Chapter 69: Ugly Lizard

"Enticing... but I have to refuse," the mana beast’s soft voice dropped into an erratic whisper, its six bulbous eyes suddenly shining with a demented frenzy. "All of you must die."

The giant predator did not lunge forward with its insectoid legs. Instead, the massive, bleeding black roots lining the cavern walls violently came to life, twisting and writhing like a swarm of colossal wooden serpents. Moving with a crazed, terrifying velocity, the massive tendrils aggressively shot forward to impale him from all angles, tearing through the air currents with sharp, deafening shrieks.

Thomas was forced into a desperate, frantic retreat. He didn’t deploy an unrefined block, because he was still waiting for his hidden system to finish its sluggish evaluation. Guided perfectly by his rapid instincts, he ducked, slipped, and contorted his physical vessel, dodging the brutal wooden spikes by the absolute split of a hair as they pulverized the stone floorboards and kicked up thick clouds of black sand around his boots.

"Why do we have to die?!" Thomas yelled as he slipped past a crashing root.

"Because it is the fate of all failures," the talking mana beast answered, its six red eyes shining with a demented frenzy as the wooden tendrils thrashed. "All failures must die."

Thomas pivoted tightly on his heels to evade a vertical strike. "Doesn’t that mean that since you are a failure yourself, you should die too? Shouldn’t you be dead already?"

The creature paused its onslaught for a fraction of a second, its mandibles clicking rhythmically. "That is entirely correct. But I have been continuously feeding off the rich ambient mana in the surrounding land for centuries. I have artificially prolonged my life force through absolute siphoning. Otherwise, I would have long died in the mud."

Thomas’s brow furrowed, a wave of deep confusion washing over his mind as he dived beneath another horizontal sweep. "Are you the reason this land is unexplored?"

"My roots cover a vast magnitude of this surrounding area," the beast said, its voice dropping into a heavy, dark octave. "I have been rooted here for an exceptionally long time, silently trying to shed off the veil of a failure after my master abandoned me in this filth. I have slaughtered a massive layout of humans who crossed my borders. In the end, no one dared try to disturb my peace anymore. So I had no choice but to spread my roots deeper into the marsh in order to hunt fresh energy."

Hearing the sheer scale of its network, Thomas realized with absolute certainty that their clash with this beast was entirely inevitable. Even if Mina had never been taken, this monster would have eventually targeted their sector.

"Weren’t you afraid of the humans retaliating with their main forces?" Thomas asked, drawing out the conversation as his right eye pulsed.

The monster let out a loud, mocking hiss. "Who among your kind can truly stand against me?"

Deep inside his conscious mind, the cold, translucent blue text of the interface violently flared to life, finishing the heavy evaluation sequence.

[ SYSTEM EVALUATION: COMPLETED ]

* Target Entity: Grade A / Verge of Evolution

* Classification: Unique Sentient Mana Beast

* Genetic Origin: Failed genetic cross between a swamp lizard and a sacred tree

Thomas was thoroughly shocked by the notification. A Grade A monster on the absolute brink of evolving into something even more catastrophic was standing right in front of him. Unlike humans, beasts could completely evolve to another grade, but the process was long and required massive loads of mana.

"Running will not help you, child," the mana beast whispered.

Before Thomas could realign his pivot, a thick, slimy root violently grazed his shin from behind. The sudden kinetic impact threw him off balance, causing him to fall heavily onto the wet stones. In a fraction of a second, the colossal lizard torso appeared directly in front of his face, its six red eyes staring down at him like an insect.

"Your friends’ cores are almost entirely empty," the beast grinned maliciously. "Soon they will be dead."

A massive wave of raw, unfiltered anger flooded Thomas’s nervous system. He tightly gripped his fists, wanting to lunge at the creature despite his terrible positioning. But the beast was faster. It violently struck downward with one of its sharp insect legs, aiming to spear his chest cavity open.

If Thomas had not utilized the full density of his Diamond Skin talent at the absolute last possible minute, the razor-sharp chitinous barb would have impaled his heart, killing him right then and there.

CLANG!

The heavy leg spear hit his hardened, reflective chest with a deafening metallic ring, the sheer force pinning him flat against the sand but failing to pierce his rewired muscle fibers.

"Hey! You ugly lizard!"

A sharp, elegant voice suddenly cut through the dark of the cavern ceiling.

"No one lays a hand on the lesser or kills him besides me," Julian barked coldly from above. His bare ebony eyes violently snapped open inside the root matrix, his silver-rimmed glasses flashing with an absolute, unyielding defiance. He didn’t waste a single breath posturing. "Collapse!"

VRK!

With that single command, the physical space directly underneath the monster’s colossal frame violently flatlined, distorting into a bleeding pocket of dark red gravity. But before the beast could be sucked into the crushing singularity, a massive, thick root violently wrapped around its torso and dragged it out of the way by a single inch, saving it from the spatial tear.

Julian didn’t stop. He turned his spatial core inward, instantly collapsing the space around the very roots that were tightly binding his silver armour and siphoning his power. The wooden coils exploded into splinters, and Julian fell heavily to the ground, landing on his hands and feet as his breath came in ragged gasps.

The creature let out a monstrous, deafening scream of pure fury that violently shook the entire cavern foundation and made the ground beneath their boots tremor.

Thomas weakly tried to stand up, straining as he eventually forced himself upright. A few paces away, Julian was doing exactly the same, brushing the swamp grease off his tattered emerald cape as he reset his rigid stance.

Julian turned his head toward the lesser-blood freshman, his face a pale, vacant mask but his voice carrying a serious weight. "Do you still have enough mana to fight off this overgrown lizard, lesser?"

Thomas quietly nodded his head, his right eye still flaring with a brilliant golden light. "I still have plenty." He looked up at the ceiling where the root network was still pulsing with stolen energy. "We need to find a way to get the creature to stop siphoning mana off the rest of our group out there."

Julian adjusted his spectacles, his fingers twitching in a tight circle as he faced the thrashing beast. "What can we do to achieve that?"