CHAPTER 299: THE HUNT IN THE RAVINE

The Ruinborne Shadow Adept bounded across the floor of the ravine, its spiky, rot-chitin armor casting no reflection against the wet stone. Its fiery crimson eyes flickered beneath its skeletal beast mask, scanning the pass with cunning, command-level precision. As a captain-tier infiltration specialist of the Nerathil rot horde, it had slipped through countless enemy battlements. The First Gate’s Plaza of Death had been formidable, but its shadow manipulation had allowed it to glide past the kinetic wards entirely unnoticed, or so it believed.

Without warning, the surrounding shadows detached themselves from the canyon walls.

Twenty streams of silver-grey light ignited in the darkness. Before the Ruinborne captain could even draw its corrupted mana, four dark elf assassins erupted from the sub-dimensional shadows directly beside it. Twin curved phantom daggers whistled through the air, vibrating with dense kinetic shadow energy.

CLANG!

The Adept’s instincts saved it from instant decapitation. With unnatural fluidity, tendrils of weeping shadow lashed out from its forearms, blocking the incoming phantom blades. The impact sent a shockwave of kinetic force rippling through the narrow ravine, cracking the rock face.

"Insolent cattle!" the Ruinborne captain hissed, its voice sounding like grinding bone and decaying leaves. It raised a clawed hand, intending to detonate a wave of contagious rot-mana across the ravine.

A blinding flash of silver light cut through the dark.

Old Bones materialized directly above the creature. His dark obsidian wings phase-shifted out of folded space, creating a localized gravity well that slammed the Shadow Adept violently onto its knees. The stone beneath its feet shattered into powder.

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"Your contagion holds no sway in this realm, beast," Old Bones said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion.

The Ruinborne captain roared, its spiky carapace bursting with black, infectious miasma as it tried to phase through the shadows to escape. But as it reached for the sub-spatial layer, it found the shadow realm completely locked. Twenty Shadow Assassins stood surrounding the perimeter, their phantom daggers plunged deep into the earth, weaving an impenetrable kinetic shadow lattice that sealed the entire canyon.

Panicking, the captain lunged at Old Bones, its clawed fingers dripping with dark rot.

Old Bones didn't even draw his blade. With a single, lightning-fast sweep of his hand, a compressed wave of kinetic shadow force struck the creature's chest like a battering ram. The impact shattered the Adept’s light, spiky armor, snapping its ribs and blowing out its offensive mana channels in a single strike.

The creature collapsed into the dirt, coughing up black, corrupted bile. It thrashed violently, but four Shadow Assassins instantly pinned its limbs to the stone floor with heavy kinetic spikes, while two others wrapped its jaws in a thread-lattice binding to prevent it from detonating its own core.

Across the northern perimeter, the other four hunting cells moved with absolute, synchronized lethality. The remaining four Ruinborne shadow adepts were cornered in separate mountain passes. In a flurry of silent phantom cuts and kinetic decapitations, all four intruders were slaughtered within seconds, their dark blood staining the earth.

A dark elf captain landed silently beside Old Bones, bowing low. "The other four infiltrators have been eliminated, Executioner. None escaped."

"Purge the infection," Old Bones commanded softly.

From their palms, the assassins channeled the secondary solar blessing granted by Caius’s crown core. Streams of brilliant, white-gold cleansing fire erupted across the passes, washing over the four slain Ruinborne corpses and the black, corrupted bile left in the stone ravine. The foul rot miasma hissed violently as it burned away, dissolving into pure, harmless ash without leaving a single speck of corruption in Æthrynn's soil.

Old Bones looked down at the writhing, caged lead captain. "Place the suppressor collar on this one. Our Sovereign has been waiting for a living piece of the rot horde to dissect before their main force arrives."