The rising sun pierced the towering canopy, spilling amber warmth across the damp, shadowed undergrowth.
Beneath the black trees, a lone figure moved like a ghost through the thicket.
Four Obsidian Ants pursued him in a frantic, high-speed chase, yet their quarry remained entirely unbothered.
No sweat beaded his brow; no panic touched his features.
He drifted through the perilous woods as if enjoying a casual stroll, using flawless footwork to kite the monsters and leave them choking on his dust.
The hunter was Asterius, and he was strictly in the business of harvesting obsidian creatures.
Puff!
Without warning, Asterius erupted into a blinding shower of sparks, leaving his pursuers targeting empty air.
Whoosh—whoosh—whoosh!
Puff!
×3
Before the ants could comprehend the illusion, three ethereal beams of light skewered their heads, dropping them instantly into the dirt.
• Target Slain: Obsidian Ant (Rare Grade)
• No Soul Armament Acquired
• Devour Requirement: Consume flesh to extract Extraordinary Life Essence.
:
The casualties were absolute.
The final ant was left completely isolated with the party leader.
Everything had unfolded too fast for its primitive brain to process.
It frozen in utter daze—and though its hesitation lasted only a fraction of a second, that tiny window was all Asterius required to finish the job.
“AZURE STEPS!”
The muscles in his legs coiled like springs closing the distance in a heartbeat.
His arm whipped out in a sharp, horizontal strike.
He aimed directly for the narrow gap in the creature’s carapace—the vulnerable flesh of its neck.
He flashed past.
His open palm sliced through the monster as effortlessly as a hot blade through wax.
REND!
The world seemed to freeze.
Asterius stood a meter away, his outstretched hand still shimmering with a ghostly, ethereal aura.
Behind him, the ant remained perfectly still, a hollow shell stripped of its soul.
Then, the silence broke.
The heavy head slid from its neck, and a torrent of dark blood erupted like a collapsing dam.
Its crimson, multifaceted eyes stared into the void—a final, vengeful protest against its sudden fate—before the last embers of light died out.
“Life is unfair, huh?” Asterius muttered under his breath, looking down at the ruin.
“The strong devour the weak to grow stronger, and the weak get swallowed whole.
That’s the law of the wild.
That is the true face of existence.”
• Target Slain: Rare Creature-Obsidian Ant
• Life Prominence Gained.
• Armament Unlocked: Baleful Bloodedge Daggers.
• Harvest Option: Consume the flesh to extract Rare Life Essence.
A slow smirk tugged at his lips.
“Now that is more like it.”
With a simple thought, a pair of void-black daggers materialized flawlessly into his grip.
gleaming with a menacing, icy luminescence.
The blades felt freezing to the touch, dominated by two crimson beads embedded deep into their base.
The weapon shared an uncanny resemblance with the mandibles of the Obsidian Ants he had just slaughtered.
Those two blood-red spheres…
they were a striking mirror to the vengeful, agonizing glare of the beasts.
“Intriguing.
A most intriguing blade…” Asterius murmured, his eyes narrowing as he scrutinized it.
• Item: Baleful Blood-Edge Daggers (evolvable)
• Rarity: Rare-Tier Life Prominence
• Skill: Bleeding Edge
• Effect: Suffuses the blades with a malevolent aura capable of inducing severe hemorrhaging.
(Resonates dynamically with the wielder’s emotional state.)
Evolvable?
Does such a concept even exist?
Asterius pondered, searching through Ceres’ memories for any trace of a precedent.
I find no record of this.
“Still, this is a welcome development,” he muttered, a slow grin forming.
“It all points to a singular conclusion: there is far more to this realm than meets the eye.”
Shing!
Shing!
Asterius executed a series of swift slashes, testing the weapon’s weight and center of gravity.
“Impeccable balance.
At the very least, I am spared the trouble of hunting for a proper weapon.
I only hope this evolvable trait lives up to its promise.”
Though a swarm of unanswered questions plagued his mind, a spark of anticipation took root in his chest.
No matter.
I will uncover its secrets in due time.
Two Days Later…
Deep within the shadows of his cavern, Asterius sat cross-legged in profound meditation.
Over the course of forty-eight hours, he had relentlessly hunted the local fauna, driving his parameters to new heights.
His updated profile materialized before him:
• Name / Status: Ceres Turner — [Unevolved]
• Ordinary Essence: 35/100
• Extraordinary Essence: 32/100
• Rare Essence: 29/100
• Epic Essence: 8/100
Over the last two days, Asterus had hunted thirteen creatures.
The tally was precise: three rare grade, seven extraordinary, and the remainder ordinary.
Aside from a single rare-grade black mamba, his prey consisted entirely of obsidian ants.
The serpent had attempted to ambush him mid-meditation.
Unfortunately for the reptile, it was swiftly relegated from apex predator to rations.
