CHAPTER 209: SHADOW PACK

The behemoth lunged, its massive body crushing stone as it closed the distance in a fraction of a second.

Caius did not flinch. Through Inner Sight, he watched the surge of dark mana rush through the beast's pathways, while Fate Sight mapped the exact trajectory of its attack before its claws ever left the ground. Using Shadow Step, Caius melted into the ambient darkness, slipping beneath the sweeping claw strike as it shattered the basalt floor behind him.

The creature’s mane flared, launching a point-blank volley of razor-sharp metallic quills. Instead of retreating, Caius activated Obsidian Lattice. Millions of microscopic, overlapping scales materialized around his arms, rotating rapidly to absorb and redirect the kinetic momentum of the quills, deflecting the deadly projectiles harmlessly into the surrounding ruins.

Caius retaliated immediately. His right hand flicked forward, unleashing his Arachne Thread Art. Black mana threads spun from his Black Core, backed by the absolute intent of his Crown Core. The threads wrapped around the beast's limbs and anchored directly into spatial coordinates.

"Thread Binding," Caius murmured.

The spatial anchors snapped taut, instantly locking the behemoth’s massive frame in place. The creature thrashed violently, but Caius executed a Void-Tether Snap. Anchoring distant coordinates behind the beast, he collapsed the space between point A and point B, appearing instantly beside its exposed throat with tremendous momentum.

With a swift twitch of his fingers, he converted the binding lines into Thread Cutting. The black threads tightened with immense spatial tension, slicing effortlessly through hide, muscle, and bone. At the same time, his twin short swords drove into the open wound, releasing raw Black Core energy that destroyed the beast's vital pathways from the inside.

The massive head separated from the torso, and the titan collapsed into a pool of dark blood.

Caius lowered his blades and knelt beside the carcass. Activating Far Sight, he located the beast's internal core and sliced open its chest, searching through the dark energy for the shimmering crystallization of a crown essence bead.

He exposed the dark core still humming inside the chest cavity. Disappointment settled over his features.

"No crown essence," he said softly.

Instead of extracting the core to refine for his own cultivation, Caius decided to test a new method. He pressed his palm directly against the pulsing core, driving Crown Core mana deep into the beast's core matrix. Black spatial threads surged through his fingers, wrapping around the core like a web. Rather than burning away the creature's residual will with black fire, he used his sovereign intent to overwrite it completely on the spot.

He routed black threads along the beast's spinal column and motor pathways, turning the intact core into an internal power engine. The corpse twitched once, its four eyes flashing with a dull, hollow purple light before settling into absolute stillness. It was a raw, immediate puppet-weaving technique, converting the carcass into an autonomous vessel without needing a full ritual.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Satisfied with the preliminary bind, he swept his hand and stored the prepared puppet body into his spatial storage ring.

For an entire day, Caius turned the Misty Valley into a methodical hunting ground.

Using the Loomheart Method to maintain efficient mana circulation, he moved through the fog without wasting energy. Far Sight mapped the core locations of hidden stalkers, while Spell Prediction allowed him to dismantle their quill attacks before they were ever launched.

With every target, he refined his new puppet-weaving method. By nightfall, nine four-eyed stalkers had fallen to his threads and blades. Each carcass was bound by his Crown intent and stored into his ring as a ready-to-deploy vanguard unit.

As dawn broke on the second day, Caius located his tenth target near the deepest hollows of the ruins.

This beast was a titan among its kind, standing nearly twice the size of the previous behemoths. Its metallic mane was dense as plate armor, and its four eyes burned like dying embers. Caius observed it from a ruined ledge, convinced this monstrous creature was the absolute apex predator of the valley.

He raised his hand to deploy his threads, but stopped.

Space near the giant stalker warped. Shadows along the basalt floor detached themselves from the stone, coalescing into six massive, living forms.

Black wolves stepped out of the darkness. They stood eight feet tall at the shoulder, their fur woven from living shadow, their eyes burning with spatial power.

Before the giant stalker could bristle its quills, the pack struck.

The wolves did not merely run; they used spatial shifts to slide through reality. One wolf vanished into a patch of shade and reappeared directly above the stalker's neck. Another flickered through a spatial tear, bypassing the beast's armored tail completely to sink its jaws into the titan's hind leg.

The stalker thrashed, launching quills and sweeping its double-edged tail blade, but the wolves moved like fluid darkness. Whenever a strike threatened to connect, the targeted wolf slipped into the shadows, emerging behind the stalker to tear away another chunk of flesh.

It was not a chaotic fight. It was a calculated execution. In minutes, the titan stalker collapsed, its throat torn out by the lead alpha.

Caius watched from above, his Eye of the Loom flaring with intense purple light. A surge of cold greed filled his chest. These wolves possessed spatial affinity and shadow movement, traits far superior to the four-eyed stalkers. If he could test his new puppet binding on creatures with native spatial affinity, his vanguard would become truly terrifying.

The shadow wolves gorged themselves on the titan stalker's core and choice prime flesh, but they did not devour the entire kill. Once they had eaten their fill, the lead alpha let out a low, vibrating huff.

Acting with seamless coordination, the remaining five wolves sank their jaws into the massive torn remnants of the stalker, its metallic-quilled hide, heavy limbs, and cragged torso. Tendrils of dark shadow mana bled from their jaws, wrapping around the massive carcass to lighten its weight. Working in unison, they lifted and dragged the substantial remaining parts of the beast, carrying the haul together as they retreated into the thick fog.

Caius activated his Abyssal Cloak. Microscopic spatial threads and Crown mana drew the surrounding shadows tightly around his body, completely suppressing his thermal signature, mana emissions, and air displacement.

Invisible to all forms of detection, Caius dropped from the archway and trailed the burdened pack through the ruins. He followed them deep into the basalt crags until they disappeared into the mouth of a dark, sunken cavern complex.

Caius crouched on a high ridge overlooking the den, watching them haul their prize inside as a cold, sovereign smile touched his lips.