Chapter 86: The Infinite Grind
The hunt inside the outer perimeters of the Supreme Forest turned into a completely one-sided massacre. The low-level first-year students simply weren’t strong enough to notice her subtle presence or trace her silent movements while she masterfully evaded the strong first-year instructors, especially the high-ranked leaders of each specialized tracking group.
She had also rapidly learned to utilize the raw biomass of her victims to change her physical form into the exact appearances of those she had just killed.
Thus, her overall efficiency in murdering increased exponentially with each passing hour, and the sheer surprise factor of seeing a trusted teammate suddenly turn into a predatory mass of devouring fluid helped her maintain a swift, flawless hunt.
Everyone left alive in the dense thickets of the forest was thoroughly terrified, their previous arrogance completely broken by an unseen, untraceable phantom that seemed to strike from the very shadows beneath their feet.
"Vikram, I don’t think this situation could be solved by us alone anymore."
The voice belonged to the leader of the third group, his hands shaking violently as he clutched a broken iron spear. Within a single night, almost ninety percent of the active members from the nineteen advanced hunting groups had been completely devoured by the unknown monster.
The remaining scattered members and the few surviving leaders of each group had eventually gathered together into a single, desperate team to avoid being picked off one by one.
Among them, a tall, calm young man named Vikram Rajput stood at the center of the clearing. Vikram was currently the undisputed number one in the first-year rankings of the Supreme Beast Academy.
His personal team was the smallest out of all twenty groups, yet it was also the only unit that had suffered absolutely zero casualties since the deployment began.
So, completely different from the panicked, weeping group of disciples surrounding them, Vikram’s personal group members were entirely relaxed. Some of them even casually leaned against the trees and showed off their high-grade equipment to the less fortunate survivors.
"And?" Vikram asked in a low, even voice, his sharp gaze cutting through the dark mist of the woods.
"What do you suggest we do? Run back to the gates and allow ourselves to be insulted by everyone in the lower city? Did you guys ever think about the academy’s reputation?
No, forget the academy, what about our personal reputation if we fail to even collect a single detail about that monster before retreating?
We don’t even know what it looks like, what its actual core strength is, or why it keeps hunting exclusively within the outer perimeters instead of striking the core facilities."
Vikram shook his head in deep disappointment, his hand resting firmly on the hilt of his master-grade blade.
"But look around you!" the panicked leader replied, biting his lower lip so hard it began to bleed. "Ninety percent of our classmates are gone. There are no bodies left. No blood. Just empty clothes and dissolved weapons."
"Calm your racing heart," Vikram commanded, his tone dripping with an absolute, unyielding authority that forced the surrounding students to shut their mouths.
"I received an official encrypted report from the high tower just an hour ago. The elite second-year seniors are already returning early from their distant wasteland expedition. We don’t have to defeat the beast ourselves.
We just have to survive together until morning light breaks over the canopy. Everyone, absolutely do not sleep tonight. Form a defensive circle, set the flares, and let us see if that monster actually dares to come near my Earth Drake."
Among the desperate, huddling disciples at the edge of the clearing, a female student with dark hair and a completely average appearance stood slightly apart from the rest.
She didn’t look like any powerful summoner, and her uniform was slightly dusty, matching the low-tier aesthetics of the surrounding fodder.
If thrown into a large crowd, she would be completely inconspicuous, a background variable that no ranked summoner would ever waste a second glance on.
However, the faint glint hidden deep within her dark eyes was the absolute opposite of average. They were remarkably sharp, intensely intelligent, yet carried a bizarre, innocent curiosity.
Ayla slowly curled her lips upward into a silent, beautiful grin, glancing up through her fake human eyelashes at the surviving humans who were busy reinforcing their pathetic wooden barriers.
Over the course of the night, she had discovered something highly anomalous regarding the mechanics of this world. Hunting and consuming these specific academy students strangely didn’t grant her any new biological traits.
Rather, every single time she devoured a student’s brain, it directly and massively increased the raw strength of her internal soul.
