Chapter 308: Scout? [2]

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!

A massive, crescent-shaped wave of pitch-black static erupted from the tip of the blade, expanding into a thirty-foot arc of tearing spatial energy.

The wave tore across the canyon floor, carving a deep, smoking trench into the solid granite bedrock as it slammed directly into the front lines of the charging horde.

The impact was catastrophic.

Calcified bone armor, thick demonic hide, iron claws, and muscular torsos were cleanly bisected along the horizontal plane. Twelve beasts were sheared in half in a single heartbeat, their upper bodies flying backward into the fog while their severed legs continued to run forward for two paces before collapsing into the dirt.

The translucent system text flickered at the edge of my vision, but I barely paid it any attention.

I leaned forward, my boots exploding off the ground with a thunderous crack that left twin craters in the gravel. I crossed the forty-yard distance in the blink of an eye, plunging directly into the center of the remaining fourteen beasts before they could reorganize their formation.

What followed was not a battle, it was a calculated, ruthless execution.

A beast lunged from my left; I sidestepped with fluid grace, driving the tip of Oathstorm through its eye socket and channeling a micro-pulse of dark lightning that exploded its skull from within.

Two beasts attacked from my right in a pincer maneuver; I ducked low, sweeping my blade in a low circle that severed the Achilles tendons of both creatures, before spinning upright and decapitating both with a lightning-fast reverse slash.

The beasts were ferocious, fast, and armed with enough corrosive poison to wipe out a platoon of regular soldiers, but to my enhanced perception, every single motion they made was agonizingly slow, predictable, and riddled with structural flaws.

Through Code Intuition, every enemy was simply a collection of red fault lines waiting to be severed.

CLANG! SLASH! CRACK!

Sparks, black blood, and shattered bone fragments rained down across the frozen canyon floor in an endless, rhythmic dance of violence. Oathstorm moved like an extension of my own arm, humming with lethal precision as the dark lightning tore through the creatures with zero resistance.

The captain stood twenty paces back, frozen like a statue of salt. His broadsword hung uselessly at his side as he watched the solitary figure in the dark tunic dismantle an entire demonic hunting pack with the effortless, casual demeanor of a man trimming dead branches in a garden.

"Gods above..." the captain whispered, his voice trembling with sheer, unadulterated awe. "He's not fighting them... he's butchering them..."

Within two minutes, the deafening roars and screeches of the horde were silenced.

The last remaining beast, a larger, scarred alpha with heavy bone horns curling around its skull, scrambled backward across the blood-soaked gravel, whimpering in genuine, primal terror. Its predatory instinct was completely broken as it looked at the mountain of smoking, severed corpses littering the gorge.

It turned its back, attempting to scramble up the rocky cliff to escape.

I didn't move from my spot. I simply pointed the tip of Oathstorm toward its retreating spine.

A single, needle-thin beam of compressed black lightning shot from the tip of the sword. The beam crossed the twenty-yard gap instantly, piercing straight through the alpha's skull and detonating its brain stem.

The massive horned beast went completely rigid, tumbling backward down the rocky slope and landing with a heavy, final thud among the pile of its slaughtered kin.

Silence returned to the canyon.

The only sound remaining was the quiet crackle of lingering dark static and the sizzling hiss of black blood melting into the frozen ash.

I stood in the center of the carnage, my chest rising and falling in a slow, perfectly steady rhythm.

I flicked the blade with a sharp, downward snap, shedding the remaining droplets of dark sludge onto the rocks, before sheathing it with a crisp, satisfying CLACK.

"Sir... Sir Raith..."

The captain walked forward with unsteady, trembling steps, his boots squelching in the puddles of demonic blood. He looked down at the thirty slaughtered beasts, then up at me, his eyes filled with a mixture of profound terror and absolute reverence.

"You... by the Goddess... who in the world are you?"

Before I could answer, my passive suddenly flashed a bright, warning yellow at the top corner of my vision.

A presence.

My head snapped toward the high, jagged ridge fifty yards to our north, overlooking the canyon.

Through the dense, drifting veil of gray sulfur mist, a silhouette stood perched on the edge of a jagged granite outcropping.

The figure was wrapped in a long, tattered traveling cloak with a deep cowl pulled low over their face, completely obscuring their features.

They weren't a beast, nor did they radiate the chaotic, burning corruption of a demon.

The cloaked figure stared down at the canyon floor, their hidden gaze lingering on the smoking craters of dark lightning and the pile of slaughtered corpses surrounding me.

The moment our eyes met across the distance, the figure didn't hesitate.

A faint, distorted ripple of spatial mana blurred the air around them. Without making a single sound, the cloaked watcher stepped backward into the shadows of the rock face, their form dissolving into the swirling gray mist and vanishing completely from my perception.

I narrowed my eyes into thin, dangerous slits, my hand instinctively dropping back toward the hilt of Oathstorm.

A scout? Or someone tracking my movements?

"Sir Raith?" the captain asked nervously, noticing my sudden shift in posture as he scanned the empty rocks above. "Did you see something?"

"Nothing," I replied quietly, staring at the empty ridge where the spatial ripple had faded into the ash-filled sky. "Let's head back to camp, Captain. We have work to do."