Rovan’s voice echoed throughout the cave.
Almost like a primal instinct, the Ironfangs grabbed the remaining survivors and headed through the passage.
It was a narrow path, barely wider than an adult, and seemed to stretch hundreds of meters into the rock.
Kair stood still.
He was reliving a grotesquely familiar scene, only now with every detail visible.
Twelve dark legs held a panicked young man.
And with the flexibility and precision of a surgeon…
It dissected him.
Piece by piece.
Blood trickled down its legs and stained the creature’s emerald-green feathers.
Each one was as sharp as a blade and covered in countless flower buds.
Its body was much smaller than that of other Elites, ending in enormous, almost lucid eyes.
Almost.
When the screams stopped, the creature that resembled an owl with twelve spider legs turned its neck a full 360 degrees.
And its deep, almost sacred green eyes stared directly at Kair.
Every fiber of his being trembled under that gaze.
One of its legs rose, and the air was sliced apart in his direction.
I’m dead!
“Pow!” The wind lifted Kair’s black hair and sent dust into the air.
In front of him, a blade covered in greenish fluids fell to the ground.
To his right, the black spear that was the creature’s leg.
“Run!
Kair!
When we get close to the entrance, press the runic circle.
We have to close the passage and get to the other side quickly!
Move!” The voice obviously belonged to Cassian, but he was different.
Normally, people with awakened lineages kept certain parts of their bodies transformed as a source of pride in their lineage, and the lions obviously kept their manes.
However, Cassian now had many parts of his body transformed.
Spine-like fur covered his arms, and a massive, sharp mane gave him an imposing presence.
But the most frightening part was a tail that ended in sharp, poison-filled spines.
The creature’s leg moved, and the displacement of air sent Kair flying several meters backward.
Perhaps because of the impact, he finally snapped out of it and began to run.
Remembering Cassian’s words, he located the runic circle and headed toward it, but not before looking back.
The spider-owl was sparing a few details for the leg that had a small tear.
From it, a liquid resembling blood, but mixed with sickly shades of green, dripped slowly.
A Rank 2 weapon needed materials from at least an Elite-stage creature, and one as well-made as Cassian’s must have been created using several Elites in harmony with their elements.
Besides being expensive, rare, and probably time-consuming to make, there also had to be someone skilled enough to keep everything from going to waste.
Kair’s thoughts died when the creature’s eyes left its wound and turned toward him.
His brown eyes met the creature’s half-lucid ones.
The creature was conducting a deep, calm, calculated analysis of him.
This time, Kair could have sworn there was something different in its eyes.
Something like…
relief?
“Kair, press the runic circle!
And run, the passage is going to close!” Cassian was analyzing the entire situation.
Everyone had already passed except him and a few others who were already entering the passage.
Kair was running toward the runic circle, but he still stared at that creature.
It was approaching slowly, but every step sank dozens of centimeters into the rock.
The door won’t withstand an attack from that thing.
His thoughts stopped when Kair reached the runic circle and was about to press it.
Everyone except him and the young man without a lineage had already passed.
Hundreds of ordinary spiders covered the ceiling, the walls, the floor, and even parts of the spider-owl.
The roots that had once sealed the cave had all disappeared, and the black clouds in the sky had parted, giving the night a faint glow before dawn.
Kair’s fingers pressed against the stone in the center of the circle, and it sank inward, the letters glowing with the same characteristic color as the Empress’s statue, a crystalline blue streaked with purple.
Kair turned his body.
It was time to run.
And that was the last movement he managed to make.
A familiar burning sensation reached his chest.
Something venomously hot.
Raising his gaze, he saw the two green eyes in the darkness of the closing passage.
Those eyes!
Kair could identify them perfectly now.
They were the same eyes he had seen in the darkness after being poisoned.
That paralyzing heat…
It’s the same!
Don’t tell me…
CASSIAN!
From inside the passage, a spiked tail swayed slowly, and a voice emerged as the passage closed.
“I’m sorry…
Kair.” The guilt in his voice dripped with poison, but that only made Kair’s chest burn even more.
The passage closed.
Kair’s mind began to fade.
It was the same sensation he had felt before seeing Cassian’s poisonous eyes when he arrived at the camp.
Fuck!
Fuck!
FUCK!
The worst part…
Was that Kair could understand him.
His greatest flaw might have been the fact that he was good at rationalizing everything.
It was obvious now what Cassian had been doing throughout the entire test.
He had tried to use Kair for some purpose at the beginning, one Kair still didn’t know.
After Kair survived, it became easy for Cassian to remove the same poison he had implanted, and now Kair knew exactly what reasoning Cassian had followed.
Among hundreds of people with different lineages, countless children of Rank 2, and even some monsters, like the children of lineage Lords, who could one day become as powerful as their parents, and one boy without a surname…
The choice was obvious!
The sensation of his body being pulled against gravity reached Kair’s hazy mind.
Now, with my death.
Maybe the creatures won’t notice the passage…
maybe, just maybe, they won’t break the rock sealing the passage.
ONE DAMN MAYBE!
That was what his life was worth.
A miserable gamble.
Delicately, almost surgically, the gigantic legs had lifted Kair, and one of them even held his head, directing his gaze toward the spider-owl.
Those two half-mad eyes became completely lucid.
Brown pupils stared into owl-like eyes, and Kair felt his end approaching.
A cold feeling replaced Cassian’s hot poison, and two tears fell from the eyes of the young man without a lineage.
Amid thousands of arachnid eyes.
Kair thought he would meet the same fate as the young lion and the other young man he had seen earlier.
What he did not expect was for a gentle voice, impossibly masculine and as calm as a breath of nature, to emerge from the owl’s beak.
“Finally…
Oh, finally, we’ve found him.”