Chapter 57: Trap

The air inside the ravine grew so hot it felt solid, pressing against Atlas’s chest like a furnace door flung wide.

The Ember-Scale Chimera took three heavy, deliberate steps into the narrow pass.

Each obsidian-clawed paw crushed the limestone floor into glowing gravel, leaving scorched, blackened footprints in the dirt.

It didn’t roar. The apex predator didn’t need to intimidate its prey.

Instead, the liquid fire pooling in its throat brightened from a deep crimson to a blinding, sun-like gold.

The heat distortion above its head warped the night air, turning the surrounding canyon walls into a shimmering, liquid blur.

Atlas didn’t move a muscle. Sweat trickled down his temple, evaporating into steam before it could even reach his jaw line.

His thumb rested lightly on the crossguard of his practice blade, his pulse thumping in a slow, calculated rhythm against his ribs.

Thirty yards. Twenty yards.

The Chimera lowered its massive head, its muscles coiling like massive steel cables under its scaled hide.

It was preparing to launch its full body weight forward to crush him.

’Ten yards.’

The monster’s front paws hit the exact center of the clearing — right over the hidden triangular array.

"Now," Atlas whispered.

He slammed the heel of his boot into the dirt, driving a thin needle of compressed shadow energy straight into the centre buried beneath the soil.

The three soul-stones exploded simultaneously under the earth, venting a violent surge of dark, destabilized mana into the carved channels.

The ground beneath the Chimera’s heavy forelegs buckled into a dense, swirling vortex of dark energy.

Black, thread-like tendrils erupted from the dirt like uncoiling chains, whipping upward to wrap tightly around the monster’s front legs, chest, and heavy obsidian shoulders.

The Chimera’s forward momentum vanished in an instant. The massive beast lurched violently, its front half slamming downward as the shadow chains locked its limbs against the bedrock.

"ROAR!"

A deafening roar of pure rage tore from the monster’s throat, shaking loose gravel from the surrounding cliffs.

The Chimera thrashed wildly, its immense physical strength causing the dark tendrils to strain, creak, and pop under the pressure.

Crimson sparks flew into the air as the beast’s molten scales bit into the shadow bindings, slowly burning through the array.

Atlas watched the struggle with cold, unblinking focus. He didn’t rush in.

He knew the shadow trap wouldn’t hold a second-tier Forest King forever — he had perhaps five seconds before the heat completely incinerated the array.

He tilted his head slightly, his gaze darting up toward the dark rim of the limestone cliff above.

High up in the shadows, two pinpricks of icy blue soul-fire flared to life.

Skull was perched on the edge, his skeletal frame coiled tight, waiting for the split-second window.

The Chimera flexed its massive shoulders, cracking three of the main shadow chains.

Its jaws snapped open, the golden fire in its throat flaring as it prepared to incinerate the ground beneath its feet to free itself.

The vent scale beneath its left shoulder popped open to release the building internal pressure, exposing a raw, glowing rift of unarmored red flesh.

"Skull! Core Drain, now!" Atlas roared.

High above, Skull launched off the cliff face.

The skeletal hound descended like a falling spear, his bone frame wrapped in a dense, swirling vortex of dark, hungry soul-energy.

This was his innate absorbing mechanism — a high-cost, specialized technique that consumed over forty percent of Atlas’s total shadow essence just to ignite the core array within Skull’s ribcage.

Atlas felt the sudden, massive drain instantly, a sharp, hollow ache tearing through his chest as his energy reserves plummeted.

’WHAM!’

Skull struck with terrifying precision, driving his jaw and clawed paws directly into the soft, exposed vent beneath the Chimera’s shoulder.

The impact drove the monster’s left side flat into the dirt. Instantly, the dark vortex around Skull’s ribcage flared into an absolute void.

The glowing, liquid heat surging through the Chimera’s body was forcefully pulled out of its flesh, flowing in thick, radiant streams of golden energy straight into Skull’s bone structure.

’SCREECH!’

The Chimera let out a high-pitched, agonized shriek as its internal heat was rapidly siphoned away.

The glowing obsidian scales along its back began to dull, turning a dark, brittle charcoal gray.

The blinding light in its throat flickered and died, choked out by the dark siphon.

Atlas sprung forward, his boots kicking off the dirt as he closed the distance in a blur. His blade ignited with the last remnant of his shadow energy, targeting the monster’s exposed neck while it was pinned and drained.

"We’ve got it!" Atlas shouted, raising his sword high for the decisive strike.

Then, the Chimera’s slitted yellow eyes turned completely crimson.

It didn’t struggle against the chains anymore. It didn’t try to pull away from Skull’s drain. Instead, the beast made a terrifying, suicidal choice.

Rather than letting its core be drained, the Chimera intentionally overloaded its internal mana heart, forcing its own body past its physical limits.

’CRACK CRACK CRACK!’

The brittle, charcoal scales across its entire body shattered outward like glass. Beneath the armor, there was no flesh left — only a roaring, pressurized sea of wild, uncontained elemental fire.

The beast’s physical form collapsed in on itself, transforming instantly into a massive, twenty-foot pillar of pure, white-hot wild flame.

"Skull, pull back!" Atlas screamed, his eyes widening in horror as the heat blast hit his face, scorching his eyebrows and knocking him off his feet.

It was too late.

The shadow chains instantly vaporized into nothingness. The pillar of roaring white fire didn’t spread out into the ravine — it curled violently inward like a massive, living maw.

The molten vortex wrapped completely around Skull’s small skeletal frame, locking the hound inside a blinding sphere of pure incineration.

Skull’s high-pitched soul-shriek echoed through Atlas’s mind as the hound’s absorbing mechanism was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of wild fire.

The intense heat forced its way backward through the siphoning link, burning straight through the connection.

Atlas hit the ground hard, rolling onto his chest just in time to see the towering column of raw, intelligent flame shape itself into a giant serpent’s head.

The flaming beast towered over the clearing, its maw stretched wide, closing down over the trapped, glowing form of Skull to devour both the summon and his soul core whole.