NOVGO.NET Chapter 910: All Drawn Together
Chapter 910: Chapter 910: All Drawn Together
The sensation grew stronger with every step Kain took.
It wasn’t spiritual energy. It wasn’t aura, or killing intent, or even domain. It was something else — something older, heavier, pulsing faintly beneath the fabricated forest like a second heartbeat beneath the floor.
Kain’s spine tingled with each pulse.
“Bea,” he murmured, “that thing in the center… I can feel Queen and Aegis heading toward it too.”
Kain paused to better sense them, “Their progress is slow, but they’re moving. Thankfully, this weird space can’t impede the sensing of the spiritual contract.”
Upon realizing that they would hopefully meet up again soon, Kain relaxed, tension easing only a fraction.
He hoped their paths were safer than his — especially Queen’s, since all her vespid guards had remained in his star space, leaving her pretty defenseless.
Kain kept moving. He could feel his contracts like faint lanterns in fog, flickering but present. They were all converging from different directions — slow, agonizing progress through an alien labyrinth.
Whatever lay at the heart of this relic was drawing everything toward it, intentionally or not.
————————–
Somewhere far away from Kain, another crystalline predator that had ’killed’ him twitched violently.
Then its entire body convulsed.
A ball of black earth snapped shut around it like a bear trap.
The creature slashed, stabbed, screeched — but the sphere only compressed further. Within seconds the sphere shrank… and shrank… and shrank.
Crunch
Aegis released the compacted lump of crushed crystal, letting it dissolve into inert dust. He did not relax.
He heard more approaching — dozens of crystalline predators.
Aegis sank into the ground, and his presence vanished.
Above him, the creatures arrived, examining the clearing but finding nothing except the crumbled remains of their kin.
One’s eyes lit up as if scanning the surrounding, pressed its face to the ground, and sent out a pulse. Suddenly, it seemed to sense something and began to sprint toward the heart of the relic. The others followed.
Aegis waited, then rose and moved again — silent, focused entirely on reaching Kain.
——————–
Queen clung to a crystalline tree, her body dimmed until she appeared more like a hollow shell than a living creature. Her life force—normally bright, vibrant, unmistakably radiant—was crushed inward so tightly she felt half-dead.
The predator stalking the clearing moved with deliberate precision, crystalline limbs clicking softly as it seemed to scan the surroundings for the presence it had sensed mere moments ago. It paused, head tilting, its single blue eye scanning in slow, slicing arcs.
Queen froze.
Every instinct told her to run. Every nerve screamed. But she held still—motionless, breathless, soul curled into the smallest possible point.
She had only discovered this ability moments ago—when another predator had descended upon her so suddenly she thought death was certain. Instinct, desperation, and sheer terror had twisted her life attribute into something unnatural: instead of radiance, suppression.
She was proud of herself for developing this new ability to feign death to such a degree that even specialty scans from high-level organisms can’t notice anything amiss—a testament to her talent.
However, she also lamented her weakness—she felt that among Kain’s contracts, she would be the only one forced to hide like this, the others would have found a way to tear open a bloody path.
She hated this.
Life did not hide. Life radiated. Life was vibrant..
Yet here she was, forcing her very nature into silence.
The predator stepped closer. Its claws scraped the ground inches from her crouched form. It paused again, eye narrowing, light flaring.
Queen willed herself smaller. Emptier. She imagined her own existence thinning, fading, dimming until she was not a Queen, not a vespid, not anything but an abandoned shell of chitin.
The predator inhaled sharply—then turned its head away.
It moved on.
Only when the sound of its footsteps faded did Queen dare release even a sliver of her breath. Her legs trembled violently.
Her mandibles clicked once—quiet, shaky.
But she didn’t have the luxury of rest.
Another crystalline shriek echoed distantly. More predators. The relic was reacting more violently with every passing minute.
Something must have changed. Perhaps it was their invasion causing this? Or maybe something else?
Queen pressed herself against the crystalline trunk, dimming her aura again. She waited. Listened. Tried her best to sense any life nearby.
When she sensed only silence, she finally moved.
Carefully. Slowly. Every step measured.
She did not take to the air—she would likely release energy as she flew, since it was impossible to pretend to be dead while also flying, and any flare of life energy would expose her in an instant. So she walked, weaving between trees, slipping into shadows, tucking her limbs tight each time something stirred.
