Chapter 168: Poisoned Silence
Alex stood motionless on the Hawkilies when a sudden chill cut across his skin.
He adjusted his stance, he was preparing for the teleportation, but his motion never finished.
The world twisted around him and nausea slammed through him hard enough to steal the air from his lungs.
’Ugh...’
When his vision finally cleared, the first thing he registered was the complete absence of open sky.
Dense layers of leaves and massive trunks blocked everything above, no moon or sun was visible through them.
It was just endless green black canopy pressing down like a ceiling that had never known light.
’Something feels off.’
The silence was wrong.
It was too clean and empty.
The Proving should have been chaos by now, yet nothing moved in his perception, not a bird call or even a single shifting leaf.
’CBI,’ he thought, only they could arrange something this controlled.
He reached for the bond without wasting another second.
’Zara, answer me.’
Nothing, the bond was unnaturally silent.
’Zara!’
A faint echo brushed the very edge of his awareness, then slipped away again like smoke through fingers.
The connection was still there, but it was muffled, as if something thick and deliberate stood between them.
’Distance shouldn’t matter after the evolution, at least I think it shouldn’t, until and unless the actual distance between us is literally Abysmal, which I don’t think is true, so what the hell is interfering?!’
Only a few seconds had burned away since he arrived, yet already the situation felt wrong in a way that went deeper than simple separation.
He stopped questioning and started checking gear.
Fingers found Viper’s Spine first, the familiar weight settling into his palm.
Next came Amethyst Paradox, chain coiled and ready.
The red lightning stone sat safe in the inner pocket against his chest.
Utility belt still held every tool and potion he had packed before leaving.
No more time to waste.
Alex kicked off the ground and raced up the nearest trunk, Shadow Element wrapping around him the moment he entered the canopy.
He settled high among the thickest branches, presence bleeding into the darkness until even the leaves seemed to ignore him.
The trees here were giants, each trunk wide enough that three men could not have linked arms around it, their crowns vanishing into the upper gloom.
Something was really wrong.
The bond interference had been the first warning.
His instincts supplied the rest, he went completely still and made his breath shallow.
His heartbeat slowed until it barely registered and every muscle remained coiled and ready.
[Adapting...]
’What?!’
Then he heard a sound, it was faint, almost too soft to catch and it brushed the air behind him.
Alex spun and Viper’s Spine was already in his hand.
The cascading serrated segments locked into a rigid saw-edge mid-motion and tore through the attacker in one clean, brutal arc.
Black blood sprayed across the leaves and a creature’s torso toppled across the branches and hung there for a moment before gravity took it.
The creature had no eyes, only smooth black plates of hardened flesh and clawed hands still dug deep into the bark where it had been clinging.
’I nearly missed that.’
He did not stay to examine the corpse.
Alex pushed off hard, leaping from trunk to trunk until the scent of blood was far behind him.
Only then did he settle into a new perch and vanish into the shadows again, becoming nothing more than another patch of darkness among the leaves.
There was no system notification or experience and that alone confirmed that something was not right.
He crouched lower, he was trying to becoming part of the shadows itself.
A sharp whistle cut the air and a circular object spun toward him with deadly speed.
Viper’s Spine moved first, it’s cascading segments angling slightly to present a broader surface and catch it cleanly.
BURST!
"Damn it—!"
Corrosive smoke exploded outward in a thick, choking cloud and all the wood he around him blackened and crumbled under the contact.
Leaves shriveled to ash in seconds.
Alex threw himself clear with his lungs locked shut but the smoke still kissed the exposed skin of his arm and the side of his neck and the pain of it hit him like poison under the flesh.
’Tch...’
Dark veins spread across the contact points as the skin began to rot and peel.
He slammed into a neighboring trunk but he caught himself on one hand, and because of that he did not fall down, and then he swung up onto a higher branch of the tree, his teeth clenched hard enough to ache.
He looked toward the source of the throw, his eyes cutting through the drifting smoke.
’Spell or tool? I didn’t get a clear look at the thrower.’
Shapes shifted among the trunks below.
Three more black humanoids shot upward from the ground cover at once as their claws tore deep tracks into the wood as they scaled with unnatural speed.
Their motion stayed jerky yet very precise, as though one mind directed the group.
Alex closed the gap at once and he kept Viper’s Spine in his hand and met the first climber head-on.
SLASH!
The cascading segments snapped rigid and sheared through its reaching arm and black blood flew in the air.
BURST!
He twisted the blade and drove the serrated edge into the creature’s chest, ripping it open before it could recover.
RIPP!
The second form lunged from the side and Alex stepped along the branch, he let the segments cascade outward mid-swing, and cut a long gash across its torso.
Ssshhhk!
The extra reach caught the third climber as it closed in as the saw-teeth locked and tore through both in one continuous motion, but more of those same projectiles came from a different direction.
SUI! SUI!
Two circular objects spun in from opposite angles.
’These fucking balls!’
’If they hit me directly I am dead, and whoever is throwing them is doing so I don’t get much time to dodge it, while I am constantly being attacked by these creat—’
Alex did not have enough time to dodge, so he turned his form in the air.
Viper’s Spine flashed left and right in rapid succession.
SLASH! SLASH!
Both objects burst on contact.
BURST! BURST!
The smoke that formed was larger this time.
He landed on a lower branch and he was already in motion and already mapping the next line of attack.
BAM!
The rot on his arm and neck throbbed with every pulse.
SIZZLE!
Blood ran from the dark patches in thin black lines and dripped on the ground.
DRIP! DRIP!
His fabric and hair showed burn traces and flakes from the earlier contact.
One more creature fell from higher branches of the tree and it was quiet until the very final instant.
Alex sensed the air shift and moved without fully turning his body and drove the pommel of Viper’s Spine back into its chest.
BAM!
At the same moment he whipped the blade around in a tight arc that locked the cascading segments into a full serrated edge and the cut ran upward from hip to shoulder in one fluid stroke.
Ssshhhk!
Dark blood hit the wood in a broad wet line.
BRUST!
Now a sharp smell of decay stuck to him and slim threads of harsh smoke still lifted from the open marks on his flesh.
Alexander Abyss was facing real difficulty already.
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End of Chapter 168: Poisoned Silence
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