Chapter 307: Scout? [1]

"Move! Sir Raith, run!"

The captain's voice broke into a frantic, jagged shriek. The seasoned composure he had displayed minutes earlier shattered under the crushing weight of reality.

Thirty pairs of burning crimson eyes glowed with predatory hunger along the high, jagged ridges of the dead gorge. Claws clicked against the stone in an overlapping, frenzied rhythm as the pack of bone-plated monstrosities began to crawl down the sheer rock walls like a swarm of ravenous locusts.

The captain lunged forward, his heavy, gauntleted hand reaching out to grab the shoulder of my woolen tunic to forcibly haul me back down the narrow trail toward the camp's barricade.

"We need to fall back into the bottleneck! If we stay in this open gully, they'll surround us and tear us to pieces in seconds! Move your legs, kid!"

I didn't run.

With a subtle, effortless shift of my weight, I stepped half an inch out of the captain's reach. His iron gauntlet caught only empty, freezing air.

"Sir Raith?!" The captain stumbled from the sudden momentum, turning back with wild, bloodshot eyes.

"Are you deaf?! That's an entire hunting vanguard! Even a full squad of senior mages wouldn't engage thirty bone beasts in an open gorge without fortified defensive wards! Get behind me and run!"

I ignored the panic bleeding from his throat.

Slowly, I reached across my hip, my fingers wrapping around the familiar, leather-wrapped hilt of Oathstorm.

The cold metal beneath my palm hummed with a soft, steady vibration.

Before my forced slumber—before Yuki's violent, high-dimensional data transfer had rewritten my neural pathways—summoning enough power to cleave through heavy demonic armor required conscious effort, calculated mana circulation, and strict pacing to avoid tearing my mana channels.

Now, the moment my fingers touched the steel, the mana inside my core didn't just flow, it resonated. A deep, bottomless reservoir of dense energy hummed through my newly reinforced pathways, smooth and unobstructed, like water flowing through a widened riverbed.

I drew Oathstorm from its scabbard.

SHIIING!

The clear, ringing hiss of the drawn blade cut straight through the howling wind and the clicking of demonic claws. The steel natively crackled with pale blue sparks, but as my mana flooded the blade, the light violently inverted into a deep, pitch-black static that swallowed the ambient gray light of the canyon.

I rolled my shoulders, my breath misting in the freezing air, and looked up at the sea of crimson eyes descending from the cliffs.

"Let's see what changed," I murmured.

"Are you insane?!" the captain roared, raising his broadsword in a desperate, trembling guard as the first wave of beasts hit the rocky floor of the canyon. "You're going to get us both killed!"

GROOOAAAR!

Four bone-plated stalkers broke away from the pack simultaneously, launching themselves off the rocky ledges in a coordinated cross-strike.

Their massive, unhinged jaws dripped sizzling black acid as they hurtled through the air, razor-sharp claws aimed to decapitate me from four separate angles.

[Code Intuition — Passive Activated.]

The world around me instantly shifted.

The chaotic, frantic motion of the leaping beasts slowed to a crawl in my perception. Their trajectories, acceleration curves, and anatomical stress points materialized in my field of vision as glowing, razor-thin lines of crimson code.

I could see the exact angle of their descent, the micro-second their claws would reach lethal distance, and the precise, unarmored gap beneath the calcified plates protecting their jugular veins.

I didn't back up. I stepped straight into the convergence point of their attack.

I pivoted on the ball of my left foot, slipping beneath the descending claws of the first beast by a margin of a single hair.

As the creature flew past my shoulder, I flicked Oathstorm upward in a short, effortless backhand slash.

The blade didn't meet resistance. Fused with dark lightning, the steel severed the beast's neck cleanly through bone and muscle.

Black blood erupted into the air, but before a single droplet could stain my tunic, I had already spun on my heel, driving the pommel of my sword hard into the snout of the second monster mid-air.

CRACK!

The concussive force of my Strength shattered the creature's nasal bone into powder. The beast's trajectory violently inverted, slamming it into the third monster and sending both tangled monstrosities crashing into the dirt in a chaotic heap of snapping jaws and broken limbs.

The fourth beast landed behind me, its spiked tail whipping forward like an iron scythe aimed at my lower spine.

I didn't even turn around.

A single tendril of pitch-black lightning shot from the heel of my boot straight into the frozen gravel.

The dark static traveled through the earth, erupting directly beneath the beast's chest cavity in a blinding geyser of black electricity.

The creature's internal organs were instantly cooked into carbon. Its charred body collapsed to the stone with a dull, hollow thud, smoke pouring from its open jaws.

Four high-tier frontier beasts. Dead in less than three seconds.

Behind me, the captain's breath seized completely in his throat. His jaw hung slack, his broadsword lowering by several inches as his brain utterly failed to process what his eyes were witnessing.

"What... what kind of speed is that...?" the captain stammered, his knuckles turning white against his hilt. "He didn't even..."

I didn't have time to indulge his shock.

The death of the first four scavengers didn't deter the horde; the scent of spilled demonic blood only sent the remaining twenty-six beasts into a rabid, ravenous frenzy.

AWOOOOOOO!

The entire gorge erupted into motion. A massive wave of bone-plated monstrosities charged down the gravel incline in a tight, stampeding phalanx.

The ground beneath our boots trembled violently as tons of muscle and calcified armor tore through the freezing fog. Half a dozen beasts on the flanks opened their maws, spewing high-velocity streams of corrosive black acid straight toward our position.

"Sir Raith! Acid incoming!" the captain shrieked, desperately bracing his kite shield.

"Stand still," I commanded, my voice flat, cold, and echoing with absolute authority.

I raised my left hand, splaying my fingers toward the incoming streams of corrosive sludge.

[Alter Projectile Vector -> Deflection: 90 Degrees.]

The incoming streams of acid, traveling at blinding speeds, hit an invisible, warped boundary of distorted space ten feet in front of me. Instead of striking us, the acid violently bent at a right angle, splashing harmlessly against the sheer granite walls of the canyon and melting the solid stone into smoking, bubbling sludge.

Before the beasts could register the anomaly, I lowered my stance, gripping Oathstorm with both hands.

My mana core surged, channeling a massive wave of dark lightning through every circuit of my body.

Pitch-black electricity roared along the entire length of the blade, wrapping it in a violent, crackling aura that distorted the visual fabric of the air around the steel.

VZZZZT-BOOM!