Chapter 35: Scales

Chapter 35: Chapter 35: Scales

The third path swallowed them whole.

The passage wound ahead in slow, lazy curves, pale stone walls veined with faint threads of light, mana hanging so thick in the air that every breath felt like drinking something warm.

Five sets of footsteps echoed through the fog.

Reeve at the front, shield low.

Wen and Skyler in the middle.

Jason and Cassius at the rear, spear and sword loose in their hands.

"Quiet in here," Cassius said cheerfully. "I hate quiet."

"You’ve been talking for ten minutes straight," Skyler said.

"That’s me being quiet."

Jason kept his eyes moving, watching the walls, the floor, the shifting fog ahead.

’Stone walls that glow, air that tastes like soup, and a cheerful stranger who won’t stop talking. Wonderful. What could possibly go wrong?’

Then the fog ahead of them moved.

Not with the wind.

With weight.

---

Something low and heavy dragged itself into view. Followed by the two of it’s pack.

Four legs. Thick, muscled, splayed wide.

Long, blunt snouts crowned with two curved horns.

And scales.

Dull green-black plates overlapping across their whole body like armor stitched together by someone who hated the concept of weak points.

Wyrms.

Crawling. Wingless. Its back was a smooth, unbroken ridge where wings should have been.

"In another world these would be dragons. I guess their bloodline is just too thin." Reeve muttered, shield rising.

"Those scales look like they’d be a pain" Skyler said.

"Let’s find out shall we" Cassius said, readying himself for combat.

It hissed.

Then they charged.

Thump-thump-thump!

Reeve met one head on, his shield slamming into its snout with a crunch that rattled the passage, stone plating rising beneath his boots.

The wyrm slowed.

"Jason!" Reeve barked. "Flank!"

Jason moved.

Crimson Blaze poured down his spear, fire coiling around the tip as he drove it straight into the creature’s ribs.

Tssss!

The flame hissed against the scales.

And died.

Barely a scorch mark.

’What?’

He pulled back, spear steaming, and tried again with a thinner, hotter stream.

Same result.

The scales drank the fire like it was nothing.

A wet, angry snap of teeth snapped past his shoulder, and he threw himself sideways, the wyrm’s jaw slamming shut on empty air.

’Resistant to fire. Great. Half my kit’s gone.’

---

He switched.

Lightning crackled down the shaft, bright and sharp, and this time he didn’t stab at the plating.

He stabbed at the gap between two scales.

Crack!

Current tore beneath the armor.

The wyrm convulsed, every muscle locking mid-lunge, a strangled hiss tearing out of its throat.

Only for a heartbeat.

Enough.

Jason drove the spear forward through the seam beneath its jaw, and the creature collapsed with a heavy, thudding groan.

The rest of the cohort had finished off the other two with seemingly no effort as well, Skylar taking down one with a few arrows to the skull.

The other, Cassius had killed it. In one strike no less. His wind affinity essence let him swing his sword with enough speed to slice clean through the neck of one of the beasts.

Silence.

"Huh," Cassius said, staring at him.

"Neat trick." Cassius wiped his own blade clean, a slim, elegant sword that hummed faintly with a wind current along its edge. "You don’t see many spears these days. Most people go for swords."

"It’s what I’m comfortable with."

"Fair." Cassius grinned. "It looks good on you, though."

Jason studied him for a heartbeat longer than he meant to.

Cassius was doing the same thing, he realized, eyes flicking between Jason’s spear and his face.

Both of them had gained a healthy respect for the other’s strength despite the gap in cultivation.

Neither of them said it out loud.

They just nodded, once, and moved on.

---

The passage split.

Then split again.

Then, somewhere in the tangle, two of the corridors met at a wide, circular junction, and Jason stopped walking.

Another group stood on the far side.

Six hunters, weapons drawn, blood on their boots.

And at the front, a man in his thirties.

Lean. Sharp. Dark hair tied back, a plain sword resting easily against his shoulder.

Nothing flashy.

Jason activated cursory insight on the new arrival.

[Name: Kane]

[Age: 34]

[Cultivation: Second Level, Late Stage]

[Affinity: Lightning]

[Condition: Stable]

’A fellow lightning user.

And he’s basically brushing the ceiling of Second Level.’

The highest cultivation in the room by a decent margin. Higher than Reeve.

"You guys the third path team?" Kane asked, voice flat and even.

"Third path," Reeve confirmed.

"We’re the fourth. Apparently we’ve crossed into yours."

That was the entire introduction.

Then the fog behind them shifted, and the growling started.

Wyrms poured out of the side passages, ten of them, maybe twelve, scales scraping against stone.

The two teams merged without a single word of coordination.

Reeve anchored the center.

Wen and a stocky fire user from the other team took the flanks.

Skyler’s arrows whistled overhead.

Clang! Crack! Thump!

"These scales are a nightmare!" the fire user roared, flames washing uselessly across a wyrm’s hide. "Fire’s barely doing anything!"

"Told you," Jason muttered, already switching to lightning.

Unlike the golems, these things had no obvious weak point. No exposed seams.

Just scales.

Thick, layered, relentless scales.

You either hit hard enough to punch through, or you didn’t.

Jason’s plain E-Rank spear groaned under the strain of it.

’Cheap spear. Cheap steel. Wonderful.’

He kept fighting anyway, but a corner of his attention slid sideways.

Toward Kane.

The man moved like water poured over stone.

A wyrm lunged.

Flash!

Lightning traced along his blade, and the creature’s head thudded to the ground before it finished its charge.

One.

Another lunged from behind.

Flash!

Two.

A third tried to flank him.

Flash!

Three.

Jason kept counting.

Four.

The fourth wyrm dropped, and Kane paused for half a second, chest rising in a slow, deliberate breath.

And that was when Jason heard it.

Not with his ears.

With the sixth sense cultivators used to detect mana.

A faint pulse, low and rhythmic, thrumming through Kane’s essence in perfect sync with his heartbeat.

Thum.

Thum.

Thum.

Every strike landed on the beat.

Every surge of power arrived exactly in time with it.

Jason went completely still.

’No.’

’That’s not possible.’

The Overbearing Heart Mantra.

A Veryon clan technique. One he’d only ever learned the very first stanza of, back when he was a child running through the clan’s training yard, before the accident.

Nobody outside the clan knew it.

Nobody outside the clan would even notice it.

To anyone else, Kane was simply fast. Powerful. Efficient.

But Jason’s Perception had sharpened beyond anything he’d had back then, and the rhythm sat there in Kane’s movements as clearly as a signature scrawled across a page.

’Someone who never learned it would never catch that.’

His grip tightened on the spear.

’I love coincidences.’

Kane wiped his blade, turned toward the remaining wyrms, and didn’t spare the room a single glance.

Jason did.

Jason kept his eyes on him for the rest of the fight.