Kael was still calculating his next move when the world blinked.
One heartbeat, the serpentine figure was a smooth, flowing trail beneath the soil. Its mana signature was clear through the Earth like ink through water. The next, it simply vanished. Mana Vision was a profound tool, but it was still perception. And perception, regardless of its source, relied on what the user could witness.
This creature had slipped entirely outside that zone of awareness.
The earth beneath Kael's boots shuddered, not from movement, but from a rhythmic, internal pulse, like a massive heartbeat in stone. The vibration rolled outward in concentric waves, each one stronger than the last.
Too fast, Kael realized. It navigated the solid earth faster than he could sprint across open ground.
Panic was a cold, sharp flutter in his chest, instinctive and immediate.
The Compendium drowned it out with surgical, absolute clarity.
Kael slammed Earth mana downward, channelling with the cold intent of stabilization, to force the stone beneath him into absolute, unyielding rigidity. Mana poured from his core, thick and gritty, clinging to the ground as it hardened under his will.
For a moment, he felt the stabilization spell take hold.
Then the world bucked.
A violent, upward jolt blasted through the ground, feeling like a massive stone fist punching his entire body. Kael flew backward, the air driven from his lungs. A thunderous impact cracked through him as his back slammed into the courtyard wall, blurring his vision into a smear of grey and a painful ringing.
[Impact Registered. Source: External Earth mana density significantly exceeds host output.]
Even half conscious, the Compendium continued to log, categorize, and compare.
He tasted copper. His breath hitched. Darkness feathered the edges of his sight.
And beneath it all, an invasive heat crawled along his nerves. Not injury. Mana. The beast's mana.
It had slipped into his body through the shockwave, like microscopic grains of burning sand burrowing through muscle and nerve. Kael gritted his teeth as the pain sharpened.
The Compendium instantly focused its attention on the invading mana, dissecting its nature the way a predator disassembles prey.
[Input Received: New mana signature recorded — Earth (Phasing).]
Earth… Phasing?
The revelation was a jolt of pure surprise. There are different signatures for the same mana type?
Another mystery. Another thread of truth to unravel.
But later. There would be no unravelling anything if he died.
Kael pushed himself upright, every muscle throbbing with bruised complaint. He was astonished. He had expected broken ribs, ruptured vessels, and crippling damage. But the pain was shallow, scattered. Just bruises. The shock had been far worse than the actual injuries.
He exhaled shakily. "Thank the—"
The ground bulged.
Not a rise. Not a crack. A presence.
Kael sprang aside as a blunt, scaled head breached the surface, dust spilling off it in a gritty waterfall. The creature's hide was layered stone, interlocking plates forming sedimentary Armor. Its eyes were pale, empty sockets. Hollow.
Blind. The Compendium confirmed the absence of visual structures even as the serpent's head turned with eerie precision, tracking his movement.
"How did it track me before...?"
The beast froze, posture rigid, head slightly elevated as if tasting the air or the stone.
Understanding clicked into place.
It hunts by tremor. Footfalls. Breathing. Microfractures in the stone.
It was not merely navigating the earth; it was the earth.
Compendium threads aligned with frightening enthusiasm, forming hypothesis after hypothesis. It was more interested in unravelling the creature's mechanics than in Kael's immediate safety.
Kael rubbed the persistent ache in his ribs. "Glad one of us is enjoying this."
The serpent coiled, then slipped back into the ground with liquid grace. Stone parted around it like water folding around a blade.
Kael's earth infused sight caught the faint outline of its form beneath the surface.
It was coming straight for him.
Fast.
Too fast.
Kael swallowed hard. His hands trembled, not from fear, but from the overclocked, channelled mana flow, as he began activating the cores of the stone beetles. Their cores hummed faintly, the latching inscriptions resonating with the mana essence.
He inhaled. "This time," he whispered, bracing his stance and forcing his mana into tight alignment, "we do this my way."
The ground bulged violently.
The beast surged upward.
Kael did not retreat. He met the rising mass of stone plated flesh head on and hurled the two beetles straight at its exposed scales. The serpent did not so much as twitch. The beetles struck its hide, legs gripping like clamps, instantly latching onto the beast's body.
