Chapter 135: The Last Harvest
Midnight.
The outpost was quiet except for the occasional creak of the gate repairs and the distant hum of the sensor array.
Most of the soldiers were asleep. Even Captain Venus had gone to bed, though Holden suspected the man slept with one eye open.
Holden’s officer bunk was small and cold. His bag was packed by the door, ready for the morning train. Everything he needed was already zipped up and waiting.
Everything except a slightly larger safety net.
He sat on the edge of the cot and checked his System.
[Current KP: 117,890]
It was actually a good amount of points. But tomorrow he was walking into the Capital, past House Sterling’s guards and into a room full of people who wanted him dead. If things went sideways, if he had to fight his way out, or if his pendant broke and he needed to buy a sudden rank-up right in the middle of a firefight, he’d want every single point he could get.
He pulled the Void Mantle from his inventory and swung it over his shoulders. The black fabric clung to him like a second skin, and that familiar ghost-mode feeling took over instantly.
He moved to the window and slipped out into the night.
The rain had stopped hours ago, but the ground was still soaked. Within seconds, he was past the outpost walls and out in No-Man’s Land.
Out here, the darkness was absolute. There were no lights, no campfires, just the faint, distant glow of the rifts on the horizon and a thin sliver of moon hiding above the clouds.
Holden moved fast. Gale-Step carried him in short, silent bursts across the broken terrain. He skirted around a clump of dead trees, hopped over a flooded trench, and pushed deeper into the dead zone.
A mile out, the ground started to change.
The mud gave way to rock as jagged black stones erupted from the ground like teeth.
And right there, carved into the base of a rocky ridge, was a cave.
It wasn’t natural. The opening was too wide and even. The Abyssal Crawlers had dug it out, turning a simple crack in the rock into a proper nest. The entrance was about eight feet tall and dark inside, with fresh claw marks scoring the stone around the edges.
Holden stopped at the mouth of the cave and listened.
He heard scratching and clicking sounds of chitin scraping against rock.
A lot of them.
He pulled up his System and did a quick scan of the cave’s interior. The readings came back in fragments, bouncing off the walls, but they painted a clear picture. At least thirty Abyssal Crawlers, mostly Rank 2, 2-Star to 4-Star, huddled together in the back chambers. They were stragglers from the army, regrouping after the Warlord died.
Holden reached up and pulled the Void Mantle off.
The black cloak folded in on itself and vanished into his inventory. He stood at the mouth of the cave in plain view, completely visible.
He summoned the Solar-Forged Sword.
The crimson blade erupted with light, turning the cave entrance from black to blood red. The scratching sounds inside stopped instantly. Dozens of glowing yellow eyes appeared in the darkness, all turning toward the light.
Holden smiled.
Then he moved.
WHOOSH.
He entered the cave like a red comet. The first Crawler didn’t even have time to raise its mandibles. Holden swung his blade across its body, cutting clean through its chitin and flesh in a single horizontal cut. Black blood sprayed across the cave wall.
Squelch.
The body hit the ground and he was already past it.
A second crawler lunged from the left. Holden sidestepped, spun around, and drove his sword straight down into the joint between its head and body.
CRACK.
He yanked the sword free and kept moving.
The cave opened up into a wider chamber. Crawlers were scrambling everywhere, climbing the walls, dropping from the ceiling, pouring out of side tunnels. They clicked and hissed and snapped their mandibles in a frenzy of panic and aggression.
Holden didn’t care.
His 7-Star body moved at a speed that made the Crawlers look like they were standing still. His 10,000x processor mapped every target, angle and movement before it happened.
A Crawler dropped from above.
SHLICK.
He bisected it midair without looking up.
Two more charged from a side tunnel.
BOOM.
Hellfire Cleave sent a wave of crimson fire roaring down the tunnel, incinerating them instantly and scorching the walls.
[Ding!]
[Abyssal Crawler (Rank 2, 3-Star) Defeated!]
[+600 KP]
[2x KP Booster Applied!]
[+1,200 KP!]
He moved deeper into the cave, following the sounds of retreating Crawlers. They were trying to flee, scrambling over each other to reach the back chambers where the rock was tighter and harder to swing a sword.
It didn’t help.
Holden found a group of eight Crawlers huddled in a dead-end chamber. They turned and hissed at him with their mandibles spread wide, trapped in a corner with nowhere left to run.
He raised his sword.
The blade blazed red-hot.
FWOOSH.
A massive wave of fire washed across the chamber wall to wall. The crawlers died instantly without a sound, incinerated to ash and glowing shell fragments in a heartbeat.
[Ding!]
[+4,800 KP!]
[Ding!]
[+1,600 KP!]
[Ding!]
[+800 KP!]
The very last bug was holed up in the deepest part of the cave. A single large Crawler, Rank 2, 4-Star, with reinforced black chitin and knife-sized mandibles. It had positioned itself between Holden and a clutch of eggs, guarding them with a frantic, hissing aggression.
Holden didn’t slow down.
He closed the distance in two steps and drove his sword straight through the Crawler’s face. The Solar-Forged blade pierced the tough shell effortlessly, sliding through like a hot needle through leather.
SHLICK.
The Crawler’s legs twitched once, then collapsed.
[Ding!]
[Abyssal Crawler (Rank 2, 4-Star) Defeated!]
[+1,000 KP]
[2x KP Booster Applied!]
[+2,000 KP!]
Silence took over the caves as the last crawler fell. The walls were scorched black, pools of dark blood covered the floor.
Holden stood in the center of the destruction, his sword still blazing, completely calm and barely out of breath.
He looked at the System log.
[Total KP Gained This Session: +15,000]
[Current Balance: 132,890]
Not bad for twenty minutes of work.
He shook the blood off his sword, dismissed it, and pulled the Void Mantle back over his shoulders. The black fabric swallowed him whole, and he turned and walked out of the cave into the cool night air.
The run back to the outpost was quick and quiet. He slipped through the gate gap, crossed the courtyard without a sound, and climbed back through his window.
In the small bathroom attached to his bunk, he washed the mud and monster blood off his boots using a rag and a basin of cold water. The water turned dark brown, then black, then he dumped it and washed again until the water ran clear.
He toweled his boots dry, set them by the door next to his packed bag, and sat on the edge of the cot.
The pendant pulsed gently against his chest.
Tomorrow, they’d take the train back to the Capital. Back to the nobles. Back to the arrogant nobles. Back to House Sterling with all their schemes, fake smiles, and hired killers waiting for them.
Holden lay back and folded his hands behind his head.
He was ready.