novelnext Chapter 168: Unchained Tyrant
Chapter 168: Unchained Tyrant
Damon frowned at the sight, with Yuki not looking much different.
They watched the bipedal figure drag the chains wrapped around its arms across the muddy earth, walking unhurriedly as the monster ahead of it fled as if every second counted.
The contrast alone felt wrong, and if that wasn’t enough, it looked even worse.
It looked like the mangled flesh of multiple beings. Something resembling the monster they fought inside the last rift, but different.
It looked even more twisted and more unnatural. Something out of a horror movie, not an actual living thing.
It followed the fleeing beast for a couple more steps before suddenly coming to a halt.
"Why is it stopping—" Yuki began, but was quickly cut off by the monster’s sudden turn.
Its head whipped with an unnatural angle, its empty eye sockets or what appeared to be them locking straight on them.
It stared for a long moment before suddenly whipping its chained arm.
Damon frowned.
The distance was far too great to reach them, which made him question whether the lack of eyes meant the monster was blind, but before he could even finish this train of thought, something invisible wrapped around him.
"What the—"
In an instant, Damon’s body was pulled from where he stood in front of the monster, no longer wrapped by an invisible force, but actually wrapped by its chains.
Whatever the monster’s ability was, it just yanked him from a distance of several dozen meters.
Damon wasted no time and moved between the shadows just as the creature’s other arm whipped through the air, the second wave of chains coming at him.
He landed near the monster’s back, just as Yuki rushed toward him, shouting from the top of her lungs.
"I’ll distort it, you finish it off!"
Her ability struck the monster a moment later, forcing it into a sudden halt, and Damon didn’t need to be told twice.
He raised both his arms, and without even a need to call for it, the lightning materialised around his arms.
It felt different this time, far more violent and uncontrollable.
Small cuts began to spread across his hands and forearms, the lightning zapping at everything around it, even him.
He sent it forth a second later.
The whole jungle basked in purple as the lightning surged forward.
The creature stood no chance of escaping. Not just because of Yuki’s Mana Distortion but simply because of the speed and scale of his attack.
It looked like something designed to level armies rather than single targets, and moved near-instantaneously.
It struck true with a deafening roar, and the impact swallowed the creature whole.
Purple lightning erupted through the jungle in a violent explosion, tearing apart the earth beneath the monster and vaporising everything around it in a blinding flash of light.
The shockwave followed a moment later.
Massive trees bent violently as the surrounding forest trembled under the force of the blast. Mud, shattered stone, and burning blue leaves were thrown high into the air while arcs of unstable lightning crawled wildly across the crater left behind.
Damon lowered his arms slowly, breathing unevenly.
The lightning still hadn’t settled.
It crackled beneath his skin violently enough to hurt and leave small cuts.
"...Damon," Yuki muttered quietly. There was a faint trace of concern in her voice, and her gaze lowered to his injured arms before lifting up to the figure emerging from the smoke-filled crater.
Damon frowned ’It survived that?’
The monster took a couple of steps forward, its skin completely scorched, its limbs protesting at every movement.
Seeing its eagerness to die, Damon took a step forward, but in that moment, it simply collapsed, and a loud notification rang in his head.
[You have slain a Level 123 Unchained Tyrant]
[New Monster Index Bonus: +41 Strength, +31 Vitality, +43 Dexterity]
[You have reached Level 94. You have received 1 Stat Point.]
[You have reached Level 95. You have received 1 Stat Point.]
[You have reached Level 96. You have received 1 Stat Point.]
"You okay?" Yuki asked the second her mana sense confirmed the monster was dead.
Damon turned toward her, then followed her gaze toward his arms, which were covered with countless small cuts from the use of his ability.
"...Yeah," he murmured, though the reply came a little slower than usual.
The mana inside him still felt wrong, and the small cuts across his arms were a reminder of that.
Still, despite that small flaw, they had a task to fulfil.
"We should keep moving," He suddenly said. "The war won’t wait for our return."
With those words, the search for the next rift continued.
It lasted longer than either of them would’ve anticipated.
Each world was normally filled with rifts; their occurrences came naturally with the introduction of mana, and without intelligent life to properly manage them, not to spiral out of control, they were bound to be everywhere.
And yet, for the first two hours of the search, they found none.
This meant that either the inhabitants of this world had actively closed them, or something even more eerie was at play, of which they had no idea.
They had just pushed through another stretch of dense, unnaturally blue foliage when Damon stopped.
Yuki noticed instantly.
"Don’t tell me—"
A faint pressure pulsed through the air. Not mana exactly, but a distortion in it, like space itself was breathing wrong.
Damon raised a hand slightly.
"Here."
Yuki followed his gaze.
Between two colossal tree trunks, the world didn’t sit right. The air bent inward, folding like thin glass under strain. Black cracks shimmered into existence, suspended without touching anything physical.
A rift.
But not one like the others.
This one felt... different.
The edges of it twitched with slow, irregular pulses, as if reacting to their presence.
Yuki exhaled quietly. "If I didn’t know better, I’d think it’s even stronger than an S-Rank."
Damon’s expression hardened. He, too, noticed the difference. Its presence felt a lot stronger than any of the other rifts he encountered so far.
He lingered on the thought for a moment before shaking it away.
It didn’t matter.
They had no luxury of picking and choosing which rift to enter.
"Let’s go," he said, already walking toward it.