Chapter 308: Advantageous Battlefield

Darkness oozed and spread across the clouds, covering the area in a wide radius.

Lured by the Dark-eyed Grape, the raven crashed down onto the cloud ground and exploded into darkness. It boasted its dark affinity, changing the technical battlefield from the harsh sun that bore down on it into the comfortable darkness that heightened its power.

A battle in between shadows was to its advantage.

Normally it would.

But it was not fighting a normal enemy, but the First Son of the Primordial Night.

Once the darkness swept in, the curl on Kai’s lips stretched further.

Croak—!

Uncanny laughter echoed within the smoky dark; the raven stalked Kai with precise vision.

It moved like a phantom, circling silently around Kai and then dashed in from behind—its big talons flared open to claw Kai’s back and perhaps pull out a few internal organs. However, Kai ducked aside; the massive bulk swooped past overhead with a chaotic gust.

Lucky.

Or at least, that was what the raven thought in its head.

It disappeared into the darkness and charged in from the side, discarding its intent to sneak.

Both wings opened like the embrace of death, and its talons cut through the air sharply.

Kai ducked and rolled. Its elongated lower digit scratched Kai’s back as he rolled, tracing a light, bloody trail. His body slowed down from the scratch as he rose to his feet and dodged several consecutive strikes from the raven.

A look of confusion crept to the raven’s face.

Animalistic as it was, its mind could still grasp that Kai seemed to be able to see in the dark.

Something that shouldn’t be possible without any likeness to the shadows.

He avoided another slash and turned to sprint, seemingly attempting to reach the sun again.

But the raven already moved, not going to let him do that.

Sparing not even a glance back, Kai reached for his pocket and flicked a Dark-eyed Grape with his thumb. A distraction. And the raven stuttered for a second, but it decided that it was better to let this opportunity to take Kai down go in exchange for the Dark-eyed Grape.

One grape was enough to recover its strength fully.

Another one might actually elevate its power.

Croak—!

It opened its wings, positioning its beak to take the Dark-eyed Grape.

But a force slammed into the side of its face, hard enough to chip the edge of its beak, and sent it hurtling sideways. Kai had tricked it. He’d feigned a sprint, then leaped—spinning his body and twisting his waist into a perfect spinning back kick that cracked against the raven’s skull.

Kai caught the Dark-eyed Grape and lunged without wasting a second.

Managing to trick the raven, he moved to exploit the raven’s distraction.

He moved faster than he ever had, devouring the distance between them in seconds.

But without a weapon in his hand, his attack options were limited.

Kai leaped onto the raven, but it already anticipated this and unfurled its left wing in an arc— pushing him back with the wind produced. It tried to fly again—but something grabbed it by its leg.

No—it’s a hand. A dark hand.

Kaelmorath grabbed the raven’s leg with one hand with an iron grip, keeping it on the ground.

And then, his muscular arms wrenched back and hurled the raven as though it only weighed a feather, flinging it straight toward Kai. In the same breath, Kai leapt, Dark Discharge already wreathed his fist, and swung with the full rotations of his hips.

Bam—!

His knuckles cracked against the raven’s skull once again, sending it rolling to the side.

Before it could react, five black stars that were hidden within the darkness began to hum with dark mana. Each one fired an eight-foot lance, sending it screaming through the air and striking the raven’s sliding body.

One on each wing and three on its body.

Upon landing his spinning back kick earlier, Kai wasted no time to summon Kaelmorath and also use the Black Starfall to summon five stars. Being in the darkness is advantageous for the raven, but it was even more so for him.

Only now did the raven realize that.

Crash—!

Kaelmorath came from above and landed directly on the raven’s back.

His massive stature pressed down on the raven, pinning it down on top of the five lances.

"As you can see—I’m very much worth following," Kai said as he approached the raven with steady steps. "I am very capable in my own right, and I also could give you food. What’s there to resist my domination for? Let me make you mine."

Kai pointed his hand forward, and channelled his mana once again.

Slowly, he probed the raven’s null gem to create the bond bridge and finished the connection.

Darkness, foreign one began to infiltrate the raven’s mind, and its vision grew darker around the edges. It tried to resist, but being pinned down and wounded made it hard for it to use its dark affinity to do anything.

"For a domesticated Star Beast, you sure like to resist," Kai said, looking down at the raven.

Sensing its distress, adrenaline surged through its body one last time.

Its dark affinity flared out with impressive energy and sucked in all the darkness in the area.

