Chapter 195: Core

The second convulsion nearly threw them all off the ridge.

The membrane under Lian’s boots bucked hard. He kept his blade buried in the firmer structure he had found and rode the movement, teeth clenched against the pain in his ribs. Dark fluid poured faster around the weapon. The smell grew sharper, almost acidic.

Elara staggered but stayed upright, cutting down a hatchling that tried to climb her leg during the tremor. Ryzek had just regained his position after the earlier blow. He planted his feet and released a short, controlled burst of amber energy to clear the limbs closing in on them again.

“What did you hit?” Elara shouted over the noise of the creature’s movement.

“Something harder,” Lian answered. He twisted the blade and pushed deeper. The resistance was different from the outer membrane and the fibrous layer beneath it. This felt denser, more organized. “I think it’s part of the core structure.”

The adult creature reacted with immediate violence.

Several massive limbs erupted from the fog at once and slammed down around the wound. One of them struck the ridge close enough to send a shockwave through the flesh that nearly knocked Lian off his feet. Another swept low across the surface, forcing Elara to drop flat to avoid being taken in the chest. Ryzek met the third with a concentrated energy spear that cracked the limb at the joint but did not fully sever it.

Hatchlings still swarmed the area. Some were crushed under the adult’s own thrashing limbs. Others kept coming, driven by whatever instinct had been hatched into them. Eggs continued to split open near the edges of the wound, adding more small, aggressive bodies to the fight.

Lian did not pull his blade free.

He drove it in harder, using both hands and whatever strength he had left. The firmer structure under the weapon gave a fraction more. A new pulse of dark fluid sprayed upward, thicker than before. The vibration that followed was different — less of a general tremor and more like a direct, pained response.

“Keep it open!” he called.

Elara moved in beside him and added her own cuts to the edges of the wound, preventing the membrane from closing around Lian’s blade. Ryzek stayed mobile, blasting limbs and hatchlings whenever they threatened to overwhelm the two at the wound. His energy output was growing less frequent. The earlier battles and the constant fighting on the creature’s back were draining him faster than he could recover.

The ridge tilted again as the adult tried a new motion — a rolling twist meant to scrape everything off its back against the unseen ground far below. The three of them slid several meters before the movement stopped. Lian nearly lost his grip on the buried blade. He held on, boots skidding across the slick surface, and forced the weapon to stay in place.

A larger hatchling — one of the more developed ones from the bigger eggs — launched itself at his exposed side. Elara cut it down mid-leap, the body falling away into the fog in two pieces.

“This is taking too long,” she said, breathing hard. “If it rolls again like that, we’re going under.”

Ryzek killed another pair of hatchlings and stepped closer, four amber eyes fixed on the wound.

“Then we stop cutting around it and start forcing the opening,” he said. “Together.”

They adjusted without further argument.

Lian kept his blade locked in the denser structure. Elara and Ryzek positioned themselves on either side of the wound and began cutting outward with full power, tearing the membrane and the fibrous layer wider. Dark fluid poured across their boots and ran down the slope of the ridge. The adult creature’s limbs struck with increasing desperation, some of them now aiming directly at the wound itself as if trying to physically cover and protect the damaged area.

One heavy limb succeeded in slamming down across part of the opening. Lian was forced to release his blade and roll clear as the segmented mass crashed into the space where he had been kneeling. The weapon remained buried in the core structure, the hilt jutting out at an angle.

The limb did not stay.

Ryzek hit it with a full-powered energy burst at close range. The force cracked several segments and drove the limb back long enough for Lian to recover his weapon. He grabbed the hilt, planted both feet, and shoved downward with everything he had left.

The firmer structure finally split.

A heavy surge of dark fluid and a deep, internal rupture answered the cut. The entire section of the creature’s body under them seized. The vibration that followed was so strong it blurred vision and made the fog itself tremble. Limbs thrashed without coordination. Hatchlings scattered in confusion. Several eggs that had not yet finished hatching simply split open and went still.

The adult creature under them began to sink.

The ridge of flesh dropped several meters in a single, uneven motion as the massive body tried to pull itself deeper into the fog and away from the damage. The surface under the three of them tilted sharply.

“It’s going under!” Elara shouted.

Lian yanked his blade free of the ruptured structure and looked for any remaining stable ground. There was almost none. The ridge was collapsing into the fog as the wounded creature retreated downward.

Ryzek pointed toward a section of the creature’s body that was still higher than the rest, farther along the back and less damaged.

“There! Move!”

They ran.

The membrane shifted and sank under every step. Hatchlings and severed limbs slid past them into the rising fog. The adult’s remaining large limbs still struck out, but the attacks were weaker and less accurate than before. The damage to the core structure had clearly reached something that mattered.

Lian reached the higher section first and turned to cover the other two. Elara made the distance with a final, hard push. Ryzek came last, pausing only long enough to blast a pair of hatchlings that tried to follow them up.

The three of them stood on the last stable rise of flesh as the rest of the creature’s massive body continued to sink into the fog below, dark fluid trailing behind it like smoke.

Power Scale / Cultivation Realms (Quick Reminder)

Foundation Realm (Layers 1–9): Body forging, no external Qi.

Circuit Awakening Realm (Early–Peak): First Qi loop, internal bursts.

Core Condensation Realm (Early–Peak): External Qi release, short flight.

Stellar Circuit Realm (1–9 Stars): True flight, Qi armor, energy projection.

Nebula Dominion Realm and higher: Domain control, galaxy-level power, etc

Power Scale Reminder

Lian Yu: Stellar Circuit Star 1.

Elara Voss: Core Condensation Peak

Keep it as reminders