The dust from the attack settled, revealing the Ant King hurtling blindly toward Asterius.
Plunging from the sky with a shattered wing, it tore through the air—whoosh!—before slamming violently into the mire.
Splash!
The impact sent a chaotic spray of mud, torn roots, and dead leaves exploding outward.
Asterius, standing only paces away, tilted his head just enough to let a glob of flying sludge graze past him.
Nearby, the Ant King struggled to its feet, staggering onto its five remaining legs; the sixth had been cleanly severed during its desperate escape from Asterius’s initial onslaught.
Deep lacerations marred the beast’s entire body, ranging from small gashes to massive, gaping wounds over twenty-five centimeters long.
Though drenched in its own dark blood, the creature ignored the agony.
It stood rigid, locking its gaze onto its opponent.
Its beady red eyes, initially flickering with a trace of caution, rapidly consumed themselves with pure, unbridled fury.
With mandibles thrown wide, the Ant King lunged forward, desperate to tear Asterius to ribbons.
Yet, the target of its wrath remained entirely unmoved.
Asterius stood frozen in a stance of total indifference, watching calmly as the monstrous insect closed the gap.
One and a half meters…
forty centimeters…
The moment the Ant King crossed the one-meter threshold, Asterius struck.
With an imperceptible flick of his left thumb and middle finger, he launched a tiny, purple-black sphere straight into the creature’s yawning maw.
In a single, fluid motion, he drove his heel into the dirt and sidestepped, effortlessly evading the beast’s crashing momentum.
Just in time…
clamp!
The Antking’s bloody mandibles snapped shut.
Cough!
Cough!
Cough!
It erupted into a violent fit of choking, gagging on whatever projectile Asterius had fired down its throat.
Seizing the opening, Asterius lunged forward, his twin daggers gleaming with a cold, murderous intent.
Shwiiing!
A blade tore through the humid air, slicing directly toward the beast’s head.
Kachingg!
Before the metal could pierce its armor, the Antking’s antenna intercepted the blow, deflecting the dagger off course.
Asterius recoiled instantly, narrowly evading a lethal counter-slash from the creature’s second antenna.
Shreeekk!
Enraged by these relentless hit-and-run tactics, the Antking surged after the retreating warrior, determined to deny him any chance to regroup.
Or so it thought.
In reality, the monster’s fate had been sealed from the very beginning.
As it charged, its spindly legs buckled violently.
The massive creature collapsed, tumbling through the mire and skidding helplessly toward Asterius’s feet.
Anticipating the stumble, Asterius spun his daggers in a lethal blur and struck.
Shwng!
Shwng!
Shwng!
Shwng!
Shwng!
Shwng!
Three devastating, seamless slashes carved through the air.
Splash!
Thick green blood erupted from a fresh, “X”-shaped gouge on the monster’s forehead.
The Antking collapsed into the mud, its body twitching uncontrollably.
Its beady eyes glazed over, filled with utter confusion and shock at the sudden turn of events.
Why was it unable to flawlessly coordinate its limbs?
How was the weak, two-legged creature able to pierce through its seemingly unbreakable defense?
Its small brain couldn’t process reality, leaving it trapped in a trance.
Previously, Asterius had flicked a purple ball into the ant king’s throat during its mad charge.
That ball was a fruit from the [Deadly Nightshade Plant] he had retrieved from the rubble.
Now its effects were kicking in, paralyzing the ant king!
As for breaching its defense, Asterius was only able to achieve that effect because he concentrated his six slashes into the X-shaped sword wound on its forehead with terrifying precision and accuracy.
This occurred within a split second, breaking through its thick head.
These were, of course, facts only Asterius would be privy to; the ant king would never know them.
Soon it snapped out of its trance, its confusion turning into pure fury.
It was furious that it had been reduced to such a state by a creature it deemed weaker than itself.
Shockingly, it forced itself up to its feet, its eyes burning with an unquenchable flame of anger and a determination to kill.
Asterius looked on with slight surprise in his eyes.
“As expected from an epic creature.
Anything less from you and I would have been disappointed.
Now, show me just how much of a beast you are,” Asterius said solemnly.
As if fueled by the challenge, the ant king let out a blood-curdling screech and lunged forward, defying the lingering paralysis to tear its opponent apart.
Nicely done, Now.
Let me put you out of your misery.”
He raised his left dagger high into the sky.
Beneath the brilliance of the green moon, its glistening dark edge ignited with an eerie green-red luminescence, triggering the Bleeding Edge effect.
Slowly, deliberately, he enunciated:
“ABSOLUTE WARPATH TECHNIQUE!
FIRST FORM: ABSOLUTE SLASH!”
The blade brought down like a guillotine, unleashing an overbearing, pale-red arc of baleful sword light.
Flash!
A head was sent spiraling into the sky, gushing green blood like a ruptured fountain…
splat!
It crashed heavily into the mire, followed a moment later by its mangled torso.
Sinking into the mud, the creature’s body twitched intermittently.
Its eyes flared with a final, desperate resistance before softening into a strange sense of relief and peace.
With that, the remaining glimmer in its red, beady eyes vanished, fading away forever.
[ NOTBinG!
]
• Epic Beast Slain: Obsidian Ant
• Soul Armament Acquired: Obsidian King’s Armor
• Devour Requirement: Consume its flesh to extract Epic Life Essence.
[ ITEM DETAILS: Obsidian King’s Armor ]
• Type: Armor
• Juggernaut (Active): Amplifies the user’s physical attributes by 30% for 60 seconds.
• Fear (Passive): Radiates a malevolent aura that instills dread and terror in enemies.