Kael felt it immediately.
A pull.
A steady siphon.
The beetles drank deeply of the beast's astonishing reservoir of mana, but slowly. Too slowly. The serpent possessed orders of magnitude more essence than any tiny siphon cricket ever had. It was a lake being drained by a pair of straws. He needed more beetles for this beast.
And the serpent did not even notice.
It surged upward again, blind and furious, preparing to slam into him with its entire mass. Kael braced, channelling Earth mana through his limbs. A thin, shimmering outline of earth essence crawled over his skin, layering his body in a proto carapace of hardened earth.
Still, he did not trust it.
Kael attempted to dodge.
He was not fast enough.
The serpent's head clipped him, a glancing blow that felt like a boulder hurled by a giant. Even with his earth infusion, the clash was two stones colliding at speed, and Kael was the lesser stone. His ribs vibrated with the shock. But the shield held.
Mostly.
Wincing, Kael ripped two more beetles from his pouch and flung them onto the serpent's flank. They latched on instantly.
Mana siphoning increased, but still no feedback loop.
Kael's brow tightened. The earlier cricket had triggered the cascade much sooner. By now, the beast's mana should have been destabilizing.
Why wasn't it?
Was the timing variable? Dependent on the quality of mana? Or the sheer size of the host?
He did not have time to theorize.
While the beetles drained the serpent, Kael began channelling Earth mana into a spell pattern etched into his mindscape, the optimized formation crafted earlier in Battle Weaving class.
Mana spun rapidly above his palm.
A revolving spike formed, its core a compressed drill of Earth mana, ringed with jagged thorns that rotated like hungry teeth.
He fired.
The spike shot forward and passed right through the serpent.
Not impacted.
Phased through.
Kael blinked. "Of course, it did," he muttered, disgusted with himself. "It swims through earth."
[Compendium Alert: Beast can phase through Earth mana spell forms.]
"Very helpful," Kael growled.
But he needed to test something.
He formed another Earth spike, but this time infused his sight with Arcane mana, sharpening perception and stripping away elemental interference. When the serpent phased again, Kael caught a faint glimmer:
A rune.
Incomplete. Flickering.
Kael fired again. And again. Each spike passed through the serpent harmlessly, but the rune became clearer.
Finally, the Compendium chimed.
[Input Received: Earth Phase rune. 3 CP gained.]
A grin split Kael's face despite the chaos. A new rune. A new mechanic. An entire ability unlocked.
"Compendium, can you inscribe the rune in the mindscape like you did with the spike spell?"
[Query Initiated: Rune symmetry imperfect. Only temporary inscription possible. Cost: 5 CP.]
Kael's joy curdled instantly. "Perfect timing," he muttered. "Fine. Do it."
A faded, incomplete version of the Earth Phase rune shimmered into existence inside his mindscape, already unravelling at the edges. At best, he had five minutes before it was gone.
The serpent twisted, grinding its massive stone body against the courtyard floor. Then it opened its huge maw, jaw unhinging wider than Kael expected, and hurled a boulder with bone shattering force.
Kael reacted instinctively. He gathered the newly siphoned mana, the beast's own Traversing mana still swirling faintly in his system, and forced it into the temporary rune.
Nothing happened.
Panic stabbed him.
The boulder hurtled closer.
Kael raised his arms desperately.
And the world shifted.
The stone passed through him cleanly, as if he were a ghost.
Kael's breath caught. The rune had worked.
And just in time.
Because the beetles attached to the serpent finally activated their array. A pulse of destabilizing resonance rippled outward, interrupting the serpent's mana flow.
The serpent did not thrash like the cricket had, but Kael felt something new.
Indecision.
A stumble in its pattern.
A hesitation.
The beast attempted to dive into the earth, but instead slammed headfirst into solid stone. The impact cracked the surface. It recoiled, confused, its mana failing to phase.
Kael felt the shift. The beast's entire internal flow was unravelling: phase interrupted, pathways scrambled.
It lunged.
Kael leapt aside as the massive body slammed into the floor, leaving a crater where he had been standing a heartbeat earlier. The spray of dust stung his eyes.
Again, the serpent tried to phase.
