This Beast-Tamer is a Little Strange

Capítulo 916: Chapter 916: Chaos

The chamber erupted. A hand — deceptively ordinary in size and shape, yet so powerful, each movement tore the void — pushed itself through the wounded seam of space and lunged with unnerving precision for the frantic orb darting around the clearing.

It had no eyes, no guiding sense that Kain could detect, yet it slipped in and out of space with flawless accuracy, tracking the orb’s evasive flight perfectly.

The orb darted like a trapped insect, zipping around twisted, corrupted trees, flying behind Kain and the Abyssal, clearly in panic.

Every movement of the hand carved new fissures through the air: spiderweb cracks that had a blackhole-like suction. The very fabric of the room bent toward those breaks as if gravity had been given teeth.

‘shit!’

Kain couldn’t help cursing as he screeched to a halt to avoid the arm reaching toward him because that damn orb decided to use him as a shield. Unfortunately, it seemed like he was still too slow. He planted himself and braced himself to be torn apart, feeling the pressure like a physical thing tugging at his limbs, making the hair on his arms raise.

But the hand did not aim at him. It seemed to avoid him consciously. But that didn’t mean he had no adverse effects. The suction effect that crawled from each crack tugged at him. Hair snapped against the pull, clothing strained as though hooked by invisible barbs, and the lighter threads shuddered like they might rip loose entirely. A gale that did not belong to the chamber hammered against Kain’s aura, trying to peel him out of himself, to drag him toward the wound in space like prey.

Thankfully, the influence on Kain was weaker, but the influence on the abyssal demigod was far stronger since the arm was not taking special care to avoid him.

The boy’s body went still. For a moment, the dragon inside that familiar face sounded like it might roar — then flinched as a seam of blackened space slashed across the air, and a jagged arc of the crack grazed the boy’s side.

Black, thick liquid spilled from the wound. The scales that had covered the boy’s skin from the neck down, split like cracks on glass. Kain watched, half-horrified that it could have been himself, and half-relieved that this demigod was made to suffer instead.

The abyssal’s scales, which had seemed invulnerable in the brief moment Kain faced him before, flaked and fell away under the strange wound caused by breaks in the space. Moreover, the spatial disruption seemed to even interfere briefly with its control over its body. The creature staggered, a rare and genuine flicker of panic in its violet eyes.

That flicker was all Kain needed.

The dragon’s armour and balance was broken by the spatial rip. Its right arm spasmed as if the tendons themselves had been pulled thin, and that was when Kain, who’d been slowly encroaching forward since this strange orb appeared, struck — hard. He rammed his elbow into the side of the creature’s ribcage, right where the spatial crack had destroyed its scales.

“You insect,” the abyssal hissed between teeth in only slight discomfort at the heavy blow. The voice that came out of the boy’s mouth deep, appearing odd for the juvenile body it used. It had all the contempt and disgust of someone who was minding their own business only to be bitten by a mosquito. And that’s what Kain was to it—a mosquito.

But thankfully, the blow did serve as a distraction, making him unable to dodge another space fracture.

Another fissure in space landed. This one took off a length of the scaled shoulder, peeling back the scales and flaying its skin neatly like a skilled chef preparing sashimi.

The abyssal’s snarl turned into a scream more animal than human and then, infuriatingly, into a sound full of calculation. It gripped the injured shoulder and focused, violet glare drilling into Kain, trying to affect him mentally.

As a dragon that was born capable of feeding on and manipulating luck and fate before its turn into an abyssal, it naturally had its own unique means of influencing the mind. Especially, by the means of, as certain novels from Kain’s past life would describe them, causing ‘heart demons.’

If it hadn’t been so preoccupied trying to escape its chains, and needed to drastically weaken itself for the boy’s weak body to barely accommodate him, Bea never would have had the chance to use the Empty Throne Effect to rescue the boy’s spirit.

Which is why, when Bea made an attempt now to infiltrate its mentally in retaliation and alleviate the pressure on Kain, it was ineffective.

Splits dove. Tiny, ravenous shards of Bea’s presence slipped like fish through the cracks to probe the invading mind. They crashed against a hard, cold wall inside that head and were sliced thin.

With no other alternative, she tried again, flooding the mindspace of the opponent with a skill she seldom used— Mind Chorus — what felt like thousands of voices screaming at once, rang in its mind.

The top of the abyssal’s skull throbbed. For a heartbeat the creature’s jaw worked, its hands clutched at its temples. But after a momentary discomfort, Bea could sense that the skill was no longer effective.

Bea’s presence in Kain’s awareness trembled. She was already stretched thin, the attempt costing her more than she liked to admit. The Mind Chorus had shaken the demigod’s poise, but it had not pried free the invader. And neither she, nor Kain, wished to experience a demigod’s power invading his mind.

From behind, something heavy shifted the earth.

Aegis had acted.

Spikes and pillars unfurled from the ground: anchors of earth that screamed up toward the boy’s feet and limbs. Aegis did not attempt to crush the creature at once. He attempted to bind, to imprison the abyssal’s disfigured appendages into the floor, to pin the body of the boy like a butterfly pinned by a collector.

Earth rose like a hand from the ground. Pillars latched at scales, stone clamps tried to ring the wrists. For a breath, it looked like the net might hold.

But the extremely sturdy ropes of earth, that even made Kain shiver at the thought of them binding him, were immediately torn apart with little effort by the opponent.

If anything the boy’s face took on an eerie mocking expression. ‘I had been chained by centuries by a powerful being using means capable of even binding my luck and fate…and you want to bind me with some lumps of clay?’