After what felt like hours, the oppressive pursuit around her lessened. Predators moved in new directions—toward the center, toward whatever cataclysmic presence was calling all living things.
Queen tightened her grip on the tree she had just quickly climbed onto, forcing her trembling limbs to stop shaking.
Then she stepped out, determined.
Her bond with Kain pulsed faintly in her mind—a distant star in a dark sea.
She could sense that, like these crystalline beasts, he was also in that direction.
Queen began to grow worried that they were travelling in that direction for him.
’I need to get to him soon!’
Even if her body felt like collapsing and her life force felt like a candle pinched nearly to extinction.
Even if fear gnawed at her from every direction.
Queen pushed forward.
———————-
Kain reached the center first.
The relic changed.
The artificial forest ended abruptly. Translucent trees vanished. Crystalline ground gave way to charred, broken ground.
Dark twisted growths rose upward like warped spines. Faint purple light pulsed beneath cracked earth.
Abyssal corruption.
Bea’s voice sharpened. “Kain… something in the center seems to be leaking abyssal energy. Likely whatever is imprisoned here is a high-grade abyssal as we suspected”
Kain scanned the landscape.
Corrupted creatures littered the clearing.
Blobs that were once floating orbs — now sagging, leaking purple-black sludge.
More of the crystalline creatures that had ’killed’ Kain before were here— but their limbs were bent wrong, tails split into barbed whips, bodies seemingly dipped in black ink.
The firefly-like ’cleaners’ that had ’cremated’ Kain’s body before, now were black light and trailing wisps of black smoke behind.
Every defence mechanism the relic once had was here.
All wrong.
The corruption had turned them against their original purpose.
Kain stepped toward a drifting blob, the same kind that he’d seen activing as the ’security camera’ for the relic previously, and caught it. It thrashed — until he drew the abyssal energy out of it.
The corruption went into his own body where it was purified into a much smaller amount of Source energy.
The orb flickered back to its original form… and dissolved.
Kain stared at the dust.
“I can purify them… but not save them.”
Bea analyzed the residue. “The corruption rewrote their genetic directives. Before, their instructions resisted my influence. Now those instructions have been altered, turning anything non-abyssal into a target instead.”
Rumble
Just then, Aegis emerged from the earth behind him.
Queen hurried into the clearing moments later.
With his contracts reunited, Kain’s tension eased significantly.
But ahead, a massive presence pulsed beneath the corrupted ground — the same presence that swallowed the boy.
Kain opened his palm and let ash drift away.
“Everyone, stay close.”
——————————-
A single blue orb floated high above the corrupted landscape — an eye without a pupil, a lens without a reflection. Its surface rippled, layers of runic rings shifting like gears behind frosted glass.
It observed without blinking, without breath, without anything resembling human emotion.
Yet it saw everything.
Below, the dragon — colossal, coiled, shackled by laws etched into the very fabric of space — strained against its prison. Violet chains pulsed each time it attempted to devour the boy’s mind, tightening like veins squeezing shut. The dragon snarled silently, jaws flexing, fury shaking the corrupted ground.
Despite the seemingly desperate situation it was in, the ’eye’ could sense that it was close to escaping its bonds.
But it only watched. And did nothing.
Elsewhere, it watched Kain.
The human pushed through the corrupted clearing, flanked by contracts whose very existence defied anything it’d seen before.
One drew abyssal energy into itself without being consumed. Another seemed capable of slightly controlling the thoughts of the contaminated creatures. A third demonstrated healing abilities one would only expect from a high-level creature with a domain.
And the human wielded a violet-tinged energy that made it feel something its soulless existence had never felt before.
Fear.
And hunger.
A primal, ancient ache stirred in the orb, drawn to the way Kain’s energy twisted through the air.
The orb began to move.
It descended. Just a fraction. Just enough to maybe get a taste—
Then—
The orb froze, seeming to sense something.
Then just as quickly as it appeared, it disappeared, not even leaving behind a lingering aura to trace.
A beat of silence.
Then a large hand appeared just where the ’eye’ had been. Followed by a distant voice — a cross between amused and vexed — that echoed faintly through the space:
“…damn it. Still too slow…”