Sunlight flooded back, and Kai had no choice but to dissolve Kaelmorath before anyone could see a glimpse of him. And that loss of pressure gave the raven its opening. It unleashed a dark shockwave that shattered the lances stabbing its body and pushed Kai back.

Desperately, it flapped its holed and bleeding wings, scrambling towards the sky.

Kai recovered and looked up. "How did it get that high so quickly?!"

From the shockwave to his recovery, it was merely three seconds, and yet the raven reached quite high already. It was stumbling in the sky, but it was getting higher and getting away. It couldn’t leave, or else Henry would use this mistake to take the raven back.

In an instant, Kai ran.

His sprint was extremely quick, and he could feel the wind—rushing against his body harder than it ever did. Kai was not aware of his exact speed—but it felt like he could cover a mile in under forty seconds.

Kai easily kept his pace with the flying raven, but he needed to reach it right now.

Muscles coiled as he made one last stomp, channelling all his strength to his front leg.

His hands swirled with mana, activating the Dark Discharge Imprint.

Boom—!

And the moment he shoved his palms downward—a blast of dark energy detonated beneath him and launched him skyward. His arms flailed for balance. In seconds, he was soaring. Forty feet. Sixty. One hundred.

Kai reached out his hand, fingers spread—the raven’s leg within his arm’s reach.

But the raven had already seen him.

Anticipated him.

It knew that Kai was someone persistent, and it wasn’t going to relax even when it had height.

Its wings snapped open, and it beat them hard against the air once—pushing itself up a dozen feet in a blur of black feathers. A pitiful distance for a Star Beast of its size and power, but that was enough.

Enough to slip beyond Kai’s grasp.

Kai gritted his teeth as his hand closed on empty air.

And worse, the rising momentum from his leap had already died. He was falling again.

The shift in momentum lasted only two seconds, but with his heightened senses—those mere two seconds stretched into an eternity. Time slowed down, and the world sharpened. He could see every detail of the raven above him.

Every feather, every flicker of its crimson eyes, and even every twitch of its muscles.

He could feel the wind rushing past his face, and his body weight pulling him down.

And in that stretched moment, his mind raced through the options.

It seemed to still have enough strength to continue, but I could still try and test my luck.

Kai weighed using Dark Discharge again—launch himself upward, close the dozen-foot gap, try once more. But the path would be straight. It could only be straight. And the raven would see it coming, just as it had before.

Another option was to cut off his own arm to trigger the Night Mutation.

It would turn his limb into a tentacle that could reach farther than any human arm.

But that was extreme, reckless, and the raven might still escape.

Just then, a thought surfaced.

His biggest change after breaking through to the Aspirant Supernal rank wasn’t his physical stats—but it was his Legacy Skill. Deep Slumber. It had evolved, grown stronger. He still has no idea how it changed, but since it was now an advanced version of the original, he has one guess.

And if he could channel it properly, he might not need to reach the raven at all.

Once the decision locked into place, Kai opened his palm and activated Deep Slumber.

A layer of darkness oozed from his skin, pooling in his palm like liquid shadow. He snapped his head toward the raven and thrust his hand forward, fingers splayed. An invisible reach of darkness hurled through the air.

It was silent, formless, and hard to detect.

Even though the raven sensed the shift in the air, a subtle wrongness that made its ink feathers bristle. But it couldn’t see anything. It only saw Kai’s movement, but nothing after that. There was nothing to react to. Nothing to dodge.

Until the attack reached its mind.

Splash—!

Out of nowhere, sleepiness struck its mind like a wave, and its wings faltered.

Its eyelids grew heavy, like they weighed a ton, dropping against its will.

A foreign dark energy, one that has no connection to its dark affinity at all, invaded its energy stream, wrapping around its thoughts like coils of smoke, dragging them down into the abyss. It had already been weakened from the earlier damage, so resisting this was impossible.

Nothing to use to fight back against the sleepiness.

Eventually, the raven’s eyes closed.

Its body went limp, wings folding, and it fell.

Kai’s eyes widened as he watched the massive bird drop from the sky like a stone.

He hadn’t expected it to work so well. Deep Slumber had already been powerful, but this—this was something else. The raven was unconscious before it had even begun to fall. And Kai, still suspended in his own plummet, could only stare as the bird tumbled past him, a black shape spiraling toward the cloud floor below.

Of course, a Scourge-class Star Beast was strong.

Its physicality was beyond any Supernals within the First Sky.

But with the damage the raven suffered, it might not survive the horrendous fall directly on its head.

"Shit..." Kai’s smile froze on his face. "I think I didn’t think this through."