Chapter 13: Sun Drinker

Off to his right, Peace saw a monstrous slithering beast of titanic proportions. It was the Tier 4 Titanboa.

Peace banked to his right and bounded toward his hopeful serpentine hero.

’Even these guys wouldn’t rush into a battle with this thing.’

Peace couldn’t tell too much about his pursuers other than that they were strong and equipped to deal with the Corrupted Lands. But no matter how prepared one was, no one rashly charged a Tier 4 monster, a B-Class one at that...

’Right?’

Especially not a corrupted one.

Even if it was reasonless, the beast was physically stronger than a regular Titanboa. Plus, the poison mist it spewed while corrupted was a one-shot K.O. unless a potion was quickly administered.

Peace raced toward the monster as his pursuers closed in behind him.

’The hell!’

Peace felt a tug on his leg, then looked down to see a thin wire wrapped around it.

A man yelled:

"Gotcha!"

The wire grew taut, snaring Peace. A force immediately yanked him backward, tearing him from the comfort of the trees.

As Peace fell, he opened his mouth and let out a series of high-pitched howls before slamming into the ground.

[Your health has dropped below 50%]

Peace spun around and spotted a man covered in leather armor, his face and body obscured by a black bodysuit.

The man named Deacon screeched from somewhere in the distance.

"Saxon, retreat!"

"Damnit!"

Saxon recalled the wire with a flick of his arm, then sprang back into the trees, narrowly avoiding a cloud of black mist.

Peace’s protector — or maybe killer — had arrived.

The gigantic corrupted snake reared back and unleashed its ability, flooding the forest floor with toxic black mist.

Peace disappeared inside it.

[You have been poisoned]

Thankfully, Peace seemed to be immune to the corruption, but the poison was a different matter.

One of his pursuers screamed:

"We can’t let it die!"

Peace didn’t know the exact method, but someone in their cohort immediately unleashed a wind Resonance — or activated an item with a similar effect. The black mist around him split apart, carving open a brief path through the shroud.

Peace scrambled through before it closed, breathing in as little poison as possible.

Once he broke free, the group remained at the edge of the smog and looked at the little gremlin. Peace, in turn, paused to glance back.

Through the black haze, he saw their veiled figures, and they saw him.

It was hard for him to distinguish them due to his color blindness, but he could at least take in their armor and the general shapes of their bodies. He made a mental note, then turned to run just as the titanic snake crashed into the group’s tank.

Peace ran, his bones creaking with each step, while the sounds of the fight grew closer and closer to him until, all at once...

They vanished.

He’d escaped the reach of the Australite’s passive.

Peace never knew how much he took regular hearing for granted until now...

’I hated that.’

While he had escaped his pursuers, there was no time for a respite. The poison might not have been lethal, but it still hadn’t worn off. His limbs felt heavy, his movements sluggish, and every stride drained what little energy he had left.

[Your health has dropped below 25%]

Usually, the Corrupted Lands were teeming with high-tier beasts. The fact that he’d gone so long without encountering one suggested there were probably more hunters than corrupted beasts in his immediate vicinity.

As Peace ran, he passed the occasional dead monster, but stopping would only give his original pursuers the chance to close the distance again.

Wanting to leave as few tracks as possible, Peace eventually scaled a tree and returned to tree hopping. However, he could tell his stamina was reaching its limit. He wasn’t human, and it didn’t seem like he could sweat — yet somehow he’d already run this far without stopping, all while poisoned.

Still, every jump sent a searing pain through his legs.

With his body aching and his muscles screaming for rest, Peace climbed higher into a large tree, forcing his way deep into its canopy before burying himself beneath the myriad of black leaves.

[Your health has dropped below 15%]

[Your body has resisted the poison]

When he finally found a good perch and stopped, he could truly feel his heart racing.

’Well, hearts...’

From what he could tell, it seemed he had more than one.

