Chapter 52: A Gift for Raven Dusk

Chapter 52. A Gift for Raven Dusk

Nobody answered.

How disappointing.

Darius stared at me. Garr’s grip tightened around his sword. Elia looked from my face to my hands, while Raven studied the enormous ice flowers scattered across the clearing.

I could practically hear the gears turning inside their heads.

The curse got him?

Then where’s the pain?

Where are the black veins?

Why isn’t he screaming?

Excellent questions.

Unfortunately, I had no intention of answering them.

I turned and walked deeper into the hunting ground.

Just like Rey used to do.

Whenever the Five Heroes reached a dead end, whenever their arguments dragged on and nobody knew which direction to take, Rey was usually the one who stepped forward.

He studied the terrain.

Calculated the risks.

Made a decision.

And the others followed.

I knew that feeling.

In my previous life, I’d led enough research expeditions to recognize the peculiar silence that came when everyone was waiting for somebody else to take responsibility.

Apparently, reincarnation hadn’t cured me of that habit.

Behind me, someone whispered.

"Rey..."

Elia.

She wasn’t calling me.

Not really.

The name had escaped her like a memory.

Perhaps she remembered those old journeys, too or why she’d once wanted to stand beside him.

I didn’t turn around.

After a moment, footsteps followed.

Four sets.

Once, they’d followed Rey because they trusted him to lead them through danger.

Now?

They were following because they wanted to see him fall.

Possibly kill him.

How nostalgic.

We hadn’t traveled far when the ground began trembling.

I stopped.

Something crashed through the undergrowth ahead.

Then another shape emerged.

And another.

A horde.

The creatures resembled enormous wolves, though their shoulders were broader and their bodies covered in overlapping plates of dark gray armor. Jagged ridges ran along their spines, and their jaws were wide enough to make a horse reconsider its life choices.

Ironmaw Direwolves.

Again, normally, they were classified around D or C tier.

Dangerous to ordinary travelers.

Manageable for trained adventurers.

But these specimens...

Mana signatures unfolded across my vision.

Dense cores.

Reinforced musculature.

Unusually thick armor.

B-tier.

Every single one.

[Abyssal Hunter’s Domain.]

I counted twelve.

Then fifteen.

Then stopped bothering when more emerged from the trees.

Interesting...

The hunting ground had become an accidental evolutionary experiment.

A closed environment.

Limited territory.

Competition for resources.

Generations of monsters forced to adapt.

I wanted to study them.

Preferably alive.

Failing that, I’d settle for a core.

Just one.

I glanced toward my former comrades. "I suppose it’s your turn."

Garr frowned. "What?"

"I wouldn’t want anyone complaining that I didn’t give you a chance." I gestured toward the approaching horde. "Go ahead."

Garr scoffed. "Why don’t you handle them? We aren’t your servants."

I stared at him.

Seriously?

First, they wanted me to prove I could fight.

Then, when I offered them a chance to participate, they complained.

There was simply no pleasing some people.

I guessed they still wanted me to use more magic.

How considerate.

"Very well."

[Abyssal Darkness Manipulation]

Darkness gathered around my raised hand.

It twisted into circular shapes, each edged with vicious teeth.

Gears.

Dozens of them.

They hovered around me at different heights, turning slowly.

Some were no larger than dinner plates.

Others were nearly as tall as I was.

Their black surfaces swallowed the sunlight, and their teeth rotated with a low, metallic hum.

They looked like the inner workings of an enormous clock.

A clock designed by someone with a deeply unhealthy interest in execution devices.

I loved them immediately.

Darius frowned.

Garr made an irritated noise.

Elia stared at the formations.

Raven shifted his stance.

The direwolves roared.

Then charged.

I swung my hand.

The gears moved.

They shot forward in a spinning storm, weaving between the trees and striking the monsters from different angles.

Armor split.

The first wolf fell.

A second tried to leap over a gear, only for another to catch it in midair.

A third turned to flee.

Too late.

The black blades crossed its path.

Blood scattered across the grass as the gears carved through the horde.

The monsters fought back, snapping at the spinning constructs and slamming their armored bodies against them.

A few gears shattered.

I replaced them.

