NOVGO.NET Chapter 908: ’Vessel’
Chapter 908: Chapter 908: ’Vessel’
Kain didn’t even have time to swear.
The instant his boot crossed the jagged lip of that spatial crack, the world flipped—not upside down like a fall, not sideways like teleportation, but in every direction at once, as if reality had been plucked by giant fingers and snapped like a twig.
A wrenching twist followed.
Air collapsed inward.
Colour drained to static.
Sound imploded.
Bea shrieked in his mind—sharp, panicked, unfiltered.
“Spatial rupture—brace—!”
Pressure crushed him from every angle, compressing bone, flesh, and spirit all at once. He felt Queen latch onto his coat, Aegis shield his back, the boy’s trembling fingers clutch his sleeve—
Then they were all gone.
A ripple of black static devoured everything.
Gravity inverted.
Something like a vacuum swallowed him whole—
And then—
Silence.
—————————
After an unknown amount of time, Kain slammed into the ground headfirst from a several-story fall.
Thankfully, due to his cultivation, such a fall wasn’t life threatening, although it did hurt hurt quite a bit
A grunt tore from his throat as he tumbled across what felt like jagged glass. Dust—no, crystalline powder—puffed around him.
He forced a breath in.
Then another.
His vision steadied.
“…Bea?”
A warm pulse quivered at the back of his consciousness.
“Here.”
Relief hit him hard enough to make his knees weak.
Queen?
Nothing.
Aegis?
A faint, distant echo—like hearing someone shout his name from beneath miles of stone.
But the boy—
Kain froze.
He asked Bea, but the mental connection she’d maintained ever since they met… was simply gone.
Not as if the split in the boy was so far away or obscured by this strange space, Bea could sense that the split had been destroyed.
Kain could only hope that this didn’t also mean that the boy…
’No time to dwell on what ifs. I need to figure out what’s going on here…’
Kain’s fingers curled. He forced back his lingering nausea and pulled himself upright and finally took in the environment—
—and immediately wished he hadn’t.
The terrain around him resembled a forest only in structure, not in nature. It was like a distorted version of the artificial forest they’d met before. But it felt even more off:
Translucent “trees” towered overhead—tubular, hollow, each one filled with a pulsing dark core like an exposed beating heart. A cold blue glow seeped from beneath the mineral ground, as if the surface were just a thin layer painted over light.
The soil wasn’t soil at all. It was a mosaic of stacked crystalline plates, humming faintly like a world-sized tuning fork.
Bea’s consciousness seeped outward like spreading fog.
“We’re deep inside. Much deeper. The microbial systems here seem to be stronger, with a greater focus on containment…and destruction.”
Kain exhaled slowly.
Of course.
Before he could take a step—
The ground twitched under his feet.
Microbial mats beneath him rippled like disturbed water.
Some patches swelled upward like bubbles.
Others flattened instantly into dark, glassy plates.
A few withdrew entirely, sinking like they were alive and afraid.
“Wonderful,” Kain muttered. “Living carpet with mood swings.”
Then the trees stirred.
Tiny slits opened along their sides—
—and they exhaled glittering spores.
The silver dust drifted toward him like drifting snowflakes—
then clung to his skin with faint sizzling pops.
Kain hissed and slapped at his arm.
“I thought these things only responded to Abyssal energy!”
It looked like his worry free days of not being attacked would be over…
Bea reacted instantly, projecting a thin mental burst outward. The spores peeled off his skin like they were being vacuumed away.
“They’re marking all entrants for destruction. Kind of like antibodies,“ she reported.
Before he could reply—
A deep hum vibrated through the plates beneath him.
A shape unfolded from a crystalline branch overhead—
—like a predator drone carved from glass.
A subtle vibration skittered along the crystalline branches overhead.
Kain examined it:
Four legs.
A segmented glasslike body.
A tail like a sharp razor.
A triangular head dominated by a single vertical blue “eye” that brightened as it locked onto him.
It perched there.
Staring.
Calculating.
Silent.
“Another scanner?” Kain muttered.
Bea didn’t answer. She was too busy analyzing it, trying to determine its ’job’ in the relic.
But it didn’t seem she’d need to decipher its role, it’d show them directly.
Dropping, like a guillotine blade falling, it slammed into the ground where Kain had been standing with enough force to crack the crystalline plates into a spiderweb of fractures.
Kain barely twisted aside in time.
“What—!?”
The creature reoriented instantly, joints snapping into new angles with inorganic fluidity. Its tail lashed forward like a spear.
Kain blocked with his forearm—
and nearly had the bone shattered.
’How?! I can barely even sense any spiritual power coming from this thing!’
The predator lunged again.
Every movement was quick, efficient, mathematically lethal. The barely registering spiritual power made it unpredictable—Kain’s normal senses barely picked up the attacks because his instincts weren’t triggered by the approach of any energy.
