Chapter 51: The Swarm of Kharntuft

Chapter 51: Chapter 51: The Swarm of Kharntuft

As the final second of the twenty-minute countdown ticked away, the colossal spatial array groaned beneath the weight of hundreds of circulating ley lines. The concentric boundary rings carved into the arena flags flared with blinding cerulean radiance, casting harsh, azure shadows over the tense faces of the assembled examinees. Air hissed as mana dampeners receded, and proctors in dark gray uniform coats began ushering candidates into the churning dimensional portal one by one.

Unlike natural rifts where assault vanguard squads emerged onto a fixed, heavily fortified staging beachhead, the national proving ground utilized an active spatial dispersion protocol. It was designed specifically to scatter contestants across millions of square yards of wilderness, forcing solo independence and testing sheer adaptability before any collaborative factions could form.

The instant Eric crossed the event horizon, his vision warped in a dizzying kaleidoscope of folded space. The ambient pressure surged violently, pressing against his eardrums and tugging at his equilibrium like an anchor plunging into a trench before violently spitting him out onto solid soil.

He landed on his feet, absorbing the kinetic shock with a fluid bend of his knees.

When his boots struck the forest floor, the damp scent of thick moss, decomposing mulch, and ancient oak bark flooded his senses. The air was cool, heavy with morning mist, and thick with an earthy, vegetal density that hung like a wet blanket across his skin.

He stood inside an expansive, primeval woodland. Towering ironwood trees with massive, sprawling canopies blotted out the pale artificial sky engineered above the pocket dimension, casting dense, twisted shadows across the rolling undergrowth. The silence was thick, broken only by the faint drip of condensation falling from broad ferns.

SCREEEEEEE!

A shrill, wet chittering rasped through the humid air directly behind his left shoulder.

Eric’s instincts, honed across weeks of life-or-death skirmishes in the rift, kicked in before his conscious mind could even parse the noise. He pivoted on his heels, dropping into a grounded, low-center stance as his right hand locked onto the wrapped hilt of his standard steel arming sword. The cold leather beneath his fingers brought an immediate surge of focus, his starlight-blue liquid mana coiling in his meridians like a cocked spring.

Lumbering out from behind the mossy trunk of a massive cedar was a grotesque monstrosity. Roughly the size of an armored warhound, the beast scuttled forward on four jointed, insectoid limbs terminating in serrated chitin hooks that dug deep gouges into the soil. Its bulbous, hunchbacked torso was draped in clumps of filthy, matted brown hair resembling rotting lichen, from which half a dozen twitching antenna feelers blindly whipped the humid air. Beneath a cluster of glistening, ruby-red compound eyes sat a vertical maw lined with jagged, needle-like mandibles dripping foul amber bile.

Eric narrowed his eyes, triggering his diagnostic talent.

Appraisal.

│ Race: Kharntuft

│ Rank: E

│ Stage: Soldier

│ Level: 1

"Fresh through the teleportation gateway and the welcoming committee is already waiting," Eric muttered under his breath, a cold smirk tugging at the corners of his lips. "Though a Level 1 Soldier is basically the bottom of the food chain in this zone. A gentle warm-up to dust off the boots."

With a soft mental pulse directed into his soul sea, he summoned his primary partner from the contract space.

FLASH.

Coal materialized in a swirl of violet-tinted dark mist atop a low-hanging mossy bough. The crow’s obsidian plumage rustled softly with a crisp, metallic chime as his pitch-black eyes locked onto the skittering abomination below. There was no hesitation, no fear, only the cold, calculating hunger of a predator that had hunted wild rifts since hatching.

"Take it down swiftly, Coal," Eric commanded across their soul tether, keeping his voice a low, steady rumble. "Don’t drag it out. Conserve your mana."

Caw!

Coal launched into the air with explosive velocity, snapping his broad wings once to tear through the damp mist.

Skystride!

Kicking off an invisible pocket of pressurized air with an audible pop, Coal bypassed the lower tree branches in a dark, fluid blur that defied normal gravity. The Kharntuft hissed in alarm, rearing up on its hind legs to lash out with its razor-sharp chitin claws, the hooks whistling as they cleaved empty air. But Coal’s aerial maneuverability was in an entirely different league.

Dropping like a guided obsidian dart straight into the creature’s blind spot directly behind its hunchbacked crest, Coal’s talons flared with dense, pressurized Shadow mana.

Shadow Talons!

SHLICK!

With surgical cruelty, Coal carved clean through the monster’s exposed cervical joint. Black-tinted elemental blades severed tough muscle fibers and cracked through chitin plating in a single decisive sweep. Thick, yellowish hemolymph sprayed across the surrounding ferns as the crow banked tightly, looped off another aerial air pocket, and drove his iron-hard ivory beak straight into the fractured center of its cranium.

CRACK!

The Kharntuft’s limbs seized in a violent shudder before going completely limp, its heavy, hair-draped carcass collapsing face-first into the damp mulch with a wet, heavy thud.