Again, it failed.
Its massive head struck the ground with enough force to shake the courtyard.
And again.
And again.
Stone dented and cratered with every failed attempt, the serpent unable to understand why its invincible technique no longer obeyed it.
Kael steadied his breathing, widening his stance, forcing his heartbeat into rhythm. He could feel the beast's mana collapsing in on itself.
This was his moment.
The serpent slammed into the ground again, another failed attempt to phase through the stone. A deep, echoing crack reverberated across the courtyard. Dust drifted around it like drifting ash.
Its movements, once fluid and purposeful, now stuttered with erratic jitters. Mana hiccupped through its body in uncontrolled surges, channels flickering like a dying lantern struggling to hold flame.
Kael exhaled sharply. He needed this beast fully neutralized.
He tore open the remaining beetle pouch and pressed the last siphon creatures onto the serpent's thrashing, stone plated hide. Their legs clicked sharply and burrowed instantly, vanishing between the cracks of its Armor.
The beast was absurdly durable, and more importantly, this was the perfect moment for Kael to test things he would never dare attempt in front of teachers or students.
He channelled pure mana into the spike formation.
No element.
No aspect.
Just raw, unaligned essence.
The spike snapped into existence above his hand, a clean pike of translucent force. Kael thrust it toward the beast. It shot into the serpent's flank.
Crack!
A clean fracture line split across the stone scales. The serpent wailed, a grinding, guttural shriek like boulders scraping against each other.
It thrashed harder, blind head slamming wildly against the cavern floor as it tried, again, to phase into the earth. For the first time, its blindness was painfully obvious. It struck empty space again and again, tail whipping trenches into the stone in desperate, directionless violence.
Kael smiled. Pure mana, unaligned and gentle, could create devastating impact.
He infused the formation again, but this time with Arcane mana.
The spike shone with a pale, soft radiance.
He launched it.
It struck the serpent, and instead of cracking the hide, it disintegrated it.
A whole section of the stone armor vanished into dust.
Kael froze, stunned.
Arcane mana was the gentlest essence he wielded, used for clarity, focus, and perception. Not destruction. Yet the arcane spike had eaten through the serpent's stone like aged parchment.
[Compendium Alert: Host intentions are placed on Arcane mana, but the result—]
Kael did not bother finishing the message. He was already fascinated.
He summoned another spike, this time with the intent to bind.
The moment the Arcane infused spike touched the beast's hide, it unravelled into shimmering chains that wrapped the serpent's torso. They constricted with a soft, resonant clinking.
The serpent went limp.
The chains were not as stable as true binding magic, flickering weakly, but the potential was undeniable.
Arcane mana shaping spells through pure intention.
A mage's dream.
A researcher's treasure.
He had unlocked something important.
Kael felt a shift through the beetles still clamped onto the serpent's hide.
A pulse.
A stutter.
The beast's thrashing had crushed several. Four beetles lay broken, their legs mangled, their bodies flat. A drawback to the design, but expected and acceptable.
He allowed himself a moment of satisfaction—
—before the serpent twitched again.
A violent, uncontrolled surge of mana pulsed beneath its hide. The binding chains flickered, dimmed, and snapped.
Kael's fascination deepened. Arcane mana was so intention based.
His curiosity sharpened. The Compendium's attention overlapped with his own. His eyes took on a bright, focused glow, the expression he wore whenever he approached the edge of a breakthrough.
He began channelling Arcane mana into his own body first, with the intent to soothe his channels.
Instant relief flooded him. Overstrained pathways cooled. Microfractures knitted. Inflamed nodes loosened. He almost gasped. He had not realized how damaged he was until the pain evaporated.
He did not stop.
He extended his hands and channelled raw Arcane mana outward. No spell form, no formation, no rune.
A true intention cast.
He pushed the mana onto the serpent with the sole intention of binding it completely.
Iridescent chains erupted across the beast's entire body, far stronger than before, reinforced by unfiltered will and Arcane shaping.
Kael froze in revelation.
He was free casting intention magic.
Without a core.
Without spiritual sense.
