Xavier could not remember the last time he felt so relaxed and at ease. No Kobolds or other monsters were invading the town, and he did not see people getting ready for battle.
Everybody seemed too busy chatting and drinking, almost reminding him of the era before the apocalypse started. Chiroph seemed well-known and respected because nobody doubted Xavier or his intentions. They readily accepted him after Chiroph assured them he was not a threat.
And that seemed a little weird to Xavier. He found it strange that everybody took Chiroph’s word for his innocence and trustworthiness. They were all oblivious to Xavier’s confusion, who was lost in thoughts.
Someone asked him something, but Xavier did not hear him at first. He tried talking, but then suddenly, he realized he could not hear anybody around him.
Did I drink too much?
Xavier wondered as the surrounding voices were slowly replaced by silence. Mist started slowly filling the space around him, and he could not see the others anymore. Mist continued to fill the surroundings, turning his vision blurry, and he panicked for a second.
“Hello? Chiroph, where are you?”
He called out to the Zephyr, who did not answer. Xavier shot up from his seat and looked around frantically, but he was relieved that Glut and Umbra were still around.
“Glut! Umbra!”
Xavier called them out, but they were busy playing with each other. When his voice didn’t reach them, he tried using Whispering Energy, but even that did not seem to work. The Whispering Energy dispersed into the mist.
The mist filling the area around Xavier grew darker by the second. It transformed into darkness before his eyes.
The darkness was everywhere.
It was hard to see even a few steps ahead of him as everything got enveloped in a cocoon of darkness. But amidst the mist, Xavier thought he saw a shape emerge.
An Illusion of the Heir of Darkness manifested in the darkness.
He had no idea why he was certain that was the Heir of Darkness, but that seemed to be the case. But that was weird.
How could he recognize him already just because he heard the name once? Xavier felt confused more than ever before. After all, the illusion manifested before him was the person he kept dreaming about in his frequent nightmares.
Why was he dreaming about the Heir of Darkness?
The question remained unanswered, but the darkness around him eventually dispersed. He didn’t know how long he had been wandering but found himself in a deeper part of the Grand Forest. At least, that was what he suspected. The surrounding flora was denser than before, and the trees on either side of him were much taller than the largest trees he had seen earlier.
Unsure of where to go, he kept walking through the Grand Forest aimlessly, his senses on high alert. The mist that had suddenly engulfed him seemed to disappear just as fast, adding more confusion to his already troubled mind. The Grand Forest looked lush green and vibrant, but he had no idea which path to take. Everything looked the same to him.
He turned around to see if he could guess which direction he had come from, but his mind could not decipher anything. He was lost.
That thought should have worried him. But it did not.
“Arghhhh!!”
Xavier’s neck snapped to the left from where he heard the scream, and without wasting time, he ran in that direction. He came across a young girl getting mauled by a massive creature. The poor girl was struggling against the monster, which was coated in a dark hue. At first, Xavier could not see much except for the horn jutting out of the beast’s forehead, but his brain realized he had seen something similar before.
The horned creature was coated in darkness, just like the Behemoth that had attacked Haven. The only difference was that the dark hue around this monster seemed a lot more dense.
Darkness seeped out of the monster, devouring everything while the girl was still fighting. Only now did he see that she was not an ordinary human.
She had dark skin, pointy ears, and purple eyes, though her body resembled a human's.
The girl raised her hand and thrust it in the monster’s direction, who stumbled back. It took VXavier a minute to understand that she was no ordinary being. She was releasing some kind of power that was strong enough to deflect the monster, who was around five times her size. However, he noticed that she was growing weaker with every passing second. The monster was relentless and kept attacking her. She spat blood and was bleeding from numerous wounds on her body, her movements frantic and desperate.
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Xavier saw enough to realize that she would not be able to tackle the monster alone, so he made his move.
He used Dash, Thunder Step, and Foundation Boost before charging ahead. Stun was applied to the massive creature, but the Common Card was ineffective. Umbra and Glut decided to split up and lend a helping hand to the girl. Glut shot into the treetop of the massive trees overhead, whereas Umbra disappeared into the shadows around them.
Xavier appeared next to the little girl just as the monster was about to stomp her to death. The creature’s gigantic hooves smashed down, nearly flattening Xavier as he reached the girl. His heart beat wildly as his surroundings turned dark, only for the darkness within him to churn. He instinctively used Borrow to use Umbra’s Shadow Jump with the girl in his embrace. She screamed at the top of her lungs and was taken aback by the sudden arrival of Xavier and his companions. She somehow believed they had arrived to harm her as well. That thought made her tremble wildly, and she began to writhe in Xavier’s hold and escape him.
