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Chapter 235: Chapter 235: Lord Blood Beast

The distant rumbling he had been following suddenly escalated into a deafening, earth-shattering noise.

It was no longer a vague, ambient thunder. It was an absolute, chaotic symphony of destruction. The concussive booms of earth being shattered were completely drowned out by a sound that made the blood instantly freeze in Sol’s veins… a thrumming, vibrating, mechanical shriek that literally shook the purple leaves from the ancient trees and made his eardrums throb in rhythm.

Curiosity, a trait notoriously fatal to many NovelFire protagonists, overrode his caution entirely. He completely abandoned the dead badger at his feet, tightened his grip on the Void-Oak spear, and moved silently toward the source of the noise.

He crept through the thick, violet ferns, the metallic scent of ozone growing so thick he could taste it on his tongue, until he reached the edge of a massive, blasted clearing.

What he saw dried the spit in his mouth instantly.

It was a full-scale, apocalyptic war zone.

On the ground, a massive pack of Great Badgers, identical to the one he had just killed but varying wildly in size, were violently defending a territory of torn earth and shattered timber.

And descending from the sky above them was a living, breathing nightmare.

A swarm of Dreadwings. They matched the High Shaman Zephyra’s terrifying description flawlessly but seeing them in action was infinitely worse than hearing a campfire story. Their translucent, crystal wings streaked with pulsing black veins sliced through the air with terrifying, mathematical precision. Their bodies were heavily armored in jagged grey stone, and their massive, hooked mandibles dripped constantly with a neon-green, corrosive venom that hissed violently as it hit the earth, melting the mud into bubbling slurry.

They were dive-bombing the Badgers like coordinated strike fighters. The air was thick with flying acid, enraged roars, and the sickening crunch of dense bone meeting razor-sharp crystal.

Sol’s first, primal instinct was to turn around, activate his speed cheat, and run as fast as his Goddess-enhanced legs could carry him.

But then, an even louder, more terrifying screech shattered the air, accompanied by a massive cloud of dust and debris erupting from the very center of the battlefield.

Sol squinted, focusing his Crimson-Sight to pierce the chaotic dust cloud. When the thermal signatures finally registered in his mind, his jaw slightly dropped.

Hovering just above the fray was a Dreadwing that completely dwarfed the others. Its wingspan was easily thirty feet across, creating its own localized windstorm. Its jagged stone armor was deeply etched with glowing, toxic-green runes, and the ambient essence around it was so impossibly thick it was literally warping the air like a heat mirage.

A Lord Bloodline, Sol swallowed hard, his gamer-brain doing the terrifying math. Judging by the sheer, suffocating density of that core… it’s at least Layer 3.

In the nine layers of progression, every third layer was a major, evolutionary hurdle. A Layer 3 wasn’t just incrementally stronger than a Layer 2; it was an exponential leap. It was a creature that had crossed a biological bottleneck, elevating it from a mere monster to a true, walking calamity.

And more importantly, despite its overwhelming power and terrifying venom, the Lord Dreadwing wasn’t gaining the upper hand. Because directly below it, rearing up on its hind legs and roaring with enough force to visibly crack the bedrock, was its equal.

A Layer 3 Lord Bloodline Great Badger. It was the size of a small house, its silvery fur practically glowing with condensed earth essence. It was creating a localized gravity well that was actively dragging the lesser Dreadwings out of the sky, crushing their crystal wings under its sheer, oppressive weight before ripping them apart with its jaws.

Is it my luck or my absolute misfortune to walk right into a Kaiju movie? Sol thought, completely mesmerized by the clash of titans.

But as he was busy staring at the apocalyptic battle of the Layer 3 Lords, he made a fatal error in his situational awareness.

Starting from the Essence-Born rank, beasts gained increasing intelligence as they leveled up. A Layer 1 was cunning. A Layer 2 possessed deep tactical understanding. But Lord beasts possessed the intelligence equivalent to a six- or seven-year-old human child. It was that terrifying cognitive leap… the ability to form complex strategies, hold grudges, look for opportunistic advantages, and know when to cut their losses… that allowed them to survive so long in a world this brutal.

And that intelligence trickled down to their packs.

A smaller skirmish group fighting near the edge of the clearing… a mix of three Layer 1 Great Badgers and two massive Layer 2 Dreadwings… had suddenly paused their blood feud. They turned their heavy heads. Their golden mammal eyes and faceted insectoid gems locked perfectly onto Sol hiding in the ferns.

Instantly, their ancient hatred was suspended. They looked at each other, and some primitive, silent agreement was reached. The strange biped radiating an incredibly dense, heavy Golden Liquid aura wasn’t just an intruder; he was a high-value threat, or perhaps a high-value meal that was too good to pass up.

Through his peripheral vision, Sol saw them turn. Even though he had been focusing on the Lords, his intuition pinged violently.

Without a sound, the two rival factions lunged simultaneously toward him.

Sol didn’t hesitate. He spun on his heel and instantly ran for his dear life, completely abandoning any thought of observing the Lord fight for opportunistic loot drops.

But they were fucking relentless. The Badgers tore through the underbrush with terrifying momentum, snapping small trees in their path, while the two Layer 2 Dreadwings took to the air, completely ignoring the thick canopy as they chased him down from above.

Sol weaved desperately through the massive purple trunks, utilizing his Goddess-forged speed. But the Dreadwings had the ultimate aerial advantage.

Sssshhh-SPLASH!

A massive glob of smoking, neon-green acid slammed into the trunk of a tree just inches from Sol’s shoulder, instantly melting the thick bark and sending a cloud of toxic fumes into the air. He ducked hard, sliding under a massive, petrified root just as a second glob of acid melted the damp moss exactly where his boots had been a millisecond prior.