The ants, however, yielded far less reward.
Asterus had developed a dual immunity to their essence—particularly the extraordinary variant—rendering their energy entirely useless for his own progression.
Because of this, the bulk of the harvest was left to Little Black.
The companion greedily devoured every single morsel, crunching through even their dense, brittle carapaces without hesitation.
Asterus stirred from his deep meditation, opening azure eyes that now carried a faint, crimson tint.
The first sight to greet him was Little Black swallowing the final slab of meat.
BURP!
“What a glutton,” Asterus muttered, shaking his head.
“You burn through my resources like water, yet you haven’t shown a single sign of evolving.”
Little Black let out a vehement, defensive meow.
The creature protested the slander with absolute indignation, which only earned it a quiet chuckle from Asterus.
Hopefully you’re worth the investment.
Otherwise—”
Asterius’s threat died on his lips as he immediately sprung to his feet bolting from the cave…BOOM!
…a deafening explosion shattered the air.
In a fraction of a second, his secret hideout was reduced to a heap of smoking debris.
He narrowed his eyes, staring grimly at the ruins of his former sanctuary.
Movement caught his attention.
His gaze snapped toward the upper reaches of the towering canopy, his pupils constricting to sharp pinpricks.
Hovering twelve meters above the forest floor were three obsidian ants.
Their wings beat with the furious, mechanical drone of a helicopter.
Yes, you heard correctly—they had wings.
Two of the beasts were clearly rare-grade specimens, noticeably larger and more formidable than normal.
Yet, they weren’t the reason the hairs on Asterius’s neck stood on end.
His focus locked onto the figure bridging the gap between them—a creature flanked and guarded by the two rare grades like…
a KING!!
Remarkably, it was smaller than any obsidian ant Asterius had faced before.
Its carapace was a void of absolute black, swallowing the ambient light without a single glint or reflection.
It looked less like an insect and more like a tear in reality—darkness incarnate, radiating a cold, ominous energy.
Though the creature ultimately tried to mask its presence, it could not deceive Asterius’s razor-sharp instincts.
The aura it bled into the air was unlike anything he had ever encountered across the mystical plains.
It was suffocating.
Overbearing.
It completely eclipsed the power of the Addox.
This was an EPIC GRADE!!
A pristine, apex specimen—and it.seemed to be out for his blood.
“I’m…
royally screwed,” he muttered.
Time slowed to a crawl as both sides locked eyes, observing each other intently.
For a few agonizing seconds, neither moved—until the winged soldier on the left lunged forward like a bullet, closely followed by the one on the right.
The epic-grade king remained static, merely watching with its cold, beady eyes.
Well, I guess it’s time to bite the bullet, huh?
Asterius thought.
One ant flanked him from the left, while another cut off his escape route from the right.
He stood motionless, his eyes squinted and cold.
The winged soldiers pressed their attack, opening their jagged mandibles wide in an attempt to decapitate Asterius and tear him into bloody shreds of meat.
Swoosh!
Four meters…
one meter…
thirty centimeters…
ten centimeters…
Suddenly, Asterius exploded into action!
He bent his upper body backward until his head nearly touched the ground then counteractively propelling his torso forward, a dark silhouette manifested in his hands: the Baleful Blood Edge daggers!.
Gripping the handles tightly, he retaliated fiercely.
“REND!”
“BLEEDING EDGE!
3-FOLD SLASH!”
Shing!
Shing!
Shing!
It all happened in a fraction of a second.
The ants bypassed Asterius in a flash, not even realizing they had been cut.
They executed a sharp U-turn in the sky, preparing to strike again.
Gush!
Suddenly, the ventral plates of their thoraxes split wide open, spurting green goo like ruptured pipes.
The wounds grounded them, sending them plummeting from the sky like fallen angels.
Boom!
“How unfortunate,” Asterius muttered.
“I missed their heads.”
The realization lasted only a fraction of a second before he surged toward the disoriented ants to finish them.
But an instinctual dread made him freeze, driving him backward just as the ground before him vanished, vaporized by a flash of crimson light.
The dormant Epic-grade king had finally made its move!
It lashed its antenna like a whip, unleashing a razor-sharp aura that violently halted Asterius’s advance.
Asterius bared his teeth, returning the stare with an equally icy side-eye.
BOOM!
The two disoriented ants shook off their daze, their bodies flaring as they entered Empowered Mode.
Fueled by a sudden surge of vigor, they charged.
Murder gleamed in their beady, blood-red eyes.
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
“Damn it,” Asterius hissed under his breath.
He turned and bolted into the thicket, the two enraged beasts snapping closely at his heels.
SHRIEKKK!
Now what?!
His mind raced at breakneck speed, desperate for an escape route.
Sprinting blindly through the pitch-black woods, his eyes scanned the shadows, hunting for any tactical advantage.
Then, a sudden spark of hope.
