Chapter 180: Death Essence
Chapter 180: Death Essence
The first time Rohan walked the wall with him, Jorren handed him a maintenance brush and pointed to a silver lens.
"Clean."
Rohan looked at the lens.
It was angled over the western ash field, mounted in a ring of dark metal that hummed faintly beneath his fingers.
"Is this safe?"
"No."
Rohan waited.
Jorren said nothing else.
"How helpful..."
The Jorren sound.
Rohan cleaned the lens.
He learned that the wall devices were not true weapons in the way he had assumed. They did not create silver light. They caught and focused it when Cael Athis’s upper atmosphere fractured the star’s radiation through ash-heavy clouds. The locals called those flashes "skyglass pulses." The wall lenses stored some of the charge in storm-silver coils and released it in bursts.
Useful against skarn.
Useless in heavy cloud.
Dangerous if cracked.
"Why does the silver light hurt them?" Rohan asked.
Jorren shrugged.
"Burns the ash they wear."
"They’re made of ash?"
"Everything here is made of ash if you wait long enough."
"That’s bleak."
"That’s Veyrhold."
The Jorren sound again.
Rohan liked him too.
By the end of the first month, Rohan was no longer stopped every time he crossed from one district to another. He was still watched, but the watching changed texture. Less "possible threat", more "strange young man who may accidentally set something important on fire."
That was progress.
His guest-right was extended.
The formal wording changed.
[Standing: Watched Guest -> Useful Guest]
Rohan almost laughed when he saw it.
Useful Guest came with more freedom, but also more work.
Veyrhold did not waste useful people.
His first hunt with the outer watch came eleven days after that.
Maerin did not announce it dramatically. She found him at dawn while he was helping Pell and two others load ashglass shards into padded crates behind the trade store.
"Get your spear."
Rohan straightened.
"Good morning to you too."
"Get your spear."
"Are we going somewhere?"
"Yes."
"Dangerous?"
"Yes."
"Useful details, as always."
Maerin turned away.
Rohan retrieved his spear.
The hunting party consisted of Maerin, Jorren, Liora, two archers named Sen and Arv, and Rohan.
Liora’s leg had healed enough for her to walk with a reinforced brace. She still moved stiffly, but she carried her hooked blade and a compact crossbow with the restless energy of someone who had been trapped indoors too long. When Rohan saw her waiting by the eastern gate, he raised an eyebrow.
"You’re hunting already?"
"I was hunting before you arrived."
"You were also nearly eaten before I arrived."
"And now I know this particular stranger is loud enough to distract skarn."
"I feel valued."
"You are valued. As bait."
Maerin cut in before Rohan could answer.
"No one is bait unless I say they are."
Jorren made the sound.
The hunt was not for skarn.
That surprised him.
They went south-east along a marked route for nearly an hour, crossing low slab fields where ash collected in long ripples. The air tasted sharper away from the settlement, and the wind returned with familiar hostility. Veyrhold shrank behind them until only the silver wall lenses caught the light.
Their target was something called a cinderback.
Rohan imagined a lizard.
He was mostly wrong.
The cinderback they found was the size of a calf, built low and wide, with a plated back of black-red mineral growths that glowed faintly between cracks. It had six legs, a blunt head, and a mouth full of flat grinding teeth. It was not hunting them. It was digging through a bank of warm ash near a vent, scraping up mineral roots with slow determination.
"It eats plants?" Rohan whispered.
"Mostly," Liora said.
"Then why are we killing it?"
"Because those plates hold heat for three days, the fat burns clean, and the stomach stones sell well."
Rohan looked at the cinderback again.
It looked almost peaceful.
Then it lifted its head, scented them, and slammed its tail against the ground.
The ash bank exploded outward.
Rohan had just enough time to realise that the tail was covered in hooked mineral barbs before the creature charged.
The fight was ugly but controlled.
Maerin’s party had done this before. Jorren met the charge with his shield, bracing one foot behind a slab. The impact drove him back half a metre but did not topple him. Sen and Arv put arrows into the softer joints behind the front legs. Liora circled wide, waiting for the creature to turn. Maerin barked positions.
Rohan was told to hold the left flank.
He did.
The cinderback was stronger than it looked, and the heat radiating from its plates made the ash around it shimmer. Twice, it tried to roll sideways and crush Jorren against the stone. Twice,
Maerin’s hooked blade caught under one of its plates and forced it off balance.
Rohan saw the opening before Maerin shouted it.
He stepped in, drove Hestia’s spear through the exposed gap behind the creature’s front shoulder, and pushed.
The spear slid deep.
The cinderback screamed, a harsh grinding sound that made his teeth ache. Its legs thrashed. Its tail whipped toward him. He ducked barely in time, felt barbs tear through the air above his head, then twisted the spear with both hands.
The creature collapsed.
For a heartbeat, there was only the sound of its body hitting ash.
Then something surged out of it.
Rohan froze.
A rush of hot, dense energy burst from the cinderback’s corpse and slammed into him.
Not physically. Not like wind. But it hit with enough force that his knees nearly buckled. It poured through his chest, down his limbs, into his bones, into the strange invisible framework the Great
System had placed around him. His skin prickled. His muscles tightened. His wounds throbbed once, then dulled.
It lasted less than two seconds.
When it ended, Rohan was breathing hard.
A panel appeared.
[Beast Slain: Cinderback Grazer]
[Death Essence Absorbed]
[Rank Progress Increased]
Rohan stared at the words.
Death Essence.
Absorbed.
No Origin Crystal.
No dropped item.
No decision to cultivate later.
The energy had entered him automatically the moment the beast died.