He recalled the library text: When Magi formed their core, they awakened the ability to manifest intentions directly through magic, bypassing runes entirely. Runes became crutches: fixed, rigid forms no longer needed.
Only formation masters, or eccentrics like Magus Valia, continued to study runic arts after ascension.
Arcane mana bypassed runes because it followed intention over structure.
He forced himself to stop experimenting. The serpent was still wiggling weakly.
Kael approached, raised his hand, and infused the fading Phasing rune with Arcane mana.
It flickered back to life.
Then he plunged his hand through the serpent's stony hide, slipping in like parting water, and ripped out its mana core.
The beast went still.
But Kael did not.
A hunger, deep, persistent, and ever present, rose inside him. This was the part he always looked forward to.
The harvest.
He invoked Soul Devourer.
His aura tightened. Shadows folded around his arm as he grasped the serpent's soul. The essence writhed, condensed, and screamed, but Kael pulled, siphoning it into himself and funnelling the memories directly into the Compendium.
He refused to let them flood his mind raw. Madness lay that way.
So, he pushed everything, the fear, the instinct, the lifetime of primal impressions, into the Compendium for structuring and storage.
[Input Received: Stone Wyrm memories — 40 CP gained.]
For a heartbeat, Kael's consciousness expanded. Not outward, inward.
The serpent's soul rushed through him like a collapsing tunnel of stone and echoing pressure. Its instincts roared: hunger, vibration, darkness, territory. Its senses were alien: pressure waves, seismic pulses, the slow heartbeat of shifting earth.
He felt its last memories: Burrowing under warm soil. Sensing life only through tremors. Confusion. Panic when the feedback loop struck. Terror when phasing failed.
The emotions flooded him: raw, primal, overwhelming.
But the Compendium filtered it all: Stripping sensation into data. Organizing instinct into patterns. Digesting emotion into clean memory fragments.
Clarity settled over Kael, cold and sharp.
Soul Devouring always left him with twin sensations: A lingering satiation that no food could provide, and a deeper hunger that demanded more, always more.
This time, the soul energy was not dangerously potent. It spread gently through his soul, soothing rather than tearing. The process had begun. It would take time before he could use the gathered energy to open further gates.
Kael turned to the beast's ruined body.
It was a corpse made of stone: cracked, fractured, and mana drained.
He extracted the beetles still embedded in its hide; their cores pulsed with stolen mana. Clever as they were, Kael doubted this latching trick would work against beasts that were not blind or immobile.
He infused mana into the serpent's corpse, testing its structure.
To his surprise, the stone would work much better for his beetles than the ordinary stone he extracted from the earth. It was not just denser; it held remnants of condensed Earth mana, a kind of natural resonance the beetles could process far more efficiently.
Kael's exhaustion evaporated into quiet satisfaction. This was a find.
A material he could harvest from a magical beast that enhanced his constructs dramatically. The potential applications were enormous.
He immediately set to work.
Kael infused mana into the ground beneath his feet. The earth softened, shifted, and parted under his will. Soon he had carved out a pit deep enough for the serpent's massive body. With a firm tug of his mana, the corpse slid into the hole.
Kael exhaled and began covering it. Layer after layer of earth folded neatly over the body, compacting just enough to appear untouched. Within seconds, there was no trace of the beast or the battle.
He had many plans for that corpse. He would not allow anyone else to interfere.
He was smoothing the last ripple of dirt when—
"There you are."
Kael's entire body stiffened. His hackles rose instinctively at the voice.
He turned.
Lyon stood at the edge of the courtyard, fury etched into every line of his face. Lightning crawled over his arm, dancing between his fingers like caged serpents made of light.
Kael's stomach sank. What was Lyon doing here? Had he seen the battle? Had he sensed the mana?
Lyon did not ask questions. He did not shout.
He simply lifted his hand and pointed it at Kael.
A bolt of lightning snapped into existence, blinding white, viciously loud, and launched toward him with lethal intent.
Kael barely had time to think. Panic surged through him. He triggered earth mana instinctively, shoving it into the fading Phasing rune—
And he sank.
His body dissolved into the ground beneath his feet, merging with the stone an instant before the lightning struck.
The world above exploded in white hot thunder.
And Kael vanished into the earth.