A couple of minutes later, he heard battle erupt below him but didn’t dare look.

Weapons struck and something roared. Not long afterward, the fighting moved farther away.

Nearly thirty minutes later, another set of sounds began below him — muffled voices, footsteps, and the occasional scrape of armor.

The group from before was definitely passing below. There couldn’t have been many people around with an Australite Resonance.

Peace held his breath and didn’t dare move.

All of a sudden...

The sounds of war erupted around him.

Screams split the air. Shouts overlapped, frantic and commanding. The metallic clash of weapons rang out, followed by the wet snap of something breaking.

Then came a roar. Low at first, it quickly deepened into a trembling growl that rose and rose until it drowned out everything else.

Peace couldn’t make out much, but he heard the thunderous sound of trees crashing to the forest floor as a sweltering wave of heat climbed through the canopy and threatened to scorch his leathery skin, ignite his felt, and burn through the tree concealing him.

To the terrified Peace, it felt as if a god were shaking the heavens.

The chaos raged for what felt like hours, though he knew it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes.

And then, just as suddenly as it began, it all stopped.

It wasn’t a gradual decline...

Everything simply went silent, and Peace’s hearing returned to normal.

The strong wind swept through the brittle leaves, snapping them one by one. Twigs occasionally fell too, landing in the wet corruption splatter across the ground. Every so often, droplets of corruption pattered against the leaves below.

Peace didn’t dare investigate until nearly an hour had passed and his stomach had begun to groan in pain.

When the hunger became unbearable, Peace slowly descended the tree.

Once he dropped below the canopy, he saw the devastating aftermath of the battle he’d only been able to hear.

Trees had toppled here and there; deep scars marred the ones left standing. The one he’d been hiding in had a deep gash that bit into its core.

Then, there was the blood...

Blood, or what Peace could only assume was blood, was splattered everywhere like some grotesque decoration.

The bodies certainly didn’t make the sight any more pleasant...

Six humanoid corpses littered the ground, all now tainted by corruption.

It didn’t seem like they had consumed a corrupted Resonance, so they hadn’t entirely transformed, but they had come into contact with corruption either in life or death, warping their corpses into ghastly abominations...

Despite their disfigurement, Peace recognized the armor of one of the corpses. He believed it belonged to the Mel girl.

That meant at least part of the group that had chased him had made it this far.

The other five corpses were probably from the group he’d first heard battling after he took refuge in the tree.

Peace landed on the ground and stumbled between the fallen bodies, his feet occasionally sinking into exposed organs or catching on severed limbs.

He approached the scene’s greatest anomaly...

The corpse of a Tier 3 beast, a Sun Drinker.

’Those madmen...’

No wonder six people had died...

They’d fought a Tier 3 beast.

And apparently killed it.

Yet something about the scene still made no sense...

’A Wisp?!’

The Sun Drinker had dropped a Wisp that hadn’t been picked up by its killers.

That alone made no sense.

Neither did leaving perfectly good equipment behind. Most of the armor was busted, but the weapons were in good condition, yet all of them had been abandoned.

Peace even spotted a Mythic item: Shadow Dancer.

Peace cursed his inability to wield items in this body, especially with a weapon of the second-highest tier lying right in front of him, free for the taking.

’But, a Mythic item...’

It was no understatement to say the people who died here were the best of the best.

Of the countless characters he and his sister had made over the last five years, they’d only gotten their hands on Mythic items fewer than twenty times throughout their thousands of playthroughs.

It was clear...

Something had forced the survivors to leave immediately. Something so dastardly they’d leave behind a myriad of precious items or materials.

Peace’s view drifted back to the corrupted Wisp floating above the corpse of the Sun Drinker, bobbing up and down as the flame of it’s soul flickered weaker and weaker.

Beyond everything else that made no sense...

Why did the Wisp look...

’Tasty?’

Peace climbed onto the overgrown wyrm’s corpse and trudged toward the Wisp.