Chapter 79: Hunting (1)

The protective barrier of The Iron Spire was a shimmering, three-layered wall of weave-bound gravitational mana and kinetic warding. Inside its boundary, the air was warm, clean, and saturated with purified atmospheric energy.

Ten feet beyond it, there was only the cold, howling emptiness of the Sky-Shattered Vault.

Raphael stood at the absolute precipice of the outer landing bridge, his heavy combat boots resting on the edge of the carved black granite causeway.

He was fully geared for field operations once more. He wore a wide-necked, heavy-cotton black T-shirt beneath his broad, loose white baggy cargo pants tucked into dark high-top tactical boots, and his dual adamantine blades, Vanguard of the Eclipse, strapped securely across his broad shoulders in their cross-harness.

His dark, messy hair whipped in the biting void-wind, but his sharp features were calm, his luminous silver eyes focused on the dark mist swirling two hundred meters across the open expanse.

Drifting in the purple gloom beyond the castle’s perimeter were the uncharted outer landmasses... shattered remnants of primordial floating islands, covered in blackened, petrified soil and jagged obsidian spires.

Beside him, Vanessa stood within the safe zone of the ward line, her dark relic-staff pulsing with a steady purple glow as she monitored the external spatial readings.

"The external perimeter is unanchored, Lord Raphael," Vanessa warned softly, her silk-like voice carrying through the whistling wind. "The spatial density drops by sixty percent once you step off the causeway. The outer drift islands are infested with uncatalogued wild void entities, predators that have adapted to hunt without light or physical atmosphere."

"A controlled arena can only teach so much, Vanessa," Raphael replied, completely unfazed by the howling wind. "To master spatial combat, I need to hunt beasts that swim in the spatial void naturally."

He reached to his waist, ensuring his Sovereign’s Veil was activated at maximum compression. Instantly, his presence vanished into thin air. To any creature relying on mana detection or thermal vision, he was nothing more than space.

Without another word, Raphael stepped off the edge of the granite causeway and executed a short-range Shadow-Step Flash, his body dissolving into a silvery-violet spatial streak that crossed the two-hundred-meter void gap in a fraction of a millisecond.

THUD.

His heavy boots landed silently on the cold, jagged obsidian floor of the nearest floating drift island.

The outer island was roughly three hundred meters wide, choked in a thick, creeping black fog that smelled of sulfur, dried ozone, and decayed mana. Jagged stone ruins, remnants of an ancient, forgotten civilization, protruded from the blackened soil like broken teeth.

Raphael stood motionless in the shadow of a collapsed archway, his hand resting lightly on the hilt of his four-foot matte-black longsword. His godlike neural processing speed mapped the island’s terrain instantly.

Six distinct physical entities moving through the black fog. Quadrupedal, low-slung builds, highly compressed spatial mass. B-Tier Void Stalkers.

Unlike the constructs of The Iron Spire, Void Stalkers were feral, primordial beasts born directly from the void tears. They were seven-foot-long panther-like predators covered in obsidian-scaled hides, with six glowing red eyes and razor-sharp spatial tendrils extending from their shoulders, capable of slicing through reinforced steel.

They moved through the thick fog without making a single sound, their claws phasing slightly through the rock to eliminate physical vibration. A quiet, dangerous smile touched Raphael’s lips.

’They think they own the dark.’

Raphael took three slow, deliberate steps forward into the open clearing, intentionally releasing a microscopic droplet of spatial mana from his gauntleted fingertip, just enough to act as live bait.

HISS!

Instantly, the black fog surrounding the ruins churned violently. Six pairs of glowing red eyes ignited in the darkness simultaneously. The Void Stalkers didn’t roar; they emitted a high-frequency spatial hiss that vibrated directly inside the skull.

In a heartbeat, the pack executed a synchronized ambush. Three Stalkers lunged from the high stone arches above, their six-foot spatial tendrils snapping down like razor wire, while the remaining three swept in low from the fog, aiming for Raphael’s legs and throat.

Raphael didn’t draw his sword. He stood his ground in his baggy white cargo pants and void-silk coat, his silver eyes cold and unblinking as the beasts closed the distance in milliseconds.

"Realm-Breaker."

BOOM!

A hundred-meter sphere of pitch-black and silvery-violet spatial mana erupted from his body, snapping into existence with the sound of a thunderclap. The physical laws of the drift island were overwritten instantly. The creeping black fog was blown away by the sudden atmospheric shift, and the ambient temperature plummeted.

The six lunging Void Stalkers hit the invisible wall of Absolute Weight.

CRUNCH-THUD!

The three beasts leaping from the high arches were slammed mid-air by ten atmospheres of crushing spatial pressure. Their seven-foot bodies were forced violently down into the obsidian stone, their ribs and leg joints cracking loudly under the sudden, suffocating weight of Raphael’s presence.

The three low-sweeping Stalkers collapsed onto their bellies, their six glowing eyes bulging as their spatial tendrils were pinned uselessly against the rock. Raphael stepped forward, his heavy boots crunching on the stone.

ZIP.

Using Phasing Step, he materialized directly above the lead Stalker trapped on the ground. He didn’t even unsheathe his blades. He raised his right boot and brought his heavy heel down directly onto the beast’s skull with surgical, terrifying precision.

CRACK!

Thanks to his Spatial Armor Bypass, the kick passed directly through the beast’s obsidian scales, crushing its internal spatial core in a single effortless blow.

The lead Stalker dissolved instantly into a shower of sparkling black void ash, leaving behind a glowing, fist-sized Refined Void Core hovering in the air.

Raphael executed five rapid Phasing Steps in fluid, seamless succession, appearing beside each pinned predator in the blink of an eye. With five swift, bare-handed strikes, he shattered their internal cores, clearing the entire B-Tier ambush squad in under four seconds.

THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD.

The five remaining Stalkers dissolved into ash, their glowing void cores dropping onto the stone. Raphael casually raised his left gauntlet, activating his spatial inventory storage. The six glowing cores vanished instantly, transferred directly to the vaults of The Iron Spire.

He stood alone among the ruins, his shirt snapping softly in the cold wind, his breathing completely calm.

Then, deep within the dark fog of the larger floating landmass three hundred meters further out in the void, a low, guttural roar echoed across the abyss, a sound so heavy it shook the bedrock under his boots.

Raphael looked up into the deep purple gloom, his luminous silver eyes flashing with dark anticipation.

"The alpha," Raphael whispered, his hand finally reaching back to grip the hilt of his adamantine longsword.

The hunt was just getting started.