To her processing mind, it made perfect logical sense. Since these people and this entire academy setting were ultimately an intricate illusion generated by the massive architecture of the Spire Event, they weren’t true, organic creations born from the natural world like the beasts of the forest.
She couldn’t extract genetic traits. But she could systematically improve her own soul density, because the illusions themselves were constructed and sustained by real, raw soul power funneled into the timeline.
With her internal soul strength increasing so tremendously with every student she consumed, Ayla’s manual control over her synthesized traits had rapidly improved to a terrifying degree.
A prime, shocking example of this newfound spiritual dominance was that she could now actively trigger the parameters of the Death Looper ability entirely on her own, without needing Kenji to die.
Ayla looked inwardly at the deep recesses of her own soul space. Before this massive feeding frenzy, her spiritual form had been a faint, transparent shape floating in the void.
Now, the shape had completely solidified with a light blue color, a hue that visibly deepened and crystallized every single time she devoured another human.
She had a very distinct feeling that if this light blue color turned completely dark and solid, her baseline soul power might instantly explode into something hundreds of times more powerful than her current state.
If that magnificent breakthrough happened, her manual control over her traits would reach entirely new, unimaginable heights.
With that glorious calculation finalized in her mind, she decided it was finally time to stop pretending to be a helpless first year. She stood up straight, her average human facade melting away as she instantly activated her Corrosive Abyssal Fluid at its absolute maximum capacity.
Instead of spraying it from her mouth, her expanded soul power allowed her to manifest the black, bubbling liquid directly in the air above the clearing, raining it down like a storm over the entire combined camp.
For a few horrifying minutes, absolutely devastating screams erupted throughout the Supreme Forest as the high-acid fluid dissolved armor, flesh, and shields into a boiling green sludge.
Vikram Rajput’s eyes widened in shock as his summon desperately tried to protect him, yet its high-level defense was completely useless against the sheer volume of the abyssal rain.
Before the survivors could even attempt to scatter or flee into the undergrowth, Ayla activated Pyromancy. The volatile chemical reaction between the corrosive fluid and fire triggered a massive, catastrophic chain reaction.
A huge, roaring fire exploded outward from the center of the camp, consuming everything around into a mountain of absolute ashes within a matter of seconds, leaving the clearing completely dead and silent.
Standing amidst the blazing inferno, completely unharmed by the heat, Ayla calmly closed her eyes. Her light blue soul core hummed with power as it absorbed the massive wave of spiritual energy from the freshly dissolved class leaders.
Without a hint of hesitation, she intentionally activated the Death Looper.
The world around her instantly shattered like a cracked mirror. The roaring flames drifted backward, the ashes reassembled into green leaves, and time violently folded in on itself, opening her eyes to the exact, identical moment she had first ambushed the very first group of low-tier students near the outer boundary line.
Ayla looked down at her small, pale hands, a wide, predatory grin stretching across her face as she heard the distant, happy chatter of the unsuspecting students who had just been deployed from the plaza.
She decided to continue this glorious, systematic massacre and continuously repeat the loop over and over again until her light blue soul was completely solidified into the dark.
Meanwhile, back at the southern city gates within the current active timeline, the heavy air remained perfectly frozen. Kenji was still leaning lazily against the cold stone wall, his body faking the empty, glazed look of a mindless drone under the control of the being inside Amran.
Through the dark data streams humming through his brain stems, he could feel the hive-mind network vibrating with anticipation. Every single crossbow along the high battlements was still cocked, pointed directly at the backs of the oblivious low-tier students below.
Kenji’s senses lightly brushed against the hidden bone fragment in his spiritual space, his heart rate remaining perfectly steady at sixty beats per minute. He knew that outside these walls, his woman was currently engaged in some absolute madness causing his Death Looper trait to sting periodically.
He was extremely surprised by this notion. What did this mean? Ayla had learned to use Death Looper without the need of him, and without his knowledge.