He ducked another strike, boots skidding over the humming plates.
The creature’s tail sliced cleanly through a translucent “tree,” severing it like a hot knife through butter. The top half slid off in silence.
Kain’s eyes widened.
He hadn’t even sensed the build-up to that swing.
“That could’ve cut my head off.”
“Move, no time for commentary!” Bea snapped.
He did—because the creature launched again, its segmented legs extending like spring-loaded spears. It landed where he’d stood half a breath earlier, the impact so heavy the ground plates buckled inward.
Kain swore under his breath.
Another blow.
Another dodge.
Another explosion of fractured mineral.
He considered summoning Vauleth—his remaining offensive creature
—but something stopped him.
A pulse.
A whisper of instinct.
It would escalate if he dared to do so.
Bea felt the shift at the same second he did.
“Kain—if it sends a full alarm through the system—”
“Then everything in here will come for me,” he finished grimly.
The creature’s eye burned brighter.
That meant “alarm.”
Kain didn’t hesitate.
“Time to move!”
He spun and sprinted deeper into the alien forest, the crystalline predator tearing after him with soundless, surgical aggression.
———————————
’Boy’ woke curled into himself, breath tight, every muscle trembling.
Cold.
Alone.
Lost.
His small hands clamped hard over his ears.
It didn’t help.
“—come—”
“—seed—”
“—open—”
“—child—”
The whispering was soft yet relentless, vibrating against his skull like a reversed heartbeat.
When he finally dared open his eyes—
The world was wrong.
The translucent forest was gone.
Here, twisted black “trees” jutted upward like skeletal ribs. Veins of violet light pulsed beneath their bark. The air was thick enough to choke on, metallic and cold.
He heard a sound.
Something moved.
A shape crawled into view—
a creature with too many legs, a body that rippled like living tar, eyes that glowed bright red with flecks of gold.
An abyssal.
The boy whimpered—
But the creature only stared.
Then walked away.
Another creature emerged from the shadows, sniffed him once—
its breath so cold it left a frost burn on his cheek—
then wandered off.
A winged thing clicked its claws above him, studying him like a puzzle piece, then vanished into the canopy.
None attacked.
Not one.
They looked at him like—
Like he was familiar.
Recognized.
Belonged.
Tears welled in his eyes.
“K… Kain…?”
His voice echoed strangely—
no, not echoed.
Reversed.
“K… iaK…?”
The whispering grew louder.
“Come…”
“Come…”
“Come…”
His feet moved without permission.
The cracks in the twisted trees brightened as he passed—
as if acknowledging him.
He wandered deeper, trembling so hard he stumbled every few steps.
Then he reached it—
A perfectly round clearing.
Black stone ground cracked with glowing violet veins.
And at its center:
Something enormous.
Wrapped around a dead tree.
A mass of shadow.
A shape so vast his mind struggled to fit it into its boundaries.
A dragon.
A titanic, coiled dragon.
Black scales shimmered like spilled ink.
Violet eyes burned with ancient hunger.
The boy collapsed to his knees.
The dragon’s eyes opened fully.
And it smiled.
A slow, human-like smile.
Predatory.
Patient.
Triumphant.
Its voice whispered directly into his mind—
“At last…”
He tried to move.
His body refused.
“My vessel has arrived.”
Darkness swallowed him whole.
———————————-
Fourteen years ago…
The relic, when whole, glowed with impossible brilliance.
A world-forge.
A cage of godlike craftsmanship.
Towers of crystal.
Rivers of flowing sigils.
A sun made of runic rings turning in perfect mechanical orbit.
And deep beneath it:
Chains.
Chains forged not of metal but of domain laws and sigils, binding the dragon’s limbs, wings, horns. Each chain hummed with suppressive energy that seared flesh and swallowed roars before they could form.
Every breath the dragon took summoned new sealing arrays that ignited like stars across its body.
It had tested its prison thousands of times.
It had failed thousands more.
Yet the dragon smiled.
Because imprisoned minds had one advantage—
Time.
It waited.
Watched.
Calculated.
And eventually…
The relic blinked.
A micro-fracture in dimensional stability.
Barely a flicker.
A one-in-a-million moment.
But enough.
The dragon seized the opportunity and tore a fragment of itself free.
The relic responded instantly.
Sigils screamed to life.
Chains detonated light.
Suppressive walls slammed down.
The fragment was sliced apart—
burned—
shredded—
but a sliver escaped.
A single thread.
A seed.
A whisper of its essence.
It drifted across landscapes.
Animals fled.
Some died instantly.
Some mutated.
Most ran from the corruption they sensed.
Until it brushed against—
A woman.
Pregnant.
Weak.
Alone.
The seed entered her.
Her health deteriorated rapidly.
Her unborn child flickered between life and death.
She died giving birth.
The baby nearly died too.
But the fragment ultimately settled inside him, and he lived.
Success