Chapter 740 All Down

SPLICK! Six down.

The second beast attempted a desperate tail sweep... middle legs clamped into stone (Pattern Two). Sol stepped on the fulcrum, glided along its back, and smoothly pierced its brainstem.

SPLICK! Seven down.

The third and fourth beasts tried to sandwich him from left and right, their dripping jaws snapping inward in a cross-bite formation.

Sol didn’t bother to dodge. He planted his back foot, raised his left arm, and caught the third beast’s left mandible with his bare hand, using his raw physical strength to lock its head in place.

Almost immediately with his right hand, he spun the Dreadwing blade in a short, reverse-grip circle, driving the point straight through the fourth beast’s thoracic gap.

SPLICK!

Eight down.

The massive, forty-five-foot carcasses collapsed into the mud, their hundreds of yellow legs twitching weakly in unison before going completely, utterly still.

The final two centipedes... the last survivors of the ten-monster strike force... backed up three paces toward the archway.

Their long antennae were vibrating wildly in sheer, biological panic. For the first time in their lives, these subterranean apex predators were experiencing the overwhelming, paralyzed terror of facing an absolute predator against whom their venom, their armor, and their numbers meant nothing.

They turned, their hundreds of yellow legs scrambling frantically against the stone as they tried to flee back down into the sinkhole!

"Running away again?" Sol drawled, his voice a low, raspy rumble. "Not after coming all this way."

Sol didn’t even run after them.

He raised his left hand, his fingers flicking outward as he released a microscopic, razor-sharp needle of Free Use force.

SWISH!

The spatial force cut through the air, striking the stone floor directly in front of the leading fleeing centipede, shattering the slate and causing its front legs to stumble into a deep crevice.

The beast tripped, its massive body tumbling forward and flipping over its own head, landing flat on its back with its soft, unarmored belly exposed to the ceiling!

Sol closed the distance in a fraction of a second, leaping onto its upturned chest and plunging the Dreadwing blade straight into its heart-core!

SPLICK! (9 down.)

The last remaining centipede let out a strangled, terrified shriek, scrambling madly toward the archway.

Sol pulled his blade free from the ninth carcass, spun his body, and threw the sapphire blade like a spear!

FWHOOSH!

THUNK!

The blade flew through the air like a streak of blue lightning, entering the soft cartilage gap beneath the tenth centipede’s third segment with absolute, mathematical precision! The blade pinned the monster’s neck directly to the stone archway, its four-foot steel shaft buried deep into the slate wall!

The tenth centipede twitched violently twice, its long tail thrashing against the rocks before going completely, permanently still.

Silence descended over the arched tunnel once more.

The heavy, suffocating silence was broken only by the quiet, rhythmic drip-drop of black hemolymph falling from the carcasses onto the stone floor.

The air was heavy, humid, and utterly saturated with the metallic stench of black hemolymph and the bitter, acrid aroma of venom acid.

Ten mature, fully armored Layer 3 Giant Centipedes... a strike force capable of razing a surface tribe lay dead in a massive, tangled mountain of black chitin, venom, and oozing fluid, completely blocking the arched gateway.

Sol stood in the center of the slaughter, his plain leather jerkin spotless, his breathing perfectly calm, his neon-crimson eyes glinting with quiet, cold satisfaction.

Not a single scratch on his skin. Not a single drop of acid on his clothes. He had dismantled an entire elite squad using nothing more than precise footwork, spatial reading, and a blade driven into a two-inch gap.

He casually walked over to the tenth carcass, grabbed the hilt of the Dreadwing blade, and smoothly pulled it free from the stone wall with a soft SHING

"Pattern holds," Sol murmured softly, letting out a long, slow breath as he flicked the still clean balde with a casual wrist-snap. "Clean, efficient, and zero wasted energy."

He let out a long, slow breath, rolling his shoulders as he looked back over the mountain of dead monsters.

HUMMMMMMMM!

Deep within his chest, Orphos went wild.

Without Sol even needing to issue a command, the ancient compass, sensing the concentrated buffet of nine high-density, Layer 3 elite souls dying simultaneously in a confined space, went into a frenzy.

Ten thick, luminous streams of dark indigo soul-essence rose from the mountain of corpses. They coiled and twisted through the crimson-lit air like a dozen dying serpents, before being magnetically pulled toward Sol’s chest in a rushing, indigo vortex!

WHOOSH!

The soul-wisps plunged straight through his skin and leather, diving deep into his spiritual sea.

RUMBLE!

Within his consciousness, the darkness churned violently.

Orphos’s central needle spun at high speed, its sapphire-tinted gears grinding together with an ancient, majestic resonance.

The Ten high-tier souls were sucked into the central aperture, where microscopic, glowing runes wrapped around them, crushing, refining, and digesting the beasts’ life-force down to its purest origin force.

CRACK-CLACK!

In his mental vision, a miraculous transformation unfolded.

Multiple stubborn, deep hairline fractures along Orphos’s outer ring... that would have taken at least three weeks of passive ambient absorption to mend and dissolved simultaneously, replaced by smooth, flawless, unblemished crystalline dark sheen!

The crystalline dark materiak sealed seamlessly, leaving behind an unblemished, gleaming surface that radiated a faint, ancient hum.

Sol opened his eyes, feeling the sheer density of the origin force accumulated within his spiritual sea.

The origin force required to open the spatial pathway back toward Ossuaria was accumulating at a speed that exceeded his wildest expectations.

"Good," Sol whispered, a dark thrill running through his blood. "Very good."

He sheathed the Dreadwing blade with a crisp CLACK, stepping over the mound of dead centipedes, and walked back toward the cliff-like stone shelf that overlooked the colossal subterranean sinkhole.

He stood at the edge of the shelf once more, looking down into the abyssal amphitheater below.

The sight remained staggering. Thousands of giant centipedes were still crawling over the floor and hanging from the glowing red vines. But as Sol stared down, his sharp ears picked up a subtle shift in the hive’s collective atmosphere.

The death of ten elite guards at the tunnel archway had not gone entirely unnoticed.

The metallic reek of ten Layer 3 corpses bleeding out in the upper corridor was slowly drifting down the ventilation shafts into the deep sinkhole.