A cluster of thick vines hung from a massive tree just ahead, sparking an ingenious idea.
Hopefully, this works.
Spurring himself to a final burst of speed, he launched into the air and caught the overhanging vines in a vice-like grip.
Swinging himself violently upward, he vaulted into the dense, leafy canopy, vanishing into the shadows just as the beasts closed in below
Determined to secure their prey, the two pursuers charged ahead.
They tore through the canopy, fracturing the silence as a flurry of leaves exploded in their wake.
Beyond the chaos, a cool breeze stirred the canopy, bathed in the haunting, emerald glow of the green moon.
The forest wore a mask of serene mystery—but the tranquility was a lethal illusion.
Suddenly, the two bloodthirsty ants burst into the clearing.
Their bloodshot, faceted eyes scanned the darkness with mechanical precision.
Ten seconds ticked by.
Then thirty.
Absolute stillness.
There was no trace of the phantom who had been systematically slaughtering their kind.
The predators’ fierce scowls melted into confusion, then into mounting dread.
Above them, completely swallowed by the dense shadows, Asterius watched.
He had suppressed his very lifeforce, transforming into a ghost among the leaves.
“…its Time,” he whispered.
With a concussive whoosh, Asterius materialized.
Clad in obsidian armor, a heavy brown cape cascading from his shoulders, he cut the terrifying silhouette of an ancient warlock.
The ants locked onto him instantly, coiling their bodies to strike.
But before they could lunge, the shadows fractured.
Another Asterius stepped into the light.
Then a third, a fourth, until five identical warlocks ringed the clearing.
Paralyzed by disbelief, the ants hesitated—a fatal mistake.
The doppelgängers struck in unison.
Cornered and desperate, the ants lashed out, whipping and thrusting their razor-sharp antennae like broadswords against the onslaught.
Some were decapitated; others were impaled by the antennae.
The surviving clones broke through, raining a barrage of punches upon their targets.
Though they failed to inflict serious damage on the Empowered Ants, they succeeded in provoking them.
They provided exactly what Asterius needed: a diversion.
One by one, the clones shattered into clouds of white sparks, illuminating the deep darkness of the night.
Suddenly, a shrill cry of agony pierced the air—SHRIIIKKK!
A black object was buried deep inside an ant’s forehead, leaving only the hilt exposed.
It was a dagger—the Baleful Blood Edge!
Thick, green blood sprayed from the wound, staining the night air.
Out of nowhere, another Asterius lunged toward the second ant.
This was the real one!
Brandishing his weapon at an awkward, unpredictable angle, he thrust it toward the creature’s beady eye.
But before the blade could strike home, a massive shadow slammed into him, sending him hurtling through the air like a broken kite.
BOOM!
His body tore through the dense canopy, splintering branches before violently colliding with a massive tree trunk.
Asterius hacked violently, coughing up blood from the sheer force of the impact.
Yet, he forced himself back onto his feet.
Luckily, his armor had absorbed the brunt of the blow, sparing him from fatal internal hemorrhaging.
“Dammit,” he muttered, tracing the deep, web-like fractures splintering across his smoking gauntlets.
“I didn’t even sense it coming until the last split second.”
‘If I hadn’t moved in time, it would’ve struck me head-on.
That would have been fatal.’
Stretching his cramped fingers, he exhaled a breath of pure relief.
‘Thank goodness…’ He narrowed his eyes, piercing the distance.
There it stood: the Obsidian Ant King.
The creature seemed utterly hell-bent on obstructing Asterius’ path.
‘You really piss me off, you know.’ Asterius tilted his head mockingly, but his taunt was met only by the creature’s eerie, dead-eyed stare.
‘Well, it’s now or never,’ he muttered resolutely.
Brandishing a pair of baleful daggers, he locked onto the monster’s beady gaze, refusing to yield an inch.
Above them, the heavens bruised into ominous shades of greenish-ash.
Lightning fractured the dark canopy, triggering a sonorous roar of thunder that heralded an inevitable downpour.
Yet, a suffocating silence swallowed the landscape.
The only disruptions were the violent arcs of ligthning tearing through the skies and a turbulent gale whipping through dense branches, mimicking the restless whispers of wailing ghosts.
Amidst the gathering storm stood two dark silhouettes, separated by a mere pace and a half.
Man and insect faced one another.
The human was encased in midnight-black armor, shielded from head yo toe.
The only thing that could be seen clearly were his cold eyes that glimmered with a reddish hue looking like two bright lumps of light in the dark of night.
Drapped on his shoulders was a golden brown cloak which shone with a metallic sheen and gripped tightly in his hands were two obsidian dagger which gave off a baleful aura.
His opponent; a black obsidian ant equipped with a pitch black carapace that seemed to absorb every speck of light emanating a sense of oppression and foreboding.
These two stood across each other, ready to erupt into violence at any moment!”