both of them were quite annoying for him, but they were still friends.
"I can’t protect them. Too far away from me," Bree shook her head.
If she stretched the membrane further, then it won’t be able to hold out against the heat wave, rendering the membrane useless. Bree didn’t intentionally ignore them; she wouldn’t do that. She simply couldn’t sacrifice the durability of the energy membrane.
Dorian hissed through gritted teeth and opened his eyes.
His breath was caught in his throat when the skeletal deer was already locked onto him.
It galloped with extreme speed—a horror of bone and antlers as its glowing eyes fixed at the target that it had already picked. Bryan, the weakest of the bundle. It could clearly sense that Bryan was the weakest; the way predators always did.
Bryan was still mid-air, body twisted from the blast, and he was now targeted.
No leverage to dodge. No time to react.
Like a raging bull, the deer lowered its head and aimed its antlers to ram him through.
Even though the antlers were dull on the tips, with enough force—they could easily penetrate through Bryan without resistance. "Shit, why is it aiming for me?!" Bryan crossed both of his arms and flexed his muscles, bracing for impact. "Fucking Star Beast!"
Just as the antlers were about to hit their mark, Kai got in the way.
He crossed the distance quickly as soon as he hit the ground and planted himself between the skeleton deer and Bryan. Blood-phantom Scimitar braced in a two-handed guard as Kai poured strength into his core.
And when the antlers struck, the sound resounded loudly.
Kai hissed as the force screamed up his arms, forcing his muscles to convulse; an involuntary, teeth-gritting spasm of pain. He was launched backward like a broken doll—but managed to catch himself as he stabbed the scimitar into the stone mid-flight.
The blade carved a long, sparking trench before the momentum died.
He stopped inches from slamming into a dead tree.
Chest heaving, arms trembling, he raised his gaze and locked eyes with the skeleton deer.
I managed to gather immense energy from that clash.
Kai could feel the Retribution Ending Fragment working its magic, charging himself with an insurmountable amount of additional energy proportionate to the damage he endured. His arms were trembling from the amount of mana that was crackling underneath his skin.
But he knew that his attack wouldn’t kill the skeleton deer even with this additional energy.
Right now, none of them were prepared to fight a Star Beast.
"Spread out and run!" Kai roared, brandishing his hand—as a gesture for the others to escape the area as fast as they could.
Before the others could react, Kai already made his move. He rolled forward and charged the Dark Discharge Imprint into his scimitar and swung it horizontally, firing an energy arc that sliced through the air.
He didn’t stop there.
Like a nimble acrobat, he rolled to the right and made another slash.
Swoosh—!
Kai watched as the two energy slashes slammed into the skeleton deer, staggering it back.
He saw a cut on its chest, but it only drew a pitiful amount of blood—too shallow.
I poured a good amount in those slashes, and they barely did anything. I need to pour more.
Knowing that he was facing a Star Beast, he charged a larger amount of mana into his scimitar to empower the Dark Discharge Imprint even more. But that barely did anything to the Star Beast—and now, its eyes settled on Kai.
Like a rabbit at the sight of a fox, Kai turned around and sprinted the other way.
His aim was to lure the Star Beast towards him so others could escape, and he succeeded.
Or at least, he thought he succeeded until he looked over his shoulder and saw it charging straight at Bryan again. "Screw this place!" Bryan shouted as he ran as fast as he could, cursing at the fact that the deer skeleton somehow was still aiming for him. "Get him off of me!"
Swoosh—!
Fire danced from the side as Dorian came to the rescue.
He came from the side fast and drilled his fiery fist into the skeleton deer’s face.
A small explosion happened when the fist connected—and the smoke blotted the skeleton deer’s vision, allowing Bryan to get some distance from it. Once the smoke cleared, it saw Dorian already charging another attack.
From below, he uppercutted the skeleton deer; his fist charged with the same imprint.
But unlike before, the moment the fist connected and exploded, Dorian hissed in pain.
It felt like punching a steel bar; his knuckles were throbbing.
And worse, the skeleton deer hadn’t even flinched—the uppercut landed clean, but the creature remained rooted in place, completely unmoved. And slowly, almost lazily—it tilted its skull down to fix Dorian with blazing green eyes.
"Oh, shit..."
The words barely left Dorian’s lips before the antlers came around in a brutal arc.
He was swatted hard across the clearing like a ragdoll.
However, despite eating a vicious blow, his distraction wasn’t for nothing.
Kai, with his Nigh-phantom Imprint activated, managed to sneak to the skeleton deer’s side like a ghost creeping on unsuspecting invaders of its home. His scimitar was seething with dark mana as he had been charging it throughout the way.
Normally, he would put as much mana as he could in a few seconds’ time.
Now, he went far beyond that.
"Let’s see your head roll!"
Slash—!