Suddenly, the world around her disappeared. It was only a quarter of a second later that they reappeared several meters ahead, but the short moment of shadows and darkness swallowing everything was enough to silence her. Her eyes flew wide open in shock. They trembled in fear, yet she looked intently at Xavier who used Borrow again on Glut to increase his Agility temporarily.
Xavier accelerated and disappeared in the thicket with the girl before using Pet Boost on Umbra and Glut. Glut appeared behind the massive creature and clawed at its left hind leg. The Nightshade Panther’s claws struck the thick hue coating the creature, but they didn’t pass through them. The darkness hue coating the monster repelled the Nightshade Panther’s attack.
Umbra changed his tactic to conjuring shadow balls, which quickly lobbed at the monster. The darkness hue flickered wildly as the attacks impacted, but that was already it. Umbra’s attacks didn’t inflict much damage.
Even Glut was having a hard time. More than a dozen fireballs conjured in the treetop above the massive creature. They burst down to the ground, looking like a miniature meteorite shower, and impacted heavily. The monster’s darkness hue dispersed wherever the fireballs impacted, but it regenerated a quarter of a second later. The fireballs managed to break the darkness hue, yet their destructive power wasn’t enough to gravely injure the monster.
The creature issued a terrifying roar that stunned Glut and Umbra as they closed in to execute more attacks. Glut was about to fall from the treetop, but Umbra struggled to jump through the shadows to further increase his distance from the monster. That was good enough for the creature to unleash a barrage of darkness in all directions. The hue coating its body expanded and changed shape. Tendrils of the darkness hue – highly compressed to maintain its shape and inflict considerable damage – shot out in all directions, piercing the surrounding trees, bushes, and soil.
Glut barely managed to conjure and release a massive fireball to change his trajectory and destroy a darkness tendril that had threatened to impale him. Umbra was not that lucky. He jumped through a shadow to increase the distance to the massive creature, but one of the smaller tendrils managed to hit him. As a result, his left leg was pierced through.
The darkness tendril coiled around Umbra as the Nightshade Panther roared in pain and defiance. He was picked up from the ground and lifted high into the air, where he hung limply, writhing weakly, struggling to escape certain death.
The darkness tendril smashed to the ground, shoving Umbra deep into the ground. DUmbra let out a growl as he struggled to find purchase on the ground, which kept slipping under his feet. He tried to plant his paws firmly into the soil, letting his claws sink in, but the ground kept sinking. But that did not stop the Nightshade Panther from trying hard. He wriggled and tried to twist his body at odd angles to allow him to jump up, but the darkness tendrils were relentless and kept pushing him down mercilessly.
The Nightshade Panther wasn’t dead yet, but several bones in his body were broken. Xavier emerged from a bunch of bushes as a premonition overcame him. His chest tightened, and his breath hitched. His eyes landed on Umbra’s pale body. Uncontrollable anger burned in his eyes.
The darkness inside him churned. It boiled and was about to overflow when Xavier made his move. The girl was nowhere to be seen. Xavier put her down far enough from the battle to focus on the fight. He disappeared in the shadow next to him and reappeared beside Umbra, traveling a distance much farther than he’d managed earlier.
The darkness inside him was overflowing. It tore his skin apart and poured out of him, only to coat his body. The darkness armor reappeared once again. Xavier conjured a sword using Energy Blade and slashed through the darkness tendrils easily once the Energy Blade was coated in darkness, Shadow Blade, and Glut’s blazing fire.
Xavier reacted swiftly. He grasped Umbra’s writhing body and swiftly transferred the Nightshade Panther inside the Soul World.
“You fought well,” He reassured Umbra before his eyes turned eerily cold, “I can do the rest!”
The moment Umbra disappeared inside the Soul World to regenerate, Xavier began to have problems controlling the darkness within and around him. He felt the darkness draining his lifeforce, trying to devour him alive. Simultaneously, the darkness spread out and devoured the cut-off darkness tendrils.
A weird pulling sensation overcame Xavier as his darkness devoured the darkness tendrils. The darkness within him was nurtured. It grew stronger, more resilient…and greedier.
Xavier severed several darkness tendrils that came his way, and the darkness lunged out, devouring the cut-off parts. However, that was only the beginning. The darkness armor grew stronger the more it devoured. It protected Xavier and amplified the Energy Blade in his hand while draining his lifeforce.
It was a tricky situation for Xavier, who felt he was growing stronger while growing weaker simultaneously. He only knew what he got to do when tendrils of darkness burst out of his darkness armor. The tendrils linked with the monster’s darkness tendrils and attempted to devour its darkness.
The massive creature issued a horrifying roar. It sensed a familiar power oozing out of Xavier and retaliated. The monster willed the darkness, hue shrouding itself to devour Xavier’s darkness.
A tug of war began in the middle of the battle.