Chapter 184: Abyss

Ren arrived at the cave of Ophelia. He landed in front of it and transformed into his human form, his sword in his hand and a desire to destroy in his eyes.

He took one step forward, and then suddenly, a massive snake burst out, with the width of a human and a half and a length close to fifty feet.

Ren saw the jaws coming quickly, and he pulled back, evading the attack.

He landed a few meters away and looked up.

"Seems she has gathered for herself some fighting force," he muttered. He could tell already that this thing was an infected.

"Sadly, I do not have the time to save you," he said, and then shot forward. He moved so fast he became a blur in an instant. The snake reacted and turned in the air to attack, only to be met by the blade that slashed deep into its mouth, spilling blood into the air.

Hisssssssssssss

It let out a cry and moved its head back, swinging its massive body at Ren. Ren pulled back fast and evaded the massive body, but then the tail came in with a follow-up that he was forced to block.

He tanked the attack and was hurled back through the air. He slammed into multiple trees.

The snake chased in at the same time, wanting to end this fast. Ren shot into the air before it arrived. It slammed into a tree, and he came down, stabbing right through the skull until it came out from below and spilled blood down to the ground.

Wanting to ensure the snake died, he channeled his flames in a massive burst that exploded the head of the snake into bits in an instant.

[You have gained 500 EXP] x10

"Mute notifications for now."

He pulled his blade clean and looked ahead. There was another monster headed his way.

The wolf came out of the tree line at full speed.

Two meters of muscle and lightning, its fur crackling with electricity that fired off in random bursts with every stride, and it covered the distance between the trees and Ren in a time that most things would have found uncomfortable to acknowledge.

Ren moved sideways, and it went past him, the lightning discharge from its passing washing across his scales and leaving a tingling sensation that was more annoying than damaging.

It turned faster than its size suggested it should be able to.

Ren was already coming at it.

He drew the sword and slashed, the blade catching the wolf across the shoulder, and it answered with a lightning claw strike that he blocked on his forearm, the electricity crawling up his arm before he shook it off and pushed back.

The wolf launched itself at him, all four legs leaving the ground simultaneously, its jaws wide and crackling with a concentrated ball of lightning building between its teeth.

Ren dropped.

He went flat to the ground, and the wolf sailed over him. As it passed, he grabbed its rear leg with his free hand and slammed it sideways into the earth with everything behind the motion. The impact shook the ground.

The wolf was up immediately.

Lightning exploded from its body outward in every direction, a raw discharge that forced Ren back several steps, the energy prickling across every surface it touched.

"You are fast," Ren said. "But you are not faster than this."

He opened his jaws.

The Chaos Dragon Breath came out in a sustained stream aimed directly at the wolf’s chest, the crimson flames carrying the chaos edge that burned differently from everything else. The wolf lunged sideways, trying to clear it, but the stream followed, catching it across the flank and driving it back into the trees.

It came out of the trees still moving, lightning raw and violent around its body, and launched one final charge with everything it had.

Ren planted his feet, raised one hand, and the gravity manipulation came down on the wolf like a physical ceiling, the force pressing it into the ground mid-stride, its legs buckling, its body hitting the earth at full speed without the landing it had been planning.

He walked to it while it fought to rise.

One clean strike through the skull.

It stopped moving.

He kept moving toward the cave.

He was three steps from the cave entrance when the ground erupted.

The scorpion came up from beneath him fast, claws first, and the first claw caught nothing because Ren was already airborne by the time it cleared the surface, his instincts moving him before his eyes had fully processed what was happening.

He looked down at it from the air.

"Of course," he said.

It was massive, its body easily four meters across, its tail arcing up behind it with the particular patience of something that had learned patience was more effective than speed. It tracked him in the air with its eyes and fired the tail like a javelin.

Ren grabbed it.

Both hands wrapped around the tail mid-flight, and he pulled, using his momentum and the scorpion’s own force against it, swinging the entire creature off the ground and into the nearest cluster of trees. The impact was substantial. Several trees did not survive it.

The scorpion got to its feet.

It lunged, both claws snapping, the tail already reorienting, and Ren moved between the claws without making it look difficult, the gaps between them reading clearly, and drove his blade into the joint where the first claw met the body.

The scorpion shrieked and swung the second claw.

He ducked under it, rolled, came up behind the creature, and drove the blade through the back of its head before it could reorient.

It went still.

Ren pulled his sword free and looked at the cave entrance in front of him.

He walked in.

The darkness inside was immediate, but his eyes adjusted fast, the cave opening up around him as he moved deeper, the walls damp and old and carrying the particular smell of something that had been in one place for a very long time.

Then her voice came.

"Do you really think you can stop me at this stage?"

Ren kept walking.

"Doesn’t matter what I think," he said. "Just know I’m going to end you. For everything you have done. For what you put me and my subordinates through."

She made a sound that might have been amusement.

"Your subordinates," she said. "You care so deeply for all of them and so little for yourself. Why does it matter so much to you that they are okay?" A pause. "Why not use them? Your power comes from devouring. You could have them inside you. You could grow beyond anything you have reached so far and rule over everything. If I had what you had, I would not have needed to go to these lengths."

"If you had what I had," Ren said, still walking, his voice even, "you would still have killed hundreds of people to get to where you are. That is not the power. That is you."

"In a world where only the strong survive, sacrifices must be made," she said. "That is not cruelty. That is necessity."

"Your sacrifices could have been anywhere," he said. "You made a mistake the moment you touched people close to me."

She clicked her tongue.

"This again. The people close to you. They are insects, dragon. Flies. They do not register against the scale of what I have been building." Her voice shifted slightly. "You are different. You are something special. But if you continue to stand in my way, you will be destroyed like everything else."

"Says the one who has been hiding behind walls and other people this entire time," Ren said.

"I have no more reason to hide," she said. "The final stage is complete."

The ground moved.

Not shook, not trembled, but moved, the stone beneath his feet vibrating with the particular frequency of enormous amounts of mana being drawn from a very great distance. He could feel it pulling from every direction at once, from outside the cave, from beyond the forest, from places far further than that.

Streams of purple light began pouring through the cave walls, passing through the stone as if it were not there, all of them aimed at the same destination somewhere deeper in the cave. From everywhere across the kingdom, every infected had become a conduit, mouths open, the energy that had been sitting dormant in every body Ophelia had touched now rushing back toward its source, feeding into something that had been waiting for exactly this moment.

He gritted his teeth and moved faster.

"You cannot stop it," she said. "And even if you reach me, you will not get close enough to try."

Silence for a moment.

Then her voice again, quieter and carrying something different in it.

"I think it is time you met my eldest daughter."

A figure appeared in front of him.

She stood in the center of the passage, bare feet on the cold stone, dressed in a simple gown that moved slightly even without wind. Black hair. Black eyes. Skin pale enough that the faint light of the cave made her look like something carved rather than born. She was looking at the ground in front of her when she appeared, and then slowly, she raised her head.

Her eyes met his.

Ren felt his heartbeat change.

Not in the way it changed before a fight. In the way it changed when something fundamental in the body recognized something it did not have language for, a weight that settled in the chest before the mind caught up to it, cold sweat forming at his temple before he had consciously registered being afraid.

"Abyss."