A larger wolf lunged toward me.

I flicked two fingers.

Three gears converged.

It dropped before reaching my cloak.

Within moments, the clearing fell quiet.

The bracelets flashed.

One corpse vanished.

Then another.

And another.

The king’s harvesting operation was working beautifully.

Unfortunately, it was also stealing my specimens.

Not this time.

I’d deliberately spared one direwolf near the edge of the clearing.

Its legs had been severed by the gears, leaving it unable to charge or escape.

It lay on its side, breathing heavily.

I approached.

Darius said something behind me.

I ignored him.

My attention was on the monster.

More specifically...

Its core.

I raised my fingers.

The remaining gears drifted closer, responding to each small movement of my hand.

A delicate operation.

Timing mattered.

The bracelet would transport the corpse as soon as the monster died.

Which meant I needed to retrieve the core before its heart stopped.

I narrowed my eyes.

[Abyssal Eye]

There.

The core sat deep within the chest, surrounded by dense tissue and protective bone.

I moved two fingers.

A small gear slipped through an opening in the armor.

Another followed.

They cut carefully, clearing a path.

Blood darkened the grass.

The direwolf’s breathing weakened.

Come on.

Almost.

The core came into view.

A dark blue crystal, larger than I’d expected.

[Voidwind Manipulation]

A narrow current of air darted forward, caught the exposed core, and pulled it free.

I snatched it from the air.

Then immediately dropped it into my Dimensional Storage Ring.

The direwolf’s heart stopped.

Its corpse vanished.

Ha! Success!

One B-tier monster core.

Acquired.

I felt an entirely unreasonable surge of satisfaction.

[Evolution Progress: 38%]

Then I smelled something.

Faint.

Sweet.

Almost floral.

Completely wrong for a clearing filled with monster blood.

My smile faded.

I knew that scent.

A monster lure.

A particularly effective one.

During the war, we’d used it to redirect wild monsters toward the Dark Lord’s soldiers.

Rey had proposed the tactic.

Raven had helped him find the ingredients.

Together, they’d refined the mixture until a few drops could attract creatures from an impressive distance.

And now...

I turned.

Raven stood several paces behind me.

His hood concealed most of his face.

But I could see his mouth.

He was smirking.

So that was his contribution to the hunt.

"Don’t blame me, Rey," he said. "You killed my apprentices."

His voice was cold.

"Six of them. You fed them to a monster," he continued. "So I thought I’d do the same to you."

I frowned. "Fed them to a monster?" I repeated the words slowly.

Raven’s smirk vanished. "Don’t play dumb."

He reached into his cloak and tossed something toward me.

A torn piece of fabric landed on the grass.

I glanced down.

Dark cloth.

A faint embossed crest.

The Assassins Valley insignia.

"I found that lodged between the monster’s armored plates," Raven said. "You sent that thing to me after feeding it my men."

I stared at the cloth.

Then at Raven.

He’d found a piece of his apprentice’s clothing embedded in the Chimera’s transformed body. And concluded that I’d fed the apprentice to a monster.

He hadn’t recognized the monster as his apprentice.

Not even after it had spoken his name.

In his defense, the transformation had been extensive.

The apprentice’s face had been badly damaged.

His mana signature had changed.

His body had become something that barely resembled a human being.

Still.... I’d expected Raven to recognize at least something.

Apparently not.

The message I’d sent him had been misunderstood so thoroughly that he’d invented an entirely different atrocity.

A scoff escaped me.

Raven’s eyes narrowed. "What’s so funny?"

I didn’t answer him, instead, another scoff escaped.

Then a laugh.

I threw my head back and laughed.

Loudly.

Like a madman.

"Oh, Raven." I wiped a tear from the corner of my eye. "You’ve got it all wrong." My laughter gradually subsided. "I never fed your men to a monster." Then I stopped laughing altogether. A slow, twisted smirk replaced it. "That monster was your apprentice."

I tilted my head, savoring the look on his face. "And he was the one who killed his comrades."

Darius reached for his sword.

Elia went pale.

Garr took a step back.

And Raven... Raven stood frozen. His eyes widened beneath his hood as the truth finally sank in.