"Clean and efficient," Eric nodded approvingly, stepping toward the steaming carcass with his skinning dagger drawn to extract the beast’s low-grade mana core. "Good strike, Coal. No wasted motion."

Before the beast drew its final breath, however, its bloated abdominal sac convulsed with sudden, violent spasms. The matted brown hair across its hide bristled upright like needles.

SKRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

A piercing, ultrasonic shriek detonated from the dying creature’s throat. It was not a cry of pain; it was an acoustic flare, an echoing shockwave that tore through the ancient woodland, rattling the leaves overhead and vibrating violently inside Eric’s skull.

A heartbeat later, answering howls erupted from every direction of the timber.

SCREEE! SCREEEEEEE! SKRRR-CHIT-CHIT-SCREEE!

The surrounding brush shook violently. The wet, rhythmic hammering of heavy jointed limbs pounded against the forest loam from all sides. Saplings snapped like dry twigs, ferns were trampled flat beneath jagged chitin, and dozens of filthy, hair-draped silhouettes scrambled out from the dark thickets. Multifaceted red compound eyes gleamed in the twilight under the canopy, locking onto Eric and Coal in a feral, frenzied wave.

"Well, damn it," Eric muttered, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end as his appraisal swept rapidly across the encroaching ring.

Level 1. Level 1. Level 2. Level 1. Level 2...

A full cluster. At least twenty beasts, moving with coordinated hive instincts.

"A distress beacon," Eric gritted his teeth, his grip tightening on his sword hilt. "These things operate in brood packs."

Coal circled tightly overhead, letting out an urgent, warning trill as he flapped frantically against the descending canopy. The trees here were too dense for large-scale aerial evasion; diving into that swarm without cover meant risking getting snared by sticky digestive bile or swarmed by numbers.

"Coal, pull back! We’re clearing the zone!"

Eric spun on his heel, funneling starlight liquid mana into his leg conduits. His boots kicked up wet earth as he sprinted through the timber, seeking higher ground or a narrow rocky choke point. But the Kharntuft were native forest ambushers; their four scythe-like legs allowed them to vault effortlessly over fallen logs, scuttle across slick roots, and bound between trunks without bleeding an ounce of forward momentum.

In seconds, the rustling turned into an absolute roar of snapping branches. More than twenty beasts swarmed through the trees in a suffocating pincer movement, their antenna feelers whipping in unison as they closed the perimeter down to less than thirty paces.

Individually, Level 1 and Level 2 Soldier-rank beasts posed little threat to the duo. A couple of clean sword slashes and Coal’s Shadow Talons could butcher one in seconds. But brawling twenty Soldier-tier monsters at the very start of a day-long national examination was sheer suicide.

Examinees were actively hunting throughout the rift, tracking mana flares and sound signatures to eliminate competition. If Eric exhausted his mana reserves or sustained crippling flesh wounds in the opening sixty minutes, he would be painting a massive, luminous target on his back for rival candidates looking to plunder early exam points from weakened competitors.

Tactical retreat was the only logical play. Slip into the shadows, break line of sight with Shadow Steps, and let the pack lose the scent.

Then, a sudden, deafening mechanical chime detonated directly inside his skull.

DING!

The world seemed to pause for a microsecond as the air before his retinas fractured into an unmistakable, crimson-bordered holographic pane:

│ [DYNAMIC QUEST ENGINE TRIGGERED]

│

│ Milestone Trial: Brood Cleansing

│ Objective: Annihilate the 20 pursuing Kharntuft.

│ Reward: Instant Level Up (+1 Level), Basic Gacha Ticket x1

│ Penalty: Cultivation collapse; fall back into Mortal Realm!

Eric skidded to a violent halt.

The heels of his reinforced leather boots gouged deep, muddy trenches into the forest loam, spraying mulch against the trunk of an oak.

He stared at the translucent system window hovering in his vision, his pupils shaking in sheer, unadulterated disbelief. His face darkened from cautious calculation to pure, incandescent rage until thick, bluish veins bulged furiously against his temples.

"Are you out of your goddamn mind?!" Eric roared into the damp forest air, completely abandoning stealth as pure fury shattered his composure.

"Fallback to the Mortal Realm?! I spent weeks bleeding in wild rifts, snapping my meridians, and refining my foundation to step into the Soldier stage, and you’re threatening to shatter my core over twenty overgrown lice, you trash system?!"

The crimson text did not flicker. It hung cold, indifferent, and absolute.

SCREEEEE!

The lead Kharntuft leaped from a mossy boulder fifteen feet away, its serrated hooks poised to take his head off.

Eric’s knuckles whitened around his blade. His starlight mana flared violently through his seven celestial nodes, painting his dark pupils with chilling, murderous intent.

"Fine," Eric snarled through clenched teeth, his sword screaming as it cleared the scabbard. "If you want them dead, I’ll turn every single one of them into fertilizer!"