(Effectiveness scales inversely with the opponent’s mental strength).
Whew,” he breathed, a long sigh of relief escaping his lips.
“It’s all over, at last.”
Unstrapping his daggers, he stretched his weary frame to ease his aching muscles.
“I suppose this marks the end of my hunting expedition.
I must admit, it was quite the thrill.
Now, the next step is going…”
“…home, right?” Asterius muttered under his breath, a sudden unease settling over him.
“Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
He gazed up into the vast, starry night sky.
Rain trickled down his face from his soaked hair, forming narrow rivulets that snaked down his exposed neck.
For a long moment, he stood entirely lost in thought.
BOOM!
A flash of lightning cracked across the heavens, the thunderous roar instantly snapping him back to reality.
“Sigh…
I got carried away again, didn’t I?” he admonished himself.
“Now, what exactly am I supposed to do with this?”
He turned his attention to the decapitated corpse of the Ant King.
“Can I actually eat this?” he murmured.
He stared intently at the greenish blood oozing from its severed neck, now deeply tinted with a vibrant purple hue—the undeniable mark of the Deadly Nightshade fruit.
“Normally, a low-level poisonous plant wouldn’t worry me.
But I doubt this current constitution of mine can withstand it.”
Yet, contrary to his own doubts, he hoisted the Ant King’s carcass and ventured deeper into the weeping woods.
— 13 minutes later —
SPLASH!
Asterius stepped heavily into a deep puddle.
Standing before it, he felt as small and insignificant as an ant.
A massive hollow was carved into the trunk—a groove so immense it could easily shelter an entire family.
Its pitch-black interior was so eerie and dark that it resembled the entrance to the underworld.
Asterius narrowed his eyes at the gaping threshold of the hollow.
It wasn’t the oppressive dark that gave him pause, but the chaotic swarm of vitality fluttering within it.
His perception caught well over a hundred distinct signatures.
“Well, I’ll be damned.
Bats?”
Filtering the noise through his Divine Sense, he confirmed the inhabitants of the grove were indeed bats—a massive, teeming colony of them.
“Going by their signatures, they shouldn’t be particularly strong.
Mostly ordinary grades, with the highest among them peaking at Rare.
It’s the only one with a pulse worth noting.” He muttered the realization under his breath, his lips thinning.
“Still, a nuisance is a nuisance.
There’s strength in numbers, and I’m entirely drained.”
Defying his own cautious calculations, he marched straight into the gloomy grove.
Beneath the jagged, erratic flashes of lightning tearing through the midnight sky, the twisted canopy looked like the ravenous, open jaws of a leviathan.
Within seconds, the dense foliage swallowed him whole, plunging him into a void of pure, unyielding darkness.
Yet, the blindness was no obstacle for Asterius.
His Divine Sense mapped the world perfectly.
Ordinarily, such an esoteric awareness was a privilege unlocked only after shattering the bottleneck into the [Mortal Core Formation Stage].
But Asterius was a localized anomaly.
His soul was so overwhelmingly vast that it had to be violently sealed to prevent its sheer mass from tearing his fragile physical vessel apart.
Even shackled, his Divine Sense radiated outward in a massive three-kilometer sphere—a staggering span that utterly humiliated the measly 399-meter reach of a standard Mortal Core cultivator.
Now then, Asterius mused, a cold glint in his mind’s eye.
What method shall I deploy to purge these vermin?
Killing intent?
Spiritual pressure?
Sword pressure?
He allowed himself a grim, inward smile.
For an ancient monster like him, descending upon these low-level pests was like crushing ants with a mountain; he possessed a terrifying arsenal of tricks just waiting to be unleashed on these
creatures.
His sole limitation remained, as ever, his frail constitution, which stubbornly locked away his true potential.
In his current state, both his magical reserves and spiritual potency were severely throttled; barely a fraction—not even a quarter—of his techniques remained at his disposal.
“Oh right,” he muttered, recalling a forgotten detail.
“If I remember correctly, this armor possesses a…
Fear Effect.”
[Trait] Fear (Passive)
The armor radiates a heavy, oppressive aura, instilling instinctual dread in nearby adversaries.
Scaling: Effectiveness varies based on the target’s mental fortitude.
“Let’s see what this armor can actually do, shall we?”
He ventured deeper into the subterranean grove.
Swallowed by darkness, the hollow’s only salvation was the bioluminescent fungi blooming across the terrain.
They cast a soft, ethereal glow—clinging to the gnarled, woody ceiling, carpeting the damp floor, and sprouting from the sharpest rock crevices to drape the cavern in a surreal, dreamlike haze.
Then, the silence broke.
Whoosh…
whoosh…
whoosh.
Twin pinpricks of glowing crimson ignited within the pitch-black recesses.
Then dozens.
Then hundreds.
The scarlet embers multiplied exponentially by the second until the darkness itself seemed to blink with a thousand bloodshot eyes.
The grove was utterly infested.
They were the ravenous, beady eyes of Vampire Bats.
Driven by an insatiable frenzy, these beasts fed aggressively on the blood of other living things—and, when starved, on their own kind.
Something had just provoked the colony, sending a wave of violent, chaotic agitation rippling through the swarm.
Asterius remained utterly secure, he had no wounds on him.
The same, however, could not be said for carcass of the Obsidian Ant King, which oozed a thick, sickly green ichor tinged with a faint purple hue.
They were helplessly drawn to it—to that epic-grade blood.
For low-tier monsters like vampire bats, consuming the essence of a higher-ranking creature was the ultimate catalyst needed to force an evolution.
Letting out a weary sigh, they muttered, ‘How bothersome…'”