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The darkness was not silent.
It screamed about lack of clarity.
The first thing I saw after awakening was not the warm, familiar face of my father.
I…, did not hear the boisterous, rolling laughter of my brother as we wrestled in the summer grass.
There was not a speck of sunlight.
Available only was the cold, sterile hum of a world that had been stripped of its soul.
I tried to reach out, to touch the memory of my home, but I was no longer myself.
My reflection in the stagnant pool of black liquid was a nightmare.
Two jagged, blood-red horns had erupted from my skull, tearing through the skin like rusted nails.
My hair, once the deep blue of a calm ocean, had been bleached into extreme white waves that flickered with a ghostly, unnatural energy.
And my hands... Why were they so pointy?
Why did the bone break through the fingertips like blackened claws?
"Ahhhh!"
['Who are these people?']
The sound that left my throat wasn't a human cry. It was a distorted, multi-layered screech.
"Screeech…!"
['Noooooo... Don't... I don't want to go... Please, I don't want to go into the river!']
…
Miles away from that internal scream, the air grew heavy and damp, carrying a sour, acidic smell that burned the back of the throat.
The atmosphere around the Cave of Weeping Silt had changed exponentially, the very oxygen feeling thick and fermented.
Dreleon moved through this toxic air like a ghost hidden in his own domain.
He was currently submerged in his Space Domain—a technique that folded the surrounding light and sound around him, rendering him invisible to the naked eye.
To any observer, he was nothing more than a slight ripple in the heat, a trick of the mist.
However, the cost was also just as immense.
Every second he stayed in this state, he felt his energy being siphoned away, as if his very life force was being drained into the muddy ground.
His muscles began to twitch with fatigue, and a cold sweat broke out across his brow.
He was a High-Grade warrior trying to maintain a technique that was taxing the more time it was active for.
Suddenly, a cold, dry sensation slithered against his chest.
The small snake hidden within the folds of his clothes released a tiny, concentrated pulse of cold energy.
It acted like an anchor, steadying Dreleon's flickering domain and allowing him to persist just a few moments longer.
'Focus!' he told himself, his golden eyes narrowing behind the veil of space.
He reached a distance of ten meters from the cave's jagged mouth and froze.
His heart grew cold, as he skipped a beat.
Standing guard there was a creature that defied every law of nature.
It was a being that had originally been a rat, but it stood six feet tall on two powerful, fur-covered legs.
Its torso was bloated and muscular, but it was the limbs that caused Dreleon's blood to run cold.
The creature's hands were not the delicate paws of a rodent; they were massive, bone-crushing claws similar to those of a Sky Tiger, complete with serrated black talons that dug into the soft mud.
The creature's eyes were two burning embers of red, scanning the mist with a predatory hunger.
But the most jarring feature was its ears—huge, leathery fans similar to an Elephant's, which twitched and rotated with mechanical precision.
It wasn't just looking for enemies; it was keeping an eye for unknowns, listening to the heartbeat of the forest.
Dreleon held his breath.
Even with his invisibility, he knew that a single heartbeat, a single rustle of a leaf, would be picked up by those monstrous ears.
This isn't just a guard, Dreleon realized, his mind racking through the "Lifespan" and "Research" talk the Crane had given him.
This is a Chimera.
Someone is playing god in this cave, stitching different predators together to create the perfect sentinel.
He looked at the "Rat-Tiger."
It was a masterpiece of biological horror.
If the Rabbit's report was true, there were hundreds of these things inside, guarding the "Shadows."
Dreleon gripped his wooden sword.
He was an expendable scout, a human in a world of monsters.
But as he looked at the deformed guard, he felt a spark of that earlier frustration turn into a sharp, lethal clarity. If he couldn't protect Vanessa with power, he would protect her with the Void.
…
Dreleon stared at the chimera, his reflection mirrored in its soulless red eyes.
A calm, terrifying clarity washed over him, drowning out the roar of his earlier frustration.
He realized then that he had been looking at his duty all wrong.
He shouldn't be a shield for her to hide behind; he should be the abyss that swallows her enemies before they even know they are targets.
'If I cannot protect her from incoming threats,' he vowed, his grip tightening until the wooden sword hummed with a dark, spatial resonance, 'then I shall simply become the end of every threat that dares to exist.'
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[Author's Note: I may sound annoying, but still, i want to say something as i was writing this one at night cutting my sleep.
When i decided to not write, i truly felt an emotion like Dreleon in previous chapter, and right now I was unable to sleep without writing, so i wrote, just hoping you will at-least tell